Microsoft 365 learning pathways: your customizable training solution to increase usage of Microsoft
Published May 23 2019 12:01 PM 82.4K Views
Microsoft

Earlier this year we released a Beta Preview of Custom Learning for Office 365, to help you increase usage and adoption of Office 365 in an organization.

 

The early adoption of this in the market has been both humbling and exciting.  While early adoption has been strong we heard your clear feedback that you wanted to leverage this more broadly to help with usage and adoption for all of Microsoft 365. 

 

Today we’re pleased to announce the Beta Preview of Microsoft 365 learning pathways.  Microsoft 365 learning pathways is a customizable, on-demand training solution designed to increase usage and adoption for all of Microsoft 365 in your organization.

 

Introducing Microsoft 365 learning pathways, your customizable, on-demand training solutionIntroducing Microsoft 365 learning pathways, your customizable, on-demand training solution

Once you easily provision the fully customizable SharePoint communication site through the SharePoint Online Provisioning Service you can create targeted training pathways to meet the unique needs of your company or use those that we’ve provided within the solution.  Creat custom playlists by blending learning content from Microsoft’s online content catalog with your organization’s support and process training.  You can also integrate partner content to create enhanced training pathways. All of the Microsoft content is connected to an online Microsoft content catalog so you can rest assured knowing that the content on your site is automatically updated to stay current with our product features and best practices.

 

The SharePoint Online Provisioning Service makes it easy to provision learning pathways in your organization.The SharePoint Online Provisioning Service makes it easy to provision learning pathways in your organization.

The Beta Preview of Microsoft 365 learning pathways is the first step in a continuing journey.  Later this year we plan to release additional features to help you such as:

  • Multi-language support of 9 languages
  • Support for multiple templates or content sets
  • Release of Microsoft 365 adoption guidance content to streamline your adoption journey
  • Quarterly updates of new online content
  • Open source release of the complete solution 
  • Roadmap for onboarding of Education, government cloud and firstline worker related content
  • Partner specific onboarding guidance

Several existing Microsoft partners offer training solutions for Office 365 and Windows 10 and offer premium services that go beyond the capabilities of Microsoft 365 learning pathways, providing unique and compelling value that further helps customers adopt Microsoft technology. Unique partner capabilities include custom course design, instructor-led design, gamification, user behavior analytics, extensive communication engagement features and live support. We are excited to have a strategic sampling of them with us on this journey to the release of learning pathways. 

 

Depending on the size and complexity of training and adoption needs in your organization it is possible to use our solution in combination with partner offerings to create a robust adoption & training program for your employees. 

 

Provision the Beta Preview of Microsoft 365 learning pathways to your tenant today and customize it to increase usage and adoption for all of Microsoft 365 in your organization.  Share your feedback and experience with us here in the Driving Adoption forum in the Microsoft Technical Community.

 

78 Comments
Copper Contributor

Great News! Is it possible to get more detail on the planned release schedule, especially regarding the multi-language support. @Karuana Gatimu 

Copper Contributor

Hello

I'm looking forward to seeing the road maps.

Brass Contributor

Hi @Karuana Gatimu,

 

I'm a little confused.  Is the Microsoft 365 Learning Pathways a replacement for the Office 365 Custom Learning, or are they meant to be used side-by-side?  I wanted to check with you before I ask one of our developers to provision the new service for us to look at.

 

Thanks!

Richard 

Copper Contributor

In my first review of this product it looks great!  I didn't however see ways to add new technologies to the site as it sits today.  Did i miss this in documentation or is this on the roadmap?

