This article is about the paid add-on Absorb Skills. For information on purchasing this service, please reach out to your Client Success representative.

• Click here to view the Absorb Skills Introduction.

To accommodate Absorb Skills and offer Administrators the ability to effectively review Skills related information such as Job Skills, Absorb Skills includes Reports and a dedicated section on the Add / Edit Course page.

Once enabled on a Portal, all Skills-related Reports can be found in the Skills section of the global navigation.

Mapping Job Skills to Courses

An Admin is able to manually map Job Skills to existing content in their LMS.

To map Job Skills to a Course, follow the steps below:

1. Navigate to the Courses Report.
2. Select the desired Online Course, Curriculum, or Instructor Led Course (ILC).
3. Open and navigate to the Skills section of the Edit Course form.
4. Click Add Skills.
5. Using the modal, select your desired Job Skill to map to the Course.
6. Select the specific Proficiency Level of the given Job Skill, or leave it as None Selected.
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 until all desired Job Skills have been added.
8. Publish the Course.
   • Ensure Self Enrollment Rules match the Learners that you want to surface this Course to via Skills.

An example of adding Skills to a Course is shown in the GIF below:

Skill Tagging

Absorb supports Automated Skill Tagging for Online Courses, ILCs, and Curricula using a machine learning (ML) model powered by Lightcast Skills.

How Auto-Tagging Works

Automatic Tagging is powered by a proprietary ML model trained on Lightcast's Skills Taxonomy. It uses the following Course metadata to suggest the most relevant Job Skills:

• Course Name
• Course Description
• Course Tags

Using this data, Absorb presents a ranked list of recommended Skills that Admins can accept, remove, or override.

Automatic Tagging in Online Courses and ILCs

To add Skills using Automatic Tagging in Online Courses and ILCs, follow the steps below:

1. Open the Courses Report and select an Online Course or an ILC.
2. In the Edit Course form, navigate to the General section and confirm that Automatic Tagging is toggled on.
   
    
3. Navigate to the Skills section. Recommended Skills are indicated by an asterisk (*) next to the Skill name. Additional recommended Skills are listed below the Add recommended button. Note: This button may only appear when the Course Title, Description, or Tags have been changed and the recommendation engine finds at least one Skill that is not already tagged on the Course.
4. Click the Add recommended button to add all recommended Skills. You can also manually add specific Skills by clicking the button with that Skill and a + icon, or click Add Skills to manually select Skills.
   
    
5. Review the list of recommended Skills. Remove any Skills that should not be included using the Delete button on the right-hand side of the Skills list. Click the Expand button between the Proficiency Level and the Delete button to view a Skill's description.
6. You can also add optional Proficiency Levels to Skills that do not already have them. Click the drop-down on the right-hand side of a Skill to assign a Proficiency Level to it.
7. Click Publish to save.

Automatic Tagging in Curricula

To add Skills using Automatic Tagging on a Curriculum, follow the steps below:

1. Open the Courses Report and select a Curriculum.
2. In the Edit Curriculum form, navigate to the General section and confirm that Automatic Tagging is toggled on.

3. Navigate to the Skills section. Recommended Skills are indicated by an asterisk (*) next to the Skill name. Additional recommended Skills are listed below the Add recommended button.

   Add Recommended Button Availability

   Note that this button may only appear when a Name, Description, or Tags on the Curriculum or on one or more Courses in the Curriculum has changed, and the recommendation engine finds at least one Skill that is not already tagged on the Curriculum.

   The button will also appear if the Skills for one of the related Courses has changed and introduces a new Skill to the Curriculum.

4. Click the Add recommended button to add all recommended Skills. You can also manually add specific Skills by clicking the button with that Skill and a + icon, or click Add Skills to manually select Skills.
5. Review the list of recommended Skills. Remove any Skills that should not be included using the Delete button on the right-hand side of the Skills list. Click the Expand button between the Proficiency Level and the Delete button to view a Skill's description.
6. You can also add optional Proficiency Levels to Skills that do not already have them. Click the drop-down on the right-hand side of a Skill to assign a Proficiency Level to it.
7. Click Publish to save.

