Here are four more integrations every enterprise will need their Learning Management System (LMS) to have in 2018.
[Part 1 of this article appeared in the previous issue.]
Single Sign-On (SSO)
SSO integrations allow employees across your enterprise to use the same credentials to log in to all your systems. So, if all your LMS integrations are set up on the back end properly, ideally, each employee will sign in to your LMS once or will be able to access your LMS by signing in to some other system that the LMS is integrated with. Sometimes this integration makes it so employees don’t even have to sign in to your LMS and can access learning content whenever they want, as long as they are logged into your enterprise network.
Third-Party Off-the-Shelf (OTS) Content Libraries and Course Marketplaces
Content curation is a trend all learning and development professionals will want to embrace in 2018. With OTS e-learning content library integrations, your organization will be able to collect and access content and courses from reputable outside sources. Your employees will be able to access all kinds of learning content—videos, HTML5 content, course modules, e-documents, etc. These extensive suites of e-learning and mobile-learning content cover a variety of areas of business skills, tech skills, soft skills, innovation, leadership, and more. Having access to OTS libraries will significantly decrease the amount of time your enterprise will have to spend creating training content and other course materials from scratch.
xAPIs (Tin Can)
This integration helps track and report informal or formal learning activities each employee participates in, including activities conducted inside and outside of the LMS portal—such as conferences attended, websites visited, books read, and videos watched. And it will track this information regardless of whether the learner is on a mobile device, tablet, or desktop. Tin Can also allows you to access better reporting and richer data from the different activities it can track and allows you to integrate your LMS with your Learning Record Store (LRS). This integration offers a complete and comprehensive view of each learner across your organization.
Webhooks
Webhook integrations allow you to customize and automate e-learning processes.
They’re also called “HTTP callbacks” and permit the LMS to post messages and course updates as they occur in real time. For example, using webhooks your developer creates, you can receive a real-time notification each time a learner fails an assessment or completes a course. You can then use that information forwarded with the webhook to update or generate additional actions elsewhere in a separate website or application. These integrations are essential to automating certain processes inside your LMS and other systems you integrated with your LMS.
In 2018, ensure your LMS has the integrations listed above so you can fully optimize how it works for your enterprise.