Sensei LMS 3.7 contains some important bug fixes and performance improvements, and adds an integration with the Site Health tool.
One especially important bug fix involves a pesky issue where some learners were being added to a course or lesson multiple times. This was preventing those learners from making progress in the course. As part of that fix, we’ve also brought back the ability to remove a learner’s progress at the lesson level.
Upon upgrading to 3.7, indexes are automatically added to the comments table if they don’t already exist. As Sensei LMS stores a lot of data in this table, this should noticeably improve the performance of large sites.
We’ve also added an integration with the Site Health tool. The integration does some checks on the status of the learner enrolment job and migration, and will also let you know if your theme is using outdated Sensei template files:
When a learner purchases one or more courses, those courses are now listed on the Order Details page. Clicking on any of the courses takes the learner right to that course:
We’ve also added a Courses section to the sidebar of the My Account page, which navigates to the learner’s My Courses page:
Developers: For new hooks, deprecations and template file changes, please see the beta release post.
To update, please head on over to Dashboard → Updates in the WordPress admin.
Please note: While we have thoroughly tested this release, it’s always possible that we’ve missed something. We recommend that you test the update on a staging site before updating your live site.
You can download the Sensei LMS 3.7 beta here. Alternatively, if you don’t have a staging site, you can use our Sensei LMS Test Site. You will be given the same level of access as a teacher, so some functionality may not be available. Please note that the test site integrates with Smartlook to record your visit. Smartlook is GDPR compliant out of the box, and any recordings will be automatically deleted after 1 month.
If you find a bug, please submit an issue on Github or leave a comment on this post. Our tentative release date is January 21st.
WooCommerce Paid Courses 2.3
WooCommerce Paid Courses 2.3 contains a couple of small improvements that we think will make a big difference in helping your learners get started after purchasing a course:
Added a link to the My Courses page on the My Account page.
Added a Courses section to the order details page so that learners can see which courses they’ve purchased.
When a product is sent to the trash, remove that product from all applicable courses.
Don’t copy the product over when duplicating a course. This ensures that any learners who purchased the original course don’t gain access to the duplicated course.
New Filter
sensei_wc_paid_courses_my_account_menu_courses_position – Change the position of the Courses item in the My Account menu.
Deprecations
Sensei_WC::course_link_from_order
Sensei_WC::generate_order_notice
Testing WooCommerce Paid Courses
Beta testers will receive the WooCommerce Paid Courses beta directly to their inbox. If you would like to sign up to be a beta tester and have a valid license, please fill out the beta tester signup form using the same email address you used to purchase your license.
If you find a bug, please leave a comment on this post. Our tentative release date is January 21st.
As these are beta releases, please test them on a staging site and not your live site. If you don’t have a staging site, you can use the WP Staging plugin to create one.
When creating a new course, these blocks are automatically added to the page for you. They are equivalent to the elements that already appear on the course page, but because they have been rewritten as blocks, it’s now possible to change how they look, adjust their order, or remove them altogether:
Take Course
The Take Course block is a button that enables a registered user to enrol in the course. Once enrolled, the Take Course button is no longer displayed for that user. The block can be customized by changing its style, colors or border.
Contact Teacher
The Contact Teacher block enables registered users to contact the teacher. The user is not required to be enrolled in the course in order to send a message to the teacher. Similar to Take Course, the Contact Teacher block can have its style, colors and border customized.
Course Progress
Course Progress displays the user’s progress in the course. This block is only visible to users who are already enrolled. The course progress block enables you to customize the border radius, progress bar height, and colors.
Course Outline
In addition to displaying the modules and lessons that make up a course, the course outline block enables you to build your course structure right inside the editor! Any modules or lessons you add to the block will be created automatically once the course is saved:
Please note that it’s not currently possible to add existing modules or lessons to the course outline block. Given this, the recommended flow for creating a new course is to start with the course outline block, and then add content to the individual modules and lessons once they’ve been created.
