CB Subs and Joomla LMS

I posted the following request yesterday on the CB Subs forum and have not received a reply yet, so apologies for posting here too but perhaps as a Professional subscriber I should have posted here instead.

We use the JoomlaLMS component to deliver e-learning and have installed CB Subs in the hope that it will overcome a "challenge" that we have with JoomlaLMS. However I am struggling to determine how CB Subs should be configured so am hoping for some advice!

JoomlaLMS lists a range of courses. These can be paid for individually or in groups. The major problem is providing access to a group of courses for a specific period e.g. 365 days. Whilst the LMS allows you to create a subscription for a group of courses for a given period, the moment a course is added to that subscription it extends access to all the courses. For example we could create Subscription A that provides access for 365 days to courses 1, 2 & 3. A client subscribes on 1 January 2011 and the courses would then be available until 31 December 2011. However if we added course 4 to Subscription A on 1 June 2011 the LMS extends access to all the courses until the end of May 2012. That is not what we want. It should expire access to all courses on 31 December 2011.

I hope that CB Subs can overcome this as well as provide other useful features like automatic renewal etc. However I am not sure how we can list courses for individual purchase via the LMS (or VirtueMart - this can be integrated with JoomlaLMS) but also automate enrolment to courses if a client chooses to have a CB Subs plan. If a client takes out a CB Subs plan s/he will need to be automatically enrolled in the LMS course. I assume this could be done with an SQL action that would need to enrol the user in all the courses in the plan, but is this feasible and what would happen when we add a new course to the subscription because all plan members would need to be enrolled in the course?

I hope I have explained this well and welcome advice.

Andrew

This depends entirely how you want to project your courses. If JoomlaLMS has its own access protection features then its best to manipulate them through database queries using CBSubs SQL Actions to execute queries on plan activation and deactivation; let CBSubs handle the duration of access through the plans duration (1 year for example). If JoomlaLMS does not provide built in protection you should protect the frontend URLs of the courses using CBSubs Content integration on the Extensions integration tab. If a user subscription from CBSubs were to expire on 31st of December then they would lose access; CBSubs does not auto-extend access unless they pay to extend access (renew).

Regarding CBSubs boards, yes if you've a support subscription you should post all questions regardless of topic in the support boards for a timely response. Other boards will receive response when possible.

Thanks for the advice. We need a way to enrol users in a course via CB Subs automatically which will need to be done via SQL. I'll ask the JoomlaLMS team about the appropriate queries.

I see that SQL actions can be triggered on activation, deactivation, renewal and expiration. However what happens when we add a new course to the subscription? For those clients with active subscriptions we would need to execute an SQL query that enrols all those with active subscriptions in the course. I cannot see how this can be done.

Andrew

I have been in contact with the LMS developers. Is there an API for CB Subs/developer documentation available please? I can't see any.

Andrew

Thanks for the advice. We need a way to enrol users in a course via CB Subs automatically which will need to be done via SQL. I'll ask the JoomlaLMS team about the appropriate queries.

This is very doable then using CBSubs SQL Actions, which will allow executing database queries on plan activation, deactivation, etc..

However what happens when we add a new course to the subscription? For those clients with active subscriptions we would need to execute an SQL query that enrols all those with active subscriptions in the course. I cannot see how this can be done.

You'd need to fix the actively subscriber users manually in this case. I don't know how JoomlaLMS enrollment works, but if it's something like assigning a user a Group and that Group has access to various courses you select then this shouldn't be a problem as CBSubs would handle giving them the appropriate group and LMS would handle access to the courses based off that group.

I have been in contact with the LMS developers. Is there an API for CB Subs/developer documentation available please? I can't see any.

No, CBSubs is encoded and currently not open to 3rd party development.

You'd need to fix the actively subscriber users manually in this case. I don't know how JoomlaLMS enrollment works, but if it's something like assigning a user a Group and that Group has access to various courses you select then this shouldn't be a problem as CBSubs would handle giving them the appropriate group and LMS would handle access to the courses based off that group.

Thanks for this information.

Users have to enrol in a course; for paid courses access is given once payment is made via PayPal etc. Users enrol in individual courses and whilst there are groups, assignment to one does not give access to a group of courses.

I want to be able to add courses to a subscription whilst it is active so we need an automated way to do this and therefore a suitable SQL trigger (e.g. "Plan update"). Since this is not a current feature it would need a plug-in specifically for the LMS. Furthermore it looks like the URL protection would prevent users enrolling in single courses directly through the LMS (CB Subs would be used for groups or courses). The LMS has its own update function for subscriptions so this could be replicated within such a plug-in.

The LMS developers will develop one hence the request for developer documentation. However since there is none for third parties I can't see that CB Subs is going to work, which is a great shame and disappointment because it offers so much and I really thought it was going to be the answer.