Portal Administrators can establish approval requirements for LMS users attempting any of the following activities:
- Course Enrollment -- A student enrolls in a course that is set to require management approval.
- Interest Lists -- A student is ineligible or otherwise unable to enroll in a desired course, and therefore expresses an interest in attending in the future.
- User Self Registration -- A new user wants to register for an account in your LMS portal. For detailed information on this topic, please see related document: User Self Registration Feature.
Any LMS user who is assigned a supervisory Position will have “Employees” and “Approvals” tabs enabled on his or her homepage. These dynamic information feeds allow managerial oversight of all users assigned to the same Organization with direct reporting relationships, as well as easy management of their approval requests as described above. (i.e. The list is scoped according to established Position hierarchy and Company vs. Location level profile assignments).
ESTABLISHING APPROVAL REQUIREMENTS
Course Enrollment
When adding or editing a course, in the “Approval Required” field select Yes, as shown below (A).
Note: If your course has been included in a Subscription Program, you may be provided an additional level of approval options: Non-subscribers only. For more information on configuring a course within a subscription, see related document: Create Subscription Programs for Specific LMS Locations.
Interest Lists
When adding or editing a course, in the “Approval Required” field select Yes and in the “Allow Use of Interest Lists” select Yes, as shown below (A and B). This will cause courses to require approval prior to being placed on the Interest List.
User Self-Registration
To establish the approval requirement for all new user self-registrations, a Portal Administrator must submit a request to the LMS Support team at support@latitudelearning.com. Portal Administrators may view their current setting from the left navigation menu, by selecting Site Management > LMS Information and reviewing the “User registration requires approval” indicator.
Any setup request to Latitude Learning Support should also include information about which LMS users will need to approve pending self-registrations, if any beyond the Portal Administrator. Enabling approvals for other managers and administrators may require opening up additional fields on the User Self-Registration page that would allow requests to be routed to the appropriate supervisors.
Determining Who Can view and manage Pending Requests
The horizontal “Employees” and “Approvals” tabs display on a user’s homepage dynamically, according to that user’s Position and Organization profile assignments, and regardless of Role. The primary factors controlling who can approve any type of request for another LMS user is tied to their supervisory level within the Position Hierarchy and their organizational assignment within the Business Structure. User Role assignments only determine how someone can find and process the approvals.
In the example below, assume that the position hierarchy is TRA > MNG > STF. Even though Susan is a Manager, she can only approve requests for Staff in her assigned locations: Boston and Albany, not Buffalo. Manager Andre can approve for staff in Albany and Buffalo locations, but not Boston. Diana, the Training Administrator, can approve for any organization in the portal. Susan and Andre cannot approve each other’s requests because they are peers.
Employees Tab
The Employees tab provides a list of LMS users for whom you have been granted managerial oversight. This dynamic feed defaults to the Location Employees filter (link at the top of tab), revealing the complete list of active users who have a profile tied to your own Default Location assignment (Default Profile organization) and are assigned Positions subordinate to your own.
This list can be filtered by Position and has additional sorting options in links at the top of the page. Users who have secondary profiles with supervisory responsibilities will need to click the All Direct Reports link to oversee employees at all organizations.
Supervisors can approve employee requests to enroll in a course, add an interest for an offering, or register for a new account within their organization. They are notified of pending requests via automated email messages, letting them know that a user’s activity is pending their approval.
On Latitude's new user interface Navigation page, this feature is found under the My People  icon. The My People page works in the same manner as the original.
Approvals Tabs
Only users assigned the role of Instructor, Administrator or Portal Administrator have the additional Approvals option displayed in their Left Navigation Menu in the Classic user interface. Expand the Approvals section in that menu, and click any of the three related links to search for outstanding requests by category.
Generally, only users who oversee more than one location will benefit from the search function. Managers over single locations would find the same results displayed under their homepage Approvals tab, which can also be filtered by request type.
On the new user interface Navigation page, managers can access this feature using the Approvals  icon.
Manage Pending Enrollments
To manage pending course enrollment requests:
1. From the left navigation menu, select Approvals > Approve Pending Enrollments. Managers without the Portal Administrator, Instructor, or Administrator roles need to select the Approvals tab, then click the Pending Enrollments link.
2. On the "Approve Pending Enrollment" page, provide search criteria to restrict the pending requests returned, or leave blank to see all records. Click Search.
3. If there are requests to review and process:
- For each user you want to enroll in the course, check the Approve box.
- For each user you want to deny enrollment in the course, check the Reject box. In the free-text field below the check box, enter the reason for denial.
- Choose only the requests you are ready to process now, as you can always leave records on the list to process later.
