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 new Reports and a new 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.

1. Navigate to the Courses Report.
2. Select the desired Online Course or 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. Choose specific Proficiency Level of the given Job Skill or leave as “None Selected”.
7. Repeat steps 5 & 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 will present 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 will be indicated by an asterisk (*) next to the Skill name. Additional recommended Skills will be listed below the Add recommended button.  Note that 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 will be indicated by an asterisk (*) next to the Skill name. Additional recommended Skills will be 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 will automatically apply 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.

Messages

There are four new 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, please advise the following:

1. In the Admin Experience, click on 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, please advise the following:

1. Click on the Setup tile in the menu on the left hand side of the page.
   
2. Click on Message Templates.
   
3. On the Message Templates Report, click on 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 will be 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 are detailed in the table below.

New Permissions

There are several new Permissions that have been added as a part of Absorb Skills. Once the feature is enabled on a Portal, they will be visible on the View and Edit Role page for Admins.

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

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