You can learn more about how to use these blocks in our documentation. A future release will add more blocks for both lessons and quizzes.
What If I Don’t Want to Use Blocks?
If you’d rather not use blocks for new courses, you can remove them in the editor and the PHP template will be used to render the course as before. This will create a consistent experience for learners until you’re able to update existing courses to also use blocks.
What Else is in This Release?
Here are some other enhancements and fixes you’ll find in 3.6:
Ensure analysis export works with RTL languages.
Fix incorrect rounding of maximum file size for file upload questions.
Ensure learners who have already viewed a quiz see the latest updates the next time they view it.
Remove wrapper elements from templates. This should improve the look of Sensei pages on some themes.
WooCommerce Paid Courses 2.2 extends the Take Course block, and changes it to a Purchase Course button if there is a single product attached to the course, or pricing cards if there are multiple products attached to the course:
Developers: For new hooks, deprecations and template file changes, please see the beta release post.
To update, please head on over to Dashboard → Updates in the WordPress admin.
Please note: While we have thoroughly tested this release, it’s always possible that we’ve missed something. We recommend that you test the update on a staging site before updating your live site.
*Please note that the test site integrates with Smartlook to record your visit. Smartlook is GDPR compliant out of the box, and any recordings will be deleted automatically after 1 month.
WooCommerce Paid Courses
Here’s what’s changed in Beta 2:
Purchase Course Block
Warn learner when buying a product containing a course they are already taking
Expand the editor and the frontend to support many purchase blocks
Ensure variable products work with purchase block
Other
Fix typo in package generation to include `lang` folder
Sensei LMS 3.6 is now available for testing. This release introduces a number of blocks that are available when adding or editing courses:
Take Course button
Contact Teacher button
Course Progress
Course Outline
When creating a new course, these blocks are automatically added to the page for you. They are equivalent to the elements that already appear on the course page, but because they have been rewritten as blocks, it’s now possible to change how they look, adjust their order, or remove them altogether.
Course Outline Block
The course outline block is especially noteworthy. In addition to displaying the modules and lessons that make up a course, the course outline block enables you to build your course structure right inside the editor. Any modules or lessons you add to the block will be created automatically once the course is saved:
What Else is in This Release?
Here are some other enhancements and fixes you’ll find in 3.6:
Ensure analysis export works with RTL languages.
Fix incorrect rounding of maximum file size for file upload questions.
Ensure learners who have already viewed a quiz see the latest updates the next time they view it.
Remove wrapper elements from templates. This should improve the look of Sensei pages on some themes.
You can download the Sensei LMS 3.6 beta here. Alternatively, if you don’t have a staging site, you can use our Sensei LMS Test Site. Please note that the test site integrates with Smartlook to record your visit. Smartlook is GDPR compliant out of the box, and any recordings will be deleted automatically after 1 month.
WooCommerce Paid Courses 2.2
WooCommerce Paid Courses 2.2 integrates with the Take Course block, changing it to a Purchase Course button if there is a single product attached to the course, or pricing cards if there are multiple products attached to the course:
Testing WooCommerce Paid Courses
Beta testers will receive the WooCommerce Paid Courses beta directly to their inbox. If you would like to sign up to be a beta tester and have a valid license for WooCommerce Paid Courses that has not expired, please fill out the beta tester signup form using the same email address you used to purchase your license.
If you find a bug in Sensei LMS or Sensei with WooCommerce Paid Courses, please submit an issue on Github or leave a comment here. Our tentative release date is December 10th.
For Developers
If you’re a developer, here are the technical details of what’s changed in Sensei LMS 3.6.
Sensei LMS 3.6
Template File Changes
templates/course-results.php – Changed article element to div and removed section.
templates/course-results/lessons.php – Changed article element to div.
templates/single-course.php – Removed article and section elements.
templates/single-lesson.php – Removed article and section elements.
templates/single-message.php – Removed article and section elements.
templates/single-quiz.php – Removed article and section elements.
New Filters
sensei_block_type_args – For WordPress < 5.5, filters block arguments. For WordPress >= 5.5, use register_block_type_args instead.
sensei_use_sensei_template: Whether to use Sensei’s templates and content wrappers.
sensei_use_wp_register_link – Force Sensei to output the default WordPress user registration link.
New Action
sensei_loaded: Fires once all global objects have been set in Sensei LMS.
Deprecated Functions & Methods
Sensei_Admin::get_lesson_order
Sensei_Lesson::on_lesson_published
Sensei_Core_Modules::reset_none_modules_transient
There are no deprecations or new hooks in WooCommerce Paid Courses 2.2.
As these are beta releases, please test them on a staging site and not your live site. If you don’t have a staging site, you can use the WP Staging plugin to create one.
In WooCommerce Paid Courses 2.1, it’s easier than ever to remove a learner’s enrollment. No more searching for orders — learners can now be removed with a single click! And restoring their enrollment is just as easy!
With this release, we are also bumping the minimum supported version of WordPress to 5.2 and PHP to 7.0 to match WooCommerce.
Remove Enrollment
For enrolled learners, a new Remove Enrollment link is displayed when hovering over a learner in Learner Management. Clicking this link removes the learner from the course, revoking their access. The status of any order, subscription or membership associated with the learner’s enrollment is unaffected.
Please note that if the course is tied to a product, subscription or membership, and the learner purchases that product / subscription / membership again, they will be re-enrolled in the course:
Restore Enrollment
Unenrolled learners who previously purchased a course can have their enrollment restored by clicking the Restore Enrollment link. This will re-enroll the learner in the course, and enrollment will once again be controlled by the associated order / subscription / membership:
Enroll
Unenrolled learners who do not have an active order / subscription / membership associated with their enrollment (for example, for a free course or one where an administrator enrolled them directly via Learner Management) can be re-enrolled by clicking the Enroll link. Fundamentally it does the same thing as restoring an enrollment — it enrollers the learner in the course — only there is no order / subscription / membership controlling enrollment:
We hope these changes help to streamline the management of your learners!
For Developers
If you’re a developer, here’s what you need to know about WooCommerce Paid Courses 2.1.0.
To update, please head over to Dashboard → Updates in the WordPress admin.
Please note: While we have thoroughly tested this release, it’s always possible that we’ve missed something. We recommend that you test the update on a staging site before updating your live site.
Today we’re releasing Sensei LMS 3.0 and WooCommerce Paid Courses 2.0. These are both major releases that overhaul course access and simplify the rules for adding and removing access for learners.
Sensei LMS 3.0 and Sensei with WooCommerce Paid Courses 3.0.0.2.0.0 introduce the concept of course enrollments. When updating to the new version, a migration job will run that enrolls existing learners in courses. This means that any learner who is listed in Learner Management for a particular course prior to the migration will be enrolled in that same course after the migration.
Note: As this is a major release that affects course access, we strongly recommend that you test the update on a staging site before updating your live site. We also recommend that you take a backup of your live site prior to updating.
For sites running Sensei LMS + Sensei with WooCommerce Paid Courses: For sites that are running both Sensei LMS and Sensei with WooCommerce Paid Courses, we strongly recommend updating Sensei with WooCommerce Paid Courses first, followed by Sensei LMS. Updating Sensei LMS first would mean that learners would not have access until Sensei with WooCommerce Paid Courses was also updated.
Course Enrollments
Course enrollments make it possible to separate course progress from course access. This means that a learner can be unenrolled from a course while still keeping their existing progress intact. If that learner later re-enrolls in the course, they can continue from where they left off.
