Best practices for configuring and leveraging skills in your platform

Introduction

Setting up and managing skills in your Docebo platform enables you to create personalized learning paths, recommend relevant content, and monitor progress for your organization. This article outlines the main steps to configure skills and skill sets, create skill profiles, and leverage the platform’s AI-powered recommendations effectively. For detailed step-by-step instructions, refer to the article Managing the skills of your users.

Configuring the skill platform catalog

The skill catalog is the foundation of the platform’s skill management functionality, containing all the skills relevant to your organization that can be assigned to formal and informal content, as well as to learner profiles. Setting up the catalog is the first step in enabling skill management.

Docebo provides a predefined catalog structure to help you get started, which includes:

• The Docebo skill catalog: A comprehensive library of over 10,000 skills, based on ESCO (opens in a new tab) and constantly updated to meet customers’ needs
• Predefined skill sets: Groups of related skills that help structure skill management, curated based on customer usage trends
• A default selection of skills for new platforms: A curated subset of skills from the Docebo catalog, providing a starting point for organizations without an existing framework
• Custom skills: The ability to create organization-specific skills to address business needs
• Integration capabilities: APIs to synchronize an existing skill catalog from an external HRIS, TMS, or talent management system.

Best practices for building your catalog:

• Start from the default platform catalog: Customize the predefined skill sets and skills. You can unpublish the ones you don’t need, edit existing ones, or add your own to align the catalog with your organization’s needs. Learn more on managing skills and skill sets.
• Start small: Focus on 50 to 200 skills that are most relevant to your content and learning objectives
• Use clear names and descriptions: Unique skill names and detailed descriptions improve AI understanding and recommendations
• Integrate external systems if present: If your organization already manages skills in an external talent management platform or HRIS, integrate it with Docebo to synchronize skills and streamline management. Learn more about synchronizing skills with external systems.

Managing skill sets

Skill sets are groups of related skills that determine which skills are available to specific learners:

• Learners can assign skills to their profiles based on the skill sets they have visibility on
• Unless the full skill catalog visibility option is enabled, learners can assign skills to assets they share, and Power Users can assign skills to courses, based on the visibility of the skill sets. When the option is enabled, learners and Power Users can assign all skills to content.
• Learners need at least one skill set visible to access the skill experience.

By configuring skill sets, you can tailor the skill experience to different groups or branches in your organization.

The “All skills” skill set differs from others as it provides access to all predefined Docebo skills, even those outside your platform catalog. It is useful for organizations that do not wish to manage their own skill classification. However, consider the following:

• Using this skill set can make it difficult to control your skill catalog, as learners can assign any predefined Docebo skill to their profiles or contributions
• Skills not present in your platform catalog will be automatically added the first time they are assigned to a learner’s profile or to content
• To maintain control over your skills catalog and prevent learners from accessing irrelevant skills, we recommend unpublishing the "All skills" skill set.

Recommendations for using skill sets:

• Unpublish the "All skills" set: This prevents learners from receiving suggestions for skills that are not relevant to your organization. If you prefer not to configure your own skill catalog, consider keeping the "All skills" set to simplify setup.
• Use targeted skill sets: Create specialized sets for specific employee groups while keeping general ones for company-wide use
• Assign skill sets by job roles: You can manage the visibility of skill sets based on learners’ roles in your organization. By focusing on relevant skills for each role, you help learners focus on key areas and enable the AI to provide more targeted, effective recommendations.

Assigning skills to content

Skills can be assigned to courses and to assets contributed by learners. Assigning skills is a crucial step to ensure learners can discover and access relevant learning opportunities aligned with their needs.

There are two ways to assign skills to content:

• Manual assignment: Administrators and Power Users can assign skills to courses, while learners can assign skills to their own contributions. When content is created or shared, the platform AI suggests relevant skills that users can choose to add. Users can also manually search for additional skills from the platform catalog—or from the entire Docebo catalog, if the full skill catalog visibility option is enabled.
• AI-powered assignment: To save time and improve consistency, enable Docebo’s AI-powered tool for automatic skill assignment. This tool analyzes content metadata, such as titles and descriptions, to automatically assign relevant skills from your platform catalog. Ensure your platform catalog is fully set up before enabling this feature. You can manage auto skill assignment in the artificial intelligence configuration panel.