Microsoft

Hello All and thank you for these questions.  To answer the one by one: 

 

Roadmaps will be published here shortly.  We have another content release in July and we are working to structure our roadmap schedule. The Driving Adoption forum will be the primary publishing location for service announcements, roadmaps and other information.  Detailed release notes will appear in our documentation location at https://aka.ms/M365LPDocs beginning in September.  @Trebor1761 @Xavier_Mabille 

 

Microsoft 365 learning pathways HAS replaced Custom Learning for Office 365.  We now have additional content from across the company specifically for Windows 10 so we needed to expand our name.  @RichardP 

 

Currently the technology list is static at this time.  In the meantime we'd suggest using the Category area which is fully customizable and adding a new "product" to accomplish the same goal.  @amycolemanrocks 

Brass Contributor

Thanks for the follow-up replies @Karuana Gatimu .  We are going to deploy the Microsoft 365 Learning Pathways site and start exploring the content.

If you’ve deployed the Office 365 Learning Portal, do you have to re-deploy this version?
Copper Contributor

Awesome! Will deploy the Beta version today! 

 

 

Steel Contributor

Do I actually need to be a Global Admin, or would SharePoint Service admin access be adequate?

Copper Contributor

We had to use Global Admin account to provision this.

Brass Contributor

I am trying to provision this using the Global Admin account, but keep getting the same error, "we are unable to sign in using this account, please try again later".  I am using a new InPrivate Browsing session and have tried signing into the admin centre before attempting to provision.  Is anyone aware of any other tenant requirements other then those listed on the pathways page?

Deleted
Not applicable

We are starting the process as well. It looks pretty good. We used Global Admin privileges to provision the site. Trying to edit the site and customize it now to make it company specific. 

Brass Contributor

Has anyone worked out how to embed web parts from the Learning Pathways sites into existing Sharepoint sites used for training in their organisation? When I get a Link from a playlist webpart eg. Microsoft Teams - https://[ourdomainwashereoriginally].sharepoint.com/sites/O365CL/SitePages/CustomLearningViewer.aspx?subcategory=02354a27-0675-4f67-9c32-f616ce5b3bf3 and embed it into our existing site, the webpart displays everything not just the Teams playlist.

 

EDIT: I dont see the Microsoft 365 learning pathways web part mentioned here - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/customlearning/custom_addwebpart in my site when adding new webparts.

 

EDIT2:

Ok, answering my own question but leaving it here in case it becomes useful to others.......

Looks like I need our Admin to add the webpart to our tenant - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/customlearning/custom_manualsetup before it will become available in our existing SharePoint sites.

 

Then I expect I can add the web part and configure it to display what I want like this - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/customlearning/custom_addwebpart

 

EDIT3:

Ok for anyone playing at home - here's how things ended up for me.....

I had already requested a Custom Learning Site be provisioned, so all I had to do was add that app to my existing Office 365 training site.

In my own training site, settings cog - add an app, 

Find and select the Custom Learning for 365 app

 

After thats been added, on a page in your SharePoint site embed the webpart and use the filter to display the content you want.

 

Hope that's useful for someone else :)

Campbell Smythe

Copper Contributor

We are ready to setup the Learning Pathways on our site. I have a question; if Microsoft has updated videos or commands, will it automatically update to our site or do we need to manually edit updates? 

Brass Contributor

@Stanley239 yes it does:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Driving-Adoption-Blog/Microsoft-365-learning-pathways-your-cu...

 

"All of the Microsoft content is connected to an online Microsoft content catalog so you can rest assured knowing that the content on your site is automatically updated to stay current with our product features and best practices."

 

cheers

Campbell Smythe

 

 

Copper Contributor

Hi! I wanted to ask if anyone was having issues with accessing the pathway when trying to customize it? We keep getting this error, as well as when trying to access the admin portion. We've tried checking our permissions, we are set to owners, but we still get this same error. Also we are able to edit a page such as the one below in the screenshot. we can still add web parts but that error message still appears. Any insight?

 

 

pathway error.PNG

Copper Contributor
When installing, I see only English. is there also multilanguage support? If yes, where do I find instructions? My Site is Dutch but the webparts or content do not react on site language...
Brass Contributor

@Me_as_admin the article says English only but that 9 Languages will be added this year. No more details that that but @Karuana Gatimu may have an update for everyone?

