Settings Reference

This page lists every setting in Dantian Course Cadence: the label you see on screen, the group it sits in, what it does, its default, the values it accepts, and how it interacts with other parts of the plugin. It is written for site administrators and course administrators who configure the plugin.

Settings only control how guidance is delivered (when, in what format, to whom, and how long records are kept). The guidance itself — timelines, weeks and prompts — is managed in Course Cadence → Timelines & Prompts (see Timeline management and Prompt management).

Where to find settings

Go to Course Cadence → Settings in the WordPress admin menu. Only users who can manage the site (WordPress Administrators, or any role with the manage_options capability) see this menu item — see User roles and permissions.

The Settings screen has four tabs:

Tab	What it controls
Schedule	The day and time the weekly guidance emails go out
Emails	Email format, wording, template, page links, admin digest and alerts, and attachment domains
Workflow	How trainer edit suggestions are approved and who is notified
System	How long logs are kept, whether data is removed on uninstall, and the audit log

How saving works

• Each tab has its own Save Settings button at the bottom, and each tab saves independently. Saving the Emails tab never changes anything on the Schedule, Workflow or System tabs, and vice versa. Make your changes on one tab and save before switching to the next — unsaved changes on a tab are lost if you click another tab.
• After a successful save you see the notice “Settings saved.”
• Invalid values are not rejected with an error; they are corrected silently when saved (for example, an out-of-range number is pulled back into range). The allowed values for each setting are listed below so you know what will be stored.
• Test-email tools are not on the Settings screen. They live on Course Cadence → Email Delivery → Test Emails (see Test email tools below).

The Quick start box

The Schedule tab opens with a Quick start: box headed “Here’s how to go live:”. It lists, in order:

1. Classes — “add a class and enrol your students and trainers” (shown only when the plugin is running in Native Classes mode, without an LMS — see LMS integration and native classes).
2. Timelines & Prompts — “pick a course, create a timeline, and add weekly prompts.”
3. “Set your dispatch day and time below.”
4. “Confirm your site can send email — check Tools → Site Health before relying on scheduled delivery.”

Schedule tab

Section: Email Schedule Settings. The section description reads: “Start here. Set when guidance emails are sent each week. These settings take effect immediately on save — the cron is rescheduled automatically.”

Setting (UI label)	What it does	Default	Allowed values
Day of Week	The day of the week the weekly guidance dispatch runs. One day applies to every course on the site.	Monday	Monday to Sunday (dropdown). Any other value is stored as Monday.
Time of Day	The time the weekly dispatch runs, in your site timezone (WordPress Settings → General → Timezone), not the server’s clock.	09:00	A 24-hour time between 00:00 and 23:59. Anything that is not a valid time is stored as 09:00.

What happens when you change the day or time

• Saving a new day or time reschedules the weekly dispatch straight away — including on the very first save after installation. You do not need to deactivate or reactivate anything.
• The pre-dispatch preview email (if you use it — see Admin digest & alerts) moves with the dispatch, so it stays the same number of days ahead.
• The schedule is checked by the daily watchdog: if the weekly dispatch event goes missing (for example after a manual plugin update by zip upload, or a cleanup plugin removing scheduled events), the watchdog puts it back.
• Scheduled sending relies on WordPress’s scheduled tasks (WP-Cron). On low-traffic sites, WP-Cron only runs when someone visits the site, so a 09:00 send may go out later. See Scheduled tasks and Site Health and Troubleshooting.

You can see the next scheduled run at any time on Email Delivery → Send & Status under Weekly Dispatch Status → Next scheduled run.

Emails tab

The Emails tab is headed Email Settings and groups its settings into five collapsible sections. Click a section’s title to open or close it. Delivery is open when the page loads. Student preferences & links also opens automatically while either the Student Guidance Page URL or the Email Preferences Page URL has not been saved yet, so you can’t miss those setup steps. All five sections save together with the tab’s single Save Settings button.

Below the form, an Available Placeholders box lists the placeholders you can use in the subject, intro lines, template and footer, with a description of each. On LMS-based sites the list is {student_name}, {first_name}, {last_name}, {course_name}, {week_number}, {instructor_name} and {current_date}. {instructor_name} is not offered in Native Classes mode, because there is no course record to read an instructor from. Placeholders use single curly braces. Full details: Placeholder reference.

