Uncanny LearnDash Toolkit

Add your own columns and data to Uncanny Groups and LearnDash course reports and empower your Group Leaders with the tools they need.

As an e-learning educator or administrator, you know how important it is to have accurate and detailed course reports. And while LearnDash has some built-in reporting tools, oftentimes, you need additional information. Custom data fields such as a user’s job title, age, department/organization or even last login date can be invaluable for administrators, instructors and LearnDash Group Leaders.

So, if you’ve been looking for a way to add more columns and custom data to your Uncanny Groups and LearnDash course reports, then you’ve found the right page. In this article, we’ll show you a few simple ways to customize your Uncanny Groups and LearnDash course reports. We’ll also show you how to make those reports visible right from your WordPress dashboard so that Group Leaders can access them.

Trust us, this will be the easiest course you take all day.

Custom Columns in CSV Files for Administrators

For WordPress and LearnDash administrators, one of the simplest reporting tools available are LearnDash’s native CSV reports. These reports provide administrators with the ability to export basic information on users’ course and quiz data to CSV files where they can perform in-depth analysis and keep track of their KPIs. As useful as these native CSV reports are, however, they don’t always contain the information that you’re looking for.

Enter Uncanny Toolkit Pro.

To customize your LearnDash user reports, follow these simple steps.

1. Download Uncanny Toolkit Pro

As the leading add-on for LearnDash users, Uncanny Toolkit expands and improves upon the features and functionalities of your LMS website. If you’ve ever found yourself wishing that LearnDash could do “X” (such as report customization) or show you “Y” (such as unique metadata), Uncanny Toolkit is the add-on you need. With 30+ modules and first-in-class support, you’ll have total control over your ability to customize your LearnDash site and your users’ e-learning experience.

To gain access to additional modules, such as the Enhanced LearnDash CSV Reports module that we’ll be using to improve LearnDash Reports, you’ll need the Pro version of Uncanny Toolkit. Click here to download Uncanny Toolkit Pro.

2. Select the Enhanced LearnDash CSV Reports Module

After downloading Uncanny Toolkit Pro, from your WordPress dashboard, navigate to Uncanny Toolkit > Modules. Scroll down to Enhanced LearnDash CSV Reports and toggle the module “On”. The toggle switch will appear green when enabled.

3. Configure the Module Settings

To add columns to LearnDash user reports, click on Settings in the Enhanced LearnDash CSV Reports module. A pop-up window will appear where you can select from predefined columns such as Username, Language and Website.

If you scroll down, you’ll also see that Toolkit Pro lets you add user and course metadata as columns when you enter the meta key. These fields are particularly useful when you want to include custom metadata. For example, we have created the custom metadata department, job title, age and last login to better understand our user engagement and performance.

Having entered the meta key into the Usermeta Key fields, we were able to add those keys as columns in our exported CSV reports.

If you don’t know how to create and retrieve custom metadata on WordPress, jump down to the section Create Custom Metadata for WordPress.

We’ve seen how, with the Toolkit Pro add-on for LearnDash, you can drastically improve your LearnDash course reports. But CSV files don’t suit everyone’s workflows. Not to mention, Group Leaders and other instructors without administrator access to the back-end of your WordPress website won’t be able to retrieve their own LearnDash course reports.

If you’re using the Uncanny Groups for LearnDash add-on, however, you can add columns to reports on the front-end of your WordPress website for Group Leaders and instructors to access. Furthermore, you’ll be able to export the reports to Excel if that format suits your workflows better than CSV files.

Custom Columns for Uncanny Groups Course Reports

If you’ve been using the Uncanny Groups for LearnDash add-on then you already know about all of the amazing features such as front-end management and reporting tools for Group Leaders. However, sometimes, your Group Leaders will need more information than what the default reports contain.

Fortunately, there’s an easy way to add custom columns and data to your Uncanny Groups course reports. Follow these steps to help your Group Leaders drill down into their course and user data. We’ll also show you how easy it is to export course reports to Excel so that Group Leaders can track their KPIs and customize their analytics.

1. Add Column Titles

First, you’ll need to add the titles of your custom columns to your Uncanny Groups course reports. To do this, you’ll need to add some code to the functions.php file of your child theme. The code snippet to add column titles to Uncanny Groups course reports is:

In the code snippet above, $columns[‘custom_key’] = ‘My custom column’ is where you can input the column title that you want. For example, we would like to add the column title Last Login so our code snippet would look like this:

Of course, you’d rarely only want to add only one column to your Uncanny Groups course reports. If you’d like to add multiple columns, simply include additional lines as follows:

2. Add Column Values

Now that you’ve added the column titles to your Uncanny Groups course reports, it’s time to add the values. To input the values of your custom columns into your Uncanny Groups course reports, add the following code snippet to the functions.php file of your child theme:

In the code snippet above, $user_data[‘custom_value’] = get_user_meta( $user_id, ‘custom_value’, true ); is the line that will retrieve the user’s metadata that you want included in your Uncanny Groups report. In our example, with the meta values for all of our corresponding column titles, the code snippet would look like this:

Note: The snippet $user_data[‘learndash-last-login’] = get_user_meta( $user_id, ‘learndash-last-login’, true ); will return a timestamp value. If you want your course report to return the learndash-last-login value as the date format from your WordPress settings, you can use this code snippet:

3. Export Uncanny Groups Reports to Excel

Navigate to the page(s) where you have your Uncanny Groups course reports. Note, you can include Uncanny Groups course reports on any page with the shortcode: [uo_groups_course_report]. As you can see in the image below, our custom columns along with the corresponding metadata have been added to our course report.

To export the report to Excel, simply click Excel export in the upper right-hand corner.

That’s all it takes!

Create Custom Metadata for Your LearnDash Reports

By default, WordPress stores a lot of data about your users. But it’s not always the data that you’re looking for. Throughout this article, we’ve been using custom WordPress metadata that suit our specific needs and workflows. Perhaps you’re already doing this on your site, like capturing “job title” or “department” in registration forms from your favorite form plugin, or a plugin like Advanced Custom Fields that adds extra data to users and posts. But, for greater control and management over your user and content records, you might need some additional help.

One popular solution for creating and manipulating custom WordPress metadata is our Uncanny Automator plugin. With Automator, you can craft recipes to create and alter unique metadata that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to. For example, we could help our Group Leaders by putting some key analytics right at their fingertips.

The recipe pictured above is the same one that we used to create some of the unique user metadata that you saw throughout this article. Whenever a user registers with our WPForms registration form, Automator creates the user meta organization and job_title along with the three unique key/value pairs quiz_100, quiz_85 and quiz_60 to track the number of quizzes a user passes with a given percentage score. We can then use subsequent recipes to alter that metadata, saving our Group Leaders hours of administrative work.

