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Question

Learning Plan, Catalogue or Channel?

  • August 17, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 42 views

Hi Everyone

I have been asked to put links to a lot of courses held on a third party site on our LMS. I am not sure how to proceed.

It is early days but I think the way they want it to work is that the user can browse the courses that are available under a particular heading e.g. Management and Leadership. Obviously, I need to confirm how they want it to work.

The whole point of the exercise is to record who has completed which courses etc. on our LMS and not on the third party site. Also, to keep all our courses on our LMS and not have users logging on to a different site for some courses.

So do I use a Learning Plan, Catalogue or Channel?

Thank you

 

    1 reply

    Moshe.Machlav
    Helper III
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    Before deciding between a Catalogue, Channel, or Learning Plan, it helps to address the technical catch with external course completion tracking:

    If you only provide standard hyperlinks or upload external assets, Docebo can track that a user clicked/viewed the link, but it cannot know whether the user actually completed the course on an external site unless there is a standard communication protocol (like AICC, xAPI, LTI, or an API sync).

    Here is how each organizational structure fits this requirement:

    • Channels (Informal / Asset-based): Best if these are quick resource links (URLs or informal assets) organized by topic (e.g., Management & Leadership). Learners can browse freely, but completion reporting is limited to view counts.

    • Course Catalogues (Formal Discovery): If you wrap each external module into an actual Docebo Course (using an HTML page, iframe, or external package as training material), you can place them into a Catalogue. This allows users to browse by topic, self-enroll, and gives you formal enrollment records.

    • Learning Plans (Sequential Curriculum): Best if these courses must be taken in a specific sequence or as a required curriculum, rather than just an open library to browse.

    In organizations I’ve worked with on similar vendor integrations, the most reliable setup is to build individual e-learning courses for each topic, host the external launcher/link inside the course, and organize those courses into Catalogs (or Channels configured for formal courses). If the third-party provider supports AICC, xAPI/TinCan, or a native Docebo Content connector, that will give you true completion data back in Docebo.

    For more details on setting up Catalogs for browsing, check out the official guide on Activating and managing catalogs.

    'I have never tried that before, so I think I should definitely be able to do that. Want to learn more?
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