Author:
Jon Brydges
Senior Product Manager
[email protected]
Introduction
This is a round up of the major, transformative functionality that has been released on Stream in the last 6 months.
A number of these new features are the first in a series of major upgrades to the administration capabilities of Stream. We have spent a huge amount of time in the past 12 months working to make Stream work more efficiently for our clients, and to enable Stream organisations to be easily manageable at scale.
We believe that the enhancements in automation and control for Stream administrators will allow organisations large and small to create dynamic, personalised, relevant, and effective learning journeys for their learners.
Every bit of this new functionality is available as standard for all Stream Bronze, Silver, and Gold clients. This release is just the first in a series of related functionality upgrades that will enhance Stream in the coming weeks.
Check out this video to find out more:
https://vimeo.com/601978400/2b91a12705
Custom Profile Fields [LXP-1974]
What it is:
- Our new flexible, extensible Custom Profile FIelds allow users profiles to be expanded to include almost any data you might require.
- These include a variety of Profile Field types:
- Checkbox
- Date/Time
- Framework – see below
- Selections
- Radio buttons
- Checkboxes
- Dropdown box
- Short text
- Long text
- The visibility and editability of Custom Profile Fields can be configured by administrators.
- Custom Profile Fields can be grouped into Field Sets for ease of understanding and administration.
- Initially, Custom Profile Fields and individual users’ Profile Field values can only be edited by Stream administrators and via the API.
- In the near future:
- Front-end users will be able to edit their Profile Fields via a new, improved front-end ‘My Profile’ page
- Administrators will have the choice to enable a ‘Complete Your Profile’ page which is surfaced just after login where users can add values to required and optional Custom Profile Fields as configured by the Stream administrators.
Why we have done this:
- This is an incredibly important feature that significantly increases the automation capabilities and administrator control within Stream.
- By extending the Stream understands about each user and using this data as criteria for Dynamic Rules within groups (see below), administrators now have greater control over content visibility and assignment, ensuring that the right learning is in front of the right learner at the right time.
- Based on profile information, Stream can now facilitate highly automated self-guided and assigned learning journeys, recommendations, and enrolments, as well as insightful, meaningful reporting within large scale and complex organisations.
How it works:
- Org administrators can navigate to ‘Settings >> FIelds >> Profile Fields’ to add Profile Fields to their Stream org.
- NOTE: The ‘Front-end Permissions’ and ‘Editable in front-end by’ settings are currently disabled as these apply to functionality that will be in the platform in the near future. Check out the tooltips on the controls for more context.
- Take a look at the great resources in The Academy for more information and to join the conversation: https://academy.thelpacademy.com/courses/fields-in-stream
Frameworks and Entities [LXP-2311] and [LXP-2393]
What it is:
- Frameworks provide a hierarchical structure of Entities that can be used to represent parent-child structures such as organisation charts, locations, job role hierarchies, departments, teams, and even global football leagues.
- Let’s say you wanted to classify your learners based upon the office that they work in around the world. You could construct a Framework to represent global regions, continents, countries, counties/states, and offices. For example, part of your ‘Location’ framework could look like this:
- So the ‘Location’ Framework Entity value for Anna Lloyd, Learning Pool’s Director of Product, would be ‘Oxford’ which is a child of the ‘Oxfordshire’ Entity, which is a child of the ‘England’ Entity, etc. etc.
- Frameworks can be used as Custom Profile Fields and thus can be used within dynamic rules for Groups.
- In the coming weeks, we will release ‘Job Roles’ functionality which can also include Frameworks to describe someone’s position within your organisation as well as who their manager is, when they started, and whether their position is temporary or permanent.
- Entities can be easily moved between parent Entities within the Framework and reordered to suit their needs.
- Entities can also be categorised using Entity Fields and Entity Field Sets.
- For example, you could create an Entity Field Set called ‘Offices’ and Entity Fields within this Set called ‘Office First Aid Facilities’ and ‘Office Accessibility’.
- You could create another Entity Field Set called ‘Regions’ which includes the Entity Field ‘Currencies’ so that you could categorise regions by the currencies that are accepted there.
- You can apply one Entity Field Set to any Entity you like.
- For example, you would apply the ‘Offices’ Entity Field Set to ‘Oxford’ and ‘Nottingham’, whereas you would apply the ‘Regions’ Entity Field Set to ‘EMEA’.
- Entity Fields can be used as criteria within dynamic rules for Groups.
- For example, you could add users to a Group to assign the “Using a defibrillator’ Learning Experience if they work in an office that has a defibrillator. This is far easier and quicker than having to select every office itself.
Why we have done this:
- Every organisation has some form of hierarchical structure that can be used to define a huge variety of different organisational, procedural, commercial, functional, and demographic variation amongst the user base.
- Frameworks provides an infinitely extensible way to visualise and use this within Stream and apply this to dynamic rules for Groups, saving org administrators time and resources when managing learning within their organisation.
- Entity Fields then provide a way of categorising your Entities across your Framework.
How it works:
- Frameworks can be found in ‘Settings >> Frameworks’ within the Stream admin portal.
- Entity Field Sets and Fields are managed from ‘Settings >> Fields >> Entity Fields’. They can be applied to Framework Entities via ‘Settings >> Frameworks >> click the three dots on your chosen Entity >> select the Entity Field Set >> configure the values for the Entity Fields.’
- Learn all about Frameworks and Entity Fields in The Academy: https://academy.thelpacademy.com/courses/frameworks
Dynamic Rules for Groups [LXP-2311] and [LXP-2393]
What it is:
- Stream’s existing Groups functionality has been significantly improved. As an org administrator, you can now create a set of rules that go way beyond the existing tagging system in Stream.
- Group membership can now be fully dynamic and based upon an array of different criteria including completions, enrolments, profile data, language, admin roles, custom profile field values, and in the near future, job roles, skills, and levels.
Why we have done this:
- Just like Custom Profile Fields, the new dynamic rules in Stream Groups revolutionise automation and control for Stream org administrators.
- Not only will this save time, but also provides real opportunities for dynamic learning journeys based on enrolments and recommendations and fine control visibility of learning between different groups.
- By moving users out of one group and into another, you can provide conditional pathways of learning that are adaptive to a learner’s profile, performance, choices, and needs.
How it works:
- Every new and existing Group now has a ‘Dynamic Rules’ page.
- Using ‘AND OR’ logic between rules and sets of rules, you can configure conditions and filters as simply or as complex as you require. You can also use membership of one group as a condition for membership in another.
- You can create a draft set of rules ready for when you need to enable the group.
- Rules are processed automatically every 20 minutes or so. When you publish your rules, they are run once immediately. Some complex rules can take a few minutes to process fully, so you may not see results in the ‘Members’ list straight away.
- Find out more on the Learning Pool Academy: https://academy.thelpacademy.com/courses/stream-group-settings?so=1#object/631615
Enrollment Due Dates
What it is:
- The Learning Experience Due Dates functionality allows administrators to set a date for learners to complete their Learning Experience enrolment by.
- Administrators can set rules to assign Due Dates automatically based on the learner’s enrolment date, i.e. ‘N’ days after enrolment.
- The Due Date can be viewed in various locations throughout Stream.
Why we have done this:
- Previous Due Date functionality was not a fully developed concept within Stream. The only way for an Administrator to set a type of Due Date was to set the expiry date on the enrolment. This would result in the learner losing access to the Learning Experience instead of having an overdue status.
- We wanted to give Stream Administrators more control over how long a user had to complete a Learning Experience, but without restricting access to the Learning Experience.