Catch-Up Emails

A catch-up email sends a student guidance they missed. There are two situations:

Automatic catch-up on enrolment. A student who joins a course that is already under way gets one email with every week of guidance already sent to the rest of the cohort. You don’t need to do anything.
Pending catch-ups. At any time, the plugin works out which students are behind: guidance a dispatch should already have sent them hasn’t reached them. Administrators review these students and either send them the missing weeks or dismiss them.

This page is for site administrators and course administrators. It also includes a short section for students. Weekly delivery itself is covered in Automated weekly emails.

Permissions. Only WordPress administrators can see pending catch-ups, send catch-ups or dismiss them. Students only receive the emails. Catch-up emails are never sent to course instructors or instructor accounts, even if they are also enrolled as students.

What “due” means

Catch-ups only send guidance that is due. A week is due once a weekly dispatch has run for it. More precisely, it’s the week the timeline was in at the most recent scheduled dispatch (your Day of Week and Time of Day) that wasn’t inside a break period.

If the dispatch is Monday 07:00 and a student enrols on Sunday, last Monday’s week is the latest due week. The current week arrives with everyone else’s email on Monday.
During a break, the due week stays at the last week sent before the break. The first week after the break only becomes due when the first post-break dispatch runs, so students aren’t sent next week’s guidance in the middle of a break.
Weeks after the due week are never sent as catch-ups.

Only student-visible prompts (audience Student or Both) are included. Trainer-only prompts never appear in a catch-up.

How catch-up emails are triggered

Automatic catch-up on enrolment

A student is enrolled in a course: through Tutor LMS, through LifterLMS, or by being added to a native class.
The plugin waits about 5 minutes so the enrolment can finish. The send runs through WordPress’s scheduler, so on a quiet site it can be a little later.
It checks the student is still eligible. They must not be an instructor and must not have opted out of this course on the email preferences page. The course must have an active timeline, meaning today is between its start and end dates.
It gathers every student-visible prompt from week 1 up to the due week that the student hasn’t already received.
If there’s anything to send, the plugin sends one email and records each prompt as sent. If the send fails, the prompts are recorded as failed, and the hourly retry task tries again (see Automatic retries).

Single-course catch-up email:

Subject: Welcome to {course name} – Your guidance catch-up
Opening: Welcome to {course name}! You’re joining us in week {N}. Here’s what you’ve missed:
One section per week (Week 1, Week 2, and so on, oldest first). Each prompt shows its subject as a heading, then its body, then any Related Lessons.
Closing: From now on, you’ll receive weekly guidance emails to keep you on track. Good luck!

Combined catch-up (Consolidated mode). When Email Consolidation is set to Consolidated (recommended), all enrolments for the same student within that 5-minute window are combined:

Subject: Welcome — Your guidance catch-up (3 courses)
Opening: Welcome, {name}! You’ve been enrolled in 3 courses. Here’s your guidance catch-up:
One block per course, each headed with the course name and Joining in week {N}, followed by its weeks.

If only one of the courses has anything to catch up on, the student gets the single-course version. In Individual per course mode, each enrolment gets its own email.

When no catch-up is sent. This is normal, not an error:

The course hasn’t started yet, or nothing is due yet. The student simply gets week 1 with the next dispatch.
The course uses a Rolling timeline. Each student starts at week 1 from their own enrolment date, so there’s nothing to catch up on.
The timeline has ended. A student who enrols after the end date gets no catch-up.
The student has already received every due prompt, for example after re-enrolling.
The student has opted out of emails for that course.
The student is an instructor for that course, or has an instructor account.

Re-enrolment. Delivery is tracked per prompt, so a student who leaves and re-enrols gets only the guidance they never received, not a fresh full catch-up. If they had everything, no email is sent. All weeks stay available on the guidance page.

Manual catch-up from Email Delivery

Use this to send one student the cumulative catch-up, for example when an enrolment didn’t trigger one.

