Totara V20.1 introduces further enhancements to certifications, smarter gathering and reporting of learner feedback, plus new email delivery options.
Improvements to core compliance workflows
In the recent Totara V20 release, we refined our multi-year recertification pathway functionality, giving administrators greater flexibility and control over compliance management and learner progression.
In V20.1, we’ve added some polish to further enhance the admin and learner certification experience.
Certifications – Improved learner experience
Learners will have benefit from more intuitive navigation, making it easier to understand their progress and status:
Direct linking to view the next path when certified
This makes for a more intuitive learner experience to access or preview the next steps in their pathway.
Improved navigation from certification requirements to courses
This enhancement makes it easier to navigate directly to the courses within the certification.
See Help Docs on the learner certification experience.
Certifications – Intuitive admin workflows
We’ve refined the certification management interface to make configuration faster and more intuitive for site admins. This offers a more effective way of handling complex recertification pathways.
More consistent action buttons and editing behaviour
These UX improvements bring consistency to expected behavior for site admins, based on feedback from our initial rollout.
Improved repeat-loop handling for re-certification paths
It’s now easier for admins to set the first steps of a recertification pathway. A drop-down option now allows admins to easily and intuitively assign the first steps of a reassignment pathway.
See our Help Docs on creating multi-year recertification sequences.
Totara users can also access this Totara Community course on programs and certifications.
Analyze learner feedback at scale
There is a new ‘feedback responses’ activity report source feature within report builder. This allows you to capture, analyze and improve your learning experience with powerful new insights from site-wide feedback data – all in one place.
Move beyond isolated course reports and unlock a complete view of learner sentiment across your organization. Aggregate responses from multiple courses into a single report, identify global trends, or drill down to compare performance at an individual course level.
This is a major step forward from previous versions, where feedback could only be analyzed course by course, requiring time-consuming manual consolidation.
Now, administrators can:
- Track satisfaction and engagement across all courses
- Analyse responses from shared feedback templates at scale
- Group and aggregate data using consistent question labels (e.g. “course rating”)
- Surface trends quickly for stakeholder and executive reporting
This eliminates the need to piece together fragmented reports. Instead, you get a clear, consolidated view of what learners think – helping you make faster, more informed decisions.
This is especially valuable for customers managing high volumes of feedback activities, where manual reporting was previously a significant barrier. The new ‘feedback responses’ report source enables effective enterprise reporting on customer feedback:
- Create site-wide feedback dashboards out of the box
- Deliver scalable survey reporting for enterprise clients
- Reduce reliance on bespoke reporting solutions
See Help Docs for more information.
New API options for email delivery
We’ve made it easier to select your outgoing email provider, offering a simpler experience that:
- Allows you to choose your method (default SMTP, or choose new Amazon SES and Microsoft Graph APIs)
- Offers simpler setup
- More reliable and future-ready delivery
See Help Docs for more information.
How can I get these features?
The items in this blog are part of a minor release, which means they are available immediately if you are on a progressive pathway (where your site is upgraded multiple times a year). For all other Totara users, these items will be available in the next major release (V21 – due in early 2027).
If you’re not sure what release pathway you are on, please contact your Totara partner. You can learn more about upgrade pathways here.
