Distribution Lists for Offering Enrollment

Distribution Groups are used to define rules that control user ability to enroll, or be auto-enrolled, in scheduled course offerings.

Feature Overview and Requirements

By default, when you create an offering for a classroom course, it is available to all users within the Business Units that house the course in their catalogs. You can limit the availability of an offering to a specific subset of users by assigning them to distribution groups. There are two types of Distribution Groups: Custom and Shared Offering.

This document assumes a prerequisite knowledge of course creation basics. Refer to pages under Userful Links for other aspects of Classroom Course processes.

Step by Step Procedure and Field Description

Custom Distribution Groups

Custom distribution groups are associated with one particular offering, and they are created during the Add Offering process.

To add a Custom Distribution Group:

  1. From the left navigation menu, select Courses > Add Offering.
  2. On the “Add Offering” page, complete the standard fields to create your offering, and then scroll down to the Distribution section of the form.
  3. In the Distribution section, complete entries as described below:
    • Applied Distribution: Use the radio button to select Create a custom distribution.
    • Restricted Distribution: Make a selection based on the desired behavior. Yes prevents any user outside of the Distribution List from seeing the Offering. No allows Location Managers to enroll users who are not on the distribution list. Note: Students not on the distribution list will not be able to view the offering themselves, nor be auto-enrolled.
    • Offering Enrollment Start Date: Indicate the first day you want the offering to be visible to anyone in the distribution list. This setting allows you to delay offering visibility in order to fill earlier offerings. Note that this field is not under the Distribution section, but dates used there will apply to the Distribution.
    • Offering Enrollment End Date: Indicate the day on which the offering will no longer be visible to users on the distribution list. They will not be able to enroll in the offering after this date. Note that this field is not under the Distribution section, but dates used there will apply to the Distribution.
  2. In the Distribution Rules section, define the rules (by user, organization, and/or facility) that determine user membership in a distribution group. To set up a new rule, click Add Rule, and then complete entries as described below.
  • Type: Select User, Organization, or Facility as the starting point for selecting group membership. The next field changes dynamically with the Type selected.
  • Users/Organizations/Facilities: Click Select [Users/Organizations/Facilities] to open a picker that allows you to search and select the members of your group. You can add more than one rule if needed to assemble the correct distribution list.
  • Rules display in the Distribution Rules section. To delete a rule, select the Delete check box next to the rule.
  1. Complete the rest of the Offering Detail form as necessary, and then click Submit and Continue.Note: Once you create the offering, you can edit the distribution from the offering detail page under the Distribution tab.

Shared Offering Distribution Groups

While you can create a custom distribution group for each offering, as shown above, there may be some scenarios in which you would like to use the same distribution group more than once. To make this easier, the LMS allows portal administrators to create Shared Offering Distribution Groups that are available for permanent use.

To create a Shared Offering Distribution Group:

  • In the left navigation menu, select Distributions > Add Distribution. This brings up a window with some of the same information as above.
  • On the “Add Shared Offering Distribution” page, create a standard distribution using the fields described below.
  • Name: (Required) Enter a name for the distribution group.
  • Owner: Enter the name of the person who owns this distribution, if applicable.
  • Description: Provide a description of the shared offering distribution.
  • Type: Select User, Organization, or Facility as the starting point for selecting group membership. The next field changes dynamically with the Type selected.
  • Users/Organizations/Facilities: Click Select [Users/Organizations/Facilities] to open a picker that allows you to search and select the members of your group. You can add more than one rule if needed to assemble the correct distribution list.
  • Rules display in the Distribution Rules section. To delete a rule, select the Delete check box next to the rule.
  • Click Submit.

The group will then be available for use when creating or editing any offering. In the Add Offering form under the Distribution section, as shown below, select Use a shared distribution. Then use the Existing Distribution picker to select one of the saved Shared Distributions.

Note:

To edit an existing shared offering distribution, find it using Distributions > Search Distributions, and open it to make changes under the “General Information” tab.