Go to Course Cadence → Email Delivery → Send & Status.
Under Manual Catch-up, click Send Manual Catch-up Email….
In the dialog, choose the Course, then the Student (the list shows that course’s enrolled students).
Click Send Catch-up Email.

The plugin checks the details before sending and shows one of these messages:

Message	Meaning
Catch-up email sent to {name} for “{course}” (up to week {N}).	Sent. Only prompts the student hadn’t received are included.
{name} is not enrolled in this course.	The student has no current enrolment in that course.
{name} is an instructor and cannot receive student catch-up emails.	Instructors are always excluded.
{name} has opted out of emails for this course.	The student turned the course off on their preferences page.
No active timeline found for “{course}”.	The timeline hasn’t started, has ended, or doesn’t exist.
Catch-up emails are not available for rolling timelines. Each student progresses at their own pace from their enrolment date.	Use Pending catch-ups for Rolling timelines instead.
No student prompts found up to week {N} for this course.	Nothing student-facing has been written for the due weeks.

The success message appears even if the student had already received everything, in which case no email actually goes out. To see exactly who is missing what, use Pending catch-ups.

Pending catch-ups

Pending catch-ups show who is behind and on which weeks. A student is behind on a course when a student-visible prompt from a due week hasn’t been delivered to them and hasn’t been dismissed. Common reasons:

A prompt was added to a week after that week’s dispatch had already run. Only the new prompt counts as missing.
A student joined late and the automatic catch-up didn’t happen, for example because the email system was down at the time.
A student turned emails back on after opting out. The weeks sent while they were opted out are listed as missing.
The weekly run reached its 100-email limit before reaching everyone.

Students who are currently opted out of a course, instructors, and courses with no active timeline are not counted. Emails that failed and are still being retried are not counted either, because the retry task is handling them.

Nothing is sent automatically from this list. An administrator always decides.

Where you see it

Admin menu badge. The Course Cadence menu shows a badge such as 2 behind whenever any student is behind. Screen readers announce 2 students need catching up.
Overview → All courses. A panel at the top reads 5 students are behind on guidance emails and need catching up. Under it is one line per course, for example Anatomy & Physiology — Weeks 3, 4 · 2 students, with a Review & send button. Expand Show which students (2 students) to see a table with Student, Weeks behind and Actions (Send catch-up and Dismiss). The list is open by default when only one course is affected. The Students to Catch Up card on the same page links to this panel.
Timelines & Prompts. With a course selected, a banner reads, for example, 2 weeks of guidance are behind — 3 students affected. with a Review & send button. Review & send on the Overview opens this banner’s review panel directly.
Admin digest and cadence preview. If they’re switched on, both emails include a students behind on guidance summary (see Admin digest and cadence alerts).

The totals are refreshed after every send, dismissal, restore, enrolment and weekly dispatch. Changes to prompts can take up to 5 minutes to show.

Reviewing and sending (Timelines & Prompts)

Click Review & send on the banner, or on the course’s row in the Overview.
The Pending catch-up review panel opens. It explains: Each student receives one email with only the weeks ticked below. Untick anyone you do not want to send to — they stay pending and can be sent later. Or dismiss the ticked weeks to stop them being flagged without sending anything (reversible).
The grid has one row per student and one column per week. Use All and None to tick or untick a whole row or column, or tick individual weeks.
Click Send to {N} student(s) ({N} week(s)). Each student gets one email containing only the weeks you ticked:
- Subject: New guidance for {course name}
- The body uses the same week-by-week layout as the enrolment catch-up. It opens with Welcome to {course}! You’re joining us in week {N}. Here’s what you’ve missed:, so this wording also appears for students who are already part of the cohort.
The result reads Sent catch-up guidance to {N} student(s) covering {N} week(s). The list refreshes, and students who were sent everything disappear from it.

