Overview

There are many policies that you can set for your company, such as the features that learners, instructors, and administrators can access. Setting these policies is one of the most important things for an administrator to do. To see your current policies, click Admin/Policies.

General

This section allows you to set features that apply to everyone in your organization. By default, the walled community and current scores are enabled.

Here are some notes on the various options:

Log in

Strong passwords 

If enabled, this option will require a more complex password to be selected when creating accounts.

Use the email as User ID

If enabled, the site first checks to make sure that every account has an email address and that they are all unique. If unsuccessful, a notification is sent that shows all the accounts that need to be fixed. Once successfully enabled, users will no longer have to enter a separate User ID when creating an account, and when they log in, the login box shows "Email" instead of "User ID". Note that this feature is disabled by default.

Remember Me expiration limit

To set a limit for the system to remember the username and login, click the dropdown menu and select the desired limit time.

Authentication remote check

The remote check feature performs an additional authentication step before the user logs in or signs up. To enable this feature:

Under the Two Factor Authentication heading, click Configure authentication remote check.

In the Authentication Remote Check popup, enter the remote check endpoint URL.

Select the preferred Validate response: by status code or by response text.

Enter the required fields based on the selection:

Validation by status code

When the validation response is set to “by status code”, the server will check the HTTP status code from the response.

When selecting “by status code”, enter the appropriate values for Code to approve and Code to decline.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The code to accept/reject can not be “100”. This code is informational only and indicates that the process is fine and that the user should continue with the request or ignore it if it is already finished.

Validation by response text

When the validation type is set to text, the server will check the response body (JSON format) and will approve/decline the authentication or signup.

When selecting “by response text”, enter the appropriate values to the Attribute to check field that the server will validate and the Text to approve and Text to decline values.

Note: When using the validation by response text option, this field is case sensitive.

Click Save.

Disabling Remote Check

To disable the Remote Check feature:

Under the Two Factor Authentication heading, click Configure authentication remote check.

In the popup, delete the remote check URL from the input field and leave the field empty.

Click Save.

Validation Workflow

First, the server will check the configured validation type. If the configured type is not one of the available options, the following error message displays: Invalid remote check validation type. Please contact your portal administrator.

When the validation type is set to “by status code”, the server will check the HTTP status code.
If it matches the “Code to approve” value, the user will be logged in or the user will be created.

If the value matches the “Code to decline” value, the server will check the response body for the message attribute. If this code is present, the system will use the value of this attribute as the error message, otherwise it will use the default error message of: Your login was declined by remote check. Please contact your portal administrator.

If the status code does not match either the “Code to approve” value or the “Code to decline” value, the following error message displays: Invalid remote check response. Please contact your portal administrator.

When the validation type is set to “by response text”, the server parses the response body as a JSON object and checks if it contains an attribute from the “Attribute to check” field. 
If this is not present, the following error message displays: Invalid remote check response payload. Please contact your portal administrator.

If the attribute is present, the system checks if the value of this attribute is the same as the “Text to approve” value. If yes, the user will be logged in/created.
If the attribute is not present, the system checks if it matches the “Text to decline” value. If it matches, the system will check the response body for the message attribute. If the value is present, the value of this attribute is used as an error message, otherwise it will use the default error message of: Your login was declined by remote check. Please contact your portal administrator.

If the status code does not match either the “Text to approve” value or the “Text to decline” value, the system displays the following error message: Invalid remote check response. Please contact your portal administrator.

News feed

Allow comments on home news feed announcements

If enabled, users can add comments on home news feed announcements.

Allow disabling of announcement notifications

If enables, users will be able to turn off notifications from announcements.

Courses

Course sign off

By default, a teacher can set the "Publish?" value of a course. Only published courses appear in the catalog, search results, and accept enrollments. If you enable "require sign off?", the "Publish?" value of a course can only be set to "Yes" by an administrator. To publish a course, select the "Publish?" checkbox in the Catalog section under the course's Configure tab.

Profile

Require email addresses to be unique

If enabled, it will first check to make sure that all existing emails are unique, and if they aren't, it will send you a notification with the ones that need to be fixed. Once successfully enabled, your portal will ensure that any new accounts do not have duplicate email addresses. Note that this feature is disabled by default.

Set time zone of all accounts to site time zone

If enabled, set all user time zones to the time zone of your business.

Disable edit profile

If enabled, it prevents all users (except admins) from editing user profile pages.

Allow admins and instructors to upload their own profile background

If enabled, instructors and administrators can customize their profile backgrounds.

Allow learners to upload their own profile background

If enabled, learners can customize their profile background. This option is disabled by default. Please note that if picture moderation is enabled, then administrators will receive a notification to moderate the profile background pictures (we check for this once a day) before they go live.

Mastery

Enable dashboard mastery tab

If enabled, any learner that is active in a course or has completed a course that has associated competencies will have access to the Mastery tab on their Dashboard.

Monitoring

Monitoring

Please note that first, you have to install Monitoring from the App Center.

