How User Setup Impacts Reports, Assignments, and Content

User attributes function as data points for each user account. For example, you can create a user attribute called Geography and add values such as: Americas, Europe, and Asia. You assign one value to each user when you create them.

You use attributes and their values to sort and filter reports, define leaderboards, and to group users into audiences. You use audiences when you want to make assignments and promote content to a specific group of users. You also use audiences to distribute content licenses to your users. The more user attributes you create, the more refined your audiences can be.

To determine how many custom attributes to create, answer the following prompts:

• What types of reporting will you need? For example, will you need to show learning activity by state? by region? by department? by manager? by job role? other?

• Do different groups of employees get different assignments? How do you segment out these employees? by job role? level? title? manager? hire date? other?

• Should all users be given licenses to the same content collections? For example, should only engineers access your technology content? Should only leaders access SLDP? Perhaps, you have no restrictions, and all users can have a license to all content.

• Are you going to allow managers to make assignments and run reports for employees who report to them? If yes, consider using team automation, a unique method that takes user attributes to automatically create audiences.

• Are you integrating the Skillsoft Percipio Platform with an LMS? If yes, then user attributes are mostly used in the platform for distributing content licenses to the appropriate groups of users.

• Are you using Single Sign On (SSO)? If yes, then you can identify a user attribute any way you want in the platform and map it to a relevant field from your identity provider. If you want to capture more user attributes than your identity provider offers, you can pair SSO with a data feed from an HRIS system. See Approaches for Creating User Accounts for additional details.

Create user attributes with relevant values.

The platform provides eight user roles, one for learners and seven for administrators. Each role comes with a default set of permissions, but you can customize each role to meet your needs.

To help you determine who should have what user role, answer the following prompts:

• Will someone need to promote content to specific groups of individuals? Perhaps you want to be able to showcase sales content only to your Sales department and project management content only to your PMO. This person should have a role of Content curator or content coordinator.

• Who in your organization will be able to make assignments? Does each manager get to assign content to their team? Does HR get to assign content and to whom? These people should have a role of learning admin or manager and also be set up as owners of the audiences they need to manage.

• Who in your organization will be able to organize and manage both Skillsoft and custom content including instructor-led training? These people should have a role of Content curator or content coordinator.

• Should someone other than yourself have full permissions? These people should have a role of site admin.

• Are you integrating the Skillsoft Percipio Platform with an LMS? All users should have a role of learner in the platform unless you are planning to use the platform directly for tasks described above.

Learn more about user roles.

The user attributes you defined are what you use to plan your audiences. Using combinations of attributes and their values you can break out your user population into finite groups for license distribution, assignments, and targeted promotions.

You can choose to create audiences manually or use team automation or a combination of both.

There is no limit to the size of your audiences or the number of audiences that you can create in the platform. You can create audiences at any time if additional needs arise.

After you create each audience, distribute licenses.

Skillsoft sells content in bundles called collections. For each collection, you buy a set number of licenses called a license pool. For a user to access content from a collection, you need to associate the user with the license pool for that collection. You can associate a user with multiple license pools if they need access to content from multiple collections. When a user logs into the platform they consume a license from each license pool to which they are associated.

To give users access to license pools:

1. Create an audience that contains the user

2. Associate that audience to the designated license pools using license distribution

Skillsoft provides a default audience called All Users. This audience contains all users on your site. You can use this audience for company-wide initiatives, like banner promotions and assignments, but we recommend that you do not use it when associating license pools.

With user attributes and audiences defined, you are ready to create user accounts.

You can create and manage user accounts in Percipio using several approaches. Any combination of approaches can be used together to accurately maintain your Percipio user population.

Skillsoft recommends using Just-in-Time via Single Sign-on (SSO) to ensure users do not have to wait for the creation of account credentials or remember separate Percipio credentials. SSO is also the preferred method for many learning management system (LMS) integrations.

• Just-In-Time via Single Sign-On:

  Create and update user accounts when they log into Percipio by implementing Single Sign On. Single Sign On (SSO) is a method that enables a user to log in once using standard corporate credentials and gain access to multiple systems without having to log in again.To use SSO with Percipio, you need an Identity Provider (IdP) that uses the Secure Assertion Mark-up Language (SAML) 2.0 standard.

  When a user signs into Percipio, your Identity Provider (IdP) can send user information to Percipio for the automatic creation of new accounts and the updating of existing accounts. In addition, access to Percipio can be immediately suspended by removing or invalidating the user’s credentials in your IdP.

  If it is important that Percipio user accounts are maintained regularly and not just on user sign-in, or if your IdP does not contain all the user information you require to maintain audiences, then you need to supplement the SSO approach with one of the other approaches.

• Automatic Bulk Import: You can automate the Bulk Import process by having an HRIS system (for example, PeopleSoft) deliver a formatted CSV file to a secure server at a regular cadence. Percipio processes this file at the regular cadence: daily or weekly. When using this option, you can also choose to PGP Encrypt the data that will be uploaded to the secure server. Work with your Skillsoft account team to set this up. Review CSV fields to understand the formatting required.

• Manual Bulk Import: An administrator can “Bulk Import Users” using a formatted CSV file with user details. See Bulk Import for details.

• Restful API: An organization’s developers can choose to use Percipio’s APIs to automatically manage user accounts. If you choose to use Percipio APIs, the development, maintenance and support of anything you create is your responsibility. You can find more details at Skillsoft's APIs.

• Manual Account Management by Percipio Administrator: An administrator can use the Percipio Admin User Interface to create, update and deactivate user accounts. See Create User for details.

Work with your Skillsoft account team to choose the methods that will be right for your organization.