Managing Programs

Programs combine learning activities to create a schedule of learning. The Program’s agenda controls the learning schedule, which functions like an academic syllabus. It outlines activities throughout the Program.

For example, you can create a month-long employee Onboarding Program. The agenda can be weekly: different learning activities each week over a month.

• Program ID – Program identifier
• Assignment Type – Defines how this Program is usually assigned (i.e., Required, Optional, etc.)
• Type – Defines the time frame for a Program. This is a required field with three options to choose from:
  • Scheduled: Fixed start and end dates
  • Duration-based: Fixed duration, but users can start at different times
  • Open-ended: Self-paced with no time limitations
• Completion Status – The completion status users will receive upon successful Program completion.

The Program agenda forms the overall structure of the Program. It is broken down into sections, each containing various activities.

The Learning Activities can be internal learning items or external content (such as a link to a welcome video hosted on the company intranet). Open Content Network (OCN) courses may also be added to Programs. A Program may include text descriptions of activities the users must perform outside of SAP SuccessFactors Learning (such as getting a security badge or discussing with HR). Below is a list of activities that are currently supported by Programs:

• Scheduled Only Item
• Online Only Item
• Scheduled and Online Item
• Other Item
• External Course
• Link
• Text
• HTML

Users may be assigned one or more items or curricula by an administrator, their manager, or self-assignment by searching the Library. Administrators can make learning assignments using the following methods: User Record, Manage Assignments Tool, and Assignment Profiles.

Although inefficient, administrators can add an item directly to the user entity's Assigned Items tab. This is called assigning an item not as part of a curriculum or program (also known as a free-floating item assignment). Free-floating item assignments are a one-time requirement. There are no retraining periods associated with this type of assignment.

If an administrator makes a free-floating assignment, the item will be displayed on the user’s Learning Plan, even if they have previously completed the item (successful Learning History/Completed Work record). This is because a free-floating item assignment does not check the user's learning history for itself or any substitutes.

Administrators can also assign a curriculum or program directly to a user. In this case, the system checks the user’s Learning History. If any items from the curriculum are found in Learning History, the system will flag the item as completed in the new curriculum and will not place the item onto the user’s Learning Plan. The exceptions are either if the item requires retraining or if the curricula have been set up to ignore completions too long ago. A program may be configured only to include recent completions as well. Both programs and curricula can recognize substitute completions in determining whether a history record meets their requirements.

For a manual batch assignment of one or more items, curricula, or programs to a user group, using the Manage Assignments tool is easiest. A wizard guides the administrator through a step-by-step process to make batch assignments.

The advantage of using this tool is that administrators can select multiple users and assign one or more items, curricula, or programs to the selected users. The disadvantage of the tool is that the assignment is static. The administrator must manually unassign the training if it no longer applies.

Using Assignment Profiles is how to dynamically assign and unassign items, curricula, programs, user groups, or roles to users. This can also be used as a way to Recommend Learning such as items, programs, or collections to audiences of users.

This figure illustrates one example of an Assignment Profile. In this case, the user must match ALL user attributes to be included.

Administrators can set up an OR relationship between user attributes or a group of user attributes. Many fields on the user entity are available as user attributes, including a combination of:

• City and/or State
• Job location
• Job code
• Organization
• Hire date
• Hire month
• Employee status
• Employee type
• Region
• Manager
• Item completion
• Custom Fields

The previous methods are all determined by administrator actions. Administrators can also make self-assignment available to users and managers by placing certain entities into one or more libraries.

Libraries controls what items, curricula, programs, and classes users can access and managers may assign to their direct reports. When users create content such as QuickGuides and Collections they may publish them to a library to share and recommend them to others.

Learning administrators can assign free-floating items via a downloadable Excel template through the Import Data tool. An Entity Type – Learning Assignment has been added to the Import Data tool for this feature.

If you have several free-floating learning items to assign to users, you can go to each user’s entity in People → Users and navigate to their Assigned Items tab and assign the free-floating items individually or you can import the learning assignments in bulk. When you assign in bulk, you can assign many users many learning items by importing a single Excel spreadsheet.

If you have just one or two free-floating items to add to just one or two users, consider adding those free-floating items through People → Users and the Assigned Items tab.

If you have many free-floating items to add to many users, consider importing through an Excel spreadsheet in System Administration → System Management Tools → Import Data .

Limitations include:

• The latest active revision is considered for the assignment.
• The Assignment date is defaulted to the date of import.
• Excel can optionally include the Names of the employees to make it easier to work with. They are not processed during the import.