Question

Can we create a subscription without putting our courses on sale individually?

J
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  • Jon
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Hello! We manage an open course library, in that any user on the system has access to all our courses (~250). We currently create user accounts manually or through self-registration, but we want to set up a subscription so other individuals can pay to access all courses. However, it seems that a course can only be included in the subscription if we select ‘the course is on sale in catalogs’. This then means our non-subscription users can’t access the course without paying.

Is my understanding correct? Is there any way to create a subscription without making changes to course accessibility for our non-subscription users? Thanks!

11 replies

eleonora.maggioni
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hi @Jon,

It is correct that a course can only be included in the subscription if we select ‘the course is on sale in catalogs’, but you can give free access to the users enrolling as “Superadmin”/”power user” the user to the courses, or if you want to leave the free enrolment you could create a copy of the same course and create two different catalogs (one with the free courses and one with the courses on sale).

Eleonora Maggioni Digital Learning Specialist APPrendere s.r.l | www.apprendere.eu
J
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Hi @eleonora. Really appreciate the response. We allow our standard users to select their own courses, so allowing Power Users to manage the process wouldn’t help. And duplicating our 300-400 courses would be a huge headache and cause problems with reporting etc. 

Seems it isn’t compatible to have an open library for standard users AND create a subscription option for paid users. I think we’ll need to look at third party options and add this one to the Ideas pile!

Thanks again!

Bfarkas
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Connecting some threads…if this convo interests you, go vote for the idea here:

 

J
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After some more testing, we’ve found a course can be included in subscriptions even if the ‘the course is on sale in catalogs’ option is not selected for the course. This throws up other issues though:

If we add a course to a bundle, and the user clicks the course in the ‘What’s included’ list (on the subscription page), two things can happen:

  • If the course is not selected as ‘the course is on sale in catalogs’, the user will see a 403 error
  • If the course is selected as ‘the course is on sale in catalogs’, and the catalog containing the course is assigned to the user’s branch, the user will be able to see the course description. However, after they pay for the subscription, they are prompted to pay for the course as well.

So how can we include a course in a subscription while allowing the user to see the course description page (before paying) and NOT requiring the user to pay for the course after they pay for a subscription?

I’m either not understanding something or something is wrong with the functionality.

C
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We couldn’t solve this to our satisfaction, so we went another route:

We’re handling subscriptions outside the platform and using additional fields to differentiate between subscribers and free users. As users are logging in via Open ID Connect, these additional fields are filled automatically upon login. Subscribers are automatically enrolled in groups based on these additional fields and get access to different catalogs, pages and menu. 

This way, we avoid the issue outlined above, as a course can part of multiple catalogs, i.e., accessible to subscribers and free users. 

Jamie at GuyKat
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I think the most common way I see is something similar - using an outside eCommerce process for the subscription and then feeding information into Docebo to “open” their access to specific home pages and/or other sub-pages. Depending on your internal capabilities, you could even auto-feed the information from the “checkout” into Docebo to create their user account and set all the visibility for items. 

Hope this helps!

Jamie Morgan - Vice President NA | GuyKat | www.guykat.com
J
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Thanks for the input @Ceeee and @jamie.morgan. Yes, we’re looking into third part options as well. We were hoping to use the Docebo Subscription feature so people can see the courses included in the subscription before purchase, but it doesn’t seem to work properly. I just don’t understand the point of the Subscriptions feature if it can’t be used without showing error messages to users.

Jamie at GuyKat
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Hey Jon! I think subscriptions work well for instances with a single use case (i.e. I sell subscriptions to individuals or other businesses) but I think the problems come in with instances where there are multiple use cases (i.e. some users get courses for free or internal users have one access but same courses are trying to be done with subscriptions as well). 

Jamie Morgan - Vice President NA | GuyKat | www.guykat.com
J
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Userlevel 1

Hi @jamie.morgan. Would you mind explaining how you set up your subscriptions? Let’s set the multiple use cases assigned.

If you don’t assign a catalog to the user’s branch, the user gets an error message after clicking a course under ‘What’s included’. Dead end.

If you assign the catalog to the users branch so they can click a course under ‘What’s Included’ and see the course details, one of two things can happen:

  • If the course is available for self-enrollment, the user can enroll without paying for the subscription
  • If the course is not available for self-enrollment, even after paying, the user can’t enroll without an administrator

So you cant have a subscription that allows for self-enrollment?

Thanks for you help sorting through this!

Jamie at GuyKat
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Hey Jon - you can have a subscription for self-enrollment but the course must be “for sale” in the catalog which is what blocks someone from enrolling in the course via the catalog visibility initially. Then, when they purchase the subscription plan tied to that catalog, it “unlocks” the pricing for those courses as the “payment” is within the subscription so now the user can go enroll in the courses they wish to enroll in. Subscriptions DO NOT work without the catalog visibility set and the course listed for sale to block someone from enrolling without paying for subscription.

With all of that being said, if you do have multiple use cases in a platform, the only way I’ve seen a client successfully deploy subscriptions is using a 3rd party ecommerce solution where the customer purchases a subscription plan there and then via APIs information is fed into Docebo to “sell” the subscription transaction for the appropriate plan/bundle and also sets the catalog visibility for said user or branch (depending if it’s a single license subscription or a bulk license/seat subscription). For full transparency, that setup isn’t for the faint of heart and might require some IT assistance or potentially working with a Docebo partner that has the knowledge and capabilities to help you deploy it. 

Hope this helps!

Jamie Morgan - Vice President NA | GuyKat | www.guykat.com
J
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Thanks for taking time to explain @Jamie at GuyKat, really appreciate it. We’re going to do some more testing, but I think you’re right, a third party option will be best as a long term approach for a mixed model like ours.

 

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