Copper Contributor

Love it.  Is there a master list/catalogue of all the learning resources/assets available from the MSFT source (GitHub/support.microsoft.com).  I know and have added a host of our own assets to playlists.  However I'm wanting to sit down with a big list of all the MSFT assets I can choose from and draft up a 'paper' version of a playlist.  I seem to be only able to see the assets by searching, searching, searching and it seems quite laborious.

Copper Contributor

(How) can I edit existing articles and change them, for example the line "Note: To change permissions, select the drop-down. Allow editing is checked by default. " We have it unchecked so this default article cannot be used.

 

What can you recommend? It seems I cannot add a page into the default playlists and mix default playlist assets with my customized ones.

Copper Contributor

As part of provisioning, it require tenant administrator access which I already have however in addition to that it require consent to other information such as “Reading items of all Site Collection”, “Have full control in all site collection”.

I have not proceeded further and wants to  understand why they need these permission. I am working for government organization, we need to be inline with data privacy policy. 

Even though Learning pathways is an open source however its information is published on the Microsoft Docs and as a customer we need to know what is the purpose of the access that we will grant as part of provisioning the site.

Copper Contributor

Our experience with the beta version of the web parts has not been good. We followed the directions for tenant deployment, which appeared successful. We then deployed the web part to a sample site. For myself, as an admin, I could see the content as expected. However, when users logged in to the same site to view the same web parts, they were presented with very un-friendly error messages saying the content was not available. I'm hoping that the beta version gets upgraded to a production-ready version because the content and approach both align to our usage of O365.

Hi @Michael Brunak. Did you deploy to a new site collection or try to deploy to an existing site collection? I haven't tried using the app catalog to deploy to different site collections. I used PnP to deploy to a new site collection and it works fine. 

 

@Amy Dolzine, did you managed to update the deployment? The process is here on the Github repository. In short, you'll need to download the package and update it in the App Catalog. https://github.com/pnp/custom-learning-office-365/blob/master/README.md#current-release-version

 

@sofiamaxe, I have found that you'll need to create a custom playlist and then mix your custom pages/content. I have been creating custom playlists anyway because the default playlists don't deliver the info in an order I agree with. I work with my customers to prioritise their scenarios, then order the content in the playlist to compliment the delivery of our in-person training and drop-in sessions. 

Copper Contributor

Hi @Darrell Webster - I deployed to a new SharePoint Online comm site using the "add app catalog" UI widgets. It seems to work for a bit, and then breaks at some point.

Copper Contributor
In my testing I could deploy it as a stand alone site *or* I could deploy the web parts to a (single) existing site. I could not do both, nor could I deploy the webparts to multiple sites. Has anyone managed otherwise?
Copper Contributor

Hey guys,

 

Really excited about discovering this today - I'm a L&D Manager here, so all the more appropriate! I'm in the process of getting this site provisioned and go through all the steps. Unfortunately, our account exec at Microsoft is none too helpful or prompt in their advice! So, hoping the community can come to the rescue.

 

I'd like to customize the roll-out of the site well beyond what's out of the box. In that, I'm looking to leverage this learning pathways site as the means to deliver internal policies/procedures/help files/manuals and all the support stuff in playlists and pathways. I'm hoping someone can help me how to: modify the content in the GitHub repository so the pathways site still points to it or points to a different repository on GitHub. Ideally, I'm looking to store content I would author with Adobe Robohelp or MadCap Flare (like in the Tech Comm world) and store natively in GitHub; this way, I can do single-sourcing and a bunch of content curation/authoring stuff I can't do in SharePoint. But ultimately then, serve it up/point to it from the SharePoint Learning Pathways Site.

 

Please advise!

 

Thanks,

Karthik Jediseh

Senior Manager of Learning and Development

GoodLife Fitness

Brass Contributor

I'm trying to provision this and get the error below. I am using a Global Admin account and have created an App Catalogue. The account also is a Site Collection Administrator. Any help?

Prerequisites are not fulfilled

Current configuration of your SharePoint Online tenant does not satisfy some of the pre-requirements to provision the selected package.

