Purchasing subscriptions as a Power User – Docebo Help & Support

Introduction

On platforms with e-commerce, Power Users may have the option of purchasing subscriptions. They can purchase subscriptions for their own use, like any other learner. However a more typical case is where a Power User purchases a subscription in order to distribute its seats or licenses to other users.

The configuration of subscriptions is covered in the article Creating and managing subscription plans. As explained in that article, a subscription consists of a bundle (a collection of one or more catalogs), made available for purchase through a plan. Specifically, there can be:

Single-license plans: The purchase grants access to all the bundle’s content for a specified amount of time, for one user. This is the only type of plan that learners can purchase for themselves. Power Users can also purchase this type of plan, either for themselves or for another designated user.
Multi-license plans: These can only be purchased by Power Users. The purchase grants access to a certain number of licenses, which the Power User can then distribute to users. When a user receives a license they have access to all the bundle’s content, for a specified amount of time.
Seat-based plans: These also can only be purchased by Power Users. The purchase grants access to a certain number of seats, which the Power User can then use to enroll users in any course that is part of the bundle. Each seat allows a course enrollment for one user.

When a Power User purchases a seat-based or multi-license subscription, at the time of purchase they must specify the user group or branch for which that subscription will be used.
→This does not mean that all members of the selected group or branch are automatically granted access to the bundle’s content. It only means that the Power User can later assign seats or licenses from that subscription among members of the selected group or branch.

This article covers how Power Users can make subscription purchases and then handle the subsequent assignment of subscription seats/licenses, including the required permissions and visibility for various actions.

Please note that Superadmins cannot purchase subscriptions. However they can manually create a subscription transaction which has the same effect as completing a purchase.

Visibility of subscription plans to Power Users

To be able to purchase a subscription, any user (including Power Users) needs to have visibility of the bundle as a learner. This means they must belong to one of the groups or branches assigned to the subscription bundle.

Power Users can purchase subscriptions from:

The Subscription plans built-in page: Unlike learners, who only see single-license subscriptions, Power Users can purchase here any type of plan (single-license, multi-license and seats-based subscriptions), provided they have visibility of the bundle
The Public catalog page, if configured. From here, Power Users can purchase only the same subscriptions as any other user: single-license subscriptions set to be visible to everyone.

Browse and purchase a subscription plan (as a Power User)

Power Users can browse the subscriptions available to them from the Subscription plans built in page, accessed from the user menu.

The basic flow is the same as that followed by learners. See the article Purchasing subscriptions as a learner > The Subscription plans page. The main difference here is that:

Power Users will also have available for purchase subscriptions with seat-based and multi-license plans.

Multi-license or seat-based purchase:

After selecting to purchase a seat-based or multi-license plan, in the shopping cart the Power User must click Select group or branch and specify the group or branch among which the seats or licenses can be distributed.

→ Remember, this does not automatically grant seats or licenses to the members of the selected group or branch. It means that the Power User can later assign the purchased seats or licenses only to members of the specified group/branch. See the chapter Managing subscription seats and licenses.
- It is possible to specify either one group or one branch only.
- The Power User will see available only the groups or branches assigned to them as resource. To be able to select a group, the Groups/View permission is needed.

Single-license purchase:

After selecting to purchase a single-license plan, in the shopping cart the Power User must designate a recipient in the User field. They can either:
- Opt to purchase the license for themselves, in this case the field must be left blank
- Specify another individual user for whom the license is being purchased. The Power User will see available for selection only their assigned users (either individually assigned, or belonging to a group or branch assigned as resource).

In either case, upon completing payment the subscription license will be directly assigned to the designated recipient.

Tip: Power Users with the Purchase on behalf permission will see a Purchase recipient option at the top of the shopping cart page, allowing them to select Buy for another user.
However, when purchasing subscriptions, it is recommended to leave this option set to Buy for myself. Instead, in the Items section of the cart, they can then specify the recipient—whether a user, group, or branch—for each subscription plan individually.

Managing subscription seats and licenses

The seats or licenses of a purchased subscription plan can be allocated to users from the Manage seats page. To access it, select Navigation menu > Configuration (spanner icon) > E-commerce > Subscription seats and licenses.
→ Power Users will require the Subscription records > Manage seats permission to be able to open this page, and will see listed only the subscriptions purchased (by themselves, or by other Power Users) for branches / groups / or individual users assigned as resource to the Power User. Superadmins will instead see all purchased subscription plans.

Note: Subscriptions purchased for groups or branches will be visible here to Power Users who have the same group or branch assigned as resource. For example, if a subscription was purchased for the branch “marketing”, it is not enough to be assigned the individual users belonging to that branch. The Power User must be assigned the branch itself.

Subscriptions purchased for an individual user will be visible here to Power Users who have that user assigned as resource, either directly or through a branch or group assignment.

→ If you remove a group/branch/user resource assignments from a Power User, they will lose access in Manage seats to any subscriptions purchased for that group, branch or user. But other Power Users who still retain access to that group, branch, or user will still be able to manage the subscription.

Each plan purchase is shown on a separate row, with details provided in the columns. You can click the columns icon to customize which columns are shown. In particular:

The Created by column shows which user made the purchase (or manually created the transaction). As noted above, Power Users will be able to see here the subscriptions purchased for users / groups / branches visible to them. And the Purchase date column shows when the purchase was made, or transaction created.
The Transaction code identifying this plan purchase.
The Name column shows the name of the record, Bundle name shows the name of the subscription bundle and the Plan name column shows the name of the plan. Remember that the same bundle of content may be sold under multiple plans. The Expiration column shows when the validity period of the plan ends.
The Type column shows whether the purchased subscription was for seats or licenses and the Assigned column shows how many of those seats or licenses have already been used <number assigned / total number of seats or licenses purchased>. For example, if Type=seats and Assigned = 0/50 it means the plan purchased was for 50 seats, and none of these have yet been used.
The Associated users column shows how many seats or licenses are currently granted to users.

