Just like magic: The TalentLMS automations you need

Let’s tell it like it is: deploying employee training is a process of 1,000 small but critical steps. From identifying your training needs to launching, marketing, and keeping track of training, there’s an incredible amount of work to be done. Any opportunity that comes along to take something off your plate is more than welcome.

Enter, LMS automations.

LMS automations allow you to select certain actions to be automatically performed by your LMS when a specific event occurs. It’s as simple as “if it rains, take an umbrella.” You only need to create the rule once, and the LMS will keep track of the events and perform the desired action. Automatically. No questions asked. Cool, huh?

Why use automations

The real question is, why wouldn’t you?

1. Save time and energy

Think about certificates nearing their expiration date. You start receiving notifications (or check your calendar) and reassign the course, manually, to every single employee. Sure enough, not everyone completes training at the same time, so you should expect this to be a straightforward process.

You might also want to deactivate inactive users, like employees who don’t work with you anymore, to make room for new ones.

It goes without saying that when someone else does the job for you, that frees up time in your schedule. Plus, it unburdens your workload, which is always most welcome. With LMS automations, you don’t need to be constantly checking who’s done what, and what needs to be done next.

Instead, you can use your time and energy to work on your next training program, discover more training content, or just sit back and take a break. Automations simplify the training process allowing you to focus on the stuff that matters the most.

2. Avoid repetitive tasks

Although there’s comfort in repetitive tasks, there’s also much boredom after a certain point. When organizing and managing employee training, there are a few tasks you’ll need to do over and over, like assigning courses or deactivating users. And most of the time, you’d rather be doing something more productive or fun.

Setting automations through your training platform is the best way to get rid of repetitive tasks. With automations, you only have to do these tasks once. Just tell the LMS what it needs to do every time a certain action is completed or a goal is reached, and consider the matter closed.

3. Stay on top of your training

The life of a training manager without automations is mostly “going after” their learners. That’s not only stressful, but it’s also in vain. Picture this:

Let’s say you are offering a ”Negotiation skills” course. You would like anyone who attends this course to join “Advance sales techniques” two weeks into the negotiation skills course. Next, you have to monitor which employee starts the “Negotiation skills” training, set a reminder to enroll them in “Advanced sales techniques,” and actually enroll them after two weeks’ time.

In short, trying to keep track of things with reminders and sticky notes will create havoc in your brain. Automations ensure you never miss any important milestones in your employee training program without stressing too much about it. Everything you need to remember and keep track of, your LMS will remember for you.

This way, you avoid mistakes that might put your company in trouble, e.g, in the case of expired certifications, or stall employees and cause frustration. All your energy and creativity could now go into marketing your training and engaging learners, instead of “chasing” them to log into their portal or re-take a course.

Automations in TalentLMS

TalentLMS is all about making your life easier, so we’re offering a generous number of options to automate your most common tasks. They’re all parametrizable, so you can tailor them to your needs.

You might, for example, use TalentLMS automations to assign a course to your learners when they complete a previous course, or only when they get a specific score or higher. You could also end a learner’s “lease” of a course when their certification expires so that they have to purchase it again if they want to get re-certified.

Note that TalentLMS automations are available with all the Plus and Premium plans. 

Set automated notifications and actions with TalentLMS
Avoid manual and repetitive tasks, and free up your time.
Easy to set up, easy to use, easy to customize.

Creating your own automations

Creating your own automations in TalentLMS is surprisingly easy. Have a look at this video that walks you through the process or keep reading for the step-by-step instructions.

To start working with TalentLMS automations, first, you need to log into your portal as an Administrator.

Now visit the Events Engine section, and on the Notifications/Automations switch, click Automations. You’ll be shown a list of all of your existing automations, with options to edit or delete any of them.

Or, if you haven’t yet created any, you’ll be prompted to create your first automation.

Type a name, and the dropdown menu will reveal the 19 available TalentLMS automations. Choose the one you want, and tailor it to your needs:

• Z hours after course X assignment, assign course(s) Y
• Z hours after course X completion, assign course(s) Y
• Z hours after course X certification expiration, reset and assign course(s) Y
• Z hours before course X expiration, assign course(s) Y
• Z hours before course X certification expiration, reset and assign course(s) Y
• Z hours after course X completion, with a score between K and L, assign course(s) Y
• Z hours after course X failure, assign course(s) Y
• On course X completion, assign course(s) Y
• On course X completion, with a score between K and L, assign course(s)
• On course X completion, call URL Z
• On any course completion, call URL Z
• On course X completion, give Z points
• On level X reached, assign course(s) Y
• On course X certification expiration, reset and assign course(s) Y
• On course X certification expiration, reset and remove course(s) Y
• Deactivate a user if Z hours have passed since last login
• Deactivate a user if Z hours have passed since signup and the user has not made a purchase
• Z hours after user signup, assign course(s) Y
• Z hours after course X completion, deactivate user

Remember when we said earlier that TalentLMS automations are parametrizable? This is what all this alphabet soup of K, L, X, Y, and Z’s you see above is about. They’re placeholders that you get to substitute with the appropriate actual values for your event and action.

For example, if you create a TalentLMS automation based on the template:

“On course X completion, give Z points”

You’ll be asked to determine which course X is and how many points you want to be awarded to the learner that completes it. So, it would look like this:

“On course Marketing Automation completion, give 100 points”

Similarly, if you opt to create an automation based on this template:

“Z hours after course X completion, deactivate user”

You’ll need to fill in the Z and X values, and end up with:

“72 hours after course Problem-Solving completion, deactivate user”

Remember to click Add automation, and you’re done!

So, just like that, your aspiring digital marketers will earn their 100 points. And any learner that has completed “Problem-Solving” will be deactivated three days later. Without you lifting a finger.

Conclusion

And that’s really all you need to know to know about TalentLMS automations.

Almost all of them are similar to the examples above, and each automates a common action (manual assignments, mass grading, etc).

TalentLMS automations let administrators, well, automate, all kinds of manual and menial tasks related to their training program, and are extremely easy to set up and leverage, even for inexperienced users.