EBS: Learning Management: How to setup learner access to restrict courses specific to Managers

Major organizations do offer courses specific to managers, to help them align with their learning path goals. Allowing such courses to be viewed and enrolled by managers only, is an extremely desirable feature of OLM. This desirable functionality, not only stream lines the enrollment process but also saves time for instructors and admins to filter/reject the enrollments that are not managers. Unfortunately, OLM don’t directly support this functionality. This article will discuss a workaround to meet such a business need.

"Learner Access" is a feature of Oracle E-Business Suite Learning Management module, that allows the users to restrict the courses/offerings/classes for targeted groups. Another cool feature of Learner access is, it inherits down in hierarchy, for example, you can choose to inherit restriction for all classes of an offering by just setting up learner access at offer level. Definition of Learner Group may include "Assignment", "Learner", "Eligibility Profile" and "Learner Group" itself.

Assignment/Learner - This option enables you to pre-define a static list and offer courses for a specific set: Suitable to meet requirements like.... courses for executive board members etc...

Learner Group - This option enables reusability of existing groups: Best to meet multiple restrictions together like, courses offered specially for department 101 and full-time staff. 

Eligibility Profile - This option offers greater flexibility to define eligibility based on majority of fields related to personal, employment and derived factors.

OLM version of "Eligibility Profile" form has a lot of restrictions, despite the fact that it uses the same form as Advanced Benefits (OAB) and Performance Management (OPM) modules. For example, it won't allow to write a custom rule based on Fast Formula and include it in learner access eligibility profile. This enhancement is acknowledged by Oracle and documented as part of Note 1640607.1

Fortunately, this form, does include "Assignment set" option. This option can be used as a workaround and code any custom requirement in assignment set formula by writing new package using PL/SQL. Following picture try to summarize how this can be done.

Step1) "Assignment Set" defined based on a "Criteria", internally generates a Fast Formula. We will leverage this functionality and create an assignment set first and edit the generated formula later. Create assignment set using any HRMS manager responsibility and add a dummy criterion, as shown below in "Criteria" tab and click on "Generate" button. Make sure assignment set name doesn't include any spaces to avoid potential errors.

Step2) Navigate to Total Compensation -> Basic -> Fast Formula and open "Formula Functions" form and create a new function with the details as shown below. Also add the contexts "assignment_id" and "date_earned"

Step3) Navigate to Total Compensation -> Basic -> Fast Formula and open "Write Formula" and search with the assignment set name created in Step-1. A formula should have already created with the same name. Click Edit and copy paste the following code.

INPUTS are INCLUDE_FLAG (text)

INCLUDE_FLAG = XX_is_valid_manager()

RETURN INCLUDE_FLAG

Step4) Now write PL/SQL code to match your custom requirement. Here is a code snippet for checking the manager in Supervisor hierarchy for our example.

Step5) Define an eligibility Profile based on this assignment set, by navigating to Learning Administrator -> Learning Administration -> Maintain Eligibility profiles

Step6) Define a learner group based on this eligibility profile, by navigating to Learning Administrator -> Setup Administration -> Groups -> Learner Groups and define a new one or edit existing to add eligibility profile created in previous step. Your learner group is now ready, use it wherever you need. You may need to click “Process Eligibility profiles for Learner Group” button before using it, which will execute the FF and identify the managers. You may also review the identified managers from “View Members” on eligibility profile page.

My colleagues Anand, Jason and I together discovered this solution. 😊

Do you find this topic useful? Comment below to let me know.

Thanks

Suresh