July 2021 release highlights

Release date: July 12, 2021

 

We’re pleased to announce that the July 2021 release of LMS365 is now available to all customers.

 

Highlights of this release

• Course and Training Plan administration
• My Training Dashboard
• SharePoint's enrollment limit
• Training Home Page
• The LMS365 mobile app
  
  

Course and Training Plan administration

With a wide offering of training, the list of courses and training plans gets long. For admins, this means it can be challenging to get a quick overview and find specific courses and training plans.

Therefore, we have introduced new filters that will enable admins to filter courses and training plans per category and on whether the course or training plan is visible in the course catalog. This will help admins get a quick overview of courses and training plans that live up to certain criteria.

 

#1 Quick overview of which courses and training plans that are shown in the Course Catalog

To provide a quick overview of course and training plan visibility in the Course Catalog, a new column with an eye icon is introduced to show the Course Catalog visibility status of the Course or Training Plan.

Clicking on the eye icon, the admin can sort courses by Course Catalog visibility status. The filtering option allows the admin to get a list of courses that are, respectively, set to be shown and not shown in the Course Catalog.

This is especially helpful for organizations that have a routine of changing which courses that are viewed in the Course Catalog.

 

 

#2 Easily find courses and training plans connected with one or more categories 

For the filter related to categories, the filtering option will appear when hovering over Category. Clicking the filter icon, the admin can then select or search for categories and click to get an overview of courses or training plans that are connected to one ore more categories.

 

 

My Training Dashboard

#1 Improved search for planned training 

Learners will now be able to find courses, that are part of a training plan, by search from the Training section of My Training Dashboard.

Today, when learners are enrolled in a course, because the course is part of a planned training plan, searching for this course in My Training Dashboard gives no result. From next release, also courses that are planned for the learner as part of a training plan, can be found by search from My Training Dashboard. Hovering over the icon next to the course type of the course, users will see which training plan the course is part of.

 

 

#2 More complete overview of planned training

Only planned and not completed training is shown to learners in the Training section of My Training Dashboard. Because courses of training plans are not shown separately on My Training Dashboard, today, this overview does not show learners incomplete courses, that are part of a training plan they have already completed.

With this release, we will separate the display of courses and training plans in My Training Dashboard if the course and training plan have different progress statuses. This means that if, for example, a learner is required to retake a course that is part of a training plan the learner has already completed, this course will now appear in the Training section of My Training Dashboard even though the training plan is no longer displayed here.   

With hover over the icon next to the course type of the course, the user will see which training plan the course is part of.

This update will give learners a more complete overview of the training they are due to complete.

 

 

SharePoint's enrollment limit

Due to SharePoint limitations, all courses has a maximum number of 5 000 separate enrollments. This means, when a course has 5 000 separate enrollments, attempts to enroll in this course will fail.

For larger organizations with many learners, or for courses that run over a longer period of time and, therefore, eventually will reach 5 000 separate enrollments, this can be an issue.  

This issue has not been communicated to users as part of the enrollment flow. This means, users have seen their enrollment fail without an explanation. 

With this release, we are improving the user experience by notifying learners when a course has reached the maximum number of enrollments due to SharePoint's limitations of 5 000 separate enrollments. When no more enrollments are possible due to this limitation, learners will be guided by help-text to understand the issue and how to address it.

If the maximum of 5 000 separate enrollments has been reached for a course within a training plan, learners can still enroll successfully into the training plan. However, learners will not be enrolled into the course in question and when trying to enroll into this course, they will receive the same error message.

  

Training Home Page

#1 Collection of feedback for new design of the Training Home Page

With the May 2021 release, we introduced a preview of a new design for the Training Home Page available for testing purposes.

We are still collecting feedback about the new design and are adjusting accordingly. 

If you would like to enable the new design for selected users in your organization, the global LMS365 admin can do this from the New Features section in the LMS3365 Admin Center. The selected users will see the new design of the Training Home Page and be offered to provide feedback directly to the LMS365 team via a widget at the page. 

 

We have already received valuable feedback from many users trying the new design. We highly appreciate this engagement and encourage everyone to keep sharing your experiences with the new training home page design.

Please find more details about the possibilities for providing feedback to these design changes in our customer forum. 

 

The LMS365 mobile app

#1 Alternative strategies for data loading

You can now choose between two different strategies for data loading in the LMS365 mobile app: Lazy data loading and Burn data loading.

This option is introduced to prevent heavy use of the LMS365 mobile app in an organization to negatively affect the performance of the organization's LMS365 web application. As the LMS365 mobile app allows many users to perform requests, like signing up for courses at the same time, in larger organizations with many mobile app users, this can cause the mobile app to use all available server resources. Therefore, the performance of the LMS365 web application can be challenged.

The Lazy data loading strategy is the default data loading strategy. This strategy provides more stability and is less error-prone. The Lazy data loading strategy will defer requests for data, when users visit new pages, until at the point in which it is needed. This will result in a lower server load, but mobile app users will experience longer page loading times before new pages are completely loaded in the mobile app. 

The Burn data loading strategy is only recommended if you have few users that could be performing requests from the LMS365 mobile app at the same time. The Burn data loading strategy will send all requests at the time when the mobile app loads. This means a higher server load, but mobile app users will experience shorter page loading times before new pages are completely loaded. 

The data load strategy is configured in the LMS365 Global Settings > Mobile Configuration > Data Loading Strategy:

 

 

NOTE: The latest version of the LMS365 mobile app is already rolled out and approved in Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

 

Please find full information about the LMS365 July 2021 release in the release notes