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We offer a mix of elearning and ILT courses for our software products.

We categorize these courses by software product, so our categories are like this:

  • Application Category A
  • Application Category B
    • Application Subcategory
    • Application Subcategory
  • Application Category C

etc.

Setting up categories this way finally helped our users browse/filter quickly to get what courses are available for a given software product.

However, for our ILT sessions, where we train learners on how to use software, we deploy and assign to them a cloud-based virtual machine. These machines are deployed from a given server region and to ensure optimal performance we need to know where the enrollee is physically attending from. Currently, we email them individually, which is not ideal.

Was expecting/hoping that the Course Additional Field feature would work for this scenario - I could setup a question prompt asking them to let us know their location but alas, no, this won’t work because you can only assign them to a category and since we have both elearning and ILT courses assigned to all categories it would make no sense to ask a learner who is enrolling into an elearning course to tell us where they’re physically located. 

Hoping someone offers another approach? Wondering if 3rd party form or something might be a workaround.

Hello Mark, interesting question!

Couple of clarifying questions to consider in which path to take:

  • Are the virtual machines manually assigned 1:1, user:machine - or are learners from (e.g. west coast) assigned to one of a bundle of machines on (west coast node)?
  • Could use of branches or groups help with identifying the geographic location of the user, and use enrollment rules to get them into a geographically-based session that uses virtual machines from that region’s node?
  • Are you using Docebo to track with machine gets assigned to which learner, or managing the logins/assignments in another tool?

One non-tech solution from back when I taught ILT software training sessions, I would in the first 3-5 minutes of class consecutively assigned each user to a specific machine/login/password/data set from a previously prepared spreadsheet/list at the start of the course - which was labor intensive, but clean.

Hey @mark! First off, I love your course categorization structure. It makes a lot of sense to organize courses based on different products you offer. 

 

It seems like you’re on the right track considering using Enrollment Additional Fields to prompt users to share their region when they enroll into a course. As you pointed out, Enrollment Additional Fields currently can only be assigned to courses via one of the following two options:

  • All courses
  • Single category of courses

Since I don’t have a full understanding of the breadth of your course library, this might be a big lift, but would it be possible to break down your categories/sub-categories to differentiate between ILT and E-Learning courses? You could then create individual enrollment additional fields for each ILT subcategory and assign them accordingly. 

 

I also really like your idea for the 3rd party form route. My recommendation there would be to use the User enrolled in ILT session notification and edit the body of the email notification to include a link to a survey, something like a Google Form, that the learner would complete. That would then give you a full list of learners who need access to a cloud-based VM and what region they’re in. Do you think that could work?

Just following up on my comment, I really like @jason.moore’s idea to use Branches & Groups to identify geographic location of learners. You could even go beyond that to collect that information about your learners when they initially register by adding it as a mandatory User Additional Field. That way the learner’s location “follows” them regardless of what type of session they register for. You could easily report on who is enrolled to what session and see what their region is based on their User Additional Field value.

Hello Mark, interesting question!

Couple of clarifying questions to consider in which path to take:

  • Are the virtual machines manually assigned 1:1, user:machine - or are learners from (e.g. west coast) assigned to one of a bundle of machines on (west coast node)?

    Yes - 1:1 assignment.
     
  • Could use of branches or groups help with identifying the geographic location of the user, and use enrollment rules to get them into a geographically-based session that uses virtual machines from that region’s node?

    Unfortunately no. We have the integration with Salesforce and so many of our external user accounts originate there and are then duplicated in Docebo via the integration. While Salesforce profiles have location fields, they’re typically not filled in or inaccurate so we can’t rely on them. 
    ​​​
  • Are you using Docebo to track with machine gets assigned to which learner, or managing the logins/assignments in another tool?

    No - currently the requesting of the location and the assignment of who gets which machine is all managed manually. We find out where the user is located from them, and then assign them a machine from a server that is located closest to them. If you have any ideas on how we might track this via Docebo I’d be interested to hear them.

One non-tech solution from back when I taught ILT software training sessions, I would in the first 3-5 minutes of class consecutively assigned each user to a specific machine/login/password/data set from a previously prepared spreadsheet/list at the start of the course - which was labor intensive, but clean.

This approach makes perfect sense to me and is what I would do personally, but for some reason our instructors insist this is not acceptable. 

 

Just following up on my comment, I really like @jason.moore’s idea to use Branches & Groups to identify geographic location of learners. You could even go beyond that to collect that information about your learners when they initially register by adding it as a mandatory User Additional Field. That way the learner’s location “follows” them regardless of what type of session they register for. You could easily report on who is enrolled to what session and see what their region is based on their User Additional Field value.

Thanks Adam. I hate to create two subcategories (i.e., one for e-learning courses and another for instructor-led courses) under each parent product category, as it makes the CATEGORIES filter widget a bit clunky from a UI perspective, but it might be the best option. I will look at trying this out. Thanks again.

What about using a separate catalog for ILT? 

If you create a user additional field and make it required, to collect their location, you could then automatically put them into a group and assign access to that catalog by group. 

Not sure if this helps but it should prevent the issue with categories 

What about using a separate catalog for ILT? 

If you create a user additional field and make it required, to collect their location, you could then automatically put them into a group and assign access to that catalog by group. 

Not sure if this helps but it should prevent the issue with categories 

I do have a separate catalog for ILT already. Majority of our learners never take ILT, they just take elearning courses, so using an additional field isn’t ideal because most people are hesitant to provide their home address without a good reason and the address fields we have for their profile is not reliable - most will enter their business address and many of our users are sync’d from their Salesforce profile which contains their business address. Most now are working remotely and not necessarily in the same region as their company’s location.

What about using a separate catalog for ILT? 

If you create a user additional field and make it required, to collect their location, you could then automatically put them into a group and assign access to that catalog by group. 

Not sure if this helps but it should prevent the issue with categories 

I do have a separate catalog for ILT already. Majority of our learners never take ILT, they just take elearning courses, so using an additional field isn’t ideal because most people are hesitant to provide their home address without a good reason and the address fields we have for their profile is not reliable - most will enter their business address and many of our users are sync’d from their Salesforce profile which contains their business address. Most now are working remotely and not necessarily in the same region as their company’s location.

That makes sense - do you need their whole address, or would state, country, region etc work?

What about using a survey as a pre-requisite to ILT courses?

How many unique regions do you have, Mark? A variation on @angel.maenza great suggestion - how about using the required additional field, but choose a drop-down list of choices for location (that aligns with your regions of the virtual machines) vs text entry of address, and once they have made that selection (For best system performance, which region is closest to you?) and the field is populated - they won’t be asked again for the info. Avoids putting in a personal address, and would take admin work off your team as user selects location for themselves.

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