Important Note
When assigning users to a Program/Certification via any of the below methods will lock in the settings set within the Certification tab for those assigned, please ensure that these are set up as required as assigning users will make the Certification live. Please see here for more information.
Once users are assigned and the Certification is live, any messages added to the Message tab will begin to be sent out when the next cron runs on the LMS.
When launching a Program or Certification, in order for learners to be able to view and take the learning it first needs to be assigned to them. Below outlines some aspects to consider when assigning a Program or Certification to learners, including adding a due date to the assigned learners.
Assigning a Program or Certification
When assigning either a Program or Certification, there will be 5 options that can be chosen which are:
- Audience
The most common method of assigning learners to Mandatory learning, when using an audience it allows for users that have been suspended to be excluded from the audience and therefore means that messages are not being triggered when they should not be. If using a Dynamic Audience it also means that users joining the Organisation is automatically pulled into the audience and therefore assigned to learning automatically.
- Organisation
With this method, it allows for Site Managers (Or those with the correct permissions) to assign users to Mandatory training via the Organisation that they sit within their Job Assignment.
- Position
With this method, it allows for Site Managers (Or those with the correct permissions) to assign users to Mandatory training via the Position that they sit within their Job Assignment.
- Management Hierarchy
This method allows for learners to be assigned via their Manager that is held within their Job Assignment. Meaning that if a manager is chosen all that Managers direct reports would be assigned to the learning.
- Individual
Learners can be assigned as an individual to both Programs and Certifications, learners would be added one by one rather than in bulk.
Adding a due date to Learners being assigned
When adding learners to a Program or Certification, there is an option to add a due date. Adding a due date is completely optional and does not need to be done, however, it can be useful to encourage learners to complete it at their earliest convenience. Furthermore, if Program due & overdue messages has been added to the messages tab, the due date set here is what is used to trigger the notifications (for the first time they are assigned).
There are two types of due dates that can be added to user assignments:
- Fixed Date
When using the fixed date, it allows for a fixed date in the future to be set. For example, this could be 31st December 2024 00:00. This would mean that all users being assigned would have the same due date regardless of when they are assigned to the Program whether it would be on June 30th 2024 or November 20th 2024.
Important to note, when using the fixed due date near the time in which the date is approaching it will need to be updated to a new date. Reason being, if users are assigned after the date it will cause an exception for Time Allowance and the user will not be assigned to Program.
- Relative completion criteria
When using relative completion criteria, it allows for a due date to be set depending on a date held on the users profile or assignment to the Program. The options include:
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Important to note, when working with dates such as First login, position assigned date or Job assignment start date if users are being assigned to a new program who may have been at the company for a few years now, the LMS is unable to assign a due date in past therefore again an exception will be caused and the user will be moved to the Exceptions report for Time allowance.
For example, if it is set that the due date is 'Complete within 30 days of First login' and the program is assigned on 30th October 2024. If a user being assigned has already logged in before so it could be the case that their first login was in fact 4th April 2019. As the LMS is not able to provide a due date in the past, this is an example where an exception will be thrown and therefore the user is not assigned.
It is important to ensure that if working with the majority of the choices above that the example above is taken into consideration.
Best Practice Consideration
What we normally would recommend using is Program enrollment date, the reason why this is a suggestion is that the due date is calculated from the date in which the user was assigned to the Program. For example, if the due date condition was 'Complete within 3 months of Program enrollment date' if the user was assigned on 14th August 2024, then it would automatically assign a due date of 14th November 2024. The good thing here is that this is what could be called a dynamic due date, because regardless of when the user is assigned they will always have 3 months from the date in which they were enrolled to complete the learning.
Once the due date has been created. If a fixed due date is being used then selecting 'Set fixed completion date' and if there is a dynamic due date in place selecting 'set time relative to event' adds this due to the audience.
Example of an audience being assigned with a dynamic due date.
Once the certification is ready to be launched (ensuring that every other tab is updated and follows the businesses criteria), clicking 'save changes' within the assignments tab will make the certification live.
Once clicked, there will be a confirmation screen again asking for confirmation that the changes being made:
If no further changes need to be made, clicking 'save all changes' will push the certification to be live and enrollments and messages will begin triggering (via a cron run). If changes need to be made to assignments, clicking 'edit assignments' will allow for this.
When the certification is live, it will show as the below:
Considerations when assigning Programs to Learners
- Course settings & visibility
When assigning Programs and Certifications to learners, it is important to ensure that the learners have visibility and access to both the Program and Courses contained within it. To ensure that this is set up correctly, within the Program/ Certification that is about to go live, in the tab titled 'Details' and under the section Audience Based Visibility ensure that this is set to any of the 3:
- All users - Meaning that if enabled this Program/Certification is discoverable within the Course Catalogue
- Enrolled users only - Meaning that only those enrolled have access and visibility
- Enrolled users and members of the selected audience - Meaning that only those enrolled and audiences chosen have access to the Program. Note, those who are in the Audience may not be enrolled so therefore will only be able to the Program but not actively take it.
Within the Course/s that are within the Program/Certification, there is a requirement to also ensure that learners have access to the Course. Within the course settings, it is normally recommended that the Audience that is being enrolled onto the Program is also enrolled onto the Course page. This can be found within the Course Settings > Enrolled Audiences.
If choosing to allow the users to enrol themselves onto the course page, then Self Registration needs to be enabled on the course page as an enrolment method and the Audience Based Visibility needs to be set. This can be found within the Course Settings> Audience Based Visibility.
If either of the above are not set then this will stop users from accessing the course and they will receive a message such as the below:
- Reporting
When assigning learners to Programs, depending on how the learning is assigned to them can impact the way in which the completions are reported on.
If learners are assigned to just the Program and not the course, this means that learners will enrol onto the course once they click on the course within the Program. Once they do this, they will receive the below message:
Now, if the above is the way in which the assignments has been done. If a Course Completion report (with the reporting source Course Completion) is ran for 1 or more courses within the Program, there may not be a true reflection against the number of users enrolled onto the Program against the number of users enrolled onto the course. The reason for this is down to the fact that the learner has not been enrolled onto the course and therefore they will not show up on a course completion report until they have done so.
If this method of just assigning the learners to the program is the preferred method then it is recommended that a Program completion report (with the reporting source being Program Completions) or Certification completions report (with the reporting source being Certification Completions) is used to ensure that the correct amount of users are surfaced within the report and will equal that of the number assigned to the program.
If the users are assigned to the Program/ Certification via an audience and the same audience is also enrolled onto the course/s that are within the Program then reporting can be conducted on any of the below reporting sources:
- Course Completion
- Program Completion
- Certification Completion