BrainCert Enterprise LMS Learning Management System (LMS) documentation Administrator Guide Version 3.0 1 P a g e
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BrainCert's Enterprise Learning Management System (LMS) is a feature-rich learning, and teaching platform to run a versatile online training and collaboration program for your students, employees, partners, or customers with real time tracking of training results. This complete white-label solution allows you to easily rebrand BrainCert Enterprise LMS with your own logo, domain, users, look & feel, and theme. Enterprise LMS comes integrated with 4 core platforms in one unified solution - courses platform, online testing platform, award-winning virtual classroom, and content management system. The result - significant cost savings, increasing productivity, and secure, seamless and enhanced user experience across all platforms. 3 P a g e
BrainCert is the best way to create your own private learning portal. BrainCert' platform and services are fully managed and hosted. Do not worry about servers, installations, hosting, set up, etc. You focus on your business while we take care of technology. The first step is to activate your LMS instance. You would need a user account at to create your LMS domain. Go to https:///lms/domain and type your desired domain name in the field. Now, type your password to confirm, and click on Change domain name button to activate your LMS instance. The system allows accessing your BrainCert sub-domain using both HTTP and HTTPS protocols. For example, http://mydomain.braincert.com (Or) https://mydomain.braincert.com 4 P a g e
HTTPS allows secure connections using a SSL certificate. Read more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/https. To access your LMS instance, just type your E-mail or Username and password in the Sign In block. Use Forgot password? link anytime to reset your forgotten password. Once you sign in your LMS, you will be greeted with the Dashboard. The dashboard providers a quick glimpse of your live stats and revenue reports with interactive graphs. Activity Stream shows all the activities related to your LMS such as user s sign-in activity, and information related to your courses, tests, live classes, and contents. Reports provide a quick snapshot of all your courses and tests. 5 P a g e
The LMS portal framework comprises all elements that are necessary for navigation and for displaying certain information and/or functionality that are available on each page the user can navigate to. E.g. title header, left navigation, breadcrumb and content area. Click on your name to get the menu options to change your profile avatar and account details. 6 P a g e
Change Avatar: Click Browse Picture to upload a photo from your computer. The uploaded image will be automatically resized. Account Details: Use the options below to change your account specific details such as password. 7 P a g e
The left menu area includes all the links. The links can vary based on your roles assigned to you. By default, the user who has created the LMS instance will have Super Admin privileges with full access to manage all the menu items. Use Notifications link to send live updates to users who are currently signed in to your LMS instance. The system supports customizing the notification box with multiple themes and page positions. 8 P a g e
Once you ve set up your BrainCert LMS, there are many ways you can customize it to enhance its online appeal and provide for a more satisfying visitor experience. Account & settings menu item links are available only to Super Admins and also to people with custom roles assigned. BrainCert allows you to use your own logo, and SEO specific settings. To start with, click on Basic Settings. 9 P a g e
Site Name: Your LMS website name. This will be the <title> Meta tag of your LMS for Search engine Optimization (SEO) purposes. Site Description: This will be <description> Meta tag of your LMS for SEO purposes. Upload Logo: This is the primary logo for your LMS. The uploaded logo will be automatically resized to fit the title bar area. Upload Favicon: This is also known as a shortcut icon, web site icon, tab icon or bookmark icon, and most commonly 16 16 pixels, associated with your LMS. Extensions provide support for 3 rd party apps and integrations. At present, we support Google Analytics extension, and more apps will be added in the future releases. BrainCert allows you to customize the look & feel of your LMS theme for branding purposes. Branding is the process of applying a product or company brand to the User Interface. BrainCert provides an intuitive color picker tool to change the User Interface easily. 10 P a g e
Users can change the look & feel of the pages dynamically by changing the color of the widget bar and other custom control options for added flexibility. BrainCert stores all the user specific personalization information such as the widget bar colors in the HTML5 localstorage. So what is HTML5 Storage? Simply put, it s a way for web pages to store named key/value pairs locally, within the client web browser. Like cookies, this data persists even after you navigate away from the web site, close your browser tab, exit your browser, or what have you. Click on the reset icon in your breadcrumb area to reset your HTML5 localstorage to change all personalized customizations to default state. BrainCert allows you to manage multiple languages within your LMS. This intuitive and powerful feature allows you set languages based User Groups. For example, you can set French as the interface language for your French speaking users, and English for all LMS administrators. You also have the ability to set interface language for Guests before signing in to your LMS. 11 P a g e
