January 2021 release highlights

Release date: January 25, 2021

 

We are very excited to announce the January 2021 release for LMS365! Below you will see an overview of the new improvements.

 

Highlights of this release

• My Training Dashboard
• The LMS365 app for Microsoft Teams
• Training Plans
• Classroom & Blended Training and Webinar course types
• Enrollment
• Course Management
• Notifications
• The LMS365 mobile app
  
  

 

My Training Dashboard

Transcript & CEUs

With this release we are adding more content to the Overview section of My Training Dashboard with a “My Team’s Training Status” block, only available for Line Managers, to provide them with a quick overview of the training efforts of people within their team. This release will also bring some adjustments to the Transcript and CEU sections of My Training Dashboard.

• In Transcript the groupings – Training, Certificates, Competencies – are changed from the previous “expand-collapse” to filter controls. This change has been implemented to align the experience and tools available for the user to browse content in the section with the rest of My Training Dashboard.
• In CEUs some logic adjustments have been made following the recently added feature around possibilities for enabling learners to retake training to ensure that the count of CEUs reflects these new scenarios in a meaningful way.
  
  

 

“My Team’s Training Status” for Line Managers

With this new content we are making it possible for Line Managers to get a quick overview of training progress for the people they manage – the manager’s direct reports and their subordinates – in the convenient context of My Training Dashboard.

The Line Manager will find “My Team’s Training Status” by navigating to the Overview section of My Training Dashboard. It includes a selection of information from the full Line Manager’s Dashboard presented in a new, fresh, and modern design. Charts will sum up some basic statistics about the Team’s collective training efforts, and the Manager can from a list of learners in their team dive into selected details for each direct report or their subordinates, where the individual training status is summed up.

The Line Manager’s own personal training status will of course still be available in the Overview section as well, and can be found below “My Team’s Training Status”, easily accessed by collapsing the team-related content.

“My Team’s Training status” is only available when Line Manager’s Dashboard is activated for the LMS.

 

 

The LMS365 app for Microsoft Teams

For LMS365 for Microsoft Teams release we are making quite a few additions and changes – to improve the experience and support more LMS365 usage scenarios directly within Teams, which is for many of us the place we spend the greater part of our workday.

• We are enabling LMS365 Management areas to open and work inside the Team App itself. This means that the Course and Training Plan management panels will now work from a Training home page inside Teams.
• The Line Manager dashboard now also opens directly inside the Dashboard tab in Teams.
• And we are introducing a new Manage tab in the LMS365 App for Microsoft Teams, which provides access to LMS365 Admin directly from within Teams.
  
  

 

In addition, we are proud to announce that LMS365 for Microsoft Teams is now approved and “whitelisted” by Microsoft as a 3rd party app in Microsoft Teams mobile app.

This means that LMS365 is now available for users also from their Microsoft Teams mobile app. It is a great convenience for users to be able to learn on the move via their mobile device and for organizations to ensure that relevant training is always readily available for their learners. Possibilities that are now even better supported with LMS365.

 

 

Please note: Microsoft Teams Mobile App have a known issue with deep links into 3rd party Apps on some Android devices. On those Android devices in Microsoft Teams Mobile App, navigating to a Training from Dashboard means that the Training is opened inside the Dashboard tab making it difficult to navigate back again. This will be automatically resolved, when Microsoft corrects the known issue for Microsoft Teams Mobile on those Android devices.

 

Training Plans

Start Course from Training Plan home page

This release includes several improvements to the experience when a Learner is taking a Course that is part of a Training Plan.

Previously it has not been possible for the Learner to start a Course within the Training Plan directly from the Training Plan home page. This has proven to be inconvenient for the Learner, to have to navigate to the Course home page to start the Course. It has however been a necessary step to ensure that the Learner would be presented for important information about the course, that was available only on the Course home page.

With this release it will now be possible for Learners to avoid this extra step and start the Course directly from the Training Plan home page. The course type will also be indicated on the Training Plan home page.

