LMS365 Assigner Administrator Guide

Introduction

This article provides an overview and general instructions for the Assigner managed solution, which is provided by the LMS365 Professional Services Division.

 

Availability

The Assigner managed solution is available only to Care Plus and Care Premium customers.

 

Prerequisites and access

• Care Plus or Care Premium subscription.
• Access to the LMS365 Academy.
• LMS365 API key (created in the customer’s tenant).

 

Support and maintenance

• If you encounter issues when using this solution, contact your Customer Success Manager.
• If you want to provide feedback and ideas, contact your Customer Success Manager.

 

Overview

The Assigner managed solution enables users to create Azure Active Directory groups that are populated by end users who match the specified criteria. These groups can then be used to enroll them in LMS365 courses.

 

LMS365 Assigner is a flexible group creation service for LMS365 and includes the following features:

• Management of Assigner AD groups without the need for your IT team.
• Creation of custom Azure AD groups.
• Automatic population of Azure AD groups based on specified criteria.
• Criteria that can be based on a user's attributes or activities within LMS365.
• Association of groups with LMS365 catalogs.

 

 

This guide will cover the following:

• Assigner authentication.
• Assigner settings.
• Profiles.
• Create a user profile.
• User properties for a profile.
• User activities for a profile.
• Courses for a profile.
• Setting up Azure Active Directory (AAD) access for the Assigner.

 

Assigner authentication

Required role: Users with permissions described in the Prerequisites and access section.

 

To authenticate correctly to the Assigner solution, follow these steps:

1. Access the LMS365 Automation Center page.

2. Select Assigner in the left navigation menu.

3. Select Login using LMS365 API key in the top right-hand corner of the Synchronizer page.

4. In the open Login dialog, enter your LMS365 API key.

5. Select Submit.

 

 

Assigner settings

• Contact email address. This will be used for notifications for any synchronization failures.
• Prefix for Entra ID groups. The Assigner will create AAD groups and to help identification, this prefix will be used in the naming of the Assigner groups.
• LMS365 API key. This will be populated from when you first logged in. The Assigner uses this to access your LMS365 environment. This key should have full control permissions because this is required to write data to custom columns.
• Entra ID app registration. This will require the app registration Client Id and Secret for the Azure Active Directory app aegistration that allows read access to your user's details in AD, read and write access to your groups, and read and write access to your group members. This allows the Assigner to read the values on the user profile to, then create groups and associate users with these groups.

 

 

 

Profiles

Required role: Users with permissions described in the Prerequisites and access section.

 

Profiles (main screen)

On the Profiles page, you'll see an overview of all the Assigner groups created within your tenant. You'll have the option to view each group, the group Id and the description of the group, and the status of the group.

The following columns will be available on the Profiles page:

Title - Displays the name of the group.

Enroll - Displays whether the group is actively enrolled in the assigned courses.

Auto populate - Displays whether the group membership is actively being updated.

Modified - Shows when the last modification was made.

Updated by - Shows the email address of the user who last modified or updated the group.

Courses - Shows the number of courses with which the group is associated.

 

 

Create a profile

Required role: Users with permissions described in the Prerequisites and access section.

The Profiles page consists of five sections: Basic details, User properties, User dates, User activities, and Courses.

 

 

To create a profile (also known as an assigner “group”), you should first open the Profiles page.

From the Profiles page, select Create new and complete the following 5 sections.

 

Basic details

In the Basic details section, enter the following information:

• Title - This is a required field. Enter the name of your group.
• Description - This is a required field. Enter a description of your group.
• You have selected x course(s) - This is a required field. It determines whether the group will be enrolled once the profile is created.
• Auto populated - This is a required field. It determines whether group membership is actively updated according to whether users match the rules that are set.

 

 

The following image shows an example of a group that was created for CSMs that live in the United States and will be enrolled into selected courses.

 

 

 

When syncing from AAD, you'll need to specify the AAD field that you want to use.

In order for users to be added to a group, they must match the rules or properties that are designated in the User properties, User dates, or User activities sections when creating an Assigner group.

 

User properties

The user properties rules that are created for the Assigner are properties that a learner would have in LMS365.

The default Assigner user properties will include the following: City, Company, Department, Country, Office, Job Title, Email, Title (name of learner).

If you are using any custom property fields, these will also be shown here.

In the User properties section, enter the relevant information.

 

Add rule / Add group

When setting up the properties for your Assigner group, you can add a single or group rule. Grouped rules are necessary if you want to use different relationships (And / Or / Not) between your rules.

To add a user property rule, follow these steps:

1. Select Add rule / Add group in the top right-hand corner of the Filters page.

2. Select the relevant rule conditions (Not/And/Or).

3. Define the user property fields.

 

Define user property fields

When creating a user property rule, you need to set up three fields. All fields are required.

