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Setting up separate Docebo platforms

  • 23 November 2021
  • 19 replies
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Userlevel 7
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I’ve received an inquiry from our human resources department about them potentially using our Docebo platform to deliver and administer their internal staff training. However, I’m not keen on adding all their content to our platform and giving them administration rights. In this case, is it possible to have two separate platforms? I believe Docebo supports multiple domains, but does anybody know if this feature is included as standard in the Enterprise plan?

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Best answer by natemadel 24 November 2021, 01:21

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Userlevel 1

Hi Daniel,

 

I suggest you create 2 different menus/pages, one for HR and the current one; then you arrange all the learning content into channels and catalogues, and decide which catalogues are visible to HR/internally, and which ones externally. You don’t need to give anyone else any rights, you can keep your admin rights and manage both menus yourself. Alternatively, I guess you can make someone from HR a power user and give him/her limited powers, ie. uploading content and extracting reports, so that they take some of the burden off your shoulders. 

Userlevel 7
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@Daniel we’re using the Enterprise version plus multi-domain add-on to handle a similar scenario.

We have several teams providing learning content for their respective audiences (customers, partners, employees). For each of those teams (product training, HR, info-sec, sales enablement, etc.) we have a separate category in the catalog and power users with privileges to manage courses within those categories.

On the learner side, each team has a set of catalogs in which they can post their courses and learning plans, as well as dedicated pages presenting their content.

I created menus for internal and external audiences, and assigned there relevant pages. So every group has a different home page and a personalized experience.

As a super admin, I had to once configure all those elements and create pages for them, but now, they are pretty self-sufficient.

Regarding multi-domain, actually all our users are using the same login page, we use multi-domain to assign different sets of additional fields to different branches (for customers we only have company name and country, for partners we have some flags related to their partnership level, and for employees we also have information about their internal HR ID, their department, a flag if they are a manager, etc.)

 

We implemented all that on a single platform, as we have a lot of training content shared between groups - partners apart from the dedicated courses can also access all learning for customers, and employees apart from the internal training can access all customer and partner learning.

Having a separate instance/platform would make sense if all groups would only be accessing courses dedicated to them.

Userlevel 7
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HI @Aurel we use multi domains extensively to enable different, unrelated companies to manage their own learning on the LMS and it works very well. You can create different branded experiences and easily control PU access to only those domain they should have access to. You also have the ability to enable different settings for things like terms and conditions, virtual coach. We have some sub domain users who use single sign on and we have them connected to their HR system, while others use manual login and manual user imports; so the range of options is wide

 

https://help.docebo.com/hc/en-us/articles/360020124899-Managing-the-Extended-Enterprise-App#subtitle-4

See: Creating Clients for Your Extended Enterprise

Userlevel 5
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Some great replies in here! I agree that you can accomplish this just fine with the Extended Enterprise feature -  that’s a huge part of why we made it ;)

@Daniel from a commercials perspective, a new platform is essentially a net new engagement for us, but your account manager can walk you through the specifics if you want to explore that possibility. I will caution that different platforms don’t “talk” to one another, so if you’re leveraging some of the same content, you could be doubling your efforts in those areas/tasks. 

Userlevel 7
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@Daniel - You are asking a great technical / resource question as well.

Above are alot of great nuances about the technical approaches:

  • single platform, but cleverness with metadata, branches, groups, menus and pages for delivering an experience
  • extended enterprise with multi-domain add on
  • whole new instance (probably your most costly)

I think asking some key questions about resources also drive this:

  • who is going to administrate those HR Courses
  • what content? Is it shared or not?
  • I think considering how durable your learning records are today versus tomorrow when you have HR coming to the table is important (because typically what comes with HR can be a great value add? An employee database).
    • may need to (re-)consider your current state username “namespace”
  • will they want to bring along historical records?
  • will they want to migrate content from another platform?

Help them go into their discovery with eyes wide open to what they are going to be getting into. Do a SWOT analysis (strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats) so you all can make an informed decision. But dont lose site on the resource aspect of this important project for yawl.

And then don’t forget to show off your infinite wisdom. Quote Jeff Goldblum from Jurassic Park …[we were]...so preoccupied with whether or not [we] could that they didn’t stop to think if [we] should. Have someone do a gap analysis to really show the value add for the organization.