With these recipes and the ability to add custom columns to Uncanny Groups course reports, Group Leaders can easily keep track of their learners’ progress.

If you want to learn how to create your own WordPress metadata with Automator, then download the plugin and read a brief tutorial on mastering WordPress metadata.

Gold stars and extra credit are fun ways to motivate students and reward them for their hard work—but they don’t exactly speak to credentials. Certificates, however, give students something to work towards and serve as a tangible testament to their academic achievements. They also just look great hanging on the wall.

In this step-by-step guide, we’ll show you how to improve student engagement using LearnDash certificates. Keep that certificate seal handy—with these eight cool ways to use LearnDash certificates, you’re going to need it!

What You’ll Need

Just like your students need tools for learning, you’re going to need some tools for awarding certificates and improving student engagement. Sadly, a laser pointer won’t do but we think you’ll find these plugins and add-ons much more helpful—and far less hazardous to your eyesight. They’re both easy to use and have a free version you can demo before making an investment.

Uncanny Toolkit Pro

Uncanny Toolkit Pro is the #1 must-have add-on for LearnDash websites—probably because it’s a masterclass in “Saving Time for Your LMS”. In addition to features such as course dashboards and personalized logins, Toolkit improves the functionality of LearnDash certificates to make administration easy and improve the student experience. Enhance your certification process with modules to preview certificates, automatically email them to students and staff or let your students show off their credentials with a certificates widget.

Feel free to check out the full list of features and the Pro pricing schedule by clicking here. We’ll be using Toolkit Pro features in our examples but that doesn’t mean you can’t download the free plugin and try out core modules.

Uncanny Automator Pro

If you’re running an LMS WordPress website, then Uncanny Automator is the best way to save yourself time and money. Connect your various apps and plugins for enhanced functionality, automate repetitive tasks and workflows and eliminate bloat from your website. Specifically, Automator packs so many LearnDash triggers and actions into even the free version of the plugin that you’ll feel like you’re cheating on an exam.

With Automator’s no-code, click-and-configure interface, you’ll be able to email LearnDash certificates to anyone on your contact list for just about any interaction that occurs on your website. In case that wasn’t enough, you can connect your LearnDash certification process to databases like Airtable, CRM tools like ActiveCampaign, ecommerce plugins like WooCommerce or even membership plugins like Restrict Content Pro.

Definitely try out the free Automator plugin and its dozens of LearnDash actions and triggers. Then, when you’ve gotten the hang of it, upgrade to Automator Pro to make the most of your LMS.

In addition to Toolkit Pro and Automator Pro, we’ll feature other commonly-used plugins and apps such as WooCommerce and The Events Calendar but these are only optional.

7 Cool Ways to Award LearnDash Certificates

Now that you’re all set up with the right tools, let’s look at these seven cool ways to award LearnDash certificates so that your students can start decorating their walls with their credentials.

1. Email LearnDash Certificates with Toolkit Pro

Uncanny Toolkit Pro allows you to email PDF copies of certificates to students and administrators with just a click. Here’s how it’s done:

Step 1: From your WordPress Admin Sidebar, navigate to Uncanny Toolkit > Modules.

Step 2: Scroll down to the modules titled Send Course Certificates by Email and Send Quiz Certificates by Email or type “certificates” into the search bar.

Step 3: Toggle the button in the upper right-hand corner to the “On” position.

Step 4: Click Settings to configure the module and draft the email. You can then decide who will receive the email and draft the title and content using dynamic data to personalize the message.

Step 5: Once you’ve configured the settings and drafted your email message, click Save module. Your students will now receive automated emails with a PDF copy of their certificate, ready for printing and framing!

2. Email LearnDash Certificates with Shortcode and Magic

Using some “copy-and-paste” shortcode and a little magic, you can put the power of printing certificates in your students’ hands—or, more accurately, at their fingertips. Upon completion of a course, present your students with a button to click if they would like to receive an emailed copy of their certificate. Here’s how to cast the spell:

Step1: From your WordPress Admin Sidebar, navigate to Automator > Add New. In the pop-up window that appears, select Logged-in users.

Step 2: Name your recipe something that makes it easy to remember, like… Certified Magician.

Step 3: From the menu of available integrations, click Automator.

Step 4: From the drop-down list that appears, select A user clicks a magic button.

Step 5: Your trigger should now look like this:

Copy the bracketed text [acutomator_button id=” xxxxx “ “ label=”Click here”] and save it to your clipboard. We’re going to embed this shortcode in the Classic Editor of the desired course.

Step 6: From your WordPress Admin Sidebar, navigate to LearnDash > Courses and click Edit beneath the course for which you would like to offer certificates to students for course completion.

Step 7: In the Classic Editor screen, click the Add button icon then click Shortcode and paste the magic button shortcode (the bracketed text we copied from Step 5) into the box.

Step 8: Next, we’ll need some additional shortcode so that the Automator magic button only appears for students who have completed the course. Thankfully, LearnDash has a library of preset shortcodes for us to use. Click here for the LearnDash Course Complete shortcode or copy the bracketed text: so that the finished block should now look like this:

The Automator magic button will now only appear to students who have completed the course. You can add a new block above this one, describing the purpose and function of the Automator magic button or you change the label itself to something more descriptive by simply replacing “Click here”.

Step 10: Return to your Automator recipe by navigating to Automator > All recipes and clicking Edit beneath Certified Magician.

Step 11: In the Actions panel, click Add action then click LearnDash.

From the drop-down list that appears, select Send a certificate.

Use tokens such as User email, User first name, etc. to send, draft and customize your email.

Note: When formatting the Certificate body, do not use shortcodes. As in the image above, only use tokens by clicking on the asterisk symbol. You can use these tokens to include information such as dates, user first and last names and courses.

Step 12: In the upper right-hand corner, toggle the recipe from Draft to Live. It should look like this:

“Abracadabra!” Just like that, your students can receive their certificate upon course completion with just a click.

3. Sell LearnDash Certificates with Automator and WooCommerce

Learning should be—and often is—totally free. But credentials often come with costs. With Automator and WooCommerce, you can offer paid LearnDash certificates for free courses. Here’s the best way to sell those certificates:

Step 1: The first thing you’ll want to do is to create a WooCommerce product. You’ll then connect this product to a LearnDash certificate using Automator.

From your WordPress Admin Sidebar, navigate to Products > Add New. In the Product data panel, set the product to Virtual.

