Action Plans
14 — Action Plans
🔒 Pro feature — requires Dantian Training Hub Pro.
An action plan is a student progress document you prepare at a review meeting. It takes a snapshot of the student’s live progress in every enrolled subject — lessons, tutorial attendance, clinic attendance, assignment and quiz tasks, competency — and adds your agreed actions, due dates, commentary and supporting files. Once published, the student can read it on their own Action Plan page and download it as a PDF.
Alongside the student-facing content, a plan can raise administration follow-ups (private to-dos for the office) and record student feedback (private).
Who can do what
| Role | Can do |
|---|---|
| Administrators | Everything: create, edit, publish, delete, download PDFs, email plans, manage follow-ups for any student. |
| Trainers / staff with action-plan access | Create, edit and publish plans, download PDFs and attachments, and work follow-ups — only for students enrolled in a course they instruct. |
| Students | Read their own published plans on the Student Action Plan page and download the PDF and attachments. They never see drafts, follow-ups or student-feedback entries. |
Who has “action-plan access”? Set under Training Hub → Settings → Pages & Reports → Action Plan Access:
- Allowed roles and Additional users — if both are left empty (the default), anyone who can manage tutorials has access. Fill either list to restrict access to just those roles and users. Administrators always have access.
- Trainer frontend — on by default. Lets trainers use the frontend Trainer Action Plans page. Untick to restrict management to wp-admin.
Emailing a plan to the student is administrator-only. Trainers see the button, but the send is refused unless they are an administrator.
Action Plans belongs to the Progress Tracking & Analytics Pro module. If that module’s licence is not active, the Action Plans and Follow-ups menu items are hidden and a bookmarked link shows an explanatory notice.
Where to find it
| Surface | Location |
|---|---|
| Plan list and editor (staff) | Training Hub → Action Plans |
| Administration to-do list | Training Hub → Follow-ups |
| Student page | A page containing [dthub_student_action_plan] — nominate it under Settings → Pages & Reports → Student Action Plan (or use the auto-create button there). |
| Trainer page (frontend) | A page containing [dthub_trainer_action_plans] — nominate it under Settings → Pages & Reports → Trainer Action Plans. |
On TutorLMS Pro sites instructors are blocked from wp-admin, so the frontend Trainer Action Plans page is how trainers work with plans there.
Plan statuses
| Status | Shown as | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Draft | Draft pill | Work in progress. Invisible to the student. Its progress figures can be re-pulled with Refresh data. No extensions are granted and no earlier plan is replaced until you publish. |
| Published | Published pill; in the list, Current for the student’s newest published plan and Past for older ones | The finalised snapshot the student sees. Figures are frozen at publish time. |
| Superseded | Superseded pill | An earlier published plan that was replaced when you published a plan created with Continue from latest plan. It is removed from the student’s page and becomes read-only. |
Only the student’s latest plan can be edited. Opening an older plan shows “A more recent action plan exists for this student. This plan is read-only.”
Creating a plan
- Go to Training Hub → Action Plans.
- Under Generate New Plan, choose the student from — Select a student — and click Generate Plan. The list shows users with the WordPress Subscriber role (trainers see only students in their own courses).
- On the Generate Action Plan screen, give it a Plan Label — for example Term 2 Review — March 2026. If left blank, the plan’s date is used as its name.
- Choose how to start:
- Start blank (current data) — loads the student’s live progress for every enrolled subject with empty actions and notes.
- Continue from latest plan — loads live progress and carries forward the actions per subject plus the clinic and general notes from the student’s most recent plan. When you publish, that earlier plan is marked Superseded. If there is no earlier plan you get a blank plan.
- Work through each section (below).
- Click Save draft to keep it private, or Save & Publish Plan to make it visible to the student.
New plans are always created in wp-admin — the frontend Trainer Action Plans page lists and edits existing published plans only.
Subject Progress
One row per enrolled subject, pre-filled from the current progress snapshot:
- Subject / Unit — course name, course level and units of competency (if recorded), and a competency badge: C (Competent), NYC (Not Yet Competent) or Not Assessed. A subject the student is no longer enrolled in is flagged No longer enrolled after a refresh.
- Completion — Lessons completed / total (%), tutorial attendance, and clinic attendance, each linking to the relevant report. The Lessons line appears only when your LMS has lessons.
