Reminder emails

🔒 Pro feature — requires the Pro plugin.

Pro can send each student one weekly email listing their logbook entries that are still missing required evidence. Every reminder includes an unsubscribe link, and administrators can opt individual students out or back in.

With only the free plugin active, no reminder emails are sent and the Notifications & Review settings tab is not shown.

The weekly reminder digest

Who receives it

On each scheduled run, the digest goes to every student who meets all of these conditions:

1. They have at least one allocation that is active today: status Active, and today falls within its start and end dates. Allocations with no dates count as active.
2. They have at least one published entry that is incomplete (defined below).
3. They have not been opted out, either by using the unsubscribe link or by an administrator.
4. Their account has a valid email address.

Students with nothing outstanding get no email. There is no “all clear” message.

What counts as an incomplete entry

The digest uses the requirements set for each clinic type under Logbook Configuration → Clinic Minimums & Evidence (see Program catalogue). An entry is listed when:

• Notes are required for that clinic type, and the entry has no notes reference and no uploaded evidence file, or
• A reflection is required for that clinic type, and the reflection is empty or shorter than the clinic type’s minimum word count.

Evidence the clinic type only encourages, rather than requires, is never chased. The rule matches the reflection chips students see on their overview and trainers see in the Trainer Workspace, so the email and the screen agree.

The digest looks at all of the student’s published entries, whatever their level or date, as long as the student has at least one active allocation. Drafts and voided entries are ignored. Evidence review flags (privacy or notes) do not add entries to this digest; those have their own emails (see Evidence review).

What the email contains

The default subject is:

Reminder: incomplete logbook entries — Your Site Name

The default body is:

Hi {first_name},

Logbook entries needing attention: {incomplete_count}

{treatment_list}

Please log in and complete them at your earliest opportunity.

Regards, {site_name} {site_url}

Unsubscribe from these reminder emails

{treatment_list} puts one line per entry, newest first: the treatment date in your site’s date format, then the student’s treatment number. If the student left the treatment number blank, the entry’s ID is shown instead. For example:

- 3 March 2026 (#T-014)
- 28 February 2026 (#T-011)

How often it is sent

• At most once per calendar week, Monday to Sunday in the site’s timezone. If the scheduled job runs twice in one week (a duplicate trigger, or the day changed mid-week), the second run sends nothing.
• If you move the send day within the same week, that week’s digest is not sent again on the new day.
• The digest goes out on the first run after the chosen time. Saving settings on the send day itself, even before the send time, moves the next digest to the same day next week. If you change settings on the send day, expect that week’s digest to be skipped.

Setting up reminders

Go to Clinical Training Logbook → Plugin Settings → Notifications & Review → Email Notifications.

Setting	What it does	Default	Allowed values
Enable reminders (“Send weekly reminder emails to students with incomplete treatments”)	Turns the weekly digest on or off	Off	On / Off
Send on	Day of the week the digest is sent	Monday	Monday to Sunday
Send at	Time of day, 24-hour clock, in the site timezone	09:00	Any time
Email subject	The subject line. Leave blank to use the default.	Blank (default subject)	Plain text
Email body	The email content. Leave blank to use the default template.	Blank (default body)	Text with HTML and placeholders

Select Save Notification Settings. Each section on this tab has its own save button, so saving one section does not save the others. If another section has unsaved changes, the page asks before discarding them.

Placeholders

These work in both the subject and the body:

Placeholder	Replaced with
{first_name}	The student’s first name (or display name if no first name is set)
{last_name}	The student’s last name
{incomplete_count}	The number of entries listed
{treatment_list}	The list of entries, one per line
{site_name}	Your site title
{site_url}	Your site address
{unsubscribe_url}	The student’s personal unsubscribe link

If your custom body leaves out the unsubscribe link

You don’t have to include {unsubscribe_url}. If the finished email has no unsubscribe link, the plugin adds Unsubscribe from these reminder emails at the bottom automatically, so every digest still has a way out. If your body already uses the placeholder, no second link is added.

Timing and scheduling

• The schedule runs on WP-Cron, WordPress’s built-in scheduler. WP-Cron only runs when someone visits the site, so on a quiet site the digest may go out later than the chosen time. If your host has turned off WP-Cron, set up a real server cron job to call wp-cron.php regularly.
• Times use the timezone under Settings → General → Timezone. The schedule recalculates after every run and every settings save, so daylight-saving changes don’t shift the send time.
• If Enable reminders is off, the scheduled job still runs but sends nothing.

Worked example

A clinic coordinator wants reminders on Friday afternoons:

1. Tick Enable reminders. Set Send on to Friday and Send at to 15:00.
2. Change the subject to {first_name}, you have {incomplete_count} logbook items to finish.
3. Leave the body blank to use the default, which already contains the unsubscribe link.
4. Select Save Notification Settings. Avoid saving again on a Friday before 3 pm, or that Friday’s digest moves to the next week.

On Friday after 3 pm, Mia receives “Mia, you have 2 logbook items to finish”, listing two entries whose required reflections are under the 75-word minimum. Tom’s allocation ended last month, so he gets no email, even though he still has old incomplete entries.

Opting out and unsubscribing

The student’s unsubscribe link

Every digest includes a personal unsubscribe link. It works without logging in. Selecting it opens a page titled Reminder emails that says:

Your request has been processed. If this link matched an active reminder subscription, those weekly reminder emails are now switched off. You can close this window.

The link only works for the student it was sent to. Altered or mistyped links show the same message but change nothing. Each link is signed with your site’s security keys, so changing those keys stops links in emails already sent from working.

Each digest also carries a List-Unsubscribe email header pointing to the same link. Email apps that support it can show their own unsubscribe button.

Students cannot opt back in themselves. Only an administrator can turn reminders back on (below).

Administrator opt-out list

The Per-Student Reminder Opt-Out section on the same tab lists every user with an eligible student role, 20 per page:

Column	Shows
Student	Display name
Email	Email address
Weekly digest	Subscribed or Unsubscribed
(button)	Opt out for a subscribed student, Re-enable for an unsubscribed one

Clicking the button takes effect immediately. Opt-outs from the email link and from this list are the same setting, so a student who unsubscribed shows Unsubscribed here and can be switched back with Re-enable.

Opt-outs only affect the weekly digest. Reflection-feedback emails and evidence-review emails are not affected.

Uninstalling Pro clears every opt-out. If you delete Pro and install it again later, students who had unsubscribed will be subscribed again. See Licensing and updates.

Troubleshooting

Problem	Likely cause	Fix
No reminders are sent	Enable reminders is off, or WP-Cron isn’t running	Turn reminders on. Check that WP-Cron runs, or add a server cron job
No digest this week after changing settings	Settings were saved on the send day, which moved the run to next week, or the digest already went out earlier this week	Wait for the next scheduled day. Avoid saving settings on the send day before the send time
A student says they got nothing	No active allocation today, no incomplete entries, opted out, or invalid email address	Check Student Allocations, their entries, and the opt-out list
An entry is listed that the student thinks is complete	The clinic type requires notes and none are attached, or the reflection is under the minimum word count	Compare the entry with the clinic type’s requirements. See Troubleshooting
Emails don’t arrive at all	Your site can’t send email reliably	Set up an SMTP plugin and check its email log