Monitoring is a feature that lets you look at the communications between members of your business. It can also send you daily alerts of any communications that contained potentially offensive words.

If you enable monitoring, you can also enable it for use by teachers, in which case they can monitor the communications of learners in their courses.

If you check the option that lets members know their communications are monitored, they will see a small note "your organization monitors communications for offensive language" when composing messages or using chat rooms.

To see the communications sent by a particular person, visit their profile, then click 'Monitoring' in the Communication section. You will see a summary of their messages, postings, and chats. Click on one to see the details of each communication.

Miscellaneous

Display last name before first name

This option allows administrators to disable the default "Last-name, First-name" format for name listings. If disabled, names will be displayed as "First-name, Last-name" instead.

Automatically capitalize names if they are all upper case

Here administrators can disable the "Automatically capitalize names if they are all upper case" option. This is useful if you want to enter the name "IBM", for example, without it being automatically converted to "Ibm"

Walled community

By default, a company is a walled community. This prevents your learners from interacting with any members that are not registered at your company. For example, they cannot send or receive messages with members from a different company, enroll in another company's open enrollment courses, or join groups that are not created by other members of their own company. 

Use month names instead of numbers for PDF certificates

If enabled, on the certificates will be displayed the month's name instead of its number.

Allow Maybe as a calendar event RSVP option

If enabled, it allows the user to mark Maybe as a calendar event RSVP option.

Organization restriction

Hide support forum, how-to videos, suggestions, product news, getting started guides and roadmap from anyone who is not in the default organization

If you enable this option, then users who are not in the default organization won't have access to these areas.

Prevent administrators and instructors that are not in the default organization from receiving the monthly newsletter

If you enabled this option, then administrators who are not in the default organization won't receive the monthly newsletter.

Path

Disable old-style paths

If you started using the platform a few years ago, you might be using our old-style paths where a Path was different from a course. If you've migrated to new-style paths and have no use for the old left-bar navigation associated with old-style paths, you can now disable old-style paths and remove that associated navigation via this the option under Admin/Policies/General. Please note that once disabled you can't re-enable the Old-style paths.

Administrators

This section allows you to set features that only apply to administrators. By default, an administrator can see the user ids and passwords of everyone in their company.

If you want this information to be hidden from the administrators and instructors, disable this feature. Be warned that this operation cannot be reversed. However, you can still reset passwords.

You can also choose if you want to receive notifications when users sign up, notifications of checkouts, and notifications of payments.

Instructors

This section allows you to set features that only apply to instructors. By default, instructors can see the user ids and passwords of their learners, create company groups, and access the transcript of all learners (not just their own).

You can also choose if you want to:

Learners

This section allows you to set features that only apply to learners. By default, some of the disabled features include the ability to invite parents via the People tab, the ability to create company groups, and more.

Note that if you disable messaging between learners, even learners in the same course cannot message each other. If messaging and chat are enabled, instructors can configure their courses to prevent them from being used during course hours. Click here for more info on this topic.

You can also choose if you want to:

Prevent simultaneous logins

If this feature is enabled, a learner can only be logged on via a single session. When they start a new session, any of their previous sessions are automatically terminated.

Nicknames 

We offer support for nicknames. If you enable this feature, then if a learner has a nickname, other learners will see that nickname instead of the learner's full name.

This is useful if you want learners to be able to hide their real names from other learners. Please note that the nickname is only seen by other learners. Instructors and other account types will see the learner's full name.

Users can set up their nicknames by editing their profile information. Click here for more details on this topic. 

Full users catalog

If enabled, learners can visit the Users catalog and see tabs for Learners, Instructors, and Administrators. Each of these tabs lists the users with each role but only shows their name and picture. Note that this option is disabled by default.

Managers

Under the Managers tab, you have the option to enable/disable the ability of managers to enroll learners in courses and learning paths. Please note that this option is enabled by default.

Parents

Note that the Parents policies tab only appears if you have enabled parent account types via Admin/Accounts/Types. This section allows you to set features that only apply to parent accounts. By default, a parent can see their child's modules, resources, assessments, submissions, and transcript. You can enable it if you want parents to see the "Course catalog". Also, here, you can allow parent accounts to see the Resources tab in the left navigation by enabling the "Resources tab" option. Please note that this option is enabled by default.

Network

If your business is in a network and you're a network administrator, network policies are displayed in this area and can be edited. The options are:

Documents

If you installed Policy documents from the App Center, the Documents tab will be enabled in the Admin/Policies area. Here you can manage your policy documents if you have any, and you can see how many versions there are of each policy and how many responses they have so far. To learn more about policy documents, click here.

Time Tracker

Time tracker allows you to obtain a user’s total time in a course, using the sum of the time spent in each section and assignments. Time is recorded in the course by user visits and tracks the duration of time between the moment the user opens a page and the user completes the page by moving to the next section or a different area. There are two options to record the user’s time: Time Spent and Total Time.

Each field has a slightly different behavior:

Total Time: The Total time value will be always higher or equal to the time spent.
When referring to "Total time", it refers to the time from starting the section, until leaving the section, regardless of any actions/lack of actions in that section.

