Creating general forums linked to multiple courses


Userlevel 7
Badge +5

Hello, I’m a new LMS Admin/ID implementing Docebo.

 

I’d like to have some active forums for members. It looks like forums in Docebo always live within a course widget, and are course-specific.

 

Is it possible to have general forums outside of a class? I suppose I could create a few classes with next to no content and put them in a “Forums” folder with different topics, but this is pretty inelegant. 

 

I’d also like to have forums linked to multiple classes. For example, all the sales classes could be linked to a “sales tips” forum. All the leadership classes could be linked to a “leadership discussion” forum.

 

I’d like to do this inside Docebo.


17 replies

Userlevel 4
Badge +1

Hello @lrodman,

we had the same problem about the Forum, so we solved it creating a course with only the forum Widget, and hiding with CSS the course structure. So as you can see below in the example, the users can see the course as a generical forum. If you want you can link the different topics to the related classes.

 

Hope this helped you =) 

Userlevel 5
Badge +2

hi @lrodman , my name is Marco and I’m a product manager here in Docebo.

Discover Coach and Share , and specifically his Q/A functionality, can be used to create discussion on a topic, rather than on a specific content. 

Let me guide you in creating a very simple one.

Create a channel “Leadership Discussion” , keep it empty i(n this way won’t appear to anyone), assign the visibility to the people that should use the Q/A, and create a page with the widget Q/A, single channel, and select the channel “Leadership Discussion”. Your user can interact in this page.

Moreover, you can add also additional widget to the page, making it a sort of “Leadership Discussion” community page. 

Just put in the channel you created  all the courses that are relevant to Leadership Discussion. You don’t have to bother about visibility, because the visibility of the courses will be kept (so each user in the channel will see only the courses where he was enrolled) 

And add the single channel widget to the previous page  you will have a leadership discussion page where an user can see all the relevant content and the Q/A in the same page 

 

 

Leadership Discussion Page

Single Channel Widget with all the course relevant
to “Leadership Discussion”

Q&A widget with only Q&A about the “Leadershiop Discussion

 

And.. is not finished.. if you want you can add also additional functionalities… let me mention some ideas

Activate the Mentions functionality for Q/A, to engage users in interacting

Assign “Expert” to the topic

Create a Leaderboard counting the completed trainings in “Leadership”. It will trigger a positive competition 

And If you have different Cohort having the same training, but don’t want the people of the different cohorts interact each other, you can use the channels cohorts functionality to manage it in a easy way without replicating configurations

i hope this can help

Marco

Userlevel 1

Hello @lrodman,

we had the same problem about the Forum, so we solved it creating a course with only the forum Widget, and hiding with CSS the course structure. So as you can see below in the example, the users can see the course as a generical forum. If you want you can link the different topics to the related classes.

 

Hope this helped you =) 

 

wow! I realy love your solution! It is exacly what I was searching for :)

 I am not a pro to manipulate CSS, would you please share your css code?

Badge

Hello @lrodman,

we had the same problem about the Forum, so we solved it creating a course with only the forum Widget, and hiding with CSS the course structure. So as you can see below in the example, the users can see the course as a generical forum. If you want you can link the different topics to the related classes.

 

Hope this helped you =) 

 

wow! I realy love your solution! It is exacly what I was searching for :)

 I am not a pro to manipulate CSS, would you please share your css code?

 

That would be super useful @eleonora.maggioni@lrodman 

Userlevel 4
Badge +1

Hello @AnneDubois and @RicardoLeite,
we offer CSS build and support as a service.
Usually, we prefer to not share the code because if you don't know how to manage CSS code, it could affect all the platform and change something unexpected.

Given that the code could be useful to many of you, we will make an exception, but you should keep in mind to use it only if you know how to manage CSS code!

In order to replicate my example you need to hide the empty player of the course, this is the CSS code:
 

/*IFRAME COMMUNITY WIDGET*/
#panel-0 #collection-widgets-holder .course-widget  { height: 500px; width: 1389px; overflow: hidden; margin: 0 auto !important; padding: 0 !important; }
#panel-0 #collection-widgets-holder .course-widget iframe { height: 540px; width: 1438px; pointer-events: none; }
#panel-0 #collection-widgets-holder .course-widget.forum-description { height: auto; width: 92% !important; padding: 3% !important;  }
Badge

Hi @eleonora.maggioni ,

This is much appreciated, many thanks :) and yes, I will make sure this goes through our website manager to avoid any glitches.

Best regards

This is super helpful! Does the coding only hide the course structure for that one course? Or all the course structures for every course? 

Userlevel 4
Badge +1

The code is related to one specific course, keep in mind to use it only if you know how to manage CSS code =) 

Userlevel 2

@eleonora.maggioni thanks for sharing!  A question I have is that is this code placed within the CSS text box for the course player or custom styles (found within Configure Branding and Look). You mentioned that it can be added to a specific course vs. a universal CSS setting.  I can’t seem to find that singular setting. After pasting in both CSS text boxes mentioned previously, I still see the “Whoops, there is no training material...” at the top of the page.  Any additional tips you have would be great!  Thanks in advance!

Userlevel 4
Badge +1

Hi @achess23  and @ali.zhanje

I have double check the code with my expert colleague, and I noticed that the CSS code is not related to the specific course but it is related to all the Widgets Forum and all the widgets iframe but it is used only for adjust the dimension of the image. You should put the code in the custom styles in Branding and Look settings.

In order to replicate my example you should:

  1. Create a course without training materials
  2. In the Player setting you should enable custom course starting view and select course overview page
  3. add the Widget Iframe with a link to an image

  4. add the Widget Forum 
  5. add the code in CSS (you should modify the code with the dimension of your image) 

This is how you see the course without the CSS code ⬇

 

Userlevel 2

@eleonora.maggioni - thank you so much for getting back to me about this.  worked like a charm.  the one setting that i did not have correct was having the course go right to the course overview page.

 

appreciate the help on this one!

Userlevel 1

Hi! First of all great workaround.
How do you treat the course progress under ‘My Courses’ now it’s an empty course that is used to display the forum? Ideally, we want to avoid having it show among the other “normal” courses under progress. Another implication occurs when adding the course forum to a learning plan where it now affects completion rates. 
 

Userlevel 7
Badge +6

@sebas- your challenge at its core? Is THE challenge. Exploiting (that word is sticking with me today) a learning object to get what you want from it? Can cause its regular use cases to show cracks in it when you drill into it.

Thats purely an opinion from someone that has been at it for a little.

Userlevel 1

@dklinger It sure is.

Using an empty course to exploit the forum widget is definitely not the straight-forward choice which is why I was surprised (and excited) to see it mentioned in here. 

But in lack of better ways to create non-course specific forums that are more powerful than the regular channels (e.g. attaching screenshots, creating topics, etc.) - we are eager to explore (and exploit where possible) any workarounds available.
But your concern is spot on.




 

Userlevel 6
Badge +2

hi @lrodman , my name is Marco and I’m a product manager here in Docebo.

Discover Coach and Share , and specifically his Q/A functionality, can be used to create discussion on a topic, rather than on a specific content. 

Let me guide you in creating a very simple one.

Create a channel “Leadership Discussion” , keep it empty i(n this way won’t appear to anyone), assign the visibility to the people that should use the Q/A, and create a page with the widget Q/A, single channel, and select the channel “Leadership Discussion”. Your user can interact in this page.

Moreover, you can add also additional widget to the page, making it a sort of “Leadership Discussion” community page. 

Just put in the channel you created  all the courses that are relevant to Leadership Discussion. You don’t have to bother about visibility, because the visibility of the courses will be kept (so each user in the channel will see only the courses where he was enrolled) 

And add the single channel widget to the previous page  you will have a leadership discussion page where an user can see all the relevant content and the Q/A in the same page 

 

 

Leadership Discussion Page

Single Channel Widget with all the course relevant
to “Leadership Discussion”

Q&A widget with only Q&A about the “Leadershiop Discussion

 

And.. is not finished.. if you want you can add also additional functionalities… let me mention some ideas

Activate the Mentions functionality for Q/A, to engage users in interacting

Assign “Expert” to the topic

Create a Leaderboard counting the completed trainings in “Leadership”. It will trigger a positive competition 

And If you have different Cohort having the same training, but don’t want the people of the different cohorts interact each other, you can use the channels cohorts functionality to manage it in a easy way without replicating configurations

i hope this can help

Marco

@Marco.T I like this topic level forum in DCS, expecially with the new answer an answer to make reading past dialogs easier. I am looking to tie this to gamification but I cannot see how to assign a badge, points, or a contest to a specific page/channel/etc. The association with DCS seems to be system wide. Am I missing something?

Userlevel 1

Hi @achess23  and @ali.zhanje

I have double check the code with my expert colleague, and I noticed that the CSS code is not related to the specific course but it is related to all the Widgets Forum and all the widgets iframe but it is used only for adjust the dimension of the image. You should put the code in the custom styles in Branding and Look settings.

In order to replicate my example you should:

  1. Create a course without training materials
  2. In the Player setting you should enable custom course starting view and select course overview page
  3. add the Widget Iframe with a link to an image

  4. add the Widget Forum 
  5. add the code in CSS (you should modify the code with the dimension of your image) 

This is how you see the course without the CSS code ⬇

 

“Starting View” options is no longer available in the Player configuration. @eleonora.maggioni has your team found an alternative way to make this work after the New Course page was implemented? 

 

Userlevel 4
Badge +2

IS there a way to embed this forum into a page widget? 

 

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