Delivery

Section description: “Control how weekly guidance emails are delivered to students enrolled in more than one course.”

Setting	What it does	Default	Allowed values
Email Consolidation	Consolidated (recommended) — “Students enrolled in multiple courses receive one combined email per week. Reduces inbox clutter and cognitive overload.” Individual per course — “Students receive a separate email for each course they are enrolled in. Useful if courses have very different audiences.”	Consolidated (recommended)	Consolidated or Individual per course. Anything else is stored as Consolidated.

Interactions:

• Consolidation only changes anything for people who have guidance from two or more courses in the same week. Someone with one course always gets the normal single-course email.
• It applies to trainers too: a trainer assigned to several courses receives one combined trainer email.
• A consolidated email uses the subject and heading “Your Weekly Guidance (2 courses)” (the number changes) and the Multi-Course Intro Line. It does not use the Email Subject or Email Template settings below — those apply to single-course emails.
• Consolidation also shapes catch-up emails. In Consolidated mode, enrolments made by the same student within a few minutes of each other are combined into one catch-up email; in Individual mode each enrolment gets its own. See Catch-up emails.

Content & template

Section description: “Customise the email template sent to students. The defaults work out of the box — return here if you need to adjust subject lines, intro copy, footer, or the HTML template layout.”

Setting	What it does	Default	Allowed values
Email Subject	Subject line for single-course weekly guidance emails. “Use {course_name} for the course title.” Other placeholders also work.	The field is pre-filled with Your Weekly Guidance for {course_name}. Until you save the Emails tab for the first time, emails use the built-in subject “Week 3 guidance for First Aid Refresher” (week and course filled in). If you clear the field and save, that built-in subject is used again.	Plain text. HTML tags are removed on save.
Single-Course Intro Line	“Short intro for single-course emails. Leave blank to use the default.” Shown above the week’s prompts.	Here is your guidance for this week.	Text with basic formatting (links, bold, italics). Scripts and unsafe HTML are removed.
Multi-Course Intro Line	“Short intro for multi-course emails. Leave blank to use the default.” Shown at the top of consolidated emails.	Here is your guidance for this week across your enrolled courses.	As above.
Email Template	The HTML layout of the body of single-course weekly emails, edited in a small visual/text editor. The {prompts} placeholder marks where the week’s guidance goes.	Pre-filled with a starter template: a “Hello {first_name},” heading, “Here is your guidance for Week {week_number} of {course_name}:”, the {prompts} block, and the line “This is an automated guidance email from your course instructor.”	HTML. Scripts and unsafe HTML are removed on save.
Email Footer	“Optional footer text shown in all guidance emails. Leave blank to omit the footer.”	Blank. Despite the help text, a blank footer is not left out: emails show the built-in line “This email was sent automatically from [your site name].”	Text with basic formatting.

How the template and intro lines interact — read this before customising:

• While the Email Template is empty, single-course emails use the built-in layout: an automatic greeting (“Hi [name],”), the Single-Course Intro Line, then the week’s prompts.
• When the Email Template has content, it replaces that layout for single-course weekly emails. The automatic greeting and the Single-Course Intro Line are not used — your template supplies its own greeting and wording. The on-screen help says: “The automatic greeting (“Hi {name},”) is used only for the default template; if you customize this template, include your own greeting.”
• Because the editor is pre-filled with the starter template, saving the Emails tab once puts the starter template into use. If you want the built-in layout with your own intro line instead, clear the Email Template editor completely (no text at all) and save.
• Always keep {prompts} in a custom template — without it, the week’s guidance has nowhere to appear.
• Consolidated multi-course emails and the admin digest always use their own built-in layouts, whatever is in the Email Template.
• The footer is added automatically underneath; do not paste it into the template as well.

Student preferences & links

Section description: “Links and copy shown to students — the guidance page, the unsubscribe/preferences link, and the warning text on the preferences page.” It also explains page setup: place each shortcode on its own page with a clear page title, and add heading="false" to the shortcode when the page already shows its own title, so only one heading appears. See Shortcode reference.

