···· You have the system, you have the content, but how do you distribute it to your user-base?· This is actually a fairly common question among many TotalLMS administrators.· This is not always an easy question to answer without first reviewing what the options are.· For any roll-out there are three main components; Distribution, Communication, and Reporting.· Each of these are important and if planned properly, can provide the end-users a good experience in the LMS.· This is the first of a three part blog series covering Distribution. ·Let’s get down to business.

Distributing the Content
Within TotalLMS, content can be deployed in one of three ways:

1.······ Direct Links

2.······ Assignment

3.······ Enrollment

1) Direct Links (sometimes called Deep Links) can be found in the Learning Activity properties (under General) and provide direct access to the learning activity registration page in learner mode.· Please note that proper permissions via audiences must be configured before end-users can access the activity.· This is the most simplistic way to deliver training to users by providing them with the direct link so that they do not need to locate the training.· This method requires each user to register for the learning activity and if your company does not utilize your LMS often, then the registration process may be trying with some users.

2) Assignment is the typical form of deploying training to users.· This method when used with audiences is easy to implement for administrators.· Like direct links, user registration is required for assignments.· Within TotalLMS, and depending on which version of TotalLMS is used, there are multiple ways of assigning training.· The advantage of using assignment as a form of deployment is that it allows the training to have a priority and due date listed on the user’s home page.· Assignments can also be removed from a user without making any changes to the learning activity roster as assignment does not create training records.· Let’s take a look at a few of the most common ways assignments are used.·

- Direct Assignment is performed by adding the user assignments directly in the learning activity properties.· This requires an administrator (or equivalent) to add users to the management section of the activity properties.· This method is typically used for individual or small group assignments.· Because of the management required to make the assignment, it is not recommended for large deployments.

- Object Assignments are performed by assigning the learning activity to a group object in TotalLMS.· Some of the valid objects that can have assignments made to them are organizations, audiences, and jobs.· Once an assignment is made to one of these objects, all members of that object are then given the assignment.· You can easily see that this method is advantageous as it allows assignments to a large user-base.· If you have TotalLMS 7.6 or higher, audiences are an excellent option due to their dynamic nature and easy rule changes.· If you have a group of users that do not have common traits such as jobs or domains, then organizations may be a better choice as you can define a static user-base by adding the members of the organization manually.· Jobs are only useful if your company utilizes a job structure within TotalLMS, otherwise organizations or audiences are better choices.

3) Enrollment is a less utilized method of deploying training.· This is due to the large effort required to setup, especially for large groups of users.· To enroll users, an administrator adds the users directly to the roster, which in all accounts, registers the users for the learning activity.· The interesting part of this method is that enrollment does not take audiences nor domain permissions into account.· This means that your user-base is not required to be in the same audience that the learning activity is configured for, which can be very useful in some situations.

That ends Part 1 of this mini-blog series.· In the next part, you will find out the best practices in communicating to those individuals or organizations that you are deploying training to.