Tip: The Assigned column may not always match the Associated users count. For example, if a license is unassigned from a user, the Associated users count is decreased. But if the license is not refunded, the Assigned column will stay the same, indicating the license has not been freed up.

Assign subscription licenses to users

For a license-based plan, assigning a license to a user will grant that user access to the entire contents of the bundle until the expiration date. The user will see a “subscribed” label on all the included content, and can freely enroll in any of the courses or learning plans.

To assign a license, click the ellipsis menu on the row of the purchased plan (it must be of type = licenses) and select Assign licenses. In the panel that opens, the Users tab will show all the users who are eligible to be assigned a license from this plan:

For multi-license plans, the eligible users are the members of the group or branch that was specified at the time of purchase.
For single-license plans, the only eligible user is the individual who was designated at the time of purchase.

Note that users who are already assigned a license will not be shown in the Users tab.

Select the check boxes next to the users to whom you wish to assign a subscription license and click Confirm.

Note: If the plan is set to Enforce limit, the number of licenses must be sufficient for all the users you have selected. However if limits are not enforced, you can assign more licenses than those included in the plan.

When you assign licenses: The Associated users column updates to show the new number of licenses assigned, and the Assigned column also updates to show licenses assigned / total licenses in the plan.

Unassign licenses

You can also unassign previously assigned licenses from the Manage seats page. To do this, from the ellipsis menu select Unassign licenses. The panel that opens will show all the users currently assigned a license. Select the ones you want to unassign and click Confirm.

When a Power User unassigns licenses, if Allow licenses refunding is set to off, the counter of the Assigned column is not updated until a Superadmin unassigns the same licenses, thus confirming the action of the Power User. The counter of the Associated users column is instead always updated.

Note: When you unassign a license from a user they lose access to the subscription content. This means it will no longer be marked “subscribed” and available for them to enroll in. Any courses or learning plans in which the user had enrolled through the license will become “locked” and their enrollments marked as expired on the date when you unassigned the license. To admit the user back to the locked content, edit their enrollment in the Enrollments tab for courses and in the Assign users section for learning plans by changing the end of validity date.

Enroll users in subscribed content

In the Manage seats page, the ellipsis menu Enroll users action is available for both license and seats-based subscriptions.

For seats-based plans, it lets you select one or more of the eligible users (members of the group or branch selected at the time of purchase), and enroll them in one or more courses or learning plans. Each enrollment will use up one seat, per user and per course.
For license-based plans, it lets you select one or more of the users who have been assigned a license (for this, you need to do the Assign license action first) and enroll them in one or more courses or learning plans. In this case the enrollment is included in the user’s license.

To enroll a user in subscription content from the Manage seats page:

On the row of the subscription plan, click the ellipsis icon and select Enroll users.
In the panel that opens, select the user or users to be enrolled. The list will show only the users eligible for enrollment with that subscription (meaning the members of the group or branch for which the subscription was purchased). Then click Next.
Now select the courses or learning plans in which you want to enroll the selected users.
- For Superadmins the list will show all the courses and learning plans included in the bundle.
- For Power Users, the list will show only those courses and learning plans in the bundle that are also assigned as resource to the Power User.
Set the desired enrollment level and the enrollment validity dates, if needed. When you are finished, click Confirm.
→ The selected users will be enrolled in the selected content. A message will inform you if any enrollments have been skipped because a user was already enrolled.

Tip: No additional Power User permissions, apart from Subscription record/Manage seats, are needed to complete enrollments from the Manage seats page.
- In the case of learning plans the users will be directly enrolled, in both the learning plan and its courses.
- In the case of a course enrollment the user will be enrolled but with status to confirm, if the Power User lacks the permission Enrollment / Can activate enrollments.
For more details see the chapter Power User permissions and resources for subscriptions

Power User permissions and resources for subscriptions

To complete a purchase: To be able to purchase a subscription plan, Power Users do not require any particular permissions. However the purchased plan can only be associated to individual users, groups, or branches assigned as resource to the Power User. And to associate a group, the Groups/View permission is needed.

To assign licenses or enroll users: The Subscription record/Manage seats permission is needed to access the Manage seats page.

From this page, and with only this permission, Power Users can assign licenses for the subscriptions to the eligible users designated at the time of purchase. They can also enroll eligible users in courses or learning plans included in the subscription, but choosing only from the content that is also assigned as resource to the Power User.

Enrollments can be completed successfully without any other permissions:

For courses, the user will be enrolled with status “Enrollment to confirm”. If you add the permission Enrollment / Can activate enrollments, then the user will be enrolled directly with status “Enrolled”.
For learning plans, the user will be enrolled directly with status “Enrolled” in both the learning plan and in all its constituent courses (without any need for the “can activate enrollments permission)

If you want the Power User to be able to check the enrollments in Course management then add the permissions Courses / View and Enrollments /View. This will allow them to view the Enrollments tab of the Course page in read-only mode.

If you want the Power user to be able to check the enrollments in Learning plan management, then add the permissions Learning plans/View and Enrollment/Manage learning plan enrollments. This will allow them to access the Enrollments tab of the Learning plan page in edit mode (in this case the Power User can also edit the enrollment):

Additional notes:

Power Users can create subscriptions via the Subscriptions > Transactions management page.
A Power User can only renew their own subscriptions (either via the Subscriptions > Transactions management page or through the Manage Seats management page).
In case the Power User paid for the subscription, then the renewal will trigger a payment.