LMS Access In Your eFrontPro-Based eLearning Portal Is In Your Hands!
In the first article of this series, we looked at several eFrontPro features for controlling LMS access to your portal -- as well as for restricting learner access to specific content within it.
We covered stuff ranging from the basic, like User Types (eFrontPro's way to assign a set of permissions to users), to the more advanced, such as IP whitelisting (allowing only users at certain network locations to log in), simultaneous login restrictions, and public web pages.
In this article, we are going to go through a few more options related to LMS access control.
Sorry, We're Full
In our last article, we've mentioned that you let users self-enrol to a course by giving them a "secret" course code, such that only users with the code can register.
We have to mention though another, even more basic, way to restrict access to a course, which is by setting it to a limited capacity.
This option is available not just for hybrid learning sessions (where you wouldn't want more learners than you are able to fit in a classroom to register for a class), but also for regular eLearning courses.
You can use the limited capacity option to, for example, ensure that your instructors are not overwhelmed from having to cater to too many learners in a popular course. It’s the simplest form of LMS access control: Who get’s in and who doesn’t.
Level Up
If you have eFrontPro's Gamification engine turned on, then you also have the option to require the user to rise to a certain "level" in order to be able to enlist to a class; in other words, grant conditional access to content to just users that “have what it takes”, knowledge-wise.
This (especially combined with the other Gamification options, like points, badges, and leaderboards) is a nice way to leverage the competitive spirit of your learners and increase their engagement -- but it's also a nice LMS access method to ensure that only users with certain skills (proven by their advancing of levels) can take certain courses.
Insert Coin To Continue
If you are using eFrontPro for offering commercial eLearning courses, then another fundamental way to control LMS access to your content is of course by setting a price for it.
eFrontPro has several pricing options (including the ability to create bundles of courses and to offer monthly and yearly subscriptions), and it will automatically take care of controlling LMS access to commercial courses to users that have paid for them.
The In-Group
Groups are eFrontPro's way of organizing your users into sets that you can treat as a single entity (e.g. to mass enroll them in some classes, view reports on them, etc).
Besides controlling access to a Group directly (that is, by manually adding and removing users to it as an eFrontPro administrator) there is also the option to create a unique group key (a short code), which you can then share with specific students to allow them to register to the group.
eFrontPro also lets you set an optional cap on maximum key uses -- thus allowing you to constrain certain groups to a limited number of learners.
API Key
If you have been taking advantage of eFrontPro's integration options with third party services and their APIs, you might remember that many of them require an "API Key" to let your eFrontPro connect to them.
Well, the same holds true for eFrontPro's native API. To use it from your external scripts and services you will need to get eFrontPro's API key (from the Administration screen) and use it to connect and authenticate with your eLearning portal. This is a different kind of LMS access control, but an important one for security reasons.
Branch Out
Until now we have covered access control options for your main eFrontPro-based eLearning portal. But did you know that a lot of these can be customized further and be selectively applied per Branch?
Branches, in case you are not already familiar with the concept, is eFrontPro's way to give you separate, autonomous eLearning portals, each with its own courses, learners, branding, and customizations, but centrally managed from your main eFrontPro account.
eFrontPro allows you to create just a few independent Branches, or go full on (if you are a larger business) and arrange multiple Branches in a tree-like structure (e.g. to mimic your organizational structure, with its departments, facilities, subsidies and so on).
Each independent Branch is separate from the others, "leaks" no knowledge of the existence of other Branches (unless of course, you want it to), and can operate under it own unique URL.
If you have a parent company and two subsidiaries, for example, you can create branches for each of them, and train their users autonomously, without them having access or knowledge to either your main eLearning portal or the other Branch.
Courses, lessons, and curriculums created at a parent branch (or your main portal) are not automatically shared with the "lower level" branches -- giving your administrators the ability to cherry-pick courses for sharing between Branches and control which Branch sees what.
Speaking of administrators, eFrontPro also lets you have users that act as Branch Administrators -- that is, administrators whose powers are limited to a specific Branch.
A Branch Administrator has the same kind of powers within its Branch that a global eFrontPro Administrator has across the board, but is, of course, limited to users and entities in their Branch.
Conclusion
In this two-article series, we had a look at the various options available in eFrontPro for controlling LMS access to content, to system entities and to specific features. Between them, eFrontPro administrators have near total control over who sees what, when and how.
Stay tuned for more eFrontPro-related news, tutorials, and of course general eLearning news and industry coverage.
