Fantastic question, @cimberli! 

I’ll be interested to hear what others have to say, but from my experience, I’d say the key to avoiding cannibalization is to establish clear goals and boundaries for each platform. 

Out of curiosity, are you leveraging Docebo’s Discover, Coach & Share primarily for customer training, or for internal use? If the latter, you might be able to distinguish them functionally by audience (DCS for employees, InSided community for customers). 

If you’re using both for customer education, it gets trickier. You’ll have to sort that out by your use case needs, but I can venture some basic observations.

DCS sits inside your learning platform, so it’s easier to use it as part of a larger training ecosystem. You can run Docebo reports and capture knowledge flows easily within that centralized hub. Interactions tend to be by specialization and interest. Organized by channels, knowledge exchange happens within those spaces; if you’re not part of the channel, you won’t be able to “see” everything going on. Most of our customers use it as a feature to share knowledge and ask experts for advice.    

While it’s external to our platform, InSided allows for dynamic, global interactions. You can post where it’s visible to everyone or within designated groups. You can leverage badges and allow for private messaging. In that sense, you can do more, but it’s not directly functioning as part of your learning platform. 

That’s my (very unofficial!) take -- I invite other contributors to chime in with their opinions and insights! 

Thanks so much @ryan.woods! The good news is that we are very much in the early stages of both the LMS and the community so that I think we’ll be able to build something together rather than have some kind of Highlander “there can be only one” battle.  The more challenging news is that I would like to leverage the Ask the Experts and posting functionality for external customers.  I’m experimenting, for example, with posting the recording of an ILT workshop on a product specific channel and encouraging people to post their best work, ask additional questions etc after the workshop itself.  

And yes I’d love to hear from anyone cultivating community with the hope of jumpstarting social learning.

@cimberli, it sounds like you’ve got the right idea! I would say, if you’re planning to build conversations and input based on specific training content in your platform, DCS is your best bet. I think you could even place the training asset in the channel to invite comments and input. 

On the other hand, your InSided platform is great for things like cross-promotion and organic conversations about your product that aren’t directly related to training, don’t fit neatly into your designated channels, or don’t need to be captured in your learning platform itself. 

Again, though, I’m interested to hear from others who have navigated these issues. 

BTW, extra credit for this reference. RIP Sean Connery.

 

@cimberli, there are heaps of insights in @ryan.woods’s tips for a healthy hybrid strategy using both a success community (like inSided) and a social learning tool (like DCS). I agree with everything that Ryan shared! Here’s my paraphrased version of one of Ryan’s points:

One way to differentiate DCS and inSided (or any community platform) could be by organizational structure:

DCS: Structure your channels in Docebo by specific learning objectives. Be it product-related, role-based, jobs to be done, etc. – make sure that these channels align well with other learning content and objectives that you tackle elsewhere in Docebo. Organize and facilitate conversations around specific learning content. More than likely, your customers will discover DCS content in the flow of learning – either by discovering similar “suggested content” while viewing an asset in Docebo, or by being guided to a channel via certain pages/menus that you design.

inSided (or any success community): Structure your “forums” (or as we call them, “Discussion Categories”) loosely to make it easy for customers to ask the questions they want to ask without necessarily having to worry about where they go. Then, you and/or moderators can do the work on the backend to keep those conversations and posts organized for future reference. More than likely, your customers will discover community content “organically” via search when they have an issue/question related to that content. Community content often marries well with Knowledge Base content (which is why it’s so great that inSided supports a federated search with Zendesk, who we use for Docebo Help!)

@cimberli how does this align with your current vision? We’re learning together as we take on this journey, so I’d love to hear whether you agree/disagree!

@Cindy McElhinney you might find this thread helpful considering some of our recent conversations.

we use it in all ways described here + we have also created ‘mini’ channels that are related to specific courses (programs) that include assignments and group discussions. example: We have some programs that are about 4 months in length where users have self-study to do + assignments to hand in. When a cohort starts, the program coordinator updates the Group that manages who has access to that channel and shares all relevant conversations, questions, discussions, etc. via the channel. We found that users are very keen to get instant answers to their questions and share feedback on the program itself. The channel is moderated by the PC and facilitator so there is some sense of consistency and organization, etc. One downside is the number of channels to manage is large but with the recent improvements to the channel management page, it has helped a lot. another option we use DCS for is for user self-help and to help reduce the number of inquiries sent to our business support desk. It does help quite a bit and users quite like the idea of finding answers without having to reach out or wait on someone to assist.

I love the idea that learners can post questions related to their self study assignments on a channel.  I’m also tasked with building a certification program for clients and would love to incorporate DSC channels.  Thanks so much for sharing @lrnlab

And your observation that the channels self-help reduces the number of inquiries to the support desk.  That’s exactly the points I need to make when evangelizing.