Finish configuring your product as you’d like by setting the price, image(s), upsells, cross-sells, etc. Once the product is to your liking, click Publish.

Step 2: In these next steps, we’ll create a recipe that connects your WooCommerce product to a LearnDash certificate. We’ll add an additional trigger so that only the students who have earned the certificate will receive it.

From your WordPress Admin Sidebar, navigate to Automator > Add New and select Logged-in users.

Step 3: Name your recipe. We’ve named this recipe WooCommerce-LearnDash: Certificate Order.

Step 4: In the Triggers panel, click LearnDash. From the drop-down list, select A user completes a course. Select the course associated with the certificate and click Save.

Step 5: Still in the Triggers panel, click Add trigger then WooCommerce. From the drop-down list, select A user completes, pays for, lands on a thank you page for an order with a product.

Step 6: Automator will prompt you to configure the rest of the trigger settings. We selected completes then chose our newly created product from the drop-down list. Your finished triggers should look something like this:

Step 7: In the Actions panel, click Add action then click LearnDash. From the drop-down list, select Send a certificate and configure the rest of the settings. When you’re finished, click Save. Your action should look like this:

Step 8: Toggle the recipe from Draft to Live. Here’s what the final recipe should look like:

Step 9: Students can sometimes be forgetful—because their heads are full of knowledge. If you wanted to ensure that your students get the recognition they deserve, you could create a second recipe to send an email upon course completion with a link for them to purchase their certificate. Grab the product url from the product page and paste it into the Email body field of your Automator action. That recipe might look something like this:

You could also use Automator’s tagging actions with CRMs like Groundhogg, Mailchimp or Mailpoet to send even more compelling emails and boost conversions.

4. Award LearnDash Certificates for Live Event Attendance

Who doesn’t love to have a perfect attendance record? You can use Automator to send certificates to attendees of live events as a way for your students to remember the occasion. Here’s how to send certificates as souvenirs of successful events:

Step 1: From your WordPress Admin Sidebar, navigate to Automator > Add New and select Logged-in users.

Step 2: Name your recipe. We’ve named this recipe Special Event Attendance Certificate.

Step 3: In the Actions panel, click The Event Calendar and select A user attends an event. Automator will prompt you to select your event from a drop-down list. After you’ve selected your event, click Save.

Step 4: In the Actions panel, click Add action then click LearnDash. From the drop-down list, select Send a certificate and configure the rest of the settings. When you’re finished, click Save.

Step 5: Toggle your recipe from Draft to Live. The finished recipe should look like this:

Step 6: Concerned about event certificates only being available by email and not from the website? One solution would be to create a hidden course with an associated course certificate. Then, in our event attendance recipe, change the action so it completes the hidden course instead of sending the certificate via email.

This way, the Toolkit Pro module to send a certificate can provide it by email, and the Show Certificates module in the free version of Uncanny Toolkit can show event certificates to students!

5. Credit & Course Group Based Certificates

Credit where credit is due—which, in this case, means awarding certificates. If you have purchased the Uncanny Continuing Education Credits plugin, you can award certificates for groups of courses as well as for credits earned. Here’s how to claim the credit:

Step 1: After downloading the Uncanny Continuing Education Credit plugin, navigate Uncanny CEU > Settings.

Step 2: Scroll down to the section labeled Certificate Email Settings. Check the boxes next to Enable Multi Course certificate and Enable CEU Credits certificate. You can also choose to send the certificate to Site Administrators and Group Leaders as a prudent recordkeeping practice.

Step 3: From your WordPress Admin Sidebar, navigate to LearnDash > Certificates. Select the certificate you would like to award based on credit or course groups or create a new one. On the right-hand side of the Classic Editor, you’ll see options to award the certificate based on CEU credits accumulated or courses completed.

Once you’ve finished configuring your certificate, click Publish.

Step 4: Finally, navigate to LearnDash > Courses. From the Classic Editor within each course, you can set the CEU value. If you’re not certain how to do this—or would like to “continue” your Continuing Education Credits learning—click here.

6. Award LearnDash Certificates for Course Series with Automator

If you don’t have the Uncanny Continuing Education Credits plugin, you can still award certificates to students who complete a series of courses using Automator. It’s a lot easier than building a curriculum, we promise.

This recipe won’t differ much from previous set-ups using Automator. The only difference is that you’ll add multiple triggers; one for each course. The finished recipe should look something like this:

7. Award LearnDash Certificates for Offline Learning Activities

Why just keep the classroom online? You can leverage the power of LearnDash, Automator and Uncanny CEUs to make changes in the real world! Combine Automator with any form-building plugin or web application such as WPForms or Forminator to award credits and send certificates following offline learning events.

Step 1: You’ll need some method of verifying attendance for your offline learning activities—this will serve as the trigger for our Automator recipe. If you already have a verification process, you can skip to the next step.

For our verification process, we’ve created a form. This form can be a simple registration form or a more complex form with information only the attendees would know. It’s up to you to configure as you’d like.

Step 2: Create a new recipe in Automator, select Logged-in users and choose an appropriate title.

Step 3: In the Triggers panel, configure your trigger according to your verification process. In our example, we’ve selected our form-building integration and the form associated with our offline learning activity. Click Save.

Step 4: In the Actions panel, click Uncanny CEUs then select Award a number of custom CEUs to the user. Automator will prompt you to fill out the date, description and number of CEUs to award. When you’re finished, click Save.

Step 5: Create a second recipe to send certificates or mark a hidden course complete (and send the certificate with Uncanny Toolkit) based on the total number of CEUs a student has earned. That recipe might look something like this:

Keep Certifying

For students, certificates are as good as gold medals… if there was an Academic Olympics. And tools such as Uncanny Automator and Uncanny Toolkit help you leverage the certification process to improve your LMS and, ultimately, your students’ experience.

Try out a few of the examples we provided in this post and we promise you’ll spend less time administrating and more time educating. Then, when you’re ready, upgrade to the All Access Pass and get even more Uncanny plugins and add-ons, not to mention industry-leading support. Now that’s certifiably cool.

Today we pushed updates to 3 of our plugins (Uncanny Groups, Toolkit Pro and Tin Canny) and a fourth plugin update is coming tomorrow. While most of the changes are small fixes and improvements, there are some larger enhancements that deserve a bit more attention.

Uncanny Toolkit Pro for LearnDash

Perhaps the most interesting update is that the plugin, and specifically the Import Users module, no long requires LearnDash. This was done primarily to allow Uncanny Automator users to run imports that trigger actions as part of our new support for running actions on users in bulk. The Toolkit itself isn’t moving away from LearnDash, but this will be a big win for Automator users that aren’t necessarily using LearnDash.