Setting	What it does	Default	Allowed values
Student Guidance Page URL	“URL of the page containing the [dcc_student] shortcode. When set, emails include a “View online” link to the specific week.” The link reads “View this guidance online →” and opens that course and week on the guidance page.	Blank	A web address. Anything that isn’t a valid URL is removed.
Email Preferences Link	Checkbox: “Include a “Manage email preferences” link in the footer of guidance emails”. “When enabled, students can opt out of emails for individual courses. Requires the Email Preferences Page URL below.” The link in emails reads “Manage your email preferences”.	Ticked (on)	On or off.
Email Preferences Page URL	“URL of the page containing the [dcc_email_prefs] shortcode. This is where the unsubscribe link in emails will point to.”	Blank	A web address.
Preferences Warning Text	“Warning message shown on the email preferences page above the course toggles. Leave empty to hide the notice.”	These emails are often part of your student support. Disabling them may impact your learning journey.	Text with basic formatting. Empty hides the notice.

Page-URL auto-detect. When the Student Guidance Page URL or Email Preferences Page URL is empty, the plugin looks through your published pages (up to the first 100, alphabetically) for one containing the matching shortcode. If it finds one it fills in the field and shows “Auto-detected from the page “…”, which contains the [dcc_student] shortcode. Click Save Settings to confirm.” (or the [dcc_email_prefs] equivalent). The detected address is not used until you click Save Settings. If no page is found for the guidance page you see “No published page contains the [dcc_student] shortcode yet. Add the shortcode to a page, then return here.” On a site with more than 100 published pages, paste the address in by hand.

Interactions:

• The “Manage your email preferences” link only appears in emails when both the Email Preferences Link box is ticked and an Email Preferences Page URL is saved. Ticked with no URL saved means no link.
• Turning the link off does not cancel existing opt-outs. Students who have already opted out of a course stay opted out, and the email preferences page itself keeps working for anyone who visits it.
• If the Student Guidance Page URL is empty, emails simply have no “View this guidance online” link.

Admin digest & alerts

Section description: “Email an administrator about each week of trainer guidance. The digest goes out on every enabled week: it lists the guidance being sent, the running totals for students who are behind, and — when nothing is due — what was held back, grouped by reason.” and “The same recipient also receives the pre-dispatch preview, sent the number of days ahead of the weekly send set below (0 turns the preview off), and the daily watchdog alert, which fires when a weekly dispatch runs late or never completes.”

Setting	What it does	Default	Allowed values
Send Admin Trainer Digest	Checkbox: “Send the weekly cadence digest and alerts to the admin email.” This one switch turns on all three admin emails: the weekly digest, the pre-dispatch preview and the late-dispatch warning.	Unticked (off)	On or off.
Digest Recipient Email	“Email address to receive the digest and alerts. Leave blank to use the site admin email ([address]).”	Blank (uses the site’s Administration Email Address from Settings → General)	One email address. An invalid address is cleared on save, which means the site admin email is used.
Preview Days Before Dispatch	“How many days before each weekly dispatch the preview email is sent, at the dispatch time. 0 turns the preview off; the digest and the late-dispatch warning are unaffected.”	3	Whole number from 0 to 6. Numbers above 6 are saved as 6; below 0 as 0.

What each admin email contains:

• Weekly digest — sent straight after each weekly dispatch, including weeks when nothing went out. Subject format: “Weekly Trainer Guidance Digest (2 courses) — 1 held, 4 behind” or, in a quiet week, “Weekly cadence: nothing sent this week — 3 held, 0 behind”. It summarises the trainer-only guidance sent that week, how many guidance emails were sent (and how many failed and were queued for retry), which courses were held back and why (“Held for a scheduled break”, “No content authored for their week”, “Timeline not started yet”, “Email dispatch paused”), and the students who are behind, with a link to “Review and send catch-ups on the Overview”.
• Pre-dispatch preview — sent the set number of days before the dispatch, at the dispatch time. Subject format: “Cadence preview for Mon 13 Oct: 5 sending, 1 without content, 0 on break, 2 behind”. It groups courses under “Will send”, “No content authored for their week — nothing will be sent”, “Held for a scheduled break”, “Not started yet” and “Email dispatch paused” — your chance to add a missing week’s prompts before students are affected.
• Late-dispatch warning — the watchdog checks once a day. If the weekly dispatch is more than a day overdue, or never completed, it emails “Course Cadence: the weekly guidance dispatch is late” (once per missed dispatch, not every day).