Here are further details about the missing prerequisites:

  • In order to provision the template you need to have Full Control permissions on the App Catalog in your tenant. Please, configure the App Catalog security settings, and try again.

Please address the findings and try again.

Brass Contributor

I get the same issue as @Nicol Hanekom 

Copper Contributor

Hello from NZ.  We implemented the M365 LP a few days ago.  I'm liking the overall concept but I'd really  like to create my own Categories (beyond Getting Started, Projects, Scenarios and Adoption).  Plus I'd like to add some non MS products to the Technology lists - are either of these changes possible?  regards Dawn

Steel Contributor

@Karuana Gatimu With Ignite coming up in November, any word on updates for the Microsoft 365 Learning Pathways?  Will additional resources be added or more functionality to customizing the playlists?

Copper Contributor

Is it possible to get more detail on the planned release schedule? 

Microsoft
Yes at and after Microsoft Ignite which is Nov 4-8. We'll be posting information here as well.
Copper Contributor

So new and exciting stuff coming up?

Copper Contributor

Under the Drive Adoption section in the documentation, there is a reference to a Downloadable Adoption Kit (though I think the header needs to be updated, it says Use Download Adoption Kit) that contains campaign calendar, email templates, etc.  I can't find a link to download the adoption kit anywhere.  Am I just really blind?

 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/customlearning/driveadoption#use-the-download-adoption-ki...

Copper Contributor

Hello all,

 

Who is actually responsible for answering to queries in this community? Ourselves? I'm finding as I scroll up from the latest to when I posted over a month back, and going even further back, maybe 5% of queries are actually being fielded? 

 

Thanks,

Karthik 

Microsoft

Yes @kjediseh  the community does answer its own questions by design. As a Community Manager I answer other questions as needed and hold monthly calls to share more information.  You can find recordings and deck of those calls here via via my blog.  What question exactly do you need assistance with?  Happy to help.  Please note that anything regarding roadmap or feature would be best held till after next week.  During Ignite we have a lot of announcements that come out and we'll be posting them here.    

Microsoft

HI @Greg Berry  Hi Greg.. I see what you are talking about... I'll take a look and get that page updated as needed.  This likely won't be until after Ignite because we have more items coming out that will change the screen shots in those documents. 

Copper Contributor

Thanks for the response, @Karuana Gatimu ! My questions are to do with the roadmap for features beyond what's out of the box at present, so I shall await the results from the Ignite conference. However, did want to ask if it'd be possible to add assets (webpages) beyond the standard ASPX pages we create natively within a SharePoint site. I ask, because, there are ASPX pages created outside of SharePoint's page creator (like Adobe Robohelp) or there are XHTML pages (.htm format) created with help authoring tools like MadCap Flare, that I'd like to upload to a Document repository within the Learning Pathways site that I'd like to ideally use as Assets in a playlist.

 

Cheers,

Karthik 

Copper Contributor

 @Karuana Gatimu  - Or anyone else. Can anyone tell if the Learning Pathway is available in the GCC. (Government Cloud). I would love to take advantage of the product vs. curating and creating a portal of some type for the organization. 

 

 

Brass Contributor

We implemented this site back in May and love that we can customize the content that is delivered based on the tools we use. 

We keep encountering odd behavior though when someone visits a page. They haven't edited the page, but after they have viewed content and either navigate away from a page or close the site they get a message that reads "Leave site? Changes you may may not be saved." They haven't made any changes, so we're not sure why that message would appear.

clipboard_image_0.png

Copper Contributor

Hello everyone,

 

Sharing learnings from a custom deployment. I had posted a while hoping to get custom assets to display in the Learning Pathways site, referring to .ASPX content created outside of SPO. I had created a "SPO-friendly" HTML5 output from a Help Authoring tool popular in tech comm. circles called Adobe Robohelp

 

I've been able to upload the content to the /SitePages/ folder using SharePoint Designer 2013. From there, I can display the "full" output as an 'Online Help' system with side nav/index/glossary/filters specified by conditional tagging etc. As well, I've been able to use the individual topics (.aspx pages) as custom assets when adding those to a playlist. Pretty neat, IMHO! Especially since it works, so wanted to share this with everyone as a workaround if you want to be able to display more features, styling, leverage single-sourcing and all that, which cannot be done natively in SPO but still display it in SPO.

