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The Portal Administrator role represents the highest level of user access rights that can be assigned in LatitudeLearning®. It is part of the default set of roles provided with the system and is reserved for only those user accounts authorized to manage foundational setup and hosted content. Portal Administrators create and manage key records, including organization structure, courses and the accounts of all other users in their portal.

Portal Administrator Rights

As you will note when viewing the linked Roles matrix, assignment of this administrative Role opens access to foundational tools and configuration options focused on the following areas:

Control the look and feel of your LMS via Site Management tools

• Edit HTML Content – Manage customizable content areas (Login page, Home page “Welcome” area, left navigation menu and quick links areas), as well as the set of pre-populated blank HTML pages, to tailor instructions, supplement navigation, and build your own set of program pages.
• Edit Stylesheets – Update default stylesheet information, incorporate your own corporate and/or program branding, or select from ready stylesheets to quickly redesign your site.
• Edit Images – View and manage your LMS image collection, and easily replace logo information during rebranding.
• Edit Messages - Customize your system-generated email messages, such as new user registration and course enrollment confirmations, to reflect your organization's unique voice and communication style.
• LMS Information – View detailed information about your LMS Subscription and configure portal-wide settings.

Define and manage foundational structures and hierarchies

• Organizations – (Company > Business Unit > Division > Location) This default structure is used to scope and segregate user communities, course catalogs and resources.
• Positions – Define a set of superior and subordinate position relationships to group users into a unique hierarchy that drives managerial oversight of employees.
• Departments – Group multiple positions into a single department to improve user tracking and reporting features.

Create and manage key course and resource catalogs

• Courses – Create Self-Study, eLearning, Classroom and Assessment courses to share with one or multiple Business Units. Organize these catalogs into Majors, or a defined set of “‘Featured Courses” by location. Even link courses into a Series, with established Prerequisite and Equivalency rules, to create standard training programs.
• Offerings – Schedule when and where Classroom or Virtual Classroom courses are offered. Enroll users in Offerings, and after the class, manage Rosters to record attendance for the student’s training history. Create and manage Locales, and the set of Facilities servicing those training areas, to reserve rooms and allocate equipment for training events.
• Resources – Create a collection of documents, media files and links designed to support the learning process. Share them with one or more Business Units to create searchable catalogs, or deep-link resource content into courses and customized content areas.

Add, Edit, Impersonate User Accounts

• User / Profile Management – Create new user accounts, each with a default Student-user profile tied to a Location. Edit a user’s profile with Role and Position assignments to enhance access rights and/or oversight of others for a given organization. Add secondary profiles to allow a single user to serve in different capacities, such as Instructor or Administrator, across your organization.
• Instructor Profile – Use the Add Instructor option to generate a pool of teachers for your Classroom courses. Then manage Instructor Profiles to include the list of courses these users are authorized to teach and the facilities they use most often.
• User Impersonation – Employ the “View Home Page” and “Impersonate User” options to navigate the LMS from the viewpoint of any user with a subordinate Role assignment. You can also transact activities on another user’s behalf  (such as launching a course, running a report, viewing subordinate employees, and checking pending approvals) in order to troubleshoot issues and provide first-line user support.

Oversee pending approvals and conduct mass course enrollments for eligible users

• Approvals – View, approve or deny queued course enrollment, interest and user self-registration requests for organizations and employees you oversee.
• Enroll Others – Utilize the picking system to select targeted groups of users by organization, role, position, even ad-hoc user group assignment; then batch-enroll them (if eligible) into a targeted course or learning program.

Assess the health of ongoing training activities with broadest access to standard reports

• Course Reports – Report on course consumption, as well as compliance driven enrollment and completion activity. Plus, report on activity tied to direct bill transactions (and credit card e-commerce if enabled) for your tuition-based courses.
• User Reports – User counts, login activity, as well as detailed transcript audits
• Organization Training Reports – Organization-specific health and activity reporting
• Ad Hoc Transcript Report – Design a report to generate targeted user transcript histories

Communicate with users using the integrated messaging system

• Announcements – Utilize existing organization, role, position and user group assignments to select and target users for communications using email addresses on-file.
• Edit Messages - Edit, brand, and otherwise manage the more than 30 system-generated messages that automatically notify students, managers, and administrators when certain system events are scheduled and when specific training activities take place.