- Tasks — the subject’s assignments and assessment quizzes with their status: Pending, Submitted, Marked or Exempt, type (Quiz or In-Class where relevant), and due date or Extended to date. Shown only when your LMS supports assignments or quizzes. Long task titles are trimmed to start at the word set in Settings → Assignments → Action Plans → Action Plan Task Title Trigger Word (default Task; leave blank to show full titles).
- Actions — click + Add Action to add an agreed action with a description and Due date.
- Link this action to a task (shown when there are tasks you can link): pick an assignment or assessment quiz instead of — Free-text action —. When the plan is published, the action’s due date is applied as an extension for that task, so the student’s deadline matches what you agreed. Changing a linked date on an already-published plan updates the extension.
- Prior Actions opens the actions recorded for this subject in the student’s earlier plans (date, plan, competency, due date, actions/comments), with Copy to bring them into this plan.
Clinic Completion Notes
(Uses your clinic terminology.) Counts of logbook treatments by type — Clinic, Home, Self, Practitioner, Mentor — and free-text notes about the student’s clinic attendance and progression. Students see these as Logbook Treatments and notes.
General Commentary
Overall trainer observations for the student. Visible to the student.
Administration follow-ups
Private tasks for the administration office — e.g. “chase the missing enrolment doc”, “confirm clinic hours”. Click Add administration follow-up, then enter a title, optional notes and a due date. They are not shown to the student. See Follow-ups.
Student Feedback
Record feedback the student gave during the meeting: Type (Suggestion or Compliment), Topic, Feedback text and Action Required. Not visible to students. Topics and actions are configured under Settings → Assignments → Student Feedback. If a Feedback Webhook URL is set (Settings → Notifications), feedback is sent to that address when the plan is published and when published feedback changes.
Attachments
Click Add Files to upload worksheets, reference documents or evidence. They are visible to the student on their action plan page.
- Allowed types: PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, JPG/JPEG, PNG, GIF, TXT, CSV, ZIP.
- Maximum 10 MB per file. The file’s contents must match its extension.
- Files are kept in the plugin’s protected file store (not a public uploads folder) and can only be downloaded by the student who owns the plan or by staff with access to that student.
Refreshing a draft
On a draft, Refresh data re-pulls attendance and completion figures from current data without touching anything you have written. It also reconciles subjects: newly enrolled subjects are added as fresh rows and subjects the student has left are flagged. A message reports “Data refreshed: X updated, Y added, Z no longer enrolled.” Published plans cannot be refreshed — they are a frozen record.
PDF download and emailing the plan
- Download PDF (editor) or PDF (list) opens a PDF of the plan in a new tab. It includes the student’s name, student number (if recorded), date, trainer, subject progress, actions, notes and commentary, and uses the business name and logo from your PDF branding settings.
- Email to Student (editor) or Send Email (list) — administrators only — emails the plan to the student’s account email with the PDF attached. The button shows Sending…, then Sent! or Failed.
The email text is set under Settings → Pages & Reports → Action Plan Email:
| Field | Default |
|---|---|
| Email Subject | Your Action Plan — {plan_label} |
| Email Body (plain text) | Hi {student_name}, Please find your action plan attached. You can also view it online: {plan_url} Regards, {site_name} |
Merge tags: {student_name}, {plan_label}, {plan_date}, {site_name}, {plan_url} (a link to the plan on your Student Action Plan page — empty if no page is set). Each send is written to the attendance audit trail.
The plan list
Training Hub → Action Plans lists plans 20 per page with #, Student, Label, Created, Status and Trainer (who created it), plus Edit, PDF, Send Email and Delete.
- Tabs: All, Current (each student’s newest published plan), Past.
- Filters: Student, From / To (created date). Clear filters resets.
- Trainers only see plans for students in their own courses.
- Delete asks “Delete this plan? This cannot be undone.” — deleting removes the plan, its subject rows, attachments and feedback. Follow-ups raised from a draft are deleted with it; follow-ups raised from a published plan stay on the Follow-ups list.
Follow-ups page
Training Hub → Follow-ups is the office’s to-do list of administration follow-ups raised from action plans.
- Grouped by due date: Overdue, Today, This week, Later, No date.