 

Here's the contents as created by Robohelp in SPO /SitePages/

SPO SitePages.PNG

 

This is what a sample folder for a particular section looks like inside that output folder tree, noting all the .aspx pages created that I can use separately as assets (I will show that output later when used as a custom asset in a playlist):

SPO Robohelp ASPX.PNG

 

This is what the full Online Help system (HTML5) looks like 'embedded' using the embed Web part within a page in the Learning Pathways site. It looks seamless within the page and allows the full navigation intended by the RoboHelp design you specify (side nav, top nav) since there's many options and you can specify if you want a glossary, index, and you can filter based on personas you specify for which you conditionally tag text in the authoring environment.

SPO Online Help.PNG

 

Now, imagine one of the .aspx pages (friday.aspx, for example) being used as an individual asset while preserving all the styling/formatting you specified in the Adobe Robohelp authoring environment. It will display as is, without any formatting needed within SPO.

SPO ASPX Custom Asset.PNG

So, you can leverage either display option to create many hybrid support resources on one SPO learning pathways site, building custom playlists using assets with way more display functionality than is possible within SPO and/or display entire help systems with full nav capabilities, leveraging the full feature set of Adobe Robohelp (single sourcing, conditional tagging etc.)

 

Let me know if you have any questions.

 

Cheers,

Karthik Jediseh

Senior Manager of Learning and Development

GoodLife Fitness

 

 

Steel Contributor

@kjedisehThanks for sharing this will help others see the possibilities of customizing the Learning pathways.  I have a question from our Training and Development team.  Our HR uses Storyline 360 by Articulate to create course material. They would like to add this material into SharePoint.  I have a small example of a "course" which is just an image which you click on and text appears. I have copied all the files into the document library but the output is and aspx or HTML5 file. I have not been able to figure out if I can get this to display in SharePoint Online.  I was going to post my question on the SharePoint community but I saw your solution above and thought about asking in this forum too.

Copper Contributor

@SusanMcClements No worries at all - I believe your best bet is to somehow get access to write to the /SitePages/ folder of your SPO instance. Since you're usually only able to create a new page within SharePoint and not bring anything in from elsewhere, I recommend using SharePoint Designer 2013 (free download) and then open the site from within it. As long as you have write permissions then you can import the necessary .aspx files directly into the SharePoint /SitePages/ folder and then so, display what you want. 

Copper Contributor

@Karuana Gatimu 

Hi 

We have created 2 learning pathways, 1 production and 1 test site.

We created the production site first, we are using version 3.0.0.

If we click at the setting in our production site:

clipboard_image_0.png

We got redirect to the test site, why that?

 

I hope someone can help, because we are launching tomorrow.

 

Thanks 

Brass Contributor

@Karuana Gatimu or @kjediseh  (or others :) ) - Will it be possible for Admin (or others) to get notification in forehand when material from Microsoft is updated so there is a chance to modify according to own adoption plan?

 

Thanks

Hi @Karin LOKKE. The learning material is referenced from support.office.com. Do you want notification when their pages are updated? I don’t think that’s possible today. 

Copper Contributor

Hi All,

We have received concern from our security team, how the Microsoft data will be updated. If so, how secured it and because using the same pathway any data can be pushed to our environment.

Brass Contributor

@Darrell Webster - You are spot on! It is important for adoption to be ahead of change to communicate to users how this change might change their way of working. I think to communicate before (or at least at the same time) change happen to users is key to success for optimal use :) @Karuana Gatimu 

Copper Contributor

Hi @Karuana Gatimu, I have a question about the learning pathways administration. When we modify a training session, how can we change the image? It seems like they only ask for a Github link. Is there any easier way to change it?

Thank you in advance!

Copper Contributor

is there any schedule regarding the multi-language capabilities available?

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