Interactions:

• With Send Admin Trainer Digest off, none of the three emails is sent, whatever the Preview Days value. The watchdog still runs and still restores a missing dispatch schedule — it just doesn’t email anyone.
• Changing Preview Days (or the Schedule tab’s day/time) reschedules the preview immediately. Setting it to 0 removes the preview.
• The digest is informational only. It never changes what students or trainers receive.

Attachments

Section description: “Restrict which domains email attachments may be linked from.”

Setting	What it does	Default	Allowed values
Allowed Attachment Domains	“List the additional attachment domains that admins should allow (one per line). Core defaults + any domains added via the dcc_allowed_attachment_domains filter are merged automatically.”	Blank (only the built-in list applies)	One domain per line (commas also work). https:// and any path are stripped, so https://files.example.edu.au/docs is stored as files.example.edu.au. Entries that are not a valid domain name are dropped. Duplicates are removed.

How the allow-list works:

• Despite the section’s wording, prompt attachments are not included in guidance emails. They are shown as links (“attachments” list) under the prompt on the student guidance page ([dcc_student]) and the trainer page ([dcc_trainer_edit]). The allow-list controls which attachment links can be saved onto prompts in the first place.
• Attachment links on prompts are checked when the prompt is saved in Timelines & Prompts. A link is kept only if it points to your own WordPress site, or to a domain on the allow-list.
• The built-in allow-list is always included: drive.google.com, dropbox.com and onedrive.live.com. Your entries are added to it — leaving this setting blank does not allow every domain.
• A domain also covers its sub-domains: example.edu.au allows files.example.edu.au, but not example.edu.au.other.site.
• Links to domains not on the list are silently left off the saved prompt. If an attachment “disappears” after saving, add its domain here, save, then re-add the attachment to the prompt.
• Only http and https links are accepted.

Workflow tab

Section: Edit Approval Workflow. Description: “Configure how trainer edit suggestions are handled.” For the full trainer workflow see Trainer edit workflow.

Setting	What it does	Default	Allowed values
Trainer Edit Suggestions	Require Admin Approval — “Trainer edit suggestions must be reviewed and approved by an administrator before taking effect.” Auto-Approve — “Trainer edit suggestions are automatically applied. All changes are still logged for audit purposes.”	Require Admin Approval	Require Admin Approval or Auto-Approve. Anything else is stored as Require Admin Approval.
Edit Notifications	Checkbox: “Send email notifications when edit suggestions are submitted, approved, or rejected.”	Ticked (on)	On or off.
Notification Recipients	“Choose who receives email notifications for edit suggestion events.”	Admin & Trainer	Admin & Trainer, Admin Only, or Trainer Only.

Who gets which notification (when Edit Notifications is on):

Event	Administrator	Trainer who made the suggestion
Suggestion submitted	“[Course name] New edit suggestion submitted”, with a link to Pending Suggestions (if recipients include Admin)	“[Course name] Your edit suggestion was received” (if recipients include Trainer)
Suggestion approved	—	“[Course name] Your edit suggestion was approved” (if recipients include Trainer)
Suggestion rejected	—	“[Course name] Your edit suggestion was not approved” (if recipients include Trainer)

Interactions:

• The administrator notification goes to the site’s Administration Email Address (Settings → General), not the Digest Recipient Email.
• With Auto-Approve, a suggestion is applied the moment the trainer submits it and the trainer sees “Your edit has been applied successfully!”. Only the “submitted” notifications are sent in this mode (there is no separate approval step), and their wording still describes the suggestion as awaiting review.
• With Require Admin Approval, suggestions wait in Course Cadence → Pending Suggestions; the menu shows a count badge while any are waiting.
• Each notification is sent at most once per suggestion per event within an hour, so repeated clicks don’t flood inboxes.

System tab

Section: Data Retention. Description: “Control how long email delivery and audit log records are kept. Records older than the configured period are automatically removed once per day.”

Setting	What it does	Default	Allowed values
Log Retention Period	“Email delivery log and audit log records older than this number of days are purged automatically. Minimum 30 days. Default is 365.”	365 days	Whole number from 30 to 3650. Lower values are saved as 30; higher values as 3650.
Remove All Data on Uninstall	Checkbox: “Delete all plugin data when the plugin is uninstalled”. “When checked, all guidance timelines, prompts, email logs, audit logs, and settings are permanently deleted if you uninstall the plugin. Leave unchecked to preserve data across reinstalls.”	Unticked (keep data)	On or off.