The Enhanced CSV Reports module doubles the number of custom usermeta columns to 10. You can now run some very big reports with this tool with a lot of custom user profile data.

The Enhanced Course Grid module has the most changes, including all of the following:

• There’s a new “hide_title” attribute to turn off course titles in the grid.
• Multiple categories can now be defined for inclusion in the shortcode or block, separated by commas
• There are 7 new action hooks, including the following: uo_course_after_short_description, uo_course_before_short_description, uo_course_before_course_title, uo_course_after_course_title, uo_course_after_featured_image, uo_course_after_grid_ribbon_price, and uo_course_after_grid_ribbon_text.

Overall, these changes add significantly more flexibility to what’s an already very flexible model for outputting course objects in a grid.

Uncanny Groups

The big new feature in today’s Uncanny Groups release is support for switching products in someone’s cart based on quantity. Why is this important? In the current model, when a user buys a group product, it always creates a group and adds them as a Group Leader. This is true even if a user buys a single seat for the group. What this means is that there must be 2 workflows for course purchase, one for a group, one for personal use by a user. A site might then have a “Buy for myself” button as well as a “Buy for a group” button on a course, since they are different products. Having to make this decision is an extra step though, and buyers are often confused by it.

The new option to swap products allows sites to present a single product to prospective buyers without having to choose whether it’s for a group or themselves. Instead, if the quantity is 1, the system (optionally) assumes the purchase is for themselves and can swap in a Course or other product. If the quantity is greater than 1, the Group License product is used. When a quantity is selected and the product added to the cart, the swap (if the quantity is 1) is automatic.

Here’s what it looks like when editing a group product:

For developers, the Uncanny Groups 4.2 release adds 2 new actions: ulgm_before_license_group_is_inserted and ulgm_after_license_group_is_inserted.

There are also 3 new filters: ulgm_license_group_linked_course_id, ulgm_license_group_courses_linked_in_order and ulgm_include_user_direct_enrolled_courses (the latter for the Group Progress report).

Other Improvements

The Tin Canny release adds new support for negative scores in the individual quiz report as well as support for SCORM module uploads that may be missing requirement elements, like a title.

Across all plugin releases, there are also various compatibility fixes for LearnDash 3.6, PHP 8 and WPML. Yes, while our plugins have been translation friendly for years, we are starting to also add explicit WPML support where compatibility issues are reported.

We try to avoid Friday releases where we can, but with the upcoming holiday weekend in Canada and some exciting changes from LearnDash, we couldn’t wait to get version 3.7 of the Uncanny Toolkit Pro plugin out. It’s a big release with several really compelling new features.

Group Drip notification changes

We do need to start the list of new features with a change that Group Drip users may need to make on their sites.

LearnDash is releasing version 1.5 of their Notifications plugin next week, which is a big overhaul and improvement. That’s great news, but because of how it was rearchitected, it does break compatibility with existing notifications linked to our Group Drip module. Any current notifications on sites set up to alert users when lessons are available to the group will stop working, but there is good news: we have a new trigger available to support Group Drip notifications.

If you upgrade to LearnDash Notifications 1.5 and want notifications to be sent to group members when lessons become available via group drip, you must create new notifications with this new trigger: “A scheduled lesson is available to user with Uncanny Drip by Group”. If you don’t use group drip notifications, no changes are necessary.

Custom usermeta in LearnDash CSV reports

We keep adding more column options to LearnDash reports, and in today’s 3.7 release we’re adding up to 3 new columns that can output any user data you want. If you store custom fields for users in your system, like maybe a department, manager name, job title, whatever, now you can include columns with those records in LearnDash CSV reports using the Enhanced LearnDash CSV Reports module.

Here’s what it looks like:

To add these extra columns you will need to know the key for the record in the usermeta table, but if you’re storing custom fields you probably know what keys to use. If you’re not sure, look at whatever is capturing that record (perhaps a form or checkout process) and see if it shows the usermeta key for the record you need.

Certificates in LearnDash Transcripts

We made some really interesting LearnDash Transcript module changes in this release, and before any current users panic, these new records are optional. We know you’ll want to use them, but they can be turned on and off.

First up is the addition of a Certificate column to the Transcript output. It does exactly what you expect; if the column is shown and the user has an associated course certificate, we show an icon with a link to the certificate. This is a really handy way for users to retrieve their certificates, including from courses in which they’re no longer enrolled but do have a completion record.

The Certificate column is automatically hidden from the print view, where it wouldn’t make sense.

Custom Credits in LearnDash Transcripts

We’ve been hard at work lately with amazing new features for our Continuing Education Credits plugin, and now that it’s easy to track custom credits, we wanted to make it easy for users to see their consolidated training records. In Toolkit Pro 3.7, we have added the ability to include custom learning credits in student transcript. If our Continuing Education Credits is installed and enabled, and a user has been awarded credits, we will now (optionally) add new rows for those records.

Please note that because records like scores and steps are not applicable for custom credit records, we output “n/a” in those columns for custom records.

Group expiration shortcode

We have offered the Expire LearnDash Group module for quite some time, but we always relied on email notifications to let users know when it was expiring. This made planning difficult for Group Leaders and members, so in today’s release we have added a new shortcode. Here are some examples of usage:

[uo_group_expiration_in] //Show countdown to expiry date if set and user is only part of 1 group
[uo_group_expiration_in group-id="xx"] //Shows countdown to expiry date if set and user is part of the associated group
[uo_group_expiration_in pre-text=""] //Override default "Group Access Expires in" text in shortcode output
[uo_group_expiration_in group-id="" pre-text=""] //Combine the above attributes

When the Expire Group module is enabled this shortcode is available automatically. The default text to include is set from the module settings:

Other changes

As always, all new features, updates and fixes are included in the changelog. Two notable additions are support for Single Page Course settings for non-admins (like Instructors in the Instructor Role plugin by Wisdm Labs) and outputting course-level quizzes in the Course Dashboard module.

We’re excited to announce that today’s Uncanny Toolkit for LearnDash release includes some pretty big Front End Login changes (and we wanted to beat the upcoming Toolkit Pro and Automator 2.10 that announcements that will steal the thunder!). The Front End Login module has gotten increasingly capable, to the point that we see people using it on WordPress sites even if they’re not using LearnDash. Today’s release adds even more reasons to use it for login on any WordPress site.

Changes to user verification

We added the ability to verify users before login was allowed a very long time ago, but the module never had a great way to manage email notifications when users were approved for access. With user verification enabled, site users would have to be approved by an administrator before they could sign in, but how would the admin control the user notification and content?

