Table of Contents

• Overview
• About Locked Departments
• How to Add a Locked Department
• Roles & Permissions

Overview

The Locked Department function is an option made available in the Course's Enrollment Rules setting section.

When a Course has enabled Locked Department, it means:

• The Course is only available to Users who belong to the identified Department
  
  • Users who belong to other Departments will not be aware of the existence of content that had been "locked" 
  • Note: An Admins User Management permissions will influence locked course visibility. For example, if a Course utilizes the Locked Department feature and only wants visibility for "Department B", but an Admin belongs to "Department A" and also has User Management over "Department B", then that Admin will still be able to view or edit the course. 
• The Course can only be administered by the Department Admin(s)
  • Other Admins will not be aware of the existence of content that has been "locked"

This feature is ideal for clients that house sub-Departments for different brands, companies, or audiences within a single Absorb LMS portal, and need to ensure that content is not made visible or available to other administrators or learners.

With Locked Departments, Department Admins will only see Courses and Users who belong to the Department(s) the Admin is responsible for.

Note: Locked Departments must be toggled on within the Portal Settings > Info section of the LMS. 

About Locked Departments

When the Portal Settings > Info > Enable Locked Departments for Courses is enabled (ON) the Locked Departments functionality will be visible in the Course Settings > Enrollment section. 

When a Department is selected in the Locked Department drop-down, Administrators with a custom role will be locked to enrolling users that are only in that Department or any of its sub-Departments.

It will also restrict the visibility within the Admin portal, so that only Admins who manage the identified Locked Department, will have visibility to that Course. When running reports or creating enrollments for users, they will only see the course(s) that are visible to their Department. 

Things to Know

• If Portal Settings > Info > Enable Locked Departments for Courses is enabled to On after you have Learners enrolled into courses, these users will remain enrolled into the Course(s). 
• If Portal Settings > Info > Enable Locked Departments for Courses is enabled to On the Learner's transcripts will not be affected. Even if they are no longer eligible to enroll into the Courses, they will still see the most current completion on their transcripts. 
• If Portal Settings > Info > Enable Locked Departments for Courses is enabled to On the Admins who have visibility of departments outside the Locked Department can add rules to specifically capture or target Users they have visibility of in the Admin interface.

Instructions

How to Add a Locked Department

Step 1

Navigate to the Portal Settings by clicking the silhouette icon from the top right-hand side of the Admin portal. Choose Portals from the sub-menu.  You will be routed to the Info page.

Step 2

From the Portal Settings page, scroll down to the Enable Locked Departments for Courses option.  Toggle the Enable Locked Departments for Courses to On.  Select Save. 

Step 3

After saving your changes in the Portal Settings, you will be routed to the Admin Dashboard.

• From there navigate to the Course menu and choose Courses from the sub-menu. You will land on the Course Administration page, where you can find existing Online Courses, Curriculum, ILC, and Course Bundles or create a new training. 

Step 4

Select Add or Edit to enter into the course settings. 

Step 5

Scroll down to the Enrollment Rules section of the Course settings. There the Admin will be presented with an option to select a Locked Department. Click the Select Department button to search and find the Department you would like to lock the course visibility to. This selection will include the direct department and any sub-departments that have that department as the top hierarchy.  

Update: Absorb will no longer pre-populate a default Department in the Locked Department field when a new course is being created. As many Admins manage multiple departments, we will no longer prepopulate the field with a Department to avoid additional manual work or the possibility of the default Department being incorrect. No changes were made to the values set for existing courses.

Step 6

Continue to scroll down the page to the Course Administrators section of the Course settings. The settings will default with Course Visibility > Specific > Department Visibility with the Locked Department's selected Department. 

Step 7

Complete the rest of your Course setup and select Publish. 

Roles & Permissions

Please note that your environment may use customized Role(s), Permissions, or a combination of both to regulate access to this Report.

Admins must have Generated Reports in their Role, in order to export data to Excel or CSV on any Administration page or Report page.

If you have questions or need assistance, please contact your local System Administrator to review your current permission set. 

Required Role Permissions

Below are the required permissions the Admin will need to have, in order to perform the activities mentioned in this article. 

Suggested Role Permissions

Below are additional permissions you may want to add to an Admin's Role, in order to conduct additional functionality related to items in this article.