Learning Management 101 - use a custom user field to quickly load users into a group

  • 21 October 2021
  • 3 replies
  • 105 views
dklinger
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Ya know? I think folks will get this - but here is a quick 101 to avoid loading many people by hand into Course/LP enrollments. A quickie methodology to do a bulk load into an LP with a static group. I usually lean on my SMEs to let me know who the targeted audience is. Once they have passed along a listing of who their folks are? I check it for duplicates and then who is active/inactive in the system….if all looks good? I proceed to do the following

  • Create a custom user field
  • Generate a user upload CSV file to do a user upload with that custom user field (I have a field called static groups...not to imaginable)
  • Add a flag in that column for the CSV file for all of your peeps that should be getting bulk loaded
    • TIP two fields can do it all for you if your users already exist? And you are just looking to flag them
  • Bulk load your users from the Users interface
  • Go into Groups and create a new one
    • set it to automatic
  • Set the appropriate condition - I would also name the group something so that I know what flag made the group.
  • Save the group
  • You then have options (and you would not have loaded people one at a time) on how to proceed
    • Enroll with an enrollment rule
    • Enroll with the Enrollment Tool or (our Course, user, my team interfaces) if you have access to it
    • Directly load the group to the LP via the Learning Plans interface

3 replies

elamast
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Great idea!

Ed Lamaster, AVO Training Institute Learning Technologies Manager and eSkillz Consultant.
dklinger
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By the way? Because I am having a second chance to read what I wrote above, please note that I am not constantly creating custom user fields for each learning campaign. That would slowly create havoc over time. I worked with one system and literally ran the limit with custom user fields, and the instance started having a hard time calculating groups for me.

I personally am using one called “Static User Groups”.

dklinger
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Userlevel 7
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Ok - lets expand this just a little bit….after being a system admin with our Learn instance for less than 6 months? I think I am realizing that the approach/trick above pays further dividends - sometimes we need to take an automatic group and make it static. You can do this with the approach described above pretty successfully by switching your users that you want to switch over to Manual Assignments.

NOTE: you cannot go from a manual group and make it have automatic criteria afterwards.

So if for whatever reason you want to have a type of mixed logic - some static some automatic within the same group? Using the recipe above can support you by using an approach by flagging folks first.

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