Feature Overview and Requirements

Portal Administrators can choose between two different types of reporting relationships between LMS users to grant a user administrative or managerial oversight: a Position Code hierarchy or a direct Person-to-Person structure.

In Position Code reporting, position codes are created to establish Superior/Subordinate relationships that determine user oversight. These relationships enable users with superior positions (managers) to view training, approve course enrollment requests, and set and manage training goals for subordinate users (students) as appropriate. This reporting style is best used when the reporting structure designates subordinates to report to a specific superior position consistently throughout the organization.

Person-to-Person reporting enables Portal Administrators to set up reporting relationships based on Username, rather than Position codes. With Person-to-Person reporting, a user may have zero, one, or multiple managers, similar to how many organizations are structured today. These relationships also enable managers to view training, approve course enrollments, and set and manage user goals like they can with Position Code Reporting. Managers are assigned at a user’s Profile level, so it is possible to assign different managers to oversee the user at the various organizations in which they work.

LatitudeLearning® uses Position Hierarchy as the reporting structure standard for new portals. Even Portal Administrators who select Person-to-Person for user and training management must still rely on the LMS Position structure to generate some Training Progress Reports, assign Certifications and Curriculums (via Position Groups), and approve Self Registrations. We recommend maintaining some degree of Position hierarchy in addition to setting up P2P managers.

Whether you’re considering implementing Person-to-Person in your new LMS or transitioning an existing LMS to this new reporting structure, please consider contacting Latitude Support for consultation services.

Step-by-Step and Field Requirements

Configure the Person-to-Person Reporting Hierarchy

It is essential to understand that enabling Person-to-Person functionality will instantly change your LMS end user experience. The Managerial Hierarchy used drives which data is available under the manager’s My Team page. It will also scope the list of users a manager can see in Enroll Others and progress-tracking features.

Portal Administrators can follow these steps to switch from Position Code to Person-to-Person or vice versa:

1. From Administration menu, open Site Management > LMS Information.
2. For the setting Reporting Hierarchy, select Position Code or Person-to-Person
3. Click Submit.
4. Populate managerial relationships between users. This can be done manually through the Add/Edit Profile feature or in some cases, using the User Import process.
5. To update large sets of user data, contact Latitude Support to discuss mass data migration options.

NOTE: A portal administrator can toggle between reporting structures as necessary with no impact to user account or profile data. A user’s Position and/or Manager assignments for both reporting hierarchies are maintained in the database. Changing from person-to-person back to position-based merely hides the manager section on the user profile page.

Build Reporting Relationships Between Users

Once Person-to-Person is enabled, Portal Administrators must build a direct reporting structure between LMS users for administrative or managerial oversight. Each user profile can be assigned in different ways:

• One manager – When a user has one manager, the profile relationship is flagged as “Direct Manager”.
• Multiple managers – Administrators can assign users a Direct Manager using the radio button. Add Alternate Managers as necessary. (At this time the “Direct Manager” flag is purely informational, as Direct and Alternate managers have same scope of user oversight.)
• No managers – Manager assignment is not required, which means there may be some users at the top of the P2P hierarchy who are unmanaged.

Manager assignments work in conjunction with the three standard profile elements: Organization, Position, Role. Portal Administrators must consider the way each profile assignment controls user rights in the system, and who within the LMS will have training responsibilities beyond a “student” role. 

Import New Users with Managers Assigned

The User Import Template includes two columns for Person-to-Person reporting:  Manager Username and Alternate Manager Usernames. Portal Administrators can add one Direct Manager and may choose to add one or more Alternate managers in these columns. When adding multiple Alternate Managers, separate the usernames with a comma.

Add Manager Assignments to Existing User Profile

From the Administration menu, select User > Search Users. Using the available selection criteria, find the targeted user and click Edit User Profile.

1. Click Add a Manager to expand the section.
2. Click Select a Manager to open a User Search picker and select the appropriate manager’s profile and optionally Assign as Direct Manager.
3. Set the Effective Date.
4. Click Add Manager to submit changes.

An example of multiple manager assignments to a single user profile is shown below.

Key Points in P2P Employee Oversight

LatitudeLearning® enhanced the logic used by the LMS to scope a P2P manager’s view of employees.  Some features affected by person-to-person reporting now scope a manager’s employee visibility based primarily on roles, and for some higher roles, by organizational purview. Other features retain the original P2P functions that rely on managers sharing organizational relationships with their subordinates and toggling between various profiles to view employees in other locations. Until all work is complete, there will be differing experiences in P2P employee visibility depending on the function being used.

Features supporting improved scoping are Announcements, My Team (People, Goals, Team Certifications, Pending Approvals), the Report Writer, and Goal Assignments. Important points to understand about this improved logic when P2P is enabled:

• A user’s highest role assignment at each assigned organization controls scoping logic.
• Administrative users with the roles Portal Administrator, Administrator, Instructor, or Location Administrator will be able to search, manage, and train all users within their organizational tree, regardless of their position code.
• The organization will not scope managers with Location Manager or Student roles and will display all users who fall under their managerial tree.
• Users with administrative profiles and direct reports will see a unified employee list across their assigned organizations and direct reports located anywhere.
• User filter criterion “Position” will ignore the position code hierarchy and return all active positions in the type-ahead.

Scoping improvements to Enroll Others and other P2P-impacted features are in progress. Most new updates to P2P employee visibility are not retroactive to Classic LMS pages. We recommend using the new icon-driven Navigation page interface when P2P is enabled.

The Manager Experience

Any LMS user who manages other users will gain access to an additional My Team dashboard. Full of dynamic information about their employees’ training status, this tool makes training oversight and approval management easy.

My Team

Managers have several tools available from the My Team page, including a list of their employees across all organizational profiles, user details and drill-down, and tabs that navigate between team training views.

On My Team for Person-to-Person portals the “User > Directly reports to > [you]” is the default filter and shows just the manager’s Direct Reports. Expand the filter option and select Reports Up To to see all the people who report up to the manager through the hierarchy below.

Pending Approvals

Training coordinators use their Pending Approvals page to manage employee requests for new account registration, security lockouts, interest list additions, and course enrollments. Access pending requests directly from the Navigation page via the Approvals icon or from the My Team – Approvals dashboard.

 

Enroll Others

When a user is assigned subordinates and has the role Location Manager and above, the manager can enroll their employees in courses.  On the Enroll Others page, a manager can open the Choose Students picker and search for subordinates to enroll. User Search results will only display users who directly report to this manager from the same location.  P2P Scoping improvements to this are expected in 2020. 

Automated Messages

Under Site Management > Edit Messages, the portal administrator can configure a specific message to send a copy (CC) to a user’s manager under these conditions:

• The manager must have the LMS role checked/enabled in the message’s CC configuration
• The manager must be listed on the user’s profile as a Direct or Alternate (Indirect) Manager

Once a CC is enabled for a message event, the direct and alternate managers with those roles for any user will receive the message when appropriate. There is no way to fine-tune which roles get the message for some users, but not others. One means of determining who in those roles will receive notifications for particular users is to view a manager’s “All Direct Reports” view. When a message’s CCs are turned on for those roles, a manager will get copied on that message whenever it is sent to someone listed in their “Direct Reports” view.