The Uncanny Toolkit 3.4.1 release adds a new customizable email system (see below) as well as an easy way to suppress user verification emails entirely. Emails can also now include tokens (variables) with information that might be useful to approved users, like site name and the user’s name.

Login redirect changes

Ever wish users could sign in using a modal and the page would just update for the user without redirecting the user somewhere else? It’s been a common request, so the new 3.4.1 release adds the ability to ignore other login redirect behaviours when the modal option for login is used.

In other words, maybe you have a dedicated login page on your site and you want users that sign in from that page to land on a student dashboard when they sign in. But maybe on a sales page for members you want them to sign in and stay on that page, only with the right content for the user once signed in. Now you can do that; here’s how:

Still not enough flexibility for login behaviours? Now there’s a new filter that allows developers to make even more overrides; here’s what’s now included:

$login_form_args = apply_filters('uo_frontend_login_args', $login_form_args);

Other changes

The 3.4.1 release includes a few other changes for Front End Login and other modules.

We added the ability for other plugins to show error messages related to login in our Front End Login form. This came up as part of an investigation into why Peepso was blocking logins with our plugin that we traced to a password security parameter in its settings (which was throwing an error, we just weren’t outputting it).

The module also includes better support for /wp-login.php redirects. Previously, attempts to visit that page would be redirected to whatever was set as the login page using this module. While it worked without issue, our redirect dropped any querystring records from the URL when it redirected  users; now the full URLs are preserved.

Those are the Toolkit 3.4.1 highlights, but make sure to check out the changelog to get the full list of updates.

The Front End Login module was one of the first things we created for the free Uncanny Toolkit for LearnDash plugin. It gave LearnDash users a simple, free tool for students to use when logging in, and for us (as our business was heavily focused on consulting at the time) it was one more way that we could make site development a lot more efficient.

A lot has changed since we first introduced the module, including LearnDash adding its own login forms. There are still a lot of situations with the login form in our Toolkit is the best fit (and what we always use on sites we build), and with today’s Uncanny Toolkit 3.3 release we’re making the module even better.

Introducing Modal Login Windows

With the latest Toolkit release, you can add this shortcode anywhere on your site you want: [uo_login_modal]. That will create a link (that can also be styled as a button) that pops up a login window. No more devoting precious site real estate to giant login forms! Here’s what it looks like:

There are new options in the Front End Login module settings to change the text of the label, whether or not to dim the background when the modal is active, and text for the link to return to the page. (Make sure to turn on the new AJAX support and use the Boxed with shadow template if you want to use modal login forms.)

The new addition is incredibly powerful and flexible, it makes it practical to add login forms anywhere, but what about menu access? As long as the Log In/Log Out Links module is turned on, you’ll see a new option under Appearance > Menus in /wp-admin/ to add a modal login there:

Login forms get AJAX support

If you’ve ever wanted users to sign in but keep the page experience intact, now you can. There’s a new AJAX option (it’s disabled by default) in the Front End Login settings that allows users to submit the login form via AJAX instead.  This option currently only works with the Boxed with shadow template.

Note that this option must be enabled if you want to use the new modal login forms.

Expanded Resume support

Ever wish you could add the Resume button link in the Toolkit to a menu? Maybe somewhere else on your site, or even in your code, where a button might not make sense?

The new [uo_learndash_resume_link] shortcode returns a Resume link for users instead of a button, so you can include it in a menu or wherever else it might make sense. And with the url_only=”yes” attribute, the shortcode will return the full URL for the user, rather than a link with Resume text.

The 3.3 release includes several other changes behind the scenes as well (it has been 3 months since we last published a release!) that improve translation support and efficiency.

If you’re not yet a Toolkit user, now is a great time to give the free version a try!

Today’s 3.4 release of the Uncanny LearnDash Toolkit Pro plugin adds 2 new modules, important compatibility updates for LearnDash 3.1 changes and a number of fixes. All users of the Toolkit Pro plugin are encouraged to update, especially to take advantage of the new modules now available.

Restrict Page Access

This new module added in the 3.4 release makes it possible to restrict any post (so WordPress pages, blog posts, lessons, topics, any public post types) by logged-in state, WordPress role, course enrollment or LearnDash Group membership. If you’ve ever wished you could restrict an entire page to only signed in users based on their LearnDash access, this module is going to be very beneficial for you.

Setting up restricted access is as easy as shown in this screenshot:

By enabling the Restrict Page Access module, the metabox above is automatically added to the edit page for all public post types. The first level of access restriction is whether or not the user is logged in. If the “Users must be logged in” checkbox is checked, only signed in users can access the page; checking this also exposes additional access controls.

Administrators can set the page up to only be accessible to users based on their WordPress role, enrolled courses or group membership. All of these selections are optional, and all fields allow multiple values to be selected. Note that access for each restriction type (role, course or group) is based on users having any of the selected access. If you populate multiple restrictions (so values in both role and course, for example), use must satisfy at least one of the conditions from each section. In other words, based on the screenshot above, a page with these settings would be restricted to administrators with access to Course 101 OR subscribers with access to Course 101. It would be blocked for subscribers with no Course 101 access and to “Customers” with Course 101 access (assuming the user has the Customer role and not Subscriber).

You can also optionally set a redirect behaviour if the user doesn’t have access to the page. Checking the box allows selection of any page on the WordPress site or redirecting to a custom URL. If no redirect is defined, the user sees whatever message is designed in the “Access restriction message” field in the module settings.

For many users, this new functionality can offset the need for a complex membership plugin or other tools to lock down access for specific pages.

LearnDash Group Forums with bbPress

The second new module in the Uncanny LearnDash Toolkit Pro 3.4 release is “Group Forums with bbPress”, which restricts bbPress forums to one or more LearnDash Groups. It really is as simple as it looks:

The above screen is added to forum edit pages in bbPress; that’s where the link between LearnDash Groups and the forum is defined.

But that’s not all… to make it easier for group members to access group-specific forums, enabling this module adds a “Forum groups” widget which, as the name suggests, outputs links to forums based on the signed-in users’s LearnDash Group memberships. Add this widget to a sidebar available inside courses to provide easy access for students to their group-based forum(s).

LearnDash 3.1 Support

We saw a few handful of users run into complications now that LearnDash 3.1 supports renaming quiz tables, specifically in the Reset Course Progress and Duplicate Pages and Posts modules. Fixes for those are included in the Toolkit Pro 3.4 release.

