✔️🌍 Learning time limits

Learning time limits lets administrators set a maximum number of hours users can dedicate to studying a specific topic each day. Once the limit is exceeded, access to the chosen content is blocked until the next day. Administrators can monitor both the daily limit usage and the total number of hours spent on learning.

Why is this feature useful?

Learning time limits help distribute study time evenly, ensuring steady knowledge growth through regular engagement with educational materials. This prevents situations where employees attempt to cram weeks’ worth of learning into just one or two days, leading to poor knowledge retention in the long term.

Time limits are also essential in certain industries, where regulations strictly define learning timeframes. 

How does it work?

Learning time limits are set for a specific period and administrative category. Any user assigned to an object within the category defined by the limit is automatically subject to that limit.

For example, an employee may engage with objects assigned to the "Product Training" administrative category for a maximum of 1 hour daily from May 1st to June 30th. To ensure the learning time limit functions correctly, all objects within the selected administrative category must have an estimated study time set, as this is used to monitor the limit's usage.

Required permissions

• Adding/editing/removing learning time limits and external learning time — system role: "Administration — portal configuration".
• Viewing users' learning time limits — object role: "Users — view".

Set and monitor learning time limits step by step

For this guide, we’ll assume you want to set a yearly time limit for the category "Product training 2025", with a daily limit of 3 hours and a minimum of 15 hours annually.

Add estimated learning time and an administrative category to objects

1. Go to the configuration of a selected object to which your limit should apply, e.g., an online course.
2. Choose "Product training 2025" as the administrative category. If this category doesn’t yet exist on the platform, you can create it by going to Configuration > Customize > Administrative categories. For more information on creating administrative categories, refer to the relevant article.
3. Enter the estimated completion time in the appropriate field. The names of the fields responsible for estimated time for specific objects can be found in this article.
4. Save the changes and publish the object.
5. Repeat the above steps for all objects that should be subject to the limit.

Create a learning time limit

1. Go to Configuration > Customize > Learning time limits.
2. Click "Add limit".
3. Choose "Product training 2025" in the administrative category field, select 01.01.2025 in the "Start Date" field and 31.12.2025 in the "End Date" field, and enter 3 in the "Daily limit" field.
4. Click "Save" to confirm.

Monitor progress on objects covered by the limit

Quick preview in the user profile
To quickly check which limits apply to a user and how many hours they have completed on objects covered by the limit, go to their profile and open the "Learning time" tab.

Detailed user report
If you want to check which objects that belong to a learning time limit a user has completed and when, you can download the dedicated "Learning time limits - individual results" report in the Analytics > Reports section.

General report for all Users covered by the limit
To see which limits apply to users and how many hours they have completed of objects covered by the limit, you can download the dedicated "Learning time limits - results overview" report in the Analytics > Reports section.

Manage existing limits

Edit a limit

1. 1. Go to Configuration > Customize > Learning time limits.
   2. Click "Edit" in the row with the limit you’re interested in.
   3. Make the changes.
   4. Click "Save" to confirm.

Limits can be edited freely without affecting objects completed in the past or training planned before the limit change.

Delete a limit

1. 1. Go to Configuration > Customize > Learning time limits.
   2. Click "Delete" in the row with the limit you want to remove.
   3. Confirm the action.

Deleting a limit will remove both the limit and the progress information associated with it. If you want to regain access to the progress data, simply re-add the limit.

Learning time limits from the learner's perspective

Checking active limits
Users can check their active limits and their usage by going to their profile and clicking the "Learning time" tab.

Exceeding the daily limit
When a user exceeds the daily learning limit, they won’t be able to start any objects or sign up for training sessions on that day. If they try to start an object that exceeds the limit, they will see a message indicating that the limit has been exceeded and will be redirected to the "Learning time" tab.

External learning time

The external learning time feature can be useful for legally required limits. When a user completes training or another educational activity outside the platform, the hours can be manually added to their limit to meet the minimum required training hours.

Add external learning time

• 1. Go to Configuration > Customize > Learning time limits.
  2. Select the "External learning time" tab and click "Add external time".
  3. Choose the user, the limit to which you want to add time, and the number of hours.
  4. Click "Save" to confirm.
  5. External learning time will be displayed in both the user's profile and dedicated reports.

How we calculate the limit usage

• The usage of learning time is calculated based on the estimated time set for objects.
• Limit usage is counted when users start an object. For trainings, time is reported on the day the training takes place (only for users with accepted registrations). If there is an absence, the time will be deducted from the limit.
• Each object is counted only once. This means that if I start a 3-hour online course on Monday but only work on it for 30 minutes that day, the limit usage will still be reported as 3 hours on Monday.
• If the estimated completion time exceeds the daily limit, the user will not be able to complete the object (e.g., if the daily limit is set at 8 hours and the estimated completion time is 9 hours).