Community Training is an online learning environment powered by Azure. This is a perfect fit for organizations to train their learners and this enables our Non-Profits to achieve their mission to train the underserved population. Community Training aims to transform volunteers and the workforce with a cost-effective training solution. These benefits include cost saving, ease of setup, user friendly interface and ability to learn anywhere. In addition, Community Training adds to its advantages to drive large-scale programs and building training courses, getting insights from assessment, learners’ performance, and course-related reports.
Community Training is available with multiple endpoints for the learners. For example: a standalone white-labelled web application; an Android mobile app; within Microsoft Teams; or via API integration into your own custom app (Coming Soon).
Learners can login to any of these endpoints in three different ways: Phone number (Via ADB2C), Social Account (Microsoft/Facebook/Google) and Work or School Account (Azure Active Directory).
Once you install Community Training in your subscription, you don't have to maintain, update, or service it. All updates to the application will be delivered automatically by Microsoft without the need for you to worry about troubleshooting and diagnosing issues.
Our Non- profit Organizations can leverage the Community Training platform to support personalized learning for a large-scale mobile-based community as it is affordable, easy to manage and provides robust security and privacy protection.
Microsoft Community Training platform is installed and deployed on your Azure subscription.
How to get Azure Subscription for Nonprofits:
- Register and confirm your organization's eligibility to claim the credits: Register - Get Started
- Email activation.
- Verify your account status/ sponsorship credits via this link: Microsoft | Azure Sponsorships
Pre-requisite before Community Training installation:
- Create a pay-as-you-go Azure subscription by referring to this article on Azure documentation.
For our nonprofit organization who wants to use Community Training platform, you can apply and avail the Azure grant subject to eligibility. See the detailed steps here. If you are nonprofit, please make sure you are installing the Community Training in the Microsoft Sponsored Subscription.
2. Get the right ownership access to your pay-as-you-go Azure subscription, refer to this article on Azure documentation to learn how.
You will require Owner or Contributor role on the subscription to go through these steps. Along with these, you will need to have:
- "Application Administrator" + "External ID User Flow Administrator" OR "Global Administrator" access - for Azure AD B2C
- "Application Administrator" OR "Global Administrator" - for Microsoft Entra ID.
3. Get the required information:
Based on the authentication type (Phone/Social login OR Work/School Account), you will need to have the following information handy.
| Key | Phone/Social Login (ADB2C) | Work/School Account (MS Entra ID) |
|---|---|---|
| Global Admin Contact | The emailID /phone number of the Global Admin on the Community Training portal | |
| Tenant Identifier | The tenant id of your Azure Active Directory B2C tenant | The tenant id of your Microsoft Entra ID tenant |
| Client Identifier | Client id of your Azure Active Directory B2C application | Client ID of the Microsoft Entra ID application |
| Client Secret | Client Secret Key of your Azure Active Directory B2C application | Client Secret Key of the Microsoft Entra ID application |
| User Flow Name | Name of the user-flow configured in your Azure Active Directory B2C tenan | N/A |
| Password Resetr Policy (Optional) | The password Reset Policy for the ADB2C Tenant. Please refer to this link | N/A |
| Tenant Name | Tenant name of your Azure Active Directory B2C tenant | Tenant name of your Microsoft EntraID tenant |
4. Sign up on Google Play console in order to publish your app on the Google Play Store. This is required only if you require mobile app for Microsoft Community Training instance. This step may be done later after Community Training.
Click the following link for Community Training detailed step by step installation guide.
Steps to deploy platform from Azure Marketplace are stated as follows:
- Ensure you have completed all the pre-requisites.
- Login to Azure portal using your credentials.
- In the search bar type in Marketplace and press enter.
4. In the Search the Marketplace box, enter Community Training.
5. From the Results, select Community Training.
6. Click the Create button that appears next to it.
7. On the Create Community Training page, the first section is Basics. Enter the values as per the instructions below and click OK.
- Subscription - Select the subscription that you created when you signed up for a pay-as-you-go account (For Non-Profits is is the subscription linked to your free Azure grant).
- Resource group - A new resource group name or an existing one from your subscription.
- Location - Location for the resources of your learning portal.
- Organization Name - Name of your organization.
- Website Name - The name of your learning portal. For example, if you enter “Contoso”, you're learning portal’s website URL will be of the form "https://contoso.azurefd.net". You can map the learning portal to a custom domain later.
-
Note: Please have your website name at least 5 characters in length to meet Azure FD requirement.
- Contact email addresses - The email addresses you want to be contacted on for all information regarding getting started, updates to the platform, latest news etc. Note
Community Training offers two SKUs with license fees in addition to an Azure infrastructure fee for cloud services consumers.
- Non-profit
- Commercial
-
Community Training Installations are offered in two pricing tiers.
- Standard
- Premium
- Contact email addresses - The email addresses you want to be contacted on for all information regarding getting started, updates to the platform, latest news etc. Note
Once done, click on Next.
8. Select the type of Authentication you would like to have on your platform.
The choices are between:
i. