You can email learners a Simplesat survey from a Totara Learn seminar notification, for example once they've attended a seminar event. Totara fills in the details, so each response comes in with the learner as the customer, along with the seminar, the course and the session date.
There's nothing to connect. You generate the survey code in Simplesat and paste it into a seminar notification.
Before you start
The Totara Learn survey is available on every Simplesat plan.
The code uses the placeholders from Totara's legacy seminar notifications, such as [email], so it has to go in a legacy notification. If your site uses centralised notifications, turn on Allow legacy notifications under Quick-access menu → Seminars → Global settings. Then set the seminar to Use legacy notifications.
Send surveys from Totara Learn
In Simplesat:
Create or open the survey and choose External email embed.
Under Choose where to add your survey, choose Totara Learn.
Click Generate embed code.
Choose Visual and click Copy survey.
Then add a notification to the seminar in Totara Learn:
Open the seminar activity.
Under Seminar administration, select Legacy notifications.
Click Add below the list of notifications.
Choose Send later and set how long after the event the email goes out, with After event (closing session end time) as the reference point.
Under Recipients, choose Booked, then Attended only.
Enter a Title, which becomes the email's subject, and paste the survey into Body.
Click Save.
To use the survey in every seminar, a Site Administrator can add it to a notification template under Quick-access menu → Seminars → Notification templates. Then you choose that template under Template when you add the notification.
When Totara sends the email, it fills in these placeholders in every rating link:
What the link carries | Totara placeholder |
Customer email |
|
Customer ID |
|
Customer first name |
|
Customer last name |
|
Company |
|
Ticket subject |
|
Username, department, course name and session date, saved as ticket fields on the response |
|
Links to the course, the event page and the seminar, saved as ticket fields on the response |
|
The links carry no ticket ID, so every click records a new response, even when it's the same learner clicking again.
To learn how placeholders work in every tool, see Placeholders and merge fields.
Troubleshooting
My Totara Learn responses come in without the learner
The survey went out in a centralised notification, not a legacy seminar notification, so Totara didn't fill in the placeholders. The link reached Simplesat with [email] exactly as typed. Simplesat doesn't save an email that isn't an address, so the response has no customer.
To fix it, turn on Allow legacy notifications and put the survey in the seminar's Legacy notifications. Emails that have already gone out keep their old links, so responses to those emails will still come in without the learner.
FAQ
Do I need to connect Totara Learn to Simplesat?
No. The survey runs from the code you paste into the seminar notification.
Can I see which facilitator a response is about?
Currently, no. The Totara Learn code carries only the facilitator's name, and Simplesat needs a team member's email or ID before it can credit a response to them.
Each response does carry the seminar, the course and the session date, and you can filter Feedback by any of them.
Does the survey in my notification change when I edit the survey?
No. The code in the notification is a copy.
If you change the survey's metric question, its rating choices, icons or labels, generate the code again and replace it in the notification. External email embed lists which changes need new code.
Emails that have already gone out keep the old survey.