Interactions:

• The clean-up runs once a day as a scheduled task. Shortening the period does not delete anything instantly; old records go at the next daily run.
• The retention period is also shown to students: the email preferences page has a “How we use this data” panel that states how many days the delivery log is kept, using this value.
• The delivery log is also how the plugin avoids sending the same guidance twice and works out who is behind. Records removed by the clean-up no longer count, so keep the period longer than your longest course.
• Remove All Data on Uninstall only acts when you delete the plugin from the Plugins screen. Deactivating never deletes data. Details: Privacy, data and uninstall.

Audit log

Below the settings form, the System tab shows the Audit Log: “All changes to timelines, prompts, and edit suggestions are logged here.”

• Columns: Date, User, Action, Entity, Course / Week, Details. Entries with no WordPress user attached (for example, actions taken by scheduled tasks) show the user as “System”.
• Filters: an entity dropdown (All Entities, Timelines, Prompts, Edit Suggestions) and an action dropdown (All Actions, Created, Updated, Deleted, Approved, Rejected), applied with the Filter button.
• Sorting and paging: sort by Date; 30 entries per page.
• The table also records other actions — for example Suggested, Copied, Week Inserted, Prompt Moved, Catch-up Dismissed and Catch-up Restored — which appear in the list when “All Actions” is selected.
• The audit log is read-only and has no export button. Entries older than the Log Retention Period are removed automatically.
• Only users with manage_options can see it.

There are no other tools on the System tab (no cache-clearing or reset buttons).

Test email tools

Test-send tools are on Course Cadence → Email Delivery → Test Emails, not in Settings. They send real emails through the same delivery path as the weekly dispatch, so use them after changing the subject, template or footer.

• Test Single Course — “Send a test email for a specific course and student.” Fields: Select Course:, Select Student: (loaded from the course’s enrolments), Test Date: (decides which week is shown) and Email Type: (Student Guidance or Trainer Guidance). Button: Send Test Email.
• Test All Courses Email — “Send a test email showing prompts from ALL enrolled courses (as students would receive).” Fields: Select Student: and Test Date:. Button: Send Multi-Course Test Email.

See Admin dashboards for the rest of the Email Delivery screen.

Worked example: setting up a new RTO intake

Riverbend Training College runs a 12-week Certificate III cohort. Students also take a First Aid unit, and the college wants Monday-morning guidance.

1. Schedule tab — set Day of Week to Monday and Time of Day to 07:30. Check that Settings → General shows the timezone as Australia/Brisbane. Click Save Settings. Email Delivery → Send & Status now shows next Monday at 07:30.
2. Emails tab → Delivery — leave Consolidated (recommended). Students in both courses get one Monday email, “Your Weekly Guidance (2 courses)”.
3. Emails tab → Student preferences & links — the coordinator has already published “My Weekly Guidance” (containing [dcc_student heading="false"]) and “Email Preferences” (containing [dcc_email_prefs]). Both URLs are auto-detected. Click Save Settings to confirm them, so every email gets “View this guidance online →” and “Manage your email preferences” links.
4. Emails tab → Content & template — change Email Subject to {first_name}, your Week {week_number} guidance for {course_name}, add an Email Footer with the student support phone number, and save. Open the template and check it still contains {prompts}.
5. Emails tab → Admin digest & alerts — tick Send Admin Trainer Digest, enter the training coordinator’s address, keep Preview Days Before Dispatch at 3 and save. Each Friday at 07:30 the coordinator gets a preview listing any course with no content for Monday.
6. Emails tab → Attachments — the college keeps handouts on files.riverbend.edu.au, so add riverbend.edu.au and save. Attachment links from that host now survive when prompts are saved and appear under each prompt on the guidance page.
7. Workflow tab — keep Require Admin Approval and Admin & Trainer notifications.
8. System tab — ASQA-style record keeping matters to the college, so set Log Retention Period to 730 days and leave Remove All Data on Uninstall unticked.
9. Go to Email Delivery → Test Emails and send a Test All Courses Email to a test student before the first Monday.

Related

• Automated weekly emails
• Catch-up emails
• Email preferences
• Placeholder reference
• Scheduled tasks and Site Health
• Troubleshooting