Users who belong to multiple groups will have the effective language from the first Group ID they belong to. This is a very powerful feature that controls user registrations with a number of options. 1) Enable CAPTCHA: Use this option to prevent SPAM and bots. 2) Registration Method: BrainCert support 3 types of user registrations: a. From backend admin: User accounts are created manually by the LMS admin. b. Allow self-registration (no approval from admin): Registered users are activated immediately. They do not have to be approved by an administrator. c. Allow self-registration (needs approval from admin): Everyone can register, but user accounts will be in disabled state. They need to be manually activated by the LMS admin. Self-registration means that new users can register themselves at logon. In the logon screen, users can choose to register themselves by filling out a form. After registration they are registered users and can access all content that is assigned to the default user group. 3) Default User Group: Users are assigned to this default group setup by the admin. 4) Default User Type: BrainCert supports three types of default users: 12 P a g e
a. Learner: Learners by default has access to Courses, Tests, and Live classes (Virtual Classroom) menu items assigned by LMS admin as an end user. They do not have any authorizations to edit or change your contents. b. Content Admin: Content Admins has Full Control permissions to all left menu items except Account & Settings. c. User Admin: User Admins has Full Control permissions to User, Group, and Role specific administration activities under Account & Settings. d. Super Admin: A super administrator has all authorizations in the LMS at the highest possible level. There can be one or more super administrator. 5) Single Sign-On (SSO): Easily setup and manage single sign-on programmatically across your ecosystem of digital properties using providers such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, Microsoft Live, and Linkedin. When the checkbox is clicked, the configuration option opens as a popup window. Follow the instructions to setup and configure SSO. Please note that your LMS can support both HTTP and HTTPS protocols, and the callback URL configured in the SSO provider should be either HTTP or HTTPS protocol. For example, if you have configured SSO by logging in to your LMS using HTTPS protocol, then it will work only with HTTPS protocol and may not work properly for HTTP. 6) Enable Terms: Enter your terms & conditions text to be shown to users during registration. Customize the look and feel of your landing page with default text, logo background color, and branding image. Catalog settings: Enable this option to show/hide your courses and tests menu in the logon/landing page. This is a useful feature for SEO purposes to list all your courses and tests in the public catalog. Guests can view, but won t be able to access the content without a valid user account. NOTE: When you create a course or test, List in course/test catalog option will be presented. 13 P a g e
You can change your BrainCert sub-domain anytime by using this option. BrainCert allows you to white-label your LMS using external domain mapping feature. Simply type your external URL and click on Change External Domain Name button to finish the domain mapping process at our end. However, to finish the domain mapping process, you would need to create a CNAME entry in your DNS server. CNAME stands for 'canonical name' and is a redirection to the zone file of the entered target domain. Log in to your domain registrar's site and locate the Zone File Settings, DNS Manager, or similar area of your control panel. Here you will create a CNAME record that points your BrainCert sub-domain. Here is a sample CNAME record in host settings of a domain: Due to the limitations of CNAME domain mapping, external URLs can only be accessed using HTTP protocol. 14 P a g e
BrainCert integrates seamlessly with PayPal and Stripe to sell your courses, tests, and live classes for faster revenue. There is no need to experience the complicated merchant account setup process. With BrainCert, you can simply enter your verified PayPal Premier or Business email or start accepting credit card payments instantly with Stripe. With BrainCert, now you have the ability to choose from multiple currencies. BrainCert's multi-currency enabled payment gateway allows anyone to easily sell their e-learning content with confidence. When creating your tests, courses, and live classes, you will be presented with the currency option to setup the e-commerce bridge. It is only possible for your customers to checkout in one currency for each item sold. When you create a flexible shopping cart using BrainCert's pricing scheme option, you will be presented with the currency you have set. 15 P a g e