Catch up on Toolkit Updates

We recently released updates to the free Uncanny LearnDash Toolkit plugin to complement the Toolkit Pro changes. The most notable of these was a new module called “Disable Emails“. It’s as simple as it sounds, and we added it because we use it on every single site we manage at Uncanny Owl. Any time we clone a site out to Staging for update testing and maintenance, we turn that module on to make sure no unexpected emails go out. We consider that plugin a must-have when testing updates on Staging sites (we use an email logging tool when we need to monitor emails rather than have them actually sent). In future releases we plan to have it automatically detect when it’s being used on a Staging vs. Live site so that it can always be left on and disable emails on Staging while they’re allowed to pass on Live.

The 3.2 Toolkit release also added new naming options for the Certificate Widget and Show Certificates shortcode, ordering options for the Certificate Widget, a redirect parameter in the address bar for Front End Login, Dashboard link support for the LearnDash 3.0 template and more. Make sure to update if you haven’t yet!

The LearnDash 3.0 release landed a few weeks ago, bringing with it lots of new features and a far better user experience for students and admins. It also added new login and registration options, meaning LearnDash site admins no longer need to rely on additional plugins to incorporate those features. With all of the LearnDash enhancements in the 3.0 release, it begs the question: Do LearnDash site owners still need the free version of the Uncanny LearnDash Toolkit?

What’s in the Toolkit?

To consider the relevancy of the free Uncanny LearnDash Toolkit in a LearnDash 3.0 world, let’s review the modules included in the Toolkit:

• Breadcrumb Links: Allow easy navigation from inside lessons and topics back up to the course and student dashboard level.
• Certificate Widget: Output a list of earned certificates in a widget area with links to open the certificates.
• Front End Login: A login form that allows easy branding, password reset, recaptcha support and more.
• Groups in User Profiles: List groups that a user belongs to on the profile edit page in /wp-admin/.
• Hide Admin Bar: Hide the admin bar for users based on role.
• Log In/Log Out Links: Add links to menus to easily log in and log out from any page on a site.
• Log In/Log Out Redirects: Control where users are directed when they log in or out on the site.
• Menu Item Visibility: Show menu entries based on whether or not the user is signed in.
• Not Enrolled Redirect: Redirect users to a sales, login or other page when they land on a course page when not enrolled.
• Resume Button: Return users to where they left off in a course.
• Show Certificates: Show a list of earned certificates with hyperlinks.
• Show or Hide Content: Conditionally show content on a page based on whether the user is logged in or out.
• Topics Autocomplete Lessons: Lessons are completed automatically when associated topics are all completed.
• User Switching: Allow admins to switch to a student account and view the site as that student.

Those 14 modules are currently available in the free version of the Toolkit and offer an easy way for admins to add extra capabilities to LearnDash sites.

Are all Toolkit modules still relevant with LearnDash 3.0?

Now that we’ve taken a look at what the Toolkit offers, let’s review how their utility and relevance changes with LearnDash 3.0.

The Breadcrumb Links module is particularly useful on more complex sites where there is a dedicated page acting as a learner “dashboard”. This is typically where learners land after logging in and will often include a list of enrolled courses, instructions, and links to key tools and resources. LearnDash 3.0 offers an easy way for learners to navigate back up to the course level with breadcrumbs, but not back to a centralized course dashboard (if one exists). For sites using a learner dashboard or with more complex navigation needs, this module remains an important addition with LearnDash 3.0.

The Certificate Widget and Show Certificates modules may or may not be of value on LD sites. There are alternatives (the ld_profile shortcode in LearnDash, for example, includes certificate links) and certainly these aren’t must-have tools.  If you prefer to display a list of certificates in a sidebar or independently of the ld_profile shortcode, then these modules may still add value to your site.

The Front End Login module is where things get more interesting. Until LearnDash 3.0, this is what made the Toolkit essential for LearnDash sites and was by far the most-used module in the Toolkit. Now that LearnDash 3.0 has login capabilities, should anyone still use the version in the Toolkit?

In our opinion, it depends. What’s in LearnDash 3.0 right now is basic and handles simple login functions only. What’s in the Toolkit handles branded password reset (LearnDash relies on WordPress default password reset functions), reCaptcha, manual user verification and more—features the LearnDash login tool doesn’t support. Of course, not everyone needs those features, and what’s in LearnDash is likely sufficient on some sites.

Groups in User Profiles is effectively redundant in LearnDash 3.0. It’s a legacy module that doesn’t add value to new LearnDash 3.0 sites and we may retire it.

Hide Admin Bar adds some role-based controls to hiding the admin bar that LearnDash doesn’t offer, and if you want to keep Group Leaders out of /wp-admin/ then this is still a very useful addition. If that capability isn’t needed, default LearnDash behaviours should be sufficient.

Log In/Log Out Links and Log In/Log Out Redirects are, or at least we believe they are, essential additions to LearnDash sites. We think Log In and Log Out functions should be easily accessible to users and available in site menus, and that learner dashboards should be used to provide a good student experience (and by using the redirect module, users can automatically land there after login).

Should learners see a different site menu than anonymous prospects? Absolutely, and that’s why we think the Menu Item Visibility module is also a must-have. LearnDash doesn’t currently support this capability.

Not Enrolled Redirect is an optional module that is useful if you display the same list of courses to both enrolled and not enrolled users (using something like a course grid, for example), and want users to be redirected to some sort of page optimized for sales instead of the course page when they click on a course in which they’re not enrolled.  For sites with that type of user experience, this module can add a lot of value.

The Resume Button module is another must-have, especially if you use our Pro plugin and the course grid or dashboard modules. It makes it easier for students to see where they left off and pick up again from that point.

Show or Hide Content is another module that is very useful when you want to display different content to users on a given page depending on whether they’re logged in or out.  There are growing alternatives for sites, especially with increasing use of Membership and CRM plugins, and in many cases the native and LearnDash shortcodes are suitable alternatives. But there are still situations where these shortcodes make messaging for students a lot easier to manage.

Topics Autocomplete Lessons does still offer a more linear flow through courses and better student experience in many situations. It’s widely used, and while not a must-have, it’s going to add value to most sites.

The User Switching is the final must-have module in the list. For troubleshooting problems this capability is invaluable for admins.

So, do you need the Toolkit?

Yes, the Toolkit still adds significant value to LearnDash 3.0 sites. Certainly we’re biased, but we believe that LearnDash sites still need the Toolkit to round out the admin and user experience.

We recognize that some Toolkit modules aren’t as essential as they once were. The Front End Login module moves from must-have status to a valuable add-on for most sites, and while all sites we build will use our Front End Login module (we want reCaptcha and branded password reset), we know fewer sites in the future will depend on our login module.