Manage other key site and training activities, as well as add-on toolsets enabled for your LMS

• Distributions – Define visibility and access to classroom course offerings.
• Subscriptions – Add Subscription programs as a collection of courses only made available to specific organizations (i.e clients, franchises, stores) within your LMS.
• Certification Management – Design certification and curriculum programs; then assign them to a set of Position Groups as training goals. Define skill profiles (skill areas and levels of mastery), as well as program duration and electives vs. requirements.
• User Groups – Create ad hoc groups of users (regardless of role, position, organization assignments) for the purpose of ongoing communication, enrollment management and reporting.
• Interests – Utilize demand forecasting and track recorded interests in courses or offerings that may not be available to certain sets of users in your LMS.
• E-Commerce – Manage your PayPal account credentials.
• Discounts – Provide users Discount Codes to promote enrollment in tuition-based courses.
• Self-Registration – Manage site-wide and location-level self-registration settings, including default end dates and maximum registration counts.

Portal Administrator Profile Setup

Although there are additional administrative levels provided with the standard set of LMS Roles, only Portal Administrators have authority to both view and edit the LMS elements listed above. Before enabling this level of access for a user, it is important to understand that even though any given Profile is assigned to only one organization, a Portal Administrator can edit his/her own profile to enhance and extend his/her own access to other organizations. Therefore, you typically only want to assign this role to key resources who oversee and manage all areas of the LMS.

As you manage any user account, remember that a user's Profiles must contain at least one assignment to each of the following elements:

1. ORGANIZATION – Attach user access to a specific organization level: Company, Business Unit, Division or Location. By default, all new accounts are created with a Student-level profile assigned to a Location-level organization, which ensures that transactions related to login and transcript activity can be easily recorded and reported in the LMS. Profiles attached to higher organizational levels will grant access to all subordinate segments within the company structure.
2. POSITION – Specify a user’s Position within the overall position-to-position hierarchy defined for your LMS portal. This selection, regardless of Role assignment, helps to determine oversight of other users assigned to subordinate positions in your LMS (i.e. which employees a user can oversee under the “My Employees” and “Approvals” tabs, as well as who can be viewed via Reports and Enroll Others functions, if authorized).
3. ROLE – Unlike Position assignment, which determines the position-to-position hierarchy, Role assignment determines access rights, such as the menu items and targeted navigation a user can access. Latitude provides a set of default roles that can be incorporated as part of any profile to determine user responsibility and functionality in the LMS.

All users, including portal administrators must have an active profile at a Location. To grant a user full Portal Administrator rights, you must create a secondary profile tied to the Company level and assign it the highest managerial Position in addition to the Portal Administrator Role.

The following explains how to add a Company-level profile to an existing user to make them a full portal administrator:

1. From the left navigation menu, click Users > Search Users to find the person you want to make a full portal administrator.
2. Click Edit User Profile for the selected user.
3. On the User Details page, select the Profiles tab to see a list of current profiles, and the options to Edit Profile or Add Profile to the user’s account. To add a new profile, select Add Profile.
   
   
   
   
4. Choose an Organization – Search for and select the Company-level organization. Do NOT "check" this profile as Primary.
5. Select a Position – Search for and select the top-level position assignment in the position-to-position hierarchy you have created (e.g. by default, this is TRA -  Training Administrator). The portal administrator should be the top of the hierarchy so that he or she can manage training for all employees, including top executives.
6. Select a Role – Search and select Portal Administrator.
7. Click Submit.
   
   
   
   This is how the list of current profiles will look.
   
   

Once you make someone a Portal Administrator, you will not be able to impersonate that user. By design, Portal Administrators cannot impersonate others with the same level of access rights.

Please contact the LMS Support Team if you are interested in engaging in supplemental support to configure your users and access rights.