To ensure that the Learner will not miss out on important information about the Course in this case – which is available on the Course home page – the Learner will have access to a Course Overview page directly inside the Learning Player, accessed via the Course Syllabus navigation. The Learner will also be able to navigate between the different Courses that are part of the Training Plan in the Player context.

 

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Classroom & Blended Training and Webinar course types

Several clients have asked for the option to send email messages to Learners via LMS365 in various scenarios where a direct message in the Learner’s mailbox is considered the most effective means of communication around a course session.

For Classroom, Blended and Webinar course types a new feature included in this release will therefore enable an Instructor or Course Admin to send a message to selected or all Learners enrolled in a specific course session directly from the session management in LMS365. With this improvement cumbersome workarounds to retrieve learner lists and email addresses can be avoided, and important messages can be sent out when needed.

Furthermore, an improvement – also commonly requested by clients – around attendance marking has been added: When a Learner’s course completion is triggered by the action of registering the Learner’s attendance in a course session – typically done by an Instructor – the Learner’s date of completion for the will now be set to be the last day of the session instead of the date that the attendance is registered.

As a final detail to mention, for more transparency and improved understanding for the Admin, we have added specific information about the maximum number of attendees in connection with the Manage Learners action for Courses with All Session Enrollment.

 

 

Enrollment

Easier to enroll multiple individuals at the same time

With this release it will be much easier to enroll multiple individual Learners to a Course, Training Plan or Course Session with the same action. Similar to what is possible on Learner List, this can now be done as part of the Manage Learner actions available – simply by typing or copy & pasting a list of multiple emails, separated by comma or semicolon into the enroll learners input field.

 

 

Course Management

Re-organized Course Management Panel

The Course and Training Plan Management panel has been re-organized as part of this release, to make it easier to find the relevant actions from the menu.

The order of management actions has been changed to more logically group similar or related actions, and to emphasize this, divider lines have been added between groups.

The order of management actions has been changed to more logically group similar or related actions together, and to emphasize this visually, divider lines have been added between the groups.

In order to simplify the appearance of the menu on the top level and provide a better overview in the panel, the actions of managing SCORM, Learning Modules, Quizzes and External Apps have been grouped together under a Manage Course Content heading.

The Course Reports for each type of course content have been elevated to one single action instead of separate actions for each report type in the previous structure. This allows the Admin to select the desired course content report from the same interface, directly from Course Management panel, instead of as before from different locations depending on the content report type that was selected.

 

 

Redesign and Usability Improvements to LMS365 Management Areas

As part of the general efforts to modernize LMS365 user interfaces and user experiences we have redesigned two of the course management areas. Following this release new and improved experiences are available when managing ratings and approving enrollments – both actions available from the Management panels (which as presented above has been reorganized with this release).

For Approve Enrollments we have added a counter to highlight which that have pending requests. And it has been added as default behavior that the Approve Enrollments action will open the session that has enrollment requests pending.

Following the update of breadcrumbs in the LMS365 Admin areas with the previous release, the breadcrumbs are now also made clickable to provide an additional and quick navigation option in LMS365 Admin.

In the Learner List and Line Manager’s Dashboard a change to the logic of filters has been implemented. Now, when you filter to only find Learners with a certain competence, the result will only show Learners with that competence for where it is still valid. Previously it also showed Learners who may have had the competency previously but for whom it was then expired or revoked.

 

 

Notifications

“Clear Format” in Email Notification Template Editor

Several customers have reported difficulties with controlling the text formatting when making custom changes to the email notification template’s default content.

In order to remedy this inconvenience there will now be an option available to “clear format” for a selection of text in the template editor. A small, but very welcome improvement for LMS365 administrators when working with custom content for email notification templates.

 

 

The LMS365 mobile app

Logo animation on login page

In the latest version of the LMS365 Mobile App we have updated the look of the Course Catalog to align it with the new look of My Training Dashboard in the Mobile App, which was updated during the Fall of last year.

To provide an even nicer first impression of the LMS365 Mobile App, users will now be greeted with a logo animation on the login page. Smaller improvements like this is part of our general efforts to modernize the user experience of LMS365.