Announcements that publish and clear themselves.
A maintenance notice needs to be up on Friday evening and gone by Monday morning. In practice someone switches it on by hand, and two weeks later it is still there. Scheduled Messages lets you set the announcement up once, with a start and end date, and handles the rest itself.
What you use this for
- You have maintenance planned and want everyone to see it, but only in the days before.
- A deadline is coming up and the notice must not linger afterwards.
- A teacher wants to tell their own students something without going through you as administrator.
- People who are not logged in need to see the outage notice too, precisely because logging in is the problem.
- A temporary instruction belongs at the top of the page, not at the bottom of a forum nobody reads.
The plugins
Scheduled Messages
Announcements with a start and end date, site-wide or per course, with a choice of audience, position on the page and styling.
local_plannot · GPL, paid subscription
Moodle 4.5–5.2
How to get this plugin
The subscription runs per production site, with your test and staging copies included. Buy it in the Moodle Marketplace, or request it straight from us if that suits you better: on your own invoice, in euros, and on the same contract as the rest of your Sebsoft services.
Good to know
- This is a paid plugin, which makes it the exception on this site. The code is still GPL: the subscription pays for updates and support, not for the right to use the plugin.
- The source sits inside the plugin itself, the way the GPL intends. Unlike our free plugins it is not published on GitHub; that repository exists only for reporting issues.
- If you get it directly from us, we handle delivery and updates ourselves. If we already host your Moodle, we simply put it on there and you never see the install.
- Requires Moodle 4.5 or later. The plugin uses Moodle's existing permissions, editor, privacy and reporting APIs, so nothing in core is modified.
- Who may manage announcements inside a course is a matter of capabilities. You do not have to hand out administrator rights to let a teacher handle their own course.
- The scrolling display is meant for short, urgent notices. Do not switch it on by default: moving text is harder to read and is an accessibility problem for some of your users.
Frequently asked questions
How is this different from a block or a theme tweak?
A block only shows where the block is, and a theme tweak is something you have to revisit at every upgrade. Here you decide per announcement where it appears: as a site banner, at the top of the page or in the notifications area. And because it is a plugin, it survives a change of theme.
Can a teacher handle this for their own course?
Yes. Announcements can be site-wide, but also live inside a single course. With the right capability a teacher manages the announcements for their own course, without access to the rest of the site.
Do visitors who are not logged in see the notice too?
You choose that per announcement. You can target authenticated users, guests and visitors who are not logged in. That last one is exactly what you need during an outage where logging in is the thing that fails.
Can people dismiss a notice?
Yes, and you decide whether that lasts for the current session or for good. Changed your mind? You can reset the stored dismissals so the same announcement shows up for everyone again.
What happens if I stop the subscription?
The plugin keeps working. The code is GPL, so you may keep using the last version you received for as long as you like. What stops are the updates and the support.
Need this to do something it does not do yet?
The plugins are open source and free to use. If you need a change, a migration or someone to keep them working across Moodle upgrades, that is what we do.
No obligation, no sales pitch. We advise first; a proposal comes later.
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