Time Spent: When referring to "Time spent" or interaction time, it takes into consideration the idle time in that section.

For a better understanding, please see the example below:
If a user accesses a page and leaves it idle for 30 minutes, the Time Spent value returned will be around five minutes, while the Total Time value will be 30 minutes.

Note: Currently, five minutes is the recorded time for time spent upon being idle and we do not provide a way to change it, therefore, we recommend using the total time for better tracking.

Selecting Time Tracking Options

To select the time tracking options, click Admin from the main navigation menu and click Policies.

Click the Learners tab.

Scroll down to the Miscellaneous heading. 

To select "Time spent" as your time measurement for your courses, click the checkbox for Use interaction time to calculate time spent on a class.
To select "Total Time" as your time measurement for your courses, leave the checkbox unchecked.

When this field is enabled, the time displayed for the learner will be a sum of the Time Spent field.
When this field is disabled, the time displayed for the learner will be a sum of the Total Time field.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Enabling/disabling the option is NOT retroactive. Time will be tracked accordingly moving forward, but will not be able to report on time before the setting was changed.

Viewing Time Spent

Viewing the time a user spends in a course can be checked in several locations. To review specific details on time spent, you can run a custom report, which is discussed in the section.

The first place to check a user’s time spent is to navigate to the course and click Learners.

The total time/time spent is displayed in the Time column.

Another place to check a user’s time spent is to navigate to their profile page. Click the Enrolled tab.

The total time/time spent is displayed in the Time column.

Finally, time spent can also be checked from the Learner screen and clicking the three dot icon under the More column.

Select Activity.

The Activity screen will display the time spent on the page(s) of every user visit.

Note: We do not display the Offline assignments, however they are tracked in the User visits report.

Custom Reports

To see the Time Tracking options in detail, there are a number of custom reports that can be run to pull the information.

To create a new custom report, from the main navigation menu, click Reports and then + Add.

User Report

Enter a name for the report. To run a report specifically about the users, in the Report on dropdown menu, select Users.

Select the desired fields under the Users heading.

Scroll down to the User visits heading and select the desired fields, including either Total time OR Time spent.

Click Run.

When the report finishes, open the link to view the results. The report lists all of the designated user information, along with the indicated Time spent/Total time. The numeric value listed in this column is listed in seconds.

Custom Reports Tip: You can change the display of the returned data for the indicated fields. To do so, click the Organize tab. In the Time spent/Total time row, open the dropdown menu and select the preferred display option.

Course Report

Enter a name for the report. In the Report on dropdown menu, select Courses.

Select the desired fields under the Courses heading.

Scroll down to the Learner Visits heading and select the desired fields: either Total time OR Time spent.

Click Run.

When the report finishes, open the link to view the results. The report lists all of the designated course information, along with the indicated Time spent/Total time.

Learner Time Tracking Report

There is a built-in report that returns data on user sessions using the login history from the profile page. To access this report:

From the main navigation men, click Reports and click Catalog.

Click the Users tile.

Scroll down until you find the Learner time tracking report. Click Run next to the report name.

In the report popup, enter the appropriate information and click Run.

When the report finishes, open the link to view the results. The report lists all of the designated  information, along with the user’s duration time.

Best Practices

Below are some best practices to keep in mind when using the time tracking feature. 

Set Session Timeout

Setting the session timeout can help with reducing the number of users that can take advantage of the time tracking feature by staying idle on a page in order to log more time spent in a course.

To set this parameter, click Admin and then Portal.

Click the More tab.

Under the Session timeout heading, click Edit.

Select the desired timeout duration from the dropdown menu.

Click Save.

Set User Inactivity

Setting the user inactivity can help with reducing the number of users that can take advantage of the time tracking feature by staying idle on a page in order to log more time spent in a course.

To set this parameter, click Admin and then Portal.

Click the More tab.

Scroll down to the User inactivity heading. Enter the number of minutes for user inactivity.

Note: User inactivity value should be lower than session timeout value.

Encourage Logging Out After Each Session

Encourage users to log out when they finish their learning session.

Tip: Add this note as part of the course description or in the first section of each course to encourage users.

Unclosed User Visits

When a user accesses a page and closes the browser/device without logging out, the user visit has an empty end time since the user didn't leave the page.
In this scenario, the system runs an automatic daily job that covers these types of user visits. By default, if there is any user visit that doesn't have an end time, the system will automatically add a 10-minute duration for that visit, regardless of how much time the user initially spent on the page. It does not matter the amount of time the user spent on the page, if the user did not leave the page or log out, then there is no end time and a 10-minute value will be associated with that visit.

In the case where there is a session timeout set for the portal, the system will automatically add that value for the unclosed user visit (instead of the 10-minute value).

Retention Time

User visits and user sessions have data retention times enabled in the system. They are as follows:

User sessions (LTT report): One month
User visits (Total time): The data is stored as long one of the following criteria is not met:

• The user completed the course for more than two months.
• The course was archived two or more months ago.