Inheritance

Learners and audiences receive assignments through inheritance. When you create a learning plan assignment for an audience, all learners associated with that audience "inherit" the assignment, including the assignment settings such as due dates, initial and recurring training dates, passing thresholds, etc.

Additionally, if an audience is a subset of a larger audience that receives an assignment, all learners in the subset audience also receive the assignment.

Inheritance is convenient because it allows you to assign the same content to multiple users without the need to create an individual assignment for each user. For example, you can assign content to all employees in the same location, or to all employees with the same job role.

Example

Let's say your organization has a warehouse in Scottsdale that employs several HR, administrative, and 'floor' personnel including loading dock workers and forklift drivers.

Your audiences include the Scottsdale Warehouse All audience for all employees, and the Scottsdale Warehouse Floor Personnel audience for dock workers and forklift operators.

All employees at the Scottsdale warehouse need a Warehouse Safety course, so you assign this course to the Scottsdale Warehouse All audienc. All employees inherit this assignment.

Employees that work on the warehouse floor need to take a Preventing Back Injuries course, so you assign this course to the Scottsdale Warehouse Floor Personnel audience. Only the loading dock workers and forklift operators inherit the course.

Important notes about inheritance:

  • Stringency rules effect which inherited assignments users see in their learning plan
  • You can edit an inherited assignment to make it more stringent, but not less stringent.
  • An assignment made at the individual level always takes precedence over inherited assignments, even if the individual assignment is less stringent than the inherited assignment.