Nevertheless, that still leaves five Toolkit modules that we believe should be on all LearnDash sites: Log In/Log Out Links, Log In/Log Out Redirects, Menu Item Visibility, Resume Button and User Switching. Many others are likely to add some value, depending on the context, and there’s never a situation where we just recommend turning everything on without considering the value it adds to your site.

What about Pro?

Everything covered above is about the free Toolkit only. After all, it’s almost standard on new LearnDash sites and has a huge install base. But the Uncanny LearnDash Toolkit Pro add-ons plugin is extremely popular too, installed on thousands of LearnDash sites, and it adds dozens of additional modules. Are any of those redundant with the LearnDash release?

For our own LearnDash projects, the Pro add-on is our only other must-install plugin besides the Toolkit. (Our other Uncanny Owl plugins, like Groups, Tin Canny, Codes, and Continuing Education Credits certainly add value to some sites, but they’re not suited to every site.) At the time of publishing, Pro adds 25 modules to LearnDash sites, and on typical sites that use Pro we often see 5 to 10 of those activated.

For sites using Pro, we consider several of the modules to be extremely high value: Simple Course Timer, Import Users (directly into courses and groups using a simple checkbox interface), Course Dashboard, Enhanced Course/Lessons/Topics Grid, Import LearnDash Users, Email Course/Quiz Certificates, Drip Lessons by Group, Duplicate Pages and Posts, Autocomplete Lessons & Topics, and the Learner Transcript. LearnDash 3.0 doesn’t include anything related to the functionality these modules add to sites.

Two pro modules have been replaced by native LearnDash functionality in LearnDash 3.0 (with the LearnDash 3.0 theme active): Sample Lesson Label and Lesson/Topic/Quiz Table Colours.  The LearnDash 3.0 theme now shows a visible Sample label on sample lessons, and lets users customize UI colours in settings.  However, none of the other modules in Pro have seen their value proposition change with the LearnDash 3.0 release. While Certificate Preview is a new module to the Toolkit, it is another one where we can see future LearnDash development negating the need for this tool. For now, however, it still makes certificate production and testing more efficient.

Are we changing the Toolkit because of LearnDash 3.0?

Both the free Toolkit and Pro addons remain under very active development and we have a lot of great new features planned. Some modules (like the Groups in user Profiles module) may be retired as they become less useful, but that’s a good thing—we want deliver the best possible experience on LearnDash 3.0 sites and we’ll continue innovating and reassessing the value of our Toolkit modules.

We’re in the middle of another big round of plugin updates and perhaps one of the most exciting addition to our plugins is support for template overrides. Basically, this feature allows you to take key HTML elements from our plugins, copy the templates into your child theme, make modifications to them, and not be worried about your customizations disappearing when you update the plugins.

Last week’s Uncanny LearnDash Toolkit Pro (3.1) and LearnDash Groups (3.0.4) and this week’s Uncanny LearnDash Toolkit (3.1) updates are the first to support this new behavior. Using the overrides is really easy; find something you want to override in the /src/templates folders of our plugins, copy that file to your child theme (into an /uncanny-toolkit/ folder for the Toolkit plugins, /uncanny-groups/ for the Groups plugin), and then apply your changes to the new file.  If the file is in a subfolder of the /src/templates folder, replicate the same folder structure inside the override folder, but drop the /templates path  (e.g. /src/templates/frontend-login/default-login.php would go in /your-child-theme/uncanny-toolkit/frontend-login/default-login.php).

Certainly this feature is intended primarily for developers, who can build some very powerful features using our plugins as a base. Perhaps you want to add a new field to our Enhanced Course Grid, like an instructor name, or maybe on the Import LearnDash Users page you want to add your own instructions and branding. Template overrides make things like this much easier.

And while we’re talking about Pro and Groups plugins anyway, here are some other recent updates to the plugins you may have missed…

Recent Uncanny LearnDash Toolkit Pro Updates

Improved Group Leader Interface: No more relying on third party plugins to redirect your Group Leaders! This module now supports login redirects for Group Leaders. If you use Pro with our Groups plugin, this is a great way to get your Group Leaders to land directly on the Group Management page.

Email Quiz Certificates: Tokens now available for including the user’s first and last name in the email sent to admins and/or Group Leaders. Use %First Name% to include the user’s first name and %Last Name% for last name. This makes organizing emails much easier.

Email Course Certificates: Pro 3.0.4 added a way to send certificates with a timed delay. Most users should not choose the “Use Cron to send certificate option”, but in some cases where a shortcode does not have course completion when the certificate is sent, choosing this option and then having the certificate sent 20 seconds after completion allows time for shortcodes in the certificate to render properly. If you find your certificate PDF files have some blank values, try turning this on.

Recent Uncanny LearnDash Group Updates

We’ve made a number of recent enhancements to our Groups plugin that will really help site owners:

Put the Key Redemption field anywhere in your Gravity Form registration form. This one is a huge improvement for several Groups users; the code entry field is no longer restricted to the bottom of the form. Instead, you can add the “Uncanny Code” field type anywhere on your form.

Include passwords in user uploads. CSV files can now include a specific password rather than the Groups plugin force a random password. This is a huge benefit on sites where students may not have an email address, as instead of requiring that an email be sent with their password, or a link to reset the password, nothing needs to be confirmed by email.

User verification in Gravity Forms is now supported, so you can have users confirm their email addresses before registration.

Do your visitors get confused about how to buy your course?

Course pages in LearnDash tend to have two audiences: enrolled students and potential students. That can make things a bit confusing. Do you tailor the content and experience to the learner, or do you make the experience more intuitive for prospective buyers? You can absolutely do both (the visitor and student shortcodes come in handy here), but it does make managing the content and using page builders more difficult.

In the latest version (2.3) of our free Uncanny LearnDash Toolkit plugin, we added a very simple new module that can make things easier for some sites. What it does is simple: If a person trying to access a course page is not enrolled in the course, the system redirects them to another URL. That’s it, the behaviour is very simple.

Where this comes in really handy though is with both our course grid module in the Toolkit Pro plugin as well as the LearnDash grid add-on. Using either of those, now you have a way to control the behaviour when users click courses in the grid. If they click a course in the grid and they have access, the users get to the course. If they’re not enrolled, they go straight from the grid to a sales page (or to checkout, or to whatever other page you define). No middle step, no making the course page work for 2 different audiences.

Another great use of the module is redirecting a user to a page that explains that he or she doesn’t currently have access to the course with instructions on how to become enrolled. This can  be a single global page, making maintenance much easier than editing all course pages.

Using the new module is simple. Just turn it on from the Toolkit settings page, and in course edit pages, add the URL you want to redirect users to when they’re not enrolled. That’s it! If you want the redirect to work for some courses and not others, just add a URL for courses where you want to redirect people that aren’t enrolled and leave the URL blank if you want all users to be able to access the course page.

