Love this trick! Thank you for sharing!

@lrnlab this is a great tip!

There’s an important step missing from your instructions: You must make sure that you also add the “hidden” page to a menu that is visible to whichever users need to have access. In order to do so, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the  Admin Menu > Manage Menus
2. Select the + in the top right to Create a New Menu
3. Name the menu something like Catch All or Hidden Pages
4. Set the visibility of the menu to include whatever users you’d like to see the pages within this menu (groups, branches, and/or levels)
5. Add whatever “hidden pages” you’d like to share
6. Select Save Changes
7. On the Manage Menus page, move this “Catch All” menu to the very bottom of the list
8. Publish the menu

This will ensure that these pages are visible to the user when you link them to the page from elsewhere in the platform, but because the menu is at the bottom of the hierarchy, it will be superseded by other menus higher in the Manage Menus section.

Hi, will this work in the mobile app too?

Because a while back we tended to use the last part of the URL, e.g “/pages/20/home” when putting in shortcuts in custom content boxes to avoid Docebo loading the entire page. But that didn’t work on the mobile app. This a while back and I haven’t checked if this has changed.

@Adam Ballhaussen thanks for the clarification...I just tested again and can confirm what I thought worked without publishing the page was indeed incorrect as I was testing with my super admin account (ugh!)...not as elegant a solution but perhaps a new idea to allow pages to stand on their own...hmmm...

@Adam Ballhaussen This is my most favorite page trick!  Saved us a lot of time when we were told about this!

@Adam Ballhaussen have been looking for this tip!!!!!!!! you just made my day. I used this technique in my previous work with Docebo and somehow seemed to be drawing a blank while setting this up at a new place of work. Merci!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

@Adam Ballhaussen so should we do the reduction as mentioned by irnlab??

Reason I ask is I don’t have pages/… on my link Instead this  learn/course/4/portal-updates

Will this work too?

 @Susmitha Valvekar I AM SO GLAD this could help you! That’s what this community is all about

^ excellent question. The link you shared there is linking to a course player page rather than a custom page. In that case, you don’t need to worry about any specific page visibility settings, but you do need to focus on course visibility settings. In order to successfully link your learners to the learn/course/4/portal-updates page, you should use one of the following methods:

1. Ensure that all users who have visibility to the page from which you link are enrolled into the Portal Updates course. This will ensure they land directly on the course player page with no problems.
2. Ensure that all users who have visibility to the page from which you link have visibility to a catalog that includes the Portal Updates course and use the pre-enrollment course link format for the course link: /learn/course/internal/view/elearning/4/portal-updates. This will ensure that any users who are not enrolled in the course will have the option to enroll, and any users who are enrolled in the course will land directly on the course player page.
3. Alternatively, create a course enrollment link for the Portal Updates course to ensure that every user who clicks the link on your page is automatically enrolled into the course. I prefer to go with Option 2 so as not to automatically enroll users without their “opting in”, but this is all personal preference.

Please let me know if you have any questions! I’m also curious to hear if anyone else has another way they’d solve for linking directly to a course page from a page rather than displaying the course in a catalog or channel on the page.

I’ve just used this trick to create in my “Docebo White Label” footer an “Accessibility” link to a hidden page that describes how the LMS has accessibility options for people using it.

This new page mentions our attempt to strive to meet Level AA success criteria of W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0.

Works a treat thanks.

This method also allows for folks that have mixed authentication methods and are not using the Extended Enterprise to have something that feels like a custom landing and custom catalog experience. It is a powerful concept.

@lrnlab- a question if you did need to “restrict a permission” - is there a way to develop a secondary set of permissions for a small subset? I know how to support the minimal menu and set of pages for that menu. But that doesnt mean that a person with a url may or may not be half way dangerous. (Maybe we dont want this group accessing certain IP that is up on the learning system).

Think about those of us who are hosting content for “a vendor or externals” experience. I can do fancy things to drop them off at their own branch and menu. BUT in this case? The 404 errors may be a good thing to keep external eyes out. My goal - I really want to restrict only that group to experience courses on that page.

In that case - is there a way to support just their visibility for just their page?

