Do You Have A Flexible LMS?
If you follow the software industry, you might have noticed a raising trend this past few years for so-called "opinionated" software.
That's tech speak for software whose authors pretend to know what you need better than you, and that offers only the functionality that they deem worthwhile.
Of course, every software developer has to make decisions on what features they will implement, what they should prioritize, etc. But this process should be balanced by listening to your customer base and respecting their needs. Otherwise, you end up like that other famous example of software that "knew better" than the user: The Clippy.
TalentLMS can be opinionated too, on general principles, like prioritizing ease of use and robustness over looking good in functionality matrices. But when it comes to functionality, it takes a pragmatic stance: It's not how many features you have, it's about whether you have a flexible LMS or not.
In this post, we'll have a look at the flexibility TalentLMS gives you in, essentially, building your own LMS, just the way you want it.
Flexible Client-Wise
TalentLMS is based on a modern, responsive HTML5 web design, that adapts to and fits any device - from a lowly smartphone to the iPad Pro, and from your 13" laptop to 27" desktop hi-DPI screens.
And speaking of hi-DPI (or "retina" as Apple calls it), TalentLMS uses scalable visual elements that look good at any resolution.
And when you want the fastest possible native mobile experience (and improved battery life), there's the native iOS TalentLMS application for the iPhone and the iPad. Now that's flexibility!
Flexible UI
As expected from a product created for the international market, TalentLMS is available in multiple languages - from English and German to Spanish and French.
Deploying a TalentLMS-based eLearning portal in a different language is as easy as setting your preferred language in the administration page.
And for enterprises and organizations with multiple facilities in different countries (or employing multi-lingual staff in the same country), you can setup multiple TalentLMS "Branches", each with its own language and timezone.
Flexible Organization
Branches in general, as mentioned in the previous section, are great tools for segmenting your learning portal into different separate environments.
This, depending on your organizational structure, allows you to map different departments, facilities, franchisees, stores, subsidiaries, etc.
Each branch is like a separate TalentLMS installation and can have its users, courses, theme, language, and other custom settings.
Flexible Look
Corporate branding is the most important part of a company's identity and recognizability, and should extend to every facet of its operation - including its LMS.
TalentLMS allows you to fully customize your eLearning portal according to your branding guidelines. This includes everything, from using your custom domain and logo image, to completely altering the look and feel of your portal with your custom CSS styles and JS scripts.
Flexible Portal Structure
From a shiny introductory page, to a special offers section and FAQ pages, there might be a lot of things that you want to show to your learners outside of their basic eLearning portal pages.
TalentLMS' Page Builder allows you to create a full blown modern public website on top of your eLearning portal, and even extend it with pages available only to your logged-in users.
Flexible Authentication
Speaking of login, TalentLMS offers support for all commonly used Single-Sign-On technologies, including LDAP (OpenLDAP etc), SAML2, and Microsoft's Active Directory - and there are also integrations available for Okta and OneLogin identity management systems.
Between these, you'll be able to integrate your eLearning portal with your corporate Single-Sign-On solution, whichever that may be.
Flexible User Management
Besides its extensive roles and permission authorization options, TalentLMS also allows you to create and manage your own custom User Types. These, which inherit from the built-in Administrator, Instructor and Learner user types, let you constrain certain functionalities to specific sets of users.
User types allow you, for example, to create an "Instructor Assistant" user type that can manage certain aspects of an existing course, but cannot create a new course.
Plus, when the existing information that TalentLMS stores for a user is not enough for your needs, you can add custom fields to your user profiles to enrich the details that TalentLMS collects and reports upon.
Flexible Classes
Asynchronous ("at your own pace") eLearning offers great freedom, but is not always appropriate for all kinds of training.
TalentLMS also has full support for blended eLearning, allowing you to combine online training with traditional classroom based, or webinar-based sessions.
Instructors just need to select the appropriate course type (ILT), and TalentLMS will let them create multiple ILT sessions, automatically managing course registration and capacity.
Flexible eCommerce
When it comes to selling your courses, TalentLMS keeps it simple but, you guessed it, flexible.
You get to choose between using PayPal or Stripe as your payment processor, and you have several options for selling your courses -- including individual course sales, bundles, subscription payments, coupon codes and global discounts.
And if you prefer to use another storefront, TalentLMS also offers a native Shopify integration, so you can sell your courses through its popular marketplace.
Flexible Gamification
Instead of merely offering a few gamification features, TalentLMS opted to offer a full blown Gamification engine.
The latter allows you to individually enable, configure, and fine-tune the behavior of Badges, Points, Levels, Rewards and Leaderboards, so that you have just the right amount of gaming that's appropriate for your learners (e.g. corporate users vs teenagers).
Conclusion
In this post we had a look at the flexibility TalentLMS offers you in customizing and adjusting its operation. It's this powerful interplay of built-in features and integration options that makes TalentLMS, an incredibly flexible LMS, capable of serving many roles, from corporate training tool to commercial eLearning portal.