• Select source - This is the specific field you want to use (e.g. City, Company, Department, etc.).
• Select condition - This menu relates to the condition of the selected field. The default condition will be “is equal to”.
• Enter value - This field will be the value that you want the source and condition to meet.

•  

The following image shows an example of a group that was created with specific rules for users to have a city of Las Vegas and a job title of Senior Office365 Consultant.

 

 

User dates

The user dates rules that are created for the Assigner are properties that a learner would have in LMS365 based on custom LMS365 date user fields. In LMS365, there are no date fields associated with user accounts by default. This means that if you don't have a custom date column in LMS365, there is no way of creating a user date rule for this Assigner group.

In the User dates section, enter the relevant information.

 

Add rule / Add group

When setting up the properties for your Assigner group, you can add a single or group rule. Grouped rules are necessary if you want to use different relationships (And / Or / Not) between your rules.

To add a user dates rule, follow these steps:

1. Select Add rule / Add group in the top right-hand corner of the Filters page.

2. Select the relevant rule conditions (Not/And/Or).

3. Define the user date fields.

 

Define user date fields

When creating a user date rule, you need to set up three fields. All fields are required.

• Select source - This is the specific date field you want to use. If there aren't any sources, this means you don't have any date type custom columns.
• Select condition - This menu relates to the condition of the selected field. The default condition will be “is before the date/time”.
• Enter value - This field will be the value that you want the source and condition to meet.

The following image shows an example of a group that was created with specific rules for users who were hired after January 1, 2023. This uses a custom date field called "Hire Date".

 

 

User activities

The user activities rules that are created for the Assigner are learner activities within LMS365. This includes activities like whether a learner has completed a course, if a learner did not complete a course on time, or if a learner recently completed a course.

In the User activities section, enter the relevant information.

 

Add rule / Add group

When setting up the properties for your Assigner Group, you can add a single or group rule. Grouped rules are necessary if you want to use different relationships (And / Or / Not) between your rules.

To add a user activities rule, follow these steps:

1. Select Add rule / Add group in the top right-hand corner of the Filters page.

2. Select the relevant rule conditions (Not/And/Or).

3. Define the user activities fields.

 

Define user activities fields

When creating a user activities rule, you need to set up two fields. All fields are required.

• Select source - This is the course you want to use.
• Select condition - This menu relates to the condition of the selected course. The default condition will be “was completed”.

The following image shows an example of a group that was created with specific rules for users who completed the "Outlook - Japanese" course.

 

 

Courses

The Courses section enables you to associate the Assigner group with specific courses.

If your group is active, it will be enrolled in the course automatically. All group enrollment management should be done through the Assigner and the courses.

In the Courses section, follow these steps:

1. Select Add course.

2. Select your courses.

3. Select Add.

 

 

Set up AAD access for Assigner

Required role: Microsoft 365 global admin.

 

This section will provide the necessary steps that your Microsoft 365 global admin must follow to create an AAD app registration that the Assigner can use to read the user data from AAD, create groups, and assign members to these groups.

 

 

Prerequisites

• Microsoft 365 global admin access.

Set up the AAD app registration

 

Most of the following information is is sourced from this Microsoft guide.

 

Create the AAD app registration

In your environment, navigate to your Azure Portal and follow these steps:

1. Go to app registrations.

2. Select the + New registration link and complete the following details:

• Name - Enter an app registration name. We recommend something like LMS365 Assigner.
• Supported Account Types - Accept the default Single-tenant value.
• Redirect URI Optional - Leave this blank.

3. Select Register.

4. Save the application (client) Id for later use.

 

Add the AAD app permissions

1. On the left-hand side, select API Permissions.

2. Select Add a permission.

3. Select Microsoft Graph and then Application Permissions.

4. Search for User.Read.All, Group.ReadWriteAll, and GroupMember.ReadWriteAll, and add those permissions.

5. Select Grant Admin Consent to grant consent for the newly added permissions.

 

Create a Client Secret

1. On the left-hand side, go to Certificates & secrets.

2. Select the + New client secret link and complete the following details:

• Description - Enter the name of the secret. We recommend something like LMS365 Assigner Secret.
• Expires - Enter the expiration time of the secret. We recommend a longer expiration date because once the secret expires, you'll have to generate a new one.

3. Save the secret value for later use because it can't be viewed once you leave this screen.

 

Provide AAD access to the Assigner

1. Go to the Assigner settings: https://automation-center.365.systems/assigner/settings.

2. Navigate to the AAD App registration section.

3. Enter the Client Id from step 4 of the Create the AAD app registration section.

4. Enter in the Client Secret from step 3 of the Creating a Client Secret section.

5. Click the Save button to finalize changes.

You should now be able to create groups in the Assigner, which in turn will create groups in AAD.