Introduction

In your platform, you can manage user levels, roles, and user statuses in order to better regulate registration, access to certain features, responsibilities, and maintenance of your platform. Let’s take a look at both user levels, roles, and statuses (both in the platform and within courses).

User levels in the platform

There are three user levels available within your platform: Users, Power Users, and Superadmins. The user level is set for the first time when the user is created in the platform but can be changed over time from the User management area.

Users

The majority of people who access your platform will likely be users. A user is a level that has basic permissions. Users are able to attend courses and learning plans, and they can view training materials but cannot manage any platform app, feature, and setting, nor the Admin menu. When users log into the platform, they can access the functionalities they have permission to see from the main menu associated with their user profile.

Superadmins

They are able to manage every aspect of the platform. They have visibility of all apps, features, and settings. There is no way to limit a Superadmin’s permissions within the system. They are able to access any area of the platform from the gear icon in the top right corner of the platform, which grants them access to the Admin menu. You likely will have only one or a handful of Superadmins.

Power Users

A third user level, Power User, is available in the platform. Power Users are users who need to perform specific management operations or oversee specific user groups or courses in the platform, and, for this reason, they are given a specific subset of the Superadmin’s permissions. Power Users can access the Admin menu from the gear icon, but their menu will be limited based on their specific set of granted permissions. Learn more about the permissions visible and configurable by each of the user levels.

User roles in the platform

Users can assume one or more roles in the platform, independently from their user level. The roles in the platform are learner, tutor, instructor, manager, and expert.

Learners 

They represent the majority of your users since learners are the target audience of learning platforms. It is highly likely that all of the people you identify with the level users are learners, but Superadmins and Power Users can be learners too, since they may also be involved in the training program of your company. The learner role is assigned when a user is enrolled in a course. Refer to the Learner guide for a comprehensive manual on how learners interact with the platform.

Tutors

They have the exact same permissions as learners within a course, but they are also able to moderate forums if the forum widget is activated in the course.

Instructors

They actually lead the courses in your platform and can manage some course settings within the platform for E-Learning, and ILT (Instructor-Led Training) courses. Instructors can upload training materials for courses, manage the content and the layout of courses in the platform, view the course’s enrollments and reports, evaluate users of classroom courses, mark their attendance and add recordings to ILT webinar events. Instructors cannot enroll users in courses. The instructor role is assigned when a user is enrolled in a course. Refer to the Instructor Guide for a comprehensive guide on what instructors can do in the platform.

Managers

They can monitor the activity of their team members directly by managing parts of their learning experience or contacting them to investigate certain situations. Depending on how the Superadmin configures the platform, managers may be able to build their own team. Managers can also enroll users in courses and learning plans. A user becomes a manager when a Superadmin or a Power User (with granted permissions) assigns some team members to him/her.

Experts

They are platform users considered more experienced than others in a certain field or topic, which means that they can help other learners better contribute to your platform’s knowledge repository by peer-reviewing the content that they’re sharing, answering questions, and more. Experts may be assigned to one or more channels. Channel experts can review content uploaded by the learners and, through the peer-review process, publish or reject it. They can also answer questions from learners about the channel that they manage or about specific assets. Refer to the Expert guide for more details on experts. The expert role is only available when the Discover, Coach & Share module is active in your platform. 

Please note! Check out the comparison chart (opens in a new tab) of each capability for these three course levels.

Statuses of user accounts

Irrespective of the user’s level or role, every user account on the platform can have one of three statuses, visible in the user management page:

Activated:  The user has access to the platform

Deactivated: The user does not have access to the platform

Expired: The user no longer has access to the platform because the specified date was reached

The accounts of Expired and Deactivated users continue to exist, and their data is not deleted.

➣ For more information about these statuses, and how they are set, see the article User account statuses. 

Tip: User accounts that are awaiting approval are not visible yet in the user management page. Instead, they are found in a separate Pending users page. Since these accounts have not yet been created, they do not have any platform status. For more information see the article Creating and managing users > Pending users.

User statuses in courses

Superadmins can manually manage and change the statuses of users on a course's Enrollments page in the platform. There are five possible course statuses for users:

Enrolled

These users are enrolled in the course but have not yet started any training material within the course. For ILT courses, these users are enrolled in the course but have not yet attended the session(s) in which they are enrolled. Users can freely access the course from their My courses and learning plans area.

In progress

These users are enrolled in the course and they have started viewing the training material in the course, but they have not completed the course. For ILT sessions, these users are enrolled in the course and they have either selected a session or started viewing the training material but have not yet completed all of it, regardless of whether they have attended sessions or not. This status may appear for ILT courses if the user has attended only part of the total number of sessions in which they have been enrolled.

Completed

These users are enrolled in the course and they have already completed the course or all sessions in which they are enrolled in an ILT course. An E-learning course is considered completed when the learner has completed all of the training material of the course. An ILT course is considered complete when the learner has completed of all the sessions in which they are enrolled. The completion of a session can be configured according to your needs. Refer to the article Creating and Managing ILT and VILT Sessions for more information on session completion.

Users can freely access the course from their My courses and learning plans area.

Waiting users

These users have self-enrolled (or were enrolled by someone else) into the course, but they are waiting for Admin approval before being able to access the course. They need Admin approval either because of the enrollment policy of the course or the enrollment capacities. Learn more about enrollment policies for courses. While waiting for enrollment approval, these users do not have access to the course, but they will see a waiting list page when trying to access the course from the My Courses and Learning Plans area.

Enrollment to confirm

These users are enrolled in an ILT course, but they are waiting on approval to be enrolled in a session of that course, either due to enrollment policies or session capacities. While waiting for enrollment approval into a session, these users have access to the course from the My courses and learning plans area, and they can view the training material in the course. However, they will not be able to actively attend a session of the course. Note that this status appears for E-Learning courses as well, but it serves the same functionality as the Waiting Users status.

Suspended

These users can access the platform, but they cannot access courses in which they have been suspended. A user is manually suspended in a course by the Superadmin or Power User managing the course. They will not have access to training material or any course page for the courses in which they're suspended.

Overbooking

As a Superadmin, you can manually assign this status to users after they have been enrolled in a course by editing the status of their enrollment. When in this status, users are enrolled in the course, but they cannot access it. This enrollment status is only available for e-learning courses, and it is not available for ILT courses or sessions. 

As the Superadmin (or a Power User with correct permissions in a course), you can always manually edit the user’s status in a course at any time. To do so, access the Admin menu from the gear icon, then select the Course management subitem in the E-Learning section. Find the course in the list on the main Course management page, click on the course description and, once in the course area, move to the Enrollments tab.

Find the user on the course’s Enrollments page, then press the menu icon in the user’s item. Then, select Edit enrollment. In the pop-up box, you can change the user’s level or status in the course. When finished, press Confirm. For more information on managing users in courses, refer to the articles in the Course management section.

User statuses in learning plans

The user learning plan enrollment status depends on the user enrollment status in the courses composing the learning plan or, depending on the learning plan settings, on the progress status in the courses of the learning plan the user is enrolled in. The available options are:

Enrolled / Not started

The user is enrolled in at least one of the courses composing the learning plan and hasn’t started any of them. 

In progress

The user is enrolled in all of the courses composing the learning plan or in part of them, and:

• the enrollment status of at least one of the courses is In Progress
• the user completed at least one course and is enrolled in at least another course of the learning plan

Completed

The user has completed all of the courses of the learning plan he or she is enrolled in or their enrollment status in the courses composing the learning plan is Waiting Users, Enrollment to confirm, Suspended, or Overbooking.