Question

Best Practices for Offering Content to External (non-employee) Learners


Hello, Docebo Community!

My organization launched our LMS at the start of the calendar year, with our employees and contingent workers gaining access to the platform via OKTA SSO.  We’re now weighing our options for, and trying to understand the work involved in, offering content free-of-charge to individuals outside of the company (i.e., customers).

For anyone who has their platform built for both employees and external customers, I’m interested in hearing about your experiences with setting it up and the lessons learned you’ve encountered.  For example, are you utilizing the extended enterprise app, how are you managing external users gaining access to the platform, etc.? 

 

Thank you in advance for your insights!


16 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +6

Hi Shanon,

Consider three primary things to start:

  • do you need to have that learning tracked?
  • do you need to maintain a database of learners?
  • will you know who the targeted audience is?

If you say no to any or all three? Consider putting your content up on a website for your externals without tracking.

My opinion - Enterprise Level Learning Systems shine when you aim for a durable learning profile that is tracked for a learner…but Docebo is interesting because it can be used for lots of different scenarios that include one-off types of learning including e-commerce (the selling of courses) and it supports a reasonable public facing scenario.

My understanding - Consider making a public catalog so that folks have a way of landing and seeing the course like a store front - as soon as a person goes to interact with a course.

Some folks stand up a website as a layer in front of the LMS as well because you will find you have greater flexibility with your experience/presentation.

We are looking to use extended enterprise to have a layer like this into the near future with customers for a few narrow products/experiences.

Good luck with your approach. Would love to see it when you have it up and going.

@dklinger I appreciate the questions you posed - I need to get the answer to 2 of 3 of them!  The extended enterprise route is definitely attracting our attention. . . 

Userlevel 7
Badge +3

Hi @Shanon 

We cater for both employees and external customers without using the Extended Enterprise App. Some of our content is restricted to employees, so we use catalogs to drive visibility for different branches and groups. Employees sign in directly to the site, while customers sign in using SSO. It should be doable without using the Extended Enterprise App unless you want to customize the branding for different groups.

@Daniel Thanks for sharing how you are managing the two training audiences.  Can you share a bit more detail about how customers are signings in using SSO?

Userlevel 7
Badge +3

@Shanon We have a member site for customers that is hosted in Salesforce, so once our customers are signed in to that site they can click a button to take them directly into our E-Learning site using Salesforce SSO. Setting up the SSO was quite complicated, so we needed help from our Docebo rep to get everything working smoothly.

@Shanon We have a member site for customers that is hosted in Salesforce, so once our customers are signed in to that site they can click a button to take them directly into our E-Learning site using Salesforce SSO. Setting up the SSO was quite complicated, so we needed help from our Docebo rep to get everything working smoothly.

@Daniel Thanks for the additional info!

Userlevel 1

@Shanon We have a member site for customers that is hosted in Salesforce, so once our customers are signed in to that site they can click a button to take them directly into our E-Learning site using Salesforce SSO. Setting up the SSO was quite complicated, so we needed help from our Docebo rep to get everything working smoothly.

@Daniel We are also using Salesforce SSO and it was quite complicated. Two different developers had to be a part of the solution. What are you using for ecommerce?

Userlevel 7
Badge +3

@PaulaJarvis At the moment we don't use any of the e-commerce solutions as all our payments are handled separately by our sales team. Hopefully some of the other members of the community can give you some pointers in this direction.

Userlevel 1

@PaulaJarvis At the moment we don't use any of the e-commerce solutions as all our payments are handled separately by our sales team. Hopefully some of the other members of the community can give you some pointers in this direction.

@Daniel Hey there! Would you mind expanding on how your sales team handles payments? We are still in the implementation stage with Docebo and ecommerce (A.Net) but we hit a snag with selling Learning Plans with multiple Sessions. Just curious if we Should host ecommerce outside of Docebo.

Userlevel 7
Badge +3

@PaulaJarvis Our situation is quite unique in that we sell annual access rather than individual courses or learning plans. Also, since we deal with companies, all the transactions are handled by bank transfer rather than credit card. Of course, this is very old-school and wouldn't work if you wanted to sell individual courses to private individuals. I wonder if @Bfarkas or @dklinger could help you out here by sharing how they handle ecommerce with Docebo.

Userlevel 1

Hi @Shanon !

I’m curious since your original post, if your team has tried a solution that fits your need? Our organization is also interested in this structure

 

Thanks,

Kim

Hi @Shanon !

I’m curious since your original post, if your team has tried a solution that fits your need? Our organization is also interested in this structure

 

Thanks,

Kim

Hi, @kimngo_ac, not yet as this has been pushed out on our enhancements roadmap, but I’ve appreciated members of the community weighing in on the topic since we will be picking this back up at some point.

Userlevel 3
Badge

We host training for both Internal and External customers. Public facing courses are organized by catalog, Internal training is assigned as new hires come onboard. Our internal customers are SSO and external customers are self registration with access to all public facing content some of which offer free CE’s to nurses globally. Feel free to take a look at the site. https://learn.teleflex-academy.com/pages/41/home

Happy to discuss further if interested in more detail.

Val

Valerie.mueller@teleflex.com

 

Userlevel 3

We have several companies that are doing both free and ecommerce options with their external audiences.  I would also ask do you want the ability to see which trainings they are taking as a data gathering element and who is taking them ( registering in the system in some way ).  We have used both Catalogs and Channels to drive that view for the customers.  You can preview several of our Best Practice sessions , especially our showcase of Learning Environments and our upcoming session in February with AACN , as well as one presented by Daniel Klinger.  Here is how you can access them.  https://www.eskillz.com/Docebobestpractices, these are totally free and all sessions are recorded.  You can scroll to the bottom of the page to view the recordings. 

We host training for both Internal and External customers. Public facing courses are organized by catalog, Internal training is assigned as new hires come onboard. Our internal customers are SSO and external customers are self registration with access to all public facing content some of which offer free CE’s to nurses globally. Feel free to take a look at the site. https://learn.teleflex-academy.com/pages/41/home

Happy to discuss further if interested in more detail.

Val

Valerie.mueller@teleflex.com

 

@Vmueller Thank you so much!  Your external-facing site is informative and easy to navigate.  I appreciate you also extending your contact info - I’m taking note for when we pick this workstream back up!

Userlevel 1

We host training for both Internal and External customers. Public facing courses are organized by catalog, Internal training is assigned as new hires come onboard. Our internal customers are SSO and external customers are self registration with access to all public facing content some of which offer free CE’s to nurses globally. Feel free to take a look at the site. https://learn.teleflex-academy.com/pages/41/home

Happy to discuss further if interested in more detail.

Val

Valerie.mueller@teleflex.com

 

Thank you so much @Vmueller !! Incredibly helpful - have a great weekend

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