User Tours

Owned by Luc Richard
Last updated: Sept 20, 2018
3 min read

User tours allows Administrators to create user tours of the system, which are visual and positional step-by-step guides. Tours can be created for a wide range of purposes: to guide new users around the interface, to introduce new features, highlight important information, and more.

Once a user tour has been created and enabled, the first time that any user views a page which matches that user tour’s page (path) settings, the user tour will automatically start to display, starting with the first step. Each tour step will display its title and content, along with three button options:

  • Prev - to return to the previous step in the tour

  • Next - to go to the next step in the tour

  • End Tour - to exit out of the tour completely

Any time a user wishes to re-run the page's tour, they can click on the "Reset user tour on this page" link at the bottom of the page.

Managing User Tours

To manage user tours, go to Site administration > Appearance > User tours. You will see a list of your existing user tours, along with three button options.



For each of your existing tours, you can click either directly on its name or on its "View action" icon to view its current listed steps. Each tour can be individually enabled or disabled as required in its settings page. It's important to note that while you can have multiple tours created for the same page destination, you should only have one enabled per page at any given time.

Each tour has the following Actions options:

  1. View: to view and edit the individual steps in the tour

  2. Edit: to edit the tour settings, such as its name, page (specified page to which it is applied) and whether it is enabled or not. Tours will be displayed on any page whose URL matches the specified path value, for instance:

    1. /my/% - to match the Dashboard

    2. /course/view.php% - to match all courses

    3. /course/view.php?id=2 - to match a specific course (e.g. the course with id=2)

    4. /mod/forum/view.php% - to match the forum discussion list

    5. /user/profile.php% - to match the user profile page

    6. FRONTPAGE to use the tour on your site's home page.

  3. Export: to export the tour’s full details and steps as a .json file

  4. Delete: to delete the tour entirely

Each tour will be configured with default step settings which you can edit in the settings page:

  1. Placement: Top, Bottom (Default), Left, Right. This determines where the step shows relative to its matching block or CSS selector on the page.

  2. Show if target not found: No (Default), Yes. This determines whether the step is shown or not when the target has not been found.

  3. Show with backdrop: No (Default), Yes. If yes, the step appears surrounded by a darkened backdrop to emphasis its content and location.

  4. Move on click: No (Default), Yes. If yes, the tour continues to the next step when the user clicks within the block or area targeted by the current step.
    Note: If you want users to be able to fill in forms as they work through the tour, then don't use a backdrop.

To Learn More

To learn more about user tours, visit the Moodle documentation or the video below: