HI @Uwe Sprengart I think you can manage that using an exclusive “branch” for your External clients and making your pages, menus and catalogues only available to that branch. Alternatively, if you have the ability to create sub domains, you can also create a brand new domain just for you external clients and brand if separately + allow different log in options and rules, etc.

Hi @lrnlab,
Thanks for your quick reply. This was roughly my idea, so I can’t be that wrong. Instead of branches, I would opt for groups because they can be automatically managed whereas branches imply some manual work to do. 
I understand that pages and menus may be designed differently depending on the group(s) you assigned, right? Do the user interface may look completely different. That’s a good point.
I am currently using catalogues to filter the courses depending on the orientation (mainly sales and technical). I haven’t used channels, yet. But if my understanding is correct, you may also use them to filter by content. Only that I am not aware of the consequences. When would you use catalogues, and when would you use channels?

@Uwe Sprengart well, catalogues can only contain courses and LP’s while Channels are more for informal content but can contain courses as well...the caveat for channels & courses is that users will only see the courses if they are enrolled in them so may not not be the best choice for you…

I understand that using Groups may be easier to manager but please also consider that branches give you additional flexibility that you cannot always mirror with Groups + maintaining a separate branch for your external group is definitely a cleaner solution for viewing on screen and for reports...plus you can move them around if ever you need to...

Hi @Uwe Sprengart,

James from the Customer Experience team here. Great to hear you’re looking to push your content to a new audience!

Thanks @lrnlab for the really useful info. I’m going to take this a little deeper...

There are a few considerations to look at with these external users, including how you are going to provision them into Docebo, but best practice is to create a new branch. Remember that a user can be part of multiple Groups, but only 1 Branch, thus giving you more flexibility if you’d like to further segment those users and the content they see, it will also give you better reporting capabilities. 

Once this is done, you’ll need to create a Catalog and link that with the new users and courses.

Finally, consider how you are going to deliver the content to the new users. It’s perfect to create a unique experience for them with a menu/page set. So, how would you like the users to access the content?

1-  Have the content available for users to enroll themselves onto:

• Using a “Catalog” widget will work

2- Users to be auto-enrolled:

• A “Courses and Learning plans” or a “Catalog” widget will work
• You’ll want an Enrollment Rule for this to reduce admin

I hope this is helpful, and be sure to get touch if you’d like support with any of the above!

Thanks

James

Thank you @lrnlab and @james.buhagiar!

Your explanations and suggestions are very helpful on my way to a decision. Let me comment them one by one to better reflect my current situation:

1. The difference between catalogues and channels is now clearer to me. Courses in channels are only visible to users who enrolled to them.
   
   James’ comment is quite interesting in this respect, using an enrolment rule. If you say “a catalogue widget will work”, what exactly do you mean by that?
   Additional question about enrolment rules: I read that enrolment rules are not “retroactive” which is clear. But what will happen when new courses are created? I suppose (and hope) that these will still follow the enrolment rule, won’t they?
    
2. I fully understand the advantage of branches over groups. So this was my initial idea as well. But somehow I am not able to manage it:
   
   From the beginning, we have had 2 branches, let’s call them:
   
   - Root
        - Internals
        - Externals
   
   We are using an SSO which will be identical for internal and external users, and both user types are immediately activated when they arrive on the platform for the very first time. This is because the actual management of the users is performed on our own website from where the users access Docebo.
   The difference between internals and externals has been defined by additional fields. But the point is that both internals and externals will end up in the same branch, assigning them to another branch can only be done manually (unless I missed something).
   This is different with groups: Due to the additional fields, I can very easily (and automatically!) distinguish between “Internals” and “Externals”.
   
   This is why I thought using groups would be the right way, but maybe I have overlooked something?
    
3. Yeah, James, you are absolutely right, I indeed intend to provide a different UI for externals by using a separate menu/page set.
   Actually, I wanted to have the users enrol themselves, but maybe you can give me some additional advice based on your own experience.
    

Thank you,

Uwe
 

@Uwe Sprengart if your internal & external users all land in the same branch, then you don't have much choice but to use Groups...Have you thought about adding a “Branch selection” field to your websites registration process? This is similar to what Docebo provides when you enable self-registration; you can require that a user selects a branch they are to be assigned to otherwise they cannot create their profile. Furthermore, if you ever decide to try out the Docebo method, you can also moderate user profile requests and make adjustments to them before you activate a profile...you might want to have a look at this process for some ideas:

https://help.docebo.com/hc/en-us/articles/360020080220-User-Registration-Types

https://help.docebo.com/hc/en-us/articles/360020079980-Registration-and-Logging-In#subtitle-4

Hi @lrnlab, does that mean that we can transfer a branch name from our own registration page to Docebo? Similar to what we do with user additional fields (which help me create the groups as mentioned earlier)? If so, how would this work? Is there a special field to provide a branch name to be transferred? 

@Uwe Sprengart hmm, not sure I understand your question...you could replicate the Branch names so they match between your sites but you would probably need some code or API to transfer that info from your site to Docebo (I’m assuming you have something built that automatically creates profiles on Docebo)...what do you mean when you ask, “Is there a special field to provide a branch name to be transferred?”

@lrnlab: Sorry, couldn’t reply earlier. Meanwhile I learned that - as you suggested - our company website not only transmits the personal user data required to create an account in Docebo via API, but also the branch ID to be assigned to the new user account. That is perfect, because I do not need to do the sorting manually.
Thank you all for your valuable suggestions!
Uwe