Learners can be removed from a course by clicking Remove manual enrollment or re-enrolled by clicking Manually enroll learner:
WooCommerce Paid Courses
For paid courses, there is an important distinction between learners who were enrolled in a course because they purchased it, and those who were manually enrolled by an admin or teacher (i.e. a teacher or admin added the learner to the course even though they did not purchase it). There is a filter on the Learner Management page that can be used to view only those learners who were manually enrolled:
Special Considerations for WooCommerce Memberships
Migrating Active Memberships with Cancelled Orders
For those using WooCommerce Memberships to grant access to courses, you may see the following notice after upgrading:
In previous versions of Sensei with WooCommerce Paid Courses, a learner with an active membership and a cancelled order was not given access to the membership’s courses. This behaviour may be contrary to what you would expect, so as of Sensei with WooCommerce Paid Courses 3.0.0.2.0.0, all learners with an active membership and a cancelled order will have access to the membership’s courses. If you would like to change this behaviour for existing memberships, click the View Active Memberships with Cancelled Orders button and change the status of the memberships on that page to Cancelled.
Migrating Inactive Memberships
The default enrollment migration behaviour for learners who were granted access to a course via a membership is to enroll any learner who is listed in Learner Management for a particular course, regardless of the status of their membership. This means that learners with memberships that are paused, expired, or cancelled, but who had access to the course(s) associated with that membership prior to the migration, will still be enrolled in and have access to the course(s) after the migration.
If this is not the behaviour you desire, and would prefer NOT to enroll learners in courses if their associated membership is paused, expired, or cancelled, then please follow these instructions before updating to Sensei with WooCommerce Paid Courses 3.0.0.2.0.0. It’s important to be aware that this will remove access to courses for learners with memberships that are paused, expired, or cancelled:
Today we’re releasing Sensei LMS 3.0 Beta 4 and WooCommerce Paid Courses 2.0 Beta 4, which we are hopeful will be the final beta prior to the production release.
We hope that the fact that we’ve released 4 betas helps to highlight the importance and size of this release, and encourages everyone to do some testing on their staging sites before updating their live sites.
Sensei LMS 3.0
Here’s what’s new in Beta 4:
Add multisite support for course enrolments.
Delete provider journal data when plugin is uninstalled.
Display a notice to remind admins to upgrade WooCommerce Paid Courses to 2.0 for sites that are running Sensei LMS 3.0 and Sensei with WooCommerce Paid Courses 1.x. For sites running both plugins, we strongly recommend updating Sensei with WooCommerce Paid Courses before Sensei LMS.
Made a change to use an unfiltered method when checking whether or not a learner has started a course. This change will impact sites with code customizations that leverage the sensei_user_started_course filter, and means that this filter should no longer be relied on to provide access to a course. If you are currently doing so, please consider either switching to a custom enrolment provider (example here), or leveraging hooks in the relevant third-party plugin (i.e. WooCommerce, WooCommerce Subscriptions or WooCommerce Memberships).
We renamed the sensei_wc_paid_courses_migration_ended_memberships_provide_manual_enrolmentfilter introduced in Beta 3 to sensei_wc_paid_courses_migration_inactive_memberships_provide_manual_enrolment, and simplified its logic such that it will block users with inactive memberships from being manually enrolled when the migration runs, regardless of the status of the associated order.
Testing
As always, please test the beta release on a staging site and not your live site. If you don’t have a staging site, you can use the WP Staging plugin to create one.
If you’ve already tested a previous beta on your staging site, you should take the following steps prior to testing Beta 4:
Deactivate and delete the older beta versions of Sensei LMS.
Restore the database backup for your staging site.
Download Beta 4 and unzip it to your wp-content/plugins folder. You can choose to either override your existing folder, or rename it to something else before unzipping, if applicable.
Activate Sensei LMS 3.0.0 Beta 4.
The above steps are necessary to ensure the course enrolment migration process executes again. If you haven’t tested any of the beta releases prior to this, there’s no need to restore a database backup.
Please note that the release date has been moved to April 27th, 2020, which will allow for time to test Beta 4 prior to release. Feel free to leave a comment on this post if you find any issues while testing our latest beta.
Actions are now fired when the enrolment status is changed. (See the New Filters section below for more details.)
We added the sensei_enrolment_learner_calculation_job_batch_size filter for setting the batch size of the learner calculation job.
