Best Answer

Help with Automation App - CSV File for Course Completions

  • 25 January 2024
  • 10 replies
  • 89 views
kfontanini
Rank

We are trying to set up an automation that will pull a Completion Report from our FTP/SFTP site and mark courses complete. The Completion Report is coming from another LMS (HealthStream/3PL). I’ve read articles to understand how this works, but it’s above my expertise (for now), so I’m hoping someone can give me an Automation for Dummies explanation.

When I’m creating the course shells for the completions, should I be creating internal course shells, or should I be creating them as external course completions? If I’m creating them as internal courses, is there anything in particular I need to include from the other system to make sure the automation can match the completion with the course? Any help is greatly appreciated! I’m trying to learn as much as I can, but this is overwhelming me right now.

icon

Best answer by KMallette 25 January 2024, 21:08

View original

10 replies

KMallette
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +5

@kfontanini Hello.

Yes, this is a challenging topic.
1. Automation app requires an SFTP site, so I’ll bet that you can use the one where you’re receiving the report.
2. External vs. Internal - Given that you are just recording completions, I’d bet that you can just do internal course shells. If you had actual training materials that were being fed from Heath Stream, then you’d do the external.
3. I’d recommend a course numbering schema that recognizes that the course completion happened on another platform.
4. You’ll need to do an enrollment and a completion of the users into … It should be possible to do this in a single upload, but just for understanding sakes I wanted to say this :-).

Do you understand the instructions for creating an Automation App rule? I’m happy to go thru that, but didn’t want to over burden the 101

Let me know.

KMallette/Viasat, Inc.
kfontanini
Rank

Hi @KMallette! You are my new favorite person. :)

That is all very helpful. Our plan is to create course shells with links to the other LMS (the courses are for CE Unlimited, and they require that we use their LMS to complete courses). We will be using course shells in Docebo to assign the training and link them to the other LMS (we can link them to the exact course). Once they complete the course in the other LMS, we want them to upload their certificate in Docebo to “hold” the course open. Once the completion report runs via automation app, the course will be marked complete.

I have no experience with the automation app rule. I’ve run the APIs for bulk course enrollment and course completion to transfer our historical completions from our old LMS, but that was manual. Over burden away!

KMallette
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +5

So do you plan to use add an assignment to the course shell for the upload? That type would allow you to accept the certificate from the other platform. You can edit the setting of that training material to mark it as the ‘end object marker’ so that you can control the completion a bit more.

...but I’m thinking that you may not need to wait for the completion report from CE Unlimited. If you mark the assignment as “learner can progress in course when assignment is submitted”, then Docebo can complete the course automatically. Maybe you would do a period audit to make certain that CE and Docebo agree on who is complete.

...food for thought.
 

KMallette/Viasat, Inc.
kfontanini
Rank

Yes, our current plan is to have an assignment where they upload their completion certificate, and that will be the end object marker. We want to avoid any manual management of the course, so we don’t want anyone to have to review the assignments or do an audit (we have over 3,000 employees we train, and our L&D Team consists of 8 people, so the bandwidth isn’t there). We also need the reporting to be as “real time” as possible. My understanding is that the automation app would run overnight, so those completions would be marked overnight from CE Unlimited’s report (our “record of truth”).

KMallette
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +5

Once the assignment is uploaded, then the course will automagically complete. There isn’t any need to manage the course completion on the Docebo side. I think you can totally skip the automation app.

Reporting from Docebo is probably going to be a 24-hour thing if you create a single completion report from Docebo. You could do a daily audit between Docebo and CE to make certain they agree as near as possible. The timelines of the two platforms may not be the same producing the completion reports.

 

KMallette/Viasat, Inc.
kfontanini
Rank

Do you ever have issues with assignment uploads where people upload the wrong document or try to cheat the system? We have several new courses where we asking them to upload documents and we will check them to mark them complete. I’m curious if this is a good route without a completion report or if we need that verification to come through.

KMallette
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +5

We personally don’t have a scenario that would be similar, but we do “certify” several groups of learners.

If I were making the decision, I think I would approach it like this:
1. What would be the consequence of an untrained person passing themselves off as trained? What’s the long term risk?
2. What do I know about my user audience? Are they ones I’ve seen try to ‘cheat’ in other respects?
3. How many completions do I have in a day? More completions = more time (which ever method you use for auditing) so with a limited staff, how does that play into questions 1 and 2.
4. Can a thorough daily audit - a simple compare/contrast of the two platform completion reports that you could build in an Excel spreadsheet - give me greater confidence that my audience plays by the rules.

KMallette/Viasat, Inc.
kfontanini
Rank

As much as I would love to say we’re overcomplicating things and can just have people upload the certificate and be done, we’re using this for healthcare courses dictated by state regulations. I don’t think staff would try to “cheat” the system, but they are not all tech savvy. I anticipate people not uploading the right document, so I don’t want to just rely on that assignment. I see way too much room for error not using the automated completion report. Now, I just need to figure out how to set it up!

KMallette
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +5

@kfontanini Fair enough … you know your business requirements. 🙂

So which part are you unsure of how to set up? The Automation app rule? I’m happy to help more.

KMallette/Viasat, Inc.
kfontanini
Rank

Thank you, everyone, for your help! We have a few people on our IT team who are far more technologically savvy working on the API automation. We started off with the certificate upload piece, but our staff were struggling with uploading the certificate (I think the issue was more with downloading the certificate from the other LMS and not an issue with Docebo). Instead, I added an Observation Checklist that asks the learner to confirm they completed the course. I added myself as the customer approver to hold the course open until we can run the API automation. While our IT team sets that up, I’m manually marking people complete once a day. Just wanted to share that in case others are encountering a similar issue. We’ll probably follow a similar process for Aspire when we have that training up and running.

Reply


Terms & ConditionsCookie settings