- Filters: Filter by student and Filter by status — Open & in progress (default) or All (incl. done / dismissed).
- Each follow-up has a status: Open, In progress, Done or Dismissed. Use Start, Done, Dismiss and Reopen to move it along. Completed and dismissed items record who did it and when (“Completed by … on …”).
- Follow-ups are also flagged on the admin calendar on their due date, and open follow-ups that are overdue or due in the next 7 days are listed in the weekly attendance summary email to administrators (see 10 — Email Notifications).
- New follow-ups can only be raised from inside an action plan. Trainers can only update follow-ups for their own students.
What students see
The student’s page ([dthub_student_action_plan]) is headed My Progress Action Plans and shows published plans newest first (a plan linked from an email or calendar opens first).
- A summary strip: Plans (total published plans), and for the latest plan — Courses Tracked, Open Tasks, Completed Tasks and Latest Review date.
- Each plan in an expandable panel titled Action Plan — [label], marked Current or Past, with X/Y actions completed. Inside: Subject Progress (competency, completion, tasks, actions with Due: dates and Completed [date] stamps), Logbook Treatments, Clinic Completion Notes, General Commentary, Attachments and Download PDF.
- Action due dates also appear on the student’s calendar.
Students cannot edit anything. Before their first plan is published they see “No action plans have been shared with you yet. These will appear here after your review meeting.”
Trainer frontend page
[dthub_trainer_action_plans] shows Action Plans — “Action plans for the students you teach. Select a plan to edit it.” — with Student, Plan and Updated, and an Edit link that opens the same editor as wp-admin (save, publish changes, attachments, PDF). It lists published plans only, for students in the trainer’s courses. Drafts and new plans are handled in wp-admin.
Data and privacy
- Plans, items, attachments, follow-ups and feedback are stored in Pro’s own database tables.
- Action plans are included in WordPress personal-data export and erasure, subject to the retention hold for coaching and intervention records (default 7 years from the plan date; adjustable in Settings → Access & Privacy).
- Deleting the Pro plugin keeps action-plan data unless Pro Data Removal on Uninstall is turned on.
Worked example
Harbourside Institute of Chinese Medicine, Diploma second-year cohort.
At the Term 2 review, trainer Mei opens Training Hub → Action Plans, selects Jordan Lee and clicks Generate Plan. She labels it Term 2 Review — June and chooses Continue from latest plan, which brings across Jordan’s Term 1 actions. In Herbal Formulae 2, Jordan’s case study is Pending and overdue; Mei adds an action linked to that task with a due date of 14 July. She records 6 Clinic and 4 Home treatments, adds general commentary, and raises a follow-up “Confirm Jordan’s Saturday clinic swap” for the office. Jordan mentions the timetable clashes, so Mei logs a Suggestion under Student Feedback.
She clicks Save & Publish Plan. Jordan’s case-study deadline becomes 14 July automatically, the Term 1 plan is superseded, and the office sees the follow-up under Follow-ups → This week. The coordinator, an administrator, clicks Send Email so Jordan receives the PDF.
Troubleshooting
The Generate Plan button stays greyed out. Choose a student first. On the editor, “Select a student above to load their progress data and start an action plan.” explains the same.
“File exceeds the 10 MB limit.” / “File type not allowed.” Compress or split the file, or convert it to an allowed type (PDF, Office documents, images, TXT, CSV, ZIP). Renaming a file’s extension does not work — the contents are checked.
Email to Student fails. Only administrators can email plans. Also check the student has an email address on their account (“Student has no email address.”) and that your site can send email.
“PDF engine not available.” The PDF component is not available on this server. Contact your site administrator or support.
A student is missing from the Select a student list. The list only includes users with the WordPress Subscriber role. If your LMS gives students a different role (for example LifterLMS’s Student role), give them the Subscriber role as well or ask support. Trainers only see students enrolled in a course they instruct.
A student says they can’t see their plan. It is probably still a Draft, or it was superseded by a newer plan. Publish it, and check the Student Action Plan page is set in Settings → Pages & Reports.
A trainer gets “You do not have permission to manage action plans.” on the frontend page. Check Action Plan Access — if you have set allowed roles or users, the trainer must be in one of them — and that Trainer frontend is ticked.