Not quite sure I understand your question but here’s a thought...when you create your visibility rules for the menu, have you thought about adding both branches and groups? the premise being that only the cross-section of those 2 inputs would be your accessible group (haven't tested this so cannot say this Docebo logic or not)...not sure if that is what you're asking though

What I want to do is

• have people coming in via their own branch to be able to consume only their content - no other content from no other catalog pages.
• I dont want them to be able to land on any url that could be shared with them in error (they should get an error message saying they dont have access - the current 404 language is ok.
• I dont want them to be able to review any other courses other than what is granted to specifically that branch from the global search

Now I do have catalogs restricted to certain branches throughout - but for the most part it is a similar permission with at its core the philosophy of “sharing of content is a good thing” (a community of sharing for subsidiaries). But if I can give them the error before they ever see a catalog widget draw itself and whoops….then that would be a “good thing” in this scenario.

@kferguson  @cathyp interesting info here that could be applicable to us.

Hi All, 

I am so happy I found this trick here as just rebuilding a Learner Dashboard (User Home Page). 

I have one question, as my Learner Dashboard contains a couple of custom boxes with links to subpages (some of the include sub-sub pages).

At the same time I’d like to keep short the Menu just with a few option, just like the below:

Unfortunately in that setting users are getting the Error 403 when accessing any of the pages from the 1st screenshot. Is this because I have to include all subpages and sub-sub pages into the Menu? If so, is there any work around for this? 

Thank you in advance for your help. 

Hi @ckujawski any pages you want the users to access must be part of your “hidden menu”. Please make sure place that menu at the very bottom of your list of menus (follow the instructions above carefully)...hope this helps.

Hi @lrnlab, thanks for sur quick response. 

Is this what you mean to by putting the menu to the very bottom of the list of menus? The TEST NEW DASHBOARD MENU - is the one I am testing:

If so the Menu still contains all pages and sub-pages, like on the below screenshot. So there is no way to hide them in the menu itself? 

not quite...on the admin page for menus, you need to create a HIDDEN menu that contains all the pages you want to grant access to but not explicitly include in ay menus. This menu should have all the visibility rules in place, etc. and it should be placed (dragged) at the bottom (very last menu) of the admin menu page.

@lrnlab Thanks! Should this hidden Menu be the default menu - or will that show the sub-pages in their User Menu like ckujawski showed in their screenshot 

no need to make a default menu

@lrnlab Got it, so it just needs to be the last one, but not the default. Thanks!

This might be one of the most powerful tips and tricks I’ve ever seen. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

We have a LOT of pages and use the “hidden” menus option to assign visibility permissions to those pages.  For the most part, we have one hidden menu for our internal users and one for external users.  The “real” menus for each group mostly only contain the “My” pages - My Courses and Learning Plans, My Activities, etc., to keep the menus clean and uncluttered.  Then we use various widgets (HTML, Customer Content boxes, images, etc. to provide links to the other pages).  Our standard procedure for any new page creation includes making sure to add the page to at least one of the hidden menus when we are ready for the page to be live. 

Additional tip:  I also will add new pages while they are still under construction to the internal hidden menu - this makes it easier to share the page with everyone that needs to review it internally and not have to set up any special permissions to access the page - we just share the URL for the page with those employees that need to be able to review it before going live.  And since there is no way to browse to that page w/out getting the URL from someone, it does not pose any security issues for most pages.  The, to make the page “fully live,” we just add a link to it on one of the existing pages so users can access it.

Is anyone who had their pages set up this way having problems with visibility?  I was using this method, but it has suddenly stopped working.  I’m working with the the support team to try to figure out why, but they are saying that I have to include the page in the menu that the user sees.  Before I push back too hard, would love to hear that it’s still working for the rest of you. 

@kwatkinsinatl, we are still using this and it is working fine still for us.  I just tested and for one of our internal test accounts, the user is set to only see the “my” and “all” pages in their menu (My Courses & Learning Plans, My Activities, All Catalogs, etc.) but still has access to all pages we link to on the home page and other pages, based on permissions in our hidden menu.

Make sure nothing changed with your hidden menu - the users must meet the visibility requirements for that hidden menu for those pages to be accessible.