We hope this new workflow option improves your conversions and the user experience.

As we head into the 1-year anniversary of our Pro plugin for the Uncanny LearnDash Toolkit, our most popular product, we’re excited to announce 3 new features that will make life easier for many LearnDash admins! Today’s 2.1 release, available to all new and existing Pro users, adds the ability to send course certificates as PDF files on course completion, a new grid option for lessons and topics, and a new attribute that makes our dashboard module a lot more flexible.

Send Course Certificates by Email

We’ve supported sending LearnDash certificates as PDF files with quizzes for a long time, but the ability to send course certificates to learners, Group Leaders, administrators and other users was a gap. In this release we’re adding support for emailing those certificates, which are triggered on course completion and sent exactly as quiz certificates would be.

The functionality is largely the same as the quiz certificates function but this is set up as its own module. It can be used with or without the quiz certificate emails; there are no dependencies. For easier retrieval of certificates, you can save the files to your web server and we’re including the user’s email address in the file name. (You could also retrieve them from a user’s profile with LearnDash, of course, but this makes it easier to manage large sets of certificate files if required.)

Enhanced Lesson and Topic Grid

Our Enhanced Course Grid was one of the earliest modules in the plugin and introduced a very flexible way to organize LearnDash courses into a visual grid. But it only ever supported courses, and on almost all of our sites we were limited to pretty basic tables listing available lessons and topics. We had done some interesting things with CSS to restructure the tables as grids for some clients, but until now we didn’t have a robust grid model for wider use.

This new module effectively brings the basics of the Enhanced Course Grid to lesson and topic tables. Instead of a flat table with text and checkmarks only, you can now show users a highly visual grid format that can incorporate featured images. The module allows control over the use of featured images and the number of columns displayed. For more flexibility, you can either enable these grids globally or add the grid shortcode to specific course or lesson pages on which you want them to appear.  You can even use shortcodes for these grids on non-LearnDash pages and posts.

LearnDash Course Dashboard

On several of our client sites we found that we had outgrown the default behaviours of the dashboard shortcode. For one thing, it was useless for signed out users—and we unexpectedly had a few clients want to use it that way. In this iteration of the dashboard shortcode, you can use a new “show” attribute to populate the table with only enrolled courses (which is the current behaviour), all courses (show everything, regardless of enrolment status), and “open”, which we’re using to show open courses to logged-out users (signed in users see enrolled courses). We think these additions will make the shortcode a lot more flexible.

We hope you enjoy the updates!

The new Import LearnDash Users module may have stolen the show on Monday’s release of 2.0 versions of both the Uncanny LearnDash Toolkit and the Pro Modules add-on, but there were actually a lot of significant enhancements that deserve more attention. Some of them fundamentally change how you’ll interact with the Toolkit on your sites.

Module Settings

We’ve added a lot of new modules to the Toolkit suite since we first launched it and the settings page for it was starting to feel too busy. To make things easier to manage, we’ve added new filters for module type, module category and status. Now it’s a lot easier to see the modules in a more organized way.

We also recognized that having to turn modules on and off and then save the changes at the bottom of the pages was causing some confusion. A lot of people expected clicking the switches alone to turn modules on and off, so that’s what we did. Now you can click the switch and you’ll get a confirmation almost immediately that the status change was saved. We know a lot of users will appreciate no longer having to worry about forgetting to click the Save button.

Enhanced Course Grid

The LearnDash official course grid has had the ability to include short course descriptions in the grid for some time now, so we figured it was time to add support to our module. When the Enhanced Course Grid is active, a Short Description field is added to course edit pages. Enter text here and it will be displayed in the course grid. The grid shortcode now also includes an attribute to show or hide this description field.

One important note here is that our implementation is different than the LearnDash one, so if you currently use the LearnDash Course Grid add-on, any descriptions entered in the field it uses will have to be resaved in our field.

Group Drip & More

There was some debate about how we were handling lesson drip date when a user was in multiple groups with different drip dates. We changed the behaviour in this release so that in this situation the user gets access to the lesson on the earliest date of the groups for which the user is a member.

Our Group Leader module previously blocked access to some ProPanel items so we have unblocked them again. We’re still uneasy showing too much in the back end to Group Leaders but this is the safest approach.

Finally, as always, there are numerous tweaks and improvements in both plugins to deliver an even better experience on your sites. We hope you enjoy the new releases!

Yesterday we released version 1.4 of the Pro modules plugin for the Uncanny LearnDash Toolkit and it’s one of our biggest updates yet. Along with the usual suite of improvements, we introduced three entirely new modules: Send LearnDash Certificates by Email, Complete Lesson/Topic on Quiz Completion, and the Group Leader Experience. All 3 have been very popular requests and we’re very excited to be able to include them in the Pro plugin. All new features are, of course, available at no extra cost to existing users.

Here’s a screencast that outlines how the new modules and other changes work:

The biggest addition to the plugin is the ability to send LearnDash PDF certificates by email on quiz completion. Certificates can go to learners, of course, but even more exciting is that the site admin, Group Leaders, and even custom email addresses can be notified and also receive the certificate attachment. It’s a great way for managers and organizations to track staff achievements. One caveat with this module is that it works with quiz certificates only for now (not course certificates), but we know a lot of people are going to be excited about easy certificate distribution by email!

The Autocomplete Lessons & Topics on Quiz Results Page module addresses a common user experience issue on LearnDash sites–users must click a Click here to continue button to save results and be able to mark an associated lesson or topic as complete. If they didn’t, administrator intervention may have been required in order to complete associated lessons and topics properly. This module automatically marks an associated lesson or topic complete as soon as the quiz is completed so that users that accidentally forget to click the button won’t be negatively affected. (Clarification: LearnDash 2.3 did complete quizzes earlier in the workflow; our plugin allows easier autocompletion of associated lessons/topics.)

We have always found the Group Leader experience with LearnDash a bit confusing. For us, it was unusual for Group Leaders to have access to the WordPress Dashboard and back-end profile management, but not to have easy access to the courses they were managing and reports. This simple module, when enabled, grants Group Leaders access to the courses their groups are enrolled in and changes the back end user interface to something more suited to typical Group Leader functions.

Along with the modules themselves we’ve added some new organizing options for the course grid (including a fixed sorting option by menu order that ignores groupings), expiry date sorting for LearnDash Groups, better translation support and more.

If you don’t already have a copy of the plugin, make sure to check out the other modules already included in the Pro Modules plugin for the Uncanny LearnDash Toolkit!