Bulk Tagging (Online Courses Only)

You can also add recommended Skills to multiple Online Courses at once using bulk edit actions. To complete this, follow the steps below:

1. From the Courses Report, select multiple Online Courses.
2. Click Edit Multiple in the Mass Actions menu.
   
    
3. Navigate to the Skills tab and toggle on Skills.
4. Click the Action menu and select Add from the available drop-down options.
5. Click Recommended under Skills.
6. Choose Action Add with Recommended selected. This automatically applies unique Skill suggestions to each individual Course.
   
    
7. Click Publish.

Partner-Supported Content (Pre-Tagged)

Courses from the following partner libraries are already tagged and do not require auto-tagging:

• AmplifyMax Library
• LinkedIn Learning

When these courses are pulled in from the Content Catalog, skills are automatically applied during conversion. As such, auto-tagging only applies to:

• All other non-partner content, including custom and internally developed Online Courses.

Importing Skills with a CSV File

Admins with the Skills - Modify Permission can add or update multiple Skills at once by importing a CSV file. The file must match the exact column structure described below, or the upload is rejected before any Skills are created. For details on enabling Skills and the Permissions required, see Skills: Configuring Skills & Licensing.

File Requirements

Before uploading, confirm that the file meets each of the following requirements:

• The file uses the .csv file extension.
• The file is no larger than 10 MB.
• The file contains no more than 10,000 Skill rows, not counting the header row.
• The file contains at least one Skill row below the header row.
• The file contains all nine required column headers, in the required order, with no additional columns.

Required Column Headers

The CSV file must contain the following nine column headers, spelled exactly as shown and arranged in this order. Each column header is described in the table below.

How Existing Skills Are Matched

Each row in the file is matched against your existing Skills by the value in the Name column, and the result determines whether a Skill is updated or created:

• If a Skill with the same name already exists, that Skill is updated with the values in the row.
• If no Skill with that name exists, a new Skill is created. When the row includes a SkillId, that value is used as the identifier for the new Skill. When it is blank, an identifier is generated automatically.

Rows without a value in the Name column are skipped and reported as invalid. The remaining rows in the file are still processed.

Messages

There are five Message Templates that can be enabled for the Skills workflows. These messages are intended to direct Learners to the Skills feature and keep them engaged through their Skills journey.

To enable these Message Templates, follow the steps below:

1. In the Admin Experience (AE), click the Account button in the top right corner.
   
2. Click Client Settings.
   
3. On the Client Settings page, click the Skills card.
4. In the Skills overlay, scroll down to Messages and click the toggle ON.
5. Click Save.
   

The Message Templates can be accessed through the Message Templates Report. To locate these templates, follow the steps below:

1. Click the Setup tile in the menu on the left-hand side of the page.
   
2. Click Message Templates.
   
3. On the Message Templates Report, click the Filter icon.
   
4. Click the Parameter dropdown and select Type from the available options.
5. Click the Value dropdown and select the desired Message Template from the available options.
   
6. Click Add Filter. The filter criteria are applied to the report automatically.
7. Select the template.
8. Click Edit Template from the Actions menu on the right-hand side of the screen.
   
9. In the Edit Message Template window, adjust the Template as required.
10. Click Save.

Each of the Message Templates is detailed in the table below.

Skills Permissions

Absorb Skills includes a dedicated set of Permissions. Once the feature is enabled on a Portal, these Permissions are visible in the Skills section of the View and Edit Role pages for Admins. For broader context on configuring Roles, see Admin Roles & Permissions.

These Permissions are automatically added to the following default LMS Roles:

• Admin
• System Admin
• Reporter (View Permissions only)

Each Permission available in the Skills section is described in the table below.