4. Click Submit to save changes.
Manage Pending Interests
When students attempt to enroll themselves in a classroom course that is set to allow interests and require approval, their interest must be approved before they can enroll in an Offering. This type of course configuration allows LMS administrators to utilize demand forecasting to determine when and where they should offer a class next.
To approve a pending interest (Managers with Portal Administrator, Instructor, or Administrator roles):
1. From the left navigation menu, select Approvals > Approve Pending Interests.
2. In the Pending Interests Count column, click the number next to the student whom you wish to approve.
3. Similar to the instructions listed above for managing enrollment requests, select Approve to allow a student's interest or Reject to deny it. Rejected requests require you to enter a reason.
4. Again, choose only the requests you are ready to process now, as you can always leave records on the list to process later. Click Submit to save changes.
To approve a pending interest (Managers with Guest, Student, Location Manager, or Location Administrator roles):
1. From your home page, select the Approvals tab.
2. Click the Interests link.
3. The Pending Interests page lists all users under your purview who are awaiting approval for course interest records. Select Approve to allow the interest or Reject to deny it. Rejected requests require you to enter a reason.
4. Click Submit to complete the process.
Manage Pending User Registrations
Portal Administrators with Company-level profiles can approve, modify, or deny new user Self Registration requests across the entire organization. LMS customers have the option of extending this type of approval responsibility to additional user Roles. To learn more about this customization option, please contact your Latitude Account Manager or our Support Team at support@latitudelearning.com.
The scope of approval rights for other managerial users relies on customized fields being added to the standard Self Registration form -- especially the new user’s Location and Default Position assignments. When these key fields are added to the form, the LMS can reference the user-submitted information to determine which managers should be notified of the request, as well as who has rights to approve or deny the new user registration.
To approve new users who have self-registered for LMS access:
1. From the left navigation menu, select Approvals > Approve Pending Self Registrations. Managers without the Portal Administrator, Instructor, or Administrator roles need to select the Approvals tab, then click the Pending Registrations link.
2. The "Approve Pending Self Registration" page lists all of the people under your purview who are awaiting approval for LMS access. To process these records:
- To approve, click Approve next to each user you want to gain access to the portal. This completes the account creation process and, depending on your message settings, may notify the user of his or her LMS access credentials via email.
- To deny, click Deny next to those users who you do not wish to grant access. The user will not be allowed in, even when using the username and password they requested.
- If the Role or Position noted is not the one you want to approve for the user, you can click Change and Approve to select a different Role or Position from the respective drop-down lists. Click Approve Registration to complete the approval.
The Student Experience
The standard Latitude Learning LMS comes with a Message Editor feature. This flexible tool set allows Portal Administrators to edit and brand system-generated messages, as well as dictate the method in which automated messages are sent to users.
By default, automated messages include notifications related to user requests and approvals of all types. Depending on your LMS message settings, users submitting requests may receive a notification via email and under the “Mail Center” section of their homepage, indicating that their action (enrollment, interest, registration) is pending approval. They may also receive follow-up messages when their request is approved -- with next-step instructions -- or when their request is denied -- with the reason for rejection.
Tips for Troubleshooting Issues of Approval Rights
When analyzing issues within the chain of approval, reviewing the profiles of everyone involved will usually reveal an inconsistency in position or organization assignment between the requesting and approving parties. Flaws in organizational structure and reporting relationships within user profile assignments, or your Position Hierarchy, can prevent managers from seeing expected employee requests or grant them unintended approval responsibilities.
This is how roles, positions, and organizations impact a user’s ability to process approvals:
Roles: Roles only determine whether or not the user is provided an additional “Approvals” item in the Left Navigation Menu.
- Users assigned the Portal Administrator, Instructor, and Administrator roles are provided this categorical search option, but their approval rights are still scoped by Organization and Position.
- Location Manager, Location Administrator, Student, and Guest roles do not provide users a Left Navigation Menu option for Approvals, so they must rely on the horizontal "Approvals" tab to review and manage requests.
Positions: Each Position can be associated with superior and/or subordinate positions, creating a Position Hierarchy. These associations are the key to defining employee reporting relationships.
- A user may manage requests for anyone assigned a position that has been associated as “subordinate” to their own, as long as that user has an active profile at, or overseeing, the requester’s Location.
- In order for Portal Administrators to have system-wide approval rights, they must also have the Training Administrator (TRA) or other top-level position assignment that is superior to all other positions in the hierarchy. This position must be associated with a Company-level profile to achieve portal-wide rights.
Organizations: A user’s organization assignments fine-tune the list of employees for whom they can approve requests. As such, a user can only process requests for subordinate employees within their organizational scope of influence.
- Users who have secondary profiles with supervisory responsibilities may need to toggle between active profiles to view and manage employees at secondary organizations.
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