This function enables you to create, modify, and delete user groups. User Groups allow you to categorize and organize users in a logical container to easily assign courses, tests, and live classes. Add Group: Click on the Add group button to create a new group. Type a group name and description and click Save. Manage Group: users can be easily added to a group using the Add Users icon under options. You can also Edit to change name and description, and use option Delete to delete a group. Please note that deleting a user group will not delete actual user accounts. Click on the group name to see the associations. You can easily add users, roles, courses, and tests to a Group. 16 P a g e
BrainCert uses a powerful user management engine for managing users. The user management dashboard clearly shows the following parameters: 1) Active/disabled state of users 2) Username 3) First name 4) Last name 5) E-mail address 6) User Type: Learner, Content Admin, User Admin, Super Admin 7) Creation date: Shown in EST time zone 8) Last login: Shown in EST time zone 9) Options: Edit, Lock/Unlock, Delete Create New User: Click on Create New User button to create a new user manually. Fill out the form below with required fields and click save to create a new user. 17 P a g e
Add User From E-Learning Platform: If you already have a user registered in our E-Learning Platform then you can easily add this user in your LMS by searching the e-mail address of the user: With its role-based content, BrainCert enables users - from employees and customers to partners and suppliers - to focus exclusively on data relevant to them. Enterprise LMS provides several administrator-specific roles such as Super Admin, Content Admin, and User Admin. The default administration tools supplied with the LMS are allocated to these roles, based on their relevancy to the intended task of each administrator. You can also create and customize new administrative roles and then assign it to Groups. LMS roles define how content is grouped together and how it is displayed in the Portal. By assigning a group to a role, you define which content those users part of that group sees in the portal. Add Role: BrainCert provides role-based access to the LMS portal. Click on the Add Role button to start creating a new role. Start with typing a Name and Description and proceed with the customization. Roles allow you to set granular level permissions to menu items. The following permission levels are supported for menu item objects: 18 P a g e
None No permission is set Read Provides read-only access to the object Change - Provides all permissions permitted by read, write, edit, and save. Full Control - Provides all permissions permitted by read, write, edit, save, and delete. List Roles: Roles dashboard provides options to edit, assign groups, and delete a role. Click on the Group icon to assign role to user groups. When the user logs on, the system displays the LMS menu items and pages defined in the roles assigned to him or her. 19 P a g e
Plan details page displays the pricing and plan related information. You can easily upgrade, and downgrade your plans. Your premium membership purchase history is listed here. This section cover reports for orders and payments quickly and easily. Select a date range and currency to see the reports in a graphical format. Each row in the Reports graph provides a detailed look at a piece of information. Hovering over a bar will show you a tooltip with information from the corresponding item. All your LMS specific orders from selling tests, courses, and live classes are listed in a table format. 20 P a g e
BrainCert s One-on-One Chat enables your LMS users to chat with each other. That's not all! They can share pictures, collaborate together with writeboards, audio/video call, broadcast videos, and a lot more while maintaining their privacy. Your users can start using Chat the instant they login to your LMS. The Who's Online list will automatically display all online users and a single click enables them to start chatting in real-time. Who's Online Your users can see which of their friends or site users are online and can start chatting immediately. Smileys Your users can now emote with the wide range of smileys. With so many smileys, there is a right one for every mood. Notifications Now your users don't stand a chance of missing any notifications. BrainCert s Chat alerts users about notifications swiftly. By default, all your LMS specific emails such as live class invitations, and marketing emails use BrainCert mail server for sending outgoing emails. 21 P a g e
You can set up email relaying for BrainCert-generated email by configuring your LMS to automatically route email through your company's Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server. The following fields are required to setup your own SMTP server: From Name: The name you want to appear in outgoing emails. From E-mail Address: The e-mail address you want to appear in outgoing emails. SMTP Mail Server Hostname: SMTP server hostname or IP address. Port: Port number of your SMTP server. BrainCert supports SSL and allows SMTP authentication by default. Try using secured ports such as 465, 993, 995, etc., for added security. Username: Your SMTP account username. Password: Your SMTP account password. Click on Send Test Mail to test your settings. If everything looks good, click on Save button to save your configuration. 22 P a g e