Limits and safeguards:

Up to 100 students per click. If you select more, the first 100 are sent and the rest stay pending. Click Send again to send them.
Never a duplicate. Prompts the student already has are skipped, so a double click is safe.
Never ahead of schedule. Weeks after the student’s due week are refused.
Works for Rolling timelines too. Each student’s due week is counted from their own enrolment date.
Opted-out students and instructors are refused even if they’re selected.

From the Overview, Send catch-up on a student’s row sends exactly that student’s missing weeks in the same way. Dismiss waives them. The row then shows Catch-up sent. or Dismissed — nothing was sent.

Dismissing and restoring

Dismissing tells the plugin to stop flagging guidance without emailing it. For example, the student already has the material, or they joined too late for early weeks to matter.

In the review panel, tick the weeks to dismiss.
Click Dismiss {N} week(s) — no email.
The message reads Dismissed {N} week(s) for {N} student(s) — nothing was sent. Restore them any time from the Dismissed list.

Dismissals are recorded per prompt. If you later add a new prompt to a dismissed week, that new prompt is flagged again so you can decide on it separately.

To undo a dismissal, open the {N} dismissed weeks ({N} students) — view or restore list under the review panel. It’s still shown when nobody is pending. Click Restore week {N} next to the student. The message reads Week {N} restored — it is pending again., and the week can be sent as normal.

Every dismissal and restore is recorded in the Audit Log along with the administrator who did it.

For students: joining a course late

If you enrol after a course has started, you’ll get a welcome catch-up email within a few minutes. It contains every week of guidance sent so far, in order. From then on, you’ll get the regular weekly email with everyone else. You can also read every past week on your course’s guidance page at any time (see On-page guidance).

If the catch-up doesn’t arrive, check your spam or junk folder and the email address in your profile, then contact your course administrator. If the course hadn’t started when you enrolled, there was nothing to catch up on, and your first email is the regular weekly one.

What catch-up emails contain (and don’t)

They are sent as HTML in a simple layout. They don’t use the branded weekly-email template, so they have no greeting header, footer text, Manage your email preferences link or plain-text copy.
In a catch-up email, prompts only fill the placeholders {student_name}, {course_name} and {week_number}. Other placeholders such as {first_name} appear exactly as typed. Keep prompts you expect to send as catch-ups to those three, or check a catch-up with a test student before relying on it.
Prompt attachments aren’t included. Linked lessons are.

Troubleshooting

Problem	Fix
A late enrolee got no catch-up	Check that the course has an active Fixed period timeline and that something was due when they enrolled. Check that they aren’t an instructor or opted out. Then look under Pending catch-ups. If they’re listed, send from there.
No active timeline found for “…”	The timeline hasn’t started or has ended. Check its dates in Timeline management.
A student is listed as behind but says they have the email	They may have the email but not a prompt that was added to that week later. Send it, or Dismiss it if it isn’t needed.
The pending count looks out of date	It refreshes after sends and dispatches. Prompt edits can take up to 5 minutes. Reload the page.
A catch-up shows `{first_name}` literally	Catch-up emails only fill `{student_name}`, `{course_name}` and `{week_number}`. Edit the prompt (see above).

More: Troubleshooting.

Example: late enrolments at a massage therapy college

Riverbend College runs Remedial Massage Practicum on a Fixed period timeline. The weekly dispatch is set to Monday 07:00.

Wednesday of week 5: Priya enrols. About five minutes later she receives Welcome to Remedial Massage Practicum – Your guidance catch-up, which covers weeks 1–5. On the following Monday she gets week 6 with everyone else.
Thursday: the coordinator adds a new Infection control refresher prompt to week 3. Overview now shows a 28 behind badge, because every student who already had week 3 is missing the new prompt. The coordinator opens Review & send and sends Send to 28 student(s) (1 week(s)). Each student gets New guidance for Remedial Massage Practicum containing only that prompt.
Friday: Tom, who transferred in with recognition of prior learning, is listed for weeks 1–2. The coordinator ticks his row and clicks Dismiss 2 week(s) — no email. If the decision changes, Restore week 1 brings week 1 back.

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