A learning plan in Totara gives a learner and their manager one shared place to see what the learner is working on, what is due, and how far they have got. Used well, it turns a development conversation into a record both people can act on.
This guide explains what Totara learning plans contain, how the four workflows decide who controls a plan, how to create plans automatically for whole groups, and the setup details that catch administrators out. If you are still evaluating the platform itself, start with our overview of the Totara LMS.
Every learning plan in Totara is created from a template. A site administrator builds the template once and decides three things: which kinds of content a plan can hold, which workflow governs it, and how it gets marked complete. Each learner then gets a plan based on that template, which can be tailored to them.
Think of the template as a form with the fields already chosen, and each plan as one person's completed copy. Change the template and every plan built from it follows, because Totara applies template changes to existing and future plans alike.
A plan can hold four kinds of content, and each template can switch any of them on or off.
Courses. Specific courses a learner is expected to complete. Useful when you have a large catalogue and want managers or learners to pick the right mix for a role or career path.
Programs. Preconfigured sets of courses. Adding a program saves someone from finding and adding each course individually.
Skills. Capabilities the learner is working towards, drawn from your skill frameworks. Older Totara versions and documentation call these competencies. A skill can have linked courses that lead to it being marked as achieved, and Totara Perform extends what you can do with skills beyond Totara Learn.
Learning objectives. Free text targets. Totara draws a useful line here: a goal can be broad ("improve my communication skills"), while an objective is a specific, trackable task ("complete health and safety training within three months"). Objectives can also cover actions that happen outside Totara altogether.
Around that content, a plan carries comments on the whole plan and on individual items, due dates and priorities where the template allows them, and evidence. If your site has evidence types set up, learners can upload evidence against courses and skills in their plan, and a manager can mark those items complete once the evidence is valid.
Learning plans work best where development is individual and negotiated. Three common uses:
Onboarding. A new starter sees every piece of essential training in one place, with dates, and their manager can see the same view.
Preparing for a role. A learner and manager lay out what stands between the learner and their next position, then track it.
Ongoing development. A plan becomes the working document behind regular one-to-ones, with comments recording what was agreed.
They are the wrong tool for mandatory training that has to be proven and renewed on a schedule. That is what Totara certifications are for, with recertification windows, reminders and compliance reporting built in. A learning plan can include a program, but if an auditor is going to ask who is current, use certifications.
One limitation to know before you design anything: learning plans are not available on a site that runs multitenancy with tenant isolation turned on. If you serve several client organisations from one Totara site and isolate them from each other, plan your development approach around that from the start.
When you create a template, you choose a workflow. The workflow decides who can add content, who approves the plan, and who can complete it. Totara provides three preset workflows and a custom option.
| Workflow | Who is in control | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | The manager. Due dates and priorities on courses, skills and programs are switched off. | Simple, light-touch plans |
| User-driven | The learner. The manager can view the plan but cannot change it. | Self-directed development |
| Manager-driven | The manager assigns content. The learner can request additions, but everything needs manager approval. | Structured development tied to a role |
| Custom | Whatever you configure. | Anything the presets do not fit |
The custom workflow is where Totara's flexibility shows. For the plan as a whole, and separately for courses, skills, objectives and programs, you set what the learner and the manager can do at one of four levels: allow the action, deny it, request it, or approve it. You can also require or remove due dates and priorities per content type, and choose how the plan completes:
A practical rule: start from the preset closest to what you want, then move to custom only for the permissions that genuinely differ. Custom workflows are powerful, and every extra permission is one more thing to explain to managers.
Creating plans one learner at a time, from each user's profile page, is fine for a pilot. For anything larger, Totara offers two kinds of automation, and they solve different problems.
Totara can create a plan from a chosen template for everyone in an audience. For a dynamic audience, where membership updates itself based on rules such as job title or department, you can also have Totara create a plan automatically for every new person who joins that audience.
When you set this up, you choose the template, whether new plans start as drafts or go straight to active, and which audience members to exclude, such as people who already have an automatically created plan from that template. Two behaviours to note: if someone later leaves the audience, the plan already created for them stays, and plans appear on the next scheduled task run rather than instantly.
Getting the audience rules right is most of the work here. Our guide to Totara audiences and hierarchies covers how to build them.
The second kind of automation fills plans with the right content. If you have set up position and organisation hierarchies, assigned them to users, built a skill framework with courses linked to skills, and linked those skills to positions or organisations, a template can pull each learner's relevant skills, and optionally their linked courses, into the plan automatically.
This is the setting that makes learning plans run themselves across a large organisation. It comes with one important condition: content is pulled in at the moment the plan is created. If you later add a skill to a position, existing plans do not update. Plan for how you will handle changes to a role before you rely on this in production.
Enrolment is not automatic. Adding a course to a learning plan does not enrol the learner in it. The course needs the learning plan enrolment method added, and even then the learner is enrolled when they select Launch course from inside their plan. Until the method is added, the learner sees the course listed but cannot get into it.
Visibility controls what can be added. Whoever adds a course or program to a plan must be able to see it. If a course is restricted by audience visibility, it will not appear as an option for someone outside that audience.
Linked courses follow the creator's view. When automatic assignment pulls in courses linked to skills, it adds only the courses visible to the person creating the plan, at the time they create it.
Tenant isolation switches plans off. As noted above, sites running multitenancy with tenant isolation cannot use learning plans.
Answer those on paper first. The configuration in Totara is quick once the decisions are made, and slow to unpick once hundreds of plans exist.
Learning plans depend on groundwork that sits elsewhere in Totara: hierarchies, job assignments, audience rules, skill frameworks and enrolment methods. Most of the effort in a good learning plan setup goes into that groundwork, and it is where a partner saves the most time.
Lambda Learning has implemented and managed enterprise learning platforms since 2002, for associations, healthcare organisations, compliance teams and training companies. Huron Perth Healthcare Alliance runs managed Totara with Lambda Learning across four partner hospitals in Ontario. Read the case study.
We can help you design templates and workflows around how your managers actually work, connect your HR data so positions and organisations stay current, and test automatic plan creation before it reaches your whole workforce.
Learning plans are a Totara Learn feature. Totara Perform adds extended skills functionality that works alongside them.
A program is a fixed set of courses that you assign. A learning plan is an individual record for one learner that can contain programs, courses, skills and objectives, with comments and approvals between the learner and their manager.
Yes, if the template's workflow allows it. The user-driven workflow gives learners primary control, and a custom workflow lets you decide exactly what learners can do without approval.
Yes. Totara can create plans from a template for everyone in an audience, and automatically for anyone who later joins a dynamic audience. Separately, templates can pull in skills and linked courses based on a learner's position and organisation when the plan is created.
Not when tenant isolation is turned on. Learning plans are unavailable on sites using multitenancy with tenant isolation enabled.
Yes. It was checked against Totara's documentation for Totara 20 in September 2026.
Bring your roles, your managers and your current process. If Totara learning plans are not the right fit for what you need, we will say so.
Totara is a trademark of Totara Learning Solutions Ltd. Lambda Learning Inc. is a Totara Platinum Partner.