Userlevel 7
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Many thanks to everyone for the advice and suggestions:grinning:

I'm going to have a meeting with our account manager to discuss this is in more detail, but I now have a much clearer understanding of the different ways in which we can approach the project.

Userlevel 1

Hi @lrnlab! Now I see why you are a Hero and I’m a Newcomer :). Indeed, that is an interesting suggestion and I may need to follow up on that with Docebo for one of our future projects. Thanks a lot for your insights, very helpful.

Userlevel 6
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Hi @Daniel ,

A key consideration is whether any of your users might need to access more than one domain

Each user is restricted to logging-in via a single extended enterprise domain. This is fine for situations where each domain is targeted at separate, unrelated groups of individuals (as in @lrnlab’s scenario). But if you have certain users who need to access more than one domain, you’re out of luck. 

This is due in part because each enterprise domain is linked to one Branch, and users cannot be in more than one Branch.

Userlevel 7
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Just to add to @Alan comments...we have in fact granted access to more than one domain for a single user by assigning them to more than 1 branch and it works. It’s a little tricky from the user perspective as they need to understand that they can use different URLs to get into 2 different ‘spaces’. Note that this works best if used with manual login method. 

Another way to grant access to different parts of the LMS while keeping users in a single domain would be to use hidden menus.

Hope this helps...

Userlevel 6
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Hi @lrnlab ,

How did you assign a user to more than one branch?  I understood this was impossible?  

Userlevel 7
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Hi @Alan when editing a user, on the Branch tab, you can select more than 1 branch at a time…

Each of the checkboxes is a sub domain...you can see in this case the user is attached to 2 different branches giving them access to 2 domains + the root…

Below, I forced the error to show you that this same user has access to 2 domains:

Hope this helps. Try it out...it’s a little tricky for a user to understand the concept sometimes and in some cases we found that Docebo is a little ‘sticky’ so the user would need to clear cache, etc. to get to the right page...it’s not an option i highly recommend but it is do-able if the test case fits your needs

Userlevel 6
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@lrnlab   Aha, so it looks like this is functionality that no longer exists. I have no way of selecting multiple branches :weary:

 

 

Userlevel 7
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@Alan Are you on the Enterprise plan? maybe that’s the issue?

Userlevel 6
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@lrnlab  Yes, we have a package with Enterprise plus a bunch of custom domains. The original plan was to use a separate domain for each of our use cases, but had to abandon that idea, because many of our users need to access more than one of the use cases. 

Instead I have had to create a complicated system of user additional fields; groups; menus and pages to simulate a “multi-domain” environment using only one actual domain. 

@Daniel  As mentioned here by our many friends, you raised some excellent questions and equally, received some terrific responses. I love this workspace. I have also spoken with your Docebo Partner and asked them to contact you ASAP to support and guide you through this journey.

Userlevel 7
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@Alan@lrnlab the ability to assign users to multiple branches is not available in newer systems.

 

 

from: https://help.docebo.com/hc/en-us/articles/360020084460-Creating-and-Managing-Users

 

Userlevel 7
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thx @alekwo an easily missed note.

@natemadel any reason why this change was implemented? Seems odd to lock down something that could be of benefit to your clients. Where there functional issues related to this?

Userlevel 5
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@lrnlab yes, it leads to a lot of situations that in general are not transparent to the admin and should be avoided. Couple examples:

  • I set up notifications by branch, when a user enrolls to course (or whatever event), since they are in both branches, they get 2 notifications for the same event. 
  • I have menu visibility configured by branch. It might not be clear to me as an admin that the system will select only one menu for the user (whichever is configured first in the menu list). 
  • In the cases of extended enterprise, I may expect that the user’s experience is completely different in both portals, when in reality the experience may not be what I expected (see menu visibility above, plus the users catalog/channel visibility and enrolled courses will “follow” them across domains.)

So in short, with a user in a single branch, it (forcibly) avoids some very complex scenarios where the expected behavior may not be so clear and could result in misconfiguration, and in general provides a more straightforward experience for the admin. 

 

Userlevel 7
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Thanks for the quick reply @natemadel and i certainly understand the examples you provided hence why I mentioned in my posts that this could be tricky….that said, I think removing the option all together is not the necessarily the best approach as it may prevent some clients from using what could be a useful feature; as long as the admin understands how it should be used and what the implications are.

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