Creating learner skill profiles

Learners must configure their skills to fully benefit from the skill experience: they track progress, receive AI-driven recommendations, and define development goals. Learners can manage their skills from their profile or from their Skills dashboard if enabled. Learn how to enable the Skills dashboard for your learners.

If your organization manages skills in an external talent management system (HCM, HRIS, or TMS), you can integrate it with Docebo to synchronize learner skill profiles. Learn more about integrating skills with external systems.

A learner’s skill profile includes:

• Job selection: Learners can choose a job from a predefined list based on ESCO (opens in a new tab) or enter a custom job title
• Skill management: Learners can add up to 50 skills to their profile and select their level of competence
• Skill targets: Learners can define up to 10 priority skills to focus on improving
• AI recommendations: Based on their selected job, visible skill sets, and platform catalog, learners receive AI-generated skill suggestions. If the “All skills” skill set is published, recommendations will draw from all predefined Docebo skills.

Tip: Encourage learners to regularly update their skill profiles to receive the most relevant training recommendations.

Supporting skill development as a manager

Managers play a key role in guiding their teams’ skill development. Enable the Skills dashboard to allow them to track team progress, provide skill suggestions, and support learning initiatives.

When the Skills dashboard is enabled, managers can:

• Monitor team skill progress: View updates on jobs, skills, and target levels.
• Suggest skills: Recommend skills that learners should add to their profiles
• Propose skill levels: Suggest current and target levels of competence for specific skills.
• Ensure relevant training is available: Identify skill gaps and confirm that necessary learning content is accessible.

Learners can accept or decline skill and level suggestions from their manager. Learn more on the My team page and on team members’ skills overview page.

Tip: Enable the Skill updates notification to keep learners informed when managers provide recommendations.

Receiving skill-based recommendations

The Docebo platform provides AI-powered recommendations to help learners discover training content aligned with their skills. Learners can access skill-based recommendations through:

• AI-based channels: These channels suggest courses and assets related to specific skills
  • AI-based channels can focus on general skill development or be tailored to specific skills or skill targets
  • Visibility can be restricted to certain user groups or branches, ensuring recommendations are relevant to the right audience
• The My skills page: This reflects the content available in the My skills channel (your platform’s default AI based channel) and must be added to the platform menu for learners to access it
• The Skills dashboard and the My skills page in learners’ profiles: These pages display skill-related recommendations based on learners’ job and skills, including content that others with similar skills have frequently accessed. From each skill listed, learners can directly access all related courses and assets available in the platform with a single click.

Disabling or limiting the skill experience

If you want to restrict or completely disable the skills functionality in Docebo, you can do so by adjusting the visibility of skill-related features.

To completely disable the skill experience:

• Unpublish all skill sets: This prevents learners from selecting and using skills in their profiles or content
• Unpublish all AI-based channels: This disables the Skills dashboard and skill-based recommendations for learners
• Remove skills overview and Skills dashboard: Disable this option to prevent managers from tracking team skills. Learn how to enable or disable the skills overview and Skills dashboard.
• Disable auto skill assignment: This ensures that skills aren't automatically associated with content. You can manage auto skill assignment in the artificial intelligence configuration panel.

To restrict the skills experience to selected learners:

• Assign skill sets only to specific groups or branches: This allows controlled access to skills for certain learners while restricting it for others
• Disable full catalog visibility: When assigning skills to content, users can only choose among the skills they have visibility on, rather than the entire platform catalog. Learn how to disable the full skill catalog visibility.
• Restrict access to AI-based channels: Adjust visibility settings to ensure only relevant users see skill-based recommendations.

Tip: Even if the skill experience is limited, learners can still assign skills to the assets they share based on the skill sets they have access to.