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We have an interesting predicament. We use Docebo for training of our customer users who purchase our products and services.  They get enrolled in the following ways:

  1. If one of our employees enrolls a product-owning customer, we directly put them in a branch where they can see the appropriate course catalogs for their access level.
  2. If a customer self-enrolls, they automatically get dropped into a “free preview” branch, where they can see a few introductory, non-proprietary courses to get started.  In the meantime we vet who they actually are and then move them to the appropriate branch if they are a real paid product owner.  This method lets them get started on their own without having to wait for approval, but prevents a “spy” from self-enrolling and then viewing whatever proprietary courses they want.

The problem with this is:  On our login screen, we want to be able to show the wide selection of the courses we offer so we created a bunch of catalogs to put courses in and display them there.  That works great.  However, there is a loophole where if an un-vetted self-enroll user clicks on one of those courses, they are able to enroll in it, because it’s in a catalog that they can see on the login screen, so they have access to it.

We like having the course catalogs on the login screen because people can see what in-depth courses and learning plans we offer, get a description of them, see what the time commitment would be to take them, etc., and decide that it’s worth signing up.  We also like the idea that people can find us on their own and self-enroll to get started; it’s free marketing.  It’s just annoying that “spies” (e.g. a competitor) could self-register and enroll in any of the courses featured on the login screen.

Is there a good workaround for this, where we could take advantage of the nice catalog widgets on the login screen and the fact that they let you click through to a nice course or learning plan description page, but disable the ability for people to enroll until they are in an appropriate paid customer branch?

I know we could do this by enacting a paywall on courses, but we don’t like to do that because our paid product customers get their training for free, and they get irked if they go to our learning environment and see prices on the homepage, thinking we are nickel-and-diming them for further training.

Thanks in advance for any ideas.

​@dkraige - hello! An interesting problem. Have you considered using branch codes to limit the experiences a little further? Out of the gate with - no branch code - no completed “self-registeration”. So boom you have a filter to start.
For paying customers - you can pipe them in by supplying a branch code through an act of your correspondence with them. Or you can register them directly in the branch to kick off a “course flow” / learning experience.

I think the flow may need some vetting to consider a better set of “public branches” vs “private branches”.

Maybe the course descriptions for the courses in your public catalogs supply an appropriate branch code into only your public branches??? So eyes can only be on appropriate public content?

Yes, we do have branch codes so that self-enrollees go into a “free preview” branch where they only have access to a very limited catalog, and those with a branch code for being a paid customer go into their appropriate branch where they can see everything they need.  The problem is that even those in the free preview branch can enroll in courses that are shown on the login screen, because in order for courses to appear to everybody on the login screen, they have to be in a catalog that’s visible to everybody, at least as far as I know.

So we have not found a good way to show the interesting breadth of courses you’ll have access to once you’re a paid customer, without accidentally giving back-door access to those courses for those who happen to realize they can enroll in them from the login screen even though they cannot see them once they are actually logged in.

The ideal solution would be if we could somehow just hide the “enroll now” button on course description pages for people who are not logged in.  But the fact that it’s visible from the login screen catalogs means a potential new user can click on that enroll now button, then self-enroll in the free preview branch, and now they’re in that course which they don’t have hare permission to see from the free preview branch.

I see - I understand more closely as well.

Here is the thought - and maybe it is wrong…

If you start people with your free courses - you are in good shape.

But what if you were to show your pay courses after they authenticate only. And only offer the paid course descriptions on an external page? You can have additional external pages (albeit, it also means more to maintain).

There was this great walkthrough of working on external pages recently done as part of Docebo University offerings...

Certainly showing the pay courses after they authenticate only would be a solution.  It would just be nice if there was an easy, interactive way for people to explore the whole breadth of paid courses as well before choosing to register.  It’s good marketing and advertisement for our products and services, as well as for the learning platform itself, if people can check all those out and see descriptions and course thumbnails before having to go through the hurdle of registering.

A compromise solution is to just not show Docebo catalogs on the login screen and instead have a banner showing what content we offer, and/or some additional external HTML pages showing a preview; it’s just a shame to squander the already-built-in Docebo capability of showing course catalogs and course/learning plan description pages because of this silly vulnerability of letting non-registered users enroll in a course from the login screen.

Totally following you.

And thanks for the conversation. It is an interesting pickle (and I do my best to learn from those pickles so I can turn them into relish later 🤣). And I saw your note about tacking on the pay model - and that is not ideal either.

Because the pay for / external model is one that Docebo sells itself on? I would like to recommend putting in an idea for what you are asking for...

Idea posted here:

 

 

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