We introduced a provider journal store that is disabled by default, but can be enabled using the sensei_enable_enrolment_provider_journal filter.
We’ve significantly reduced the amount of data that was being stored in the database for course enrolments.
You can see what else changed in Beta 3 here or you can download Sensei LMS 3.0 Beta 3 here.
WooCommerce Paid Courses 2.0
The most notable change in WooCommerce Paid Courses 2.0 Beta 3 is that we added the sensei_wc_paid_courses_migration_inactive_memberships_provide_manual_enrolment filter to enable blocking users with inactive memberships from being manually enrolled when the migration runs.
Testing
As always, please test the beta release on a staging site and not your live site. If you don’t have a staging site, you can use the WP Staging plugin to create one.
If you’ve already tested either Beta 1 or Beta 2 on your staging site, you should take the following steps prior to testing Beta 3:
Deactivate and delete the Beta 1/Beta 2 version of Sensei LMS.
Restore the database backup for your staging site.
Download Beta 3 and unzip it to your wp-content/plugins folder. You can choose to either override your existing folder, or rename it to something else before unzipping, if applicable.
Activate Sensei LMS 3.0.0 Beta 3.
The above steps are necessary to ensure the course enrolment migration process executes again. If you haven’t tested any of the beta releases prior to this, there’s no need to restore a database backup.
For Developers
Sensei LMS
New Filters
sensei_comment_counts_include_sensei_comments – Whether or not to include Sensei comments in the comments count.
sensei_course_enrolment_store_results – Whether or not to store course enrolment results.
sensei_enable_enrolment_provider_journal – Whether or not to enable journal storage.
sensei_enrolment_course_calculation_job_batch_size – Set the batch size for the number of learners to query when the course calculation job runs.
sensei_enrolment_history_size – Set the maximum number of historical entries that are stored for every user, course and provider.
sensei_enrolment_learner_calculation_job_batch_size – Set the batch size for the number of learners to query when the learner calculation job runs.
sensei_enrolment_message_log_size – Set the maximum number of log messages that are stored for every user, course and provider.
sensei_frontend_learner_enrolment_handler – Enable providers to specify a custom course sign-up handler.
New Actions
sensei_course_enrolment_status_changed – Fires when the course enrolment status changes.
sensei_manual_enrolment_learner_enrolled – Fires when a learner is manually enrolled.
sensei_manual_enrolment_learner_withdrawn – Fires when a learner’s manual enrolment is withdrawn.
WooCommerce Paid Courses
New Filter
sensei_wc_paid_courses_migration_inactive_memberships_provide_manual_enrolment – Whether or not to block users with inactive memberships from being manually enrolled.
Please note that the release date has been moved to April 22nd, 2020April 27th, 2020. Feel free to leave a comment on this post if you find any issues while testing Beta 3.
Today we’re releasing a second beta for Sensei LMS 3.0 and WooCommerce Paid Courses 2.0.
Sensei LMS 3.0
Here are the important changes in Sensei LMS 3.0 Beta 2:
We’ve added a filter to bypass enrolment functionality altogether.
The “Manually Enrolled Learners” filter is now hidden when not needed.
We fixed an issue with the comment template not displaying for messages.
You can see what else changed in Beta 2 here or you can download Sensei LMS 3.0 Beta 2 here.
WooCommerce Paid Courses 2.0
Here are a few things we’ve fixed in WooCommerce Paid Courses 2.0 Beta 2:
The display of products in the product selector was being cut off in WordPress 5.4.
A PHP warning that was logged when running some enrolment jobs.
A fatal error when deactivating WooCommerce before WooCommerce Paid Courses.
For Developers
Sensei LMS
New Filter: sensei_is_enrolled – Allow default enrolment handling to be bypassed.
Deprecated Method: Sensei_Main::activation
As always, please test the beta release on a staging site and not your live site. If you don’t have a staging site, you can use the WP Staging plugin to create one.
