What More You Can Do With Your LMS Data
Getting stuff in and out of your software systems can be a major hurdle.
Proprietary data formats, incomplete standards support, vendor lock-in, confusing import and export options are just a few of the issues that plague modern enterprise software.
Fortunately, eFrontPro, with its numerous import and export options and ample support for industry standards, does not seem to be affected in the least.
In the first two parts of this article series, we examined the various ways that you can get your precious (or less precious) data in and out of eFrontPro.
Having covered most of the major options, in this article we’ll have a look at several less known but still handy methods for importing and exporting Talent Development System/LMS data.
Let’s dive in.
Collect And Act On Skills-Gap Data
Sometimes the data that you want to gather are not course content or user information related, but rather feedback from the user’s themselves.
This can be especially important in an enterprise Talent Development setting, but also in any kind of commercial eLearning business.
eFrontPro’s Tests and Surveys Engine let’s you collect and analyze test and survey responses from your learners, and is especially good for skill-gap testing -- where the results of your tests and surveys are used to automatically populate your employees’ skills, and to automagically suggest to them the courses they need to take to further their skills development .
Keep Custom Information In Extensible Profiles
Besides their basic profile information, there are probably a lot of LMS data and metadata that you would want to collect about your Users and Courses, that the eFrontPro developers have not thought of.
With most other pieces of software, you would have to keep that information in another program, perhaps an ERP tool, or maybe some crude Excel spreadsheet that pulls double duty as a database. In either case, you wouldn’t have them where you most need them: directly in your Learning and Talent Development Platform.
Not with eFrontPro though, as the platform’s Extensible Profiles feature allows you to add your own custom info fields to your User profiles or Course information pages (not to mention training sessions, branches, locations, and more coming up), and enrich the details you collect and report upon.
What’s more, you can use that information for filtering Users and Courses, creating custom Reports, performing Mass Actions, and in several other ways, just like you can with eFrontPro’s default profile fields.
Make LMS Data Accessible For Alternative Consumption
The browser (and the mobile application) is not the only game in town when it comes to Talent Development and LMS data consumption.
Accessibility standards (and basic concern for our fellow colleagues) make software such as Screen Readers an equally important data consumption method. Indeed, accessibility is an important attribute of any piece of software, and even more so for professional software. We are way past the era when ability-based discrimination in the workplace was acceptable or legal, for that matter.
Fortunately, eFrontPro has been built from the ground up to conform to the most important set of accessibility requirements, the Web Accessibility Initiative’s (WAI group) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG-2 for short).
And while eFrontPro doesn’t offer 100% compliance with the standard (no software does), it implements all the major guidelines and suggestions, offering text alternatives for images and media, adaptable layouts, high contrast themes, input assistance and keyboard accessibility, among other features.
Get Your Data Out And About
Sometimes, getting your eFrontPro LMS data out really means getting your data out.
Like, literally out -- in the field, on the commute, on a flight to China to meet a customer, that sort of thing.
Thankfully, there are native, official, and fully supported eFrontPro client applications for both iOS and Android devices, which let you take your Talent Development data out and about with ease.
eFrontPro’s mobile clients are free to download and use (with no hidden charges); you just need to have an eFrontPro portal account and you are good to go. Like, literally, go. And you can take your courses even to places where there’s no WiFi, as eFrontPro for iOS and Android supports offline learning just fine.
Conclusion
In this article (the third and last of our little series) we had a look at some of the non-obvious ways that you get your LMS data in and out of eFrontPro, including Extensive Profiles for custom record keeping, Skills-Gap data collection, and taking your data on the road with eFrontPro’s mobile options.
Stay tuned for more articles, tutorials, and tips on eFrontPro and Talent Management.