Channels: when to use them and how they are different from catalogs

  • 7 June 2021
  • 9 replies
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Danyel
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Hi there Community!

Hope you are all enjoying the week.

 

Today I’d like to share with you some insights about one of the most common conversations that I have with my clients, colleagues and sometimes friends (yes, also friends :laughing: ), and it it related to the difference between Catalogs and Channels.

 

So, as most of you know, if you are not using Discover Coach & Share (by the way, you should take a look at that youtube video) sometimes Channels are confused with Catalogs or not used at all, and this might be disadvantageous in terms of the Learner Experience.

 

In order to do a quick recap, you should use:

  • Catalogs: When you want to provide to your audience the possibility to select and choose the courses that they want to take (any course that is not mandatory but you want to make available).

or

  • Channels: When you want to organize the courses of your learners in “shelves” or “Labels” to help them to understand that the courses that they are taking belong to some specific category.

But most of all, you need to remember that in Channels you see courses only if you are enrolled into while in Catalogs you can see both courses where you are enrolled or not.

 

That said, let me give you a Pro-tip to finish, have you ever wonder “how can I organize the courses where my learners are enrolled by year? :thinking:”  Then Channels is your answer! to do so you need to:

  1. Create some channels accordingly to the timeframe that you need, let’s say 3 channels one per each year, 2021, 2020 and 2019 and start assigning your courses there.
  2. Create an specific page in the learners menu, call it “Your Courses by Year” and use the Channel Widget selecting the channels that you previously create
  3. Enjoy!

Sure, channels are fantastic, but if you really want to unlock their true potential and finally be able to implement the Social part in your LMS that everyone is buzzing around… take a look at this course about Discover Coach & Share in Docebo University.

 

What do you think about this, are you using some other tricks with channels? Let me know and lets chat about it!

 

Cheers!

Dany

 

 

 

 

9 replies

pcarr
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I am wanting to use Channels and am testing it with some users right now.  What I am challenged with is that the channel page includes the two icons of submit content and ask the expert and we really do not want that viewable for users.  We are controlling the submission of content for now and we do not want questions posed in the platform at this time.  We want to take this slowly.

How can I remove these from the page?  I have zero CSS experience and no one on sight who has it either.  Is that the only way to remove it?  

This is the only thing holding us back from using them.  I prefer them as they allow more flexibility with including the different types of items (most especially links). 

 

Danyel
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I am wanting to use Channels and am testing it with some users right now.  What I am challenged with is that the channel page includes the two icons of submit content and ask the expert and we really do not want that viewable for users.  We are controlling the submission of content for now and we do not want questions posed in the platform at this time.  We want to take this slowly.

How can I remove these from the page?  I have zero CSS experience and no one on sight who has it either.  Is that the only way to remove it?  

This is the only thing holding us back from using them.  I prefer them as they allow more flexibility with including the different types of items (most especially links). 

 

Hey @pcarr, nice to meet you!

So for use-cases like yours what you need to do is having your channels in the one “Widget Custom Page”, there you will be able to hide those buttons without any CSS code :)

 

I suggest you to check our KB article about pages from here: Pages & Menus

And our Docebo University Course here: DoceboU -Pages and Menus

 

Hope this helps!

Dany

pcarr
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@Danyel - I had considered that as well the challenge is that doing this means more manual work to add channels to the widget when we add additional channels and when the user select the channel from the page, it will still take them to the channel page that includes these icons.  :(

 

dklinger
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Dany,

Hey - I am actually struggling with this idea right now. For the most part? We are working in a place where most people are going to be pulling courses towards themselves.

A thought was to use Channels for deploying learning plans on a “catalog page” where i used two widgets - one for a typical catalog limited to said category and one for a channel (and the channel would hold onto the LP.

Where i am having the most struggle? I dont want to be enrolling all of these people in those learning plans in that channel. I just want them to view it.

But from what you are suggesting? By mapping the channel to a branch/group - that is also enrolling them in the LP. I just want the learners to be able to pull an LP in a different section versus courses is the outcome I am looking for.

Top section is a channel with some CSS applied.

I hope that makes sense and would be happy with any advice you can pass along.

Danyel
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Hey @dklinger, hope you are doing good!

 

I notice your point there and the first thing that you have to keep in mind is that inside the channels, you can only see courses and learning plans where you are already enrolled, so, if your use-case you are not invisionging to enroll your users in Learning Plans but you are willing to show and allow them to choose the ones where they want to self enroll, then you are aiming to use Catalogs instead of Channels.

In any case, I suggest you to follow-up this conversation with your SDM @ben.clark who will explain you this situation better :)

 

Have a great day!

Dany

 

 

D
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@Danyel I believe this statement is incorrect:

But most of all, you need to remember that in Channels you see courses only if you are enrolled into while in Catalogs you can see both courses where you are enrolled or not.

 

I was looking for some guidance on when to use Channel vs Catalogs. From the documentation and some testing I did, and you can see courses in Channel even if you are not enrolled in them. It looks like Docebo defines Channels for informal learning and can contain things other than courses/learning plans, like links, files, or user contributed videos. Where as catalogs would be for more formal learning that is organized in courses & learning plans. Please let me know if understanding this wrong.

Annarose.Peterson
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@dishantlangayan When this post was originally put up you could only see the courses you were enrolled into in a Channel. 

They updated this in November so that all courses that were put into a channel would be visible regardless of enrollment in the course. :relaxed:  I don’t know if this was mentioned that post - content consumed in a channel (unless is it a course) is not formally tracked on or recorded to the user’s activity (transcript).  So if they watched a video, or like downloaded a file from a channel, that activity will not be recorded.

Otherwise your understanding of the difference between the two is correct. 

Annarose Peterson (She/Her)
dandrews
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@Annarose.Peterson What reporting then can you use then to show what content in a channel is the most viewed or used if it’s not tracked. I know this will be a question that comes up.

Thanks, 

D’Arcy 

Annarose.Peterson
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@dandrews You can run the following reports to see how people are interacting with Channel assets:

These reports are helpful to get an idea of who is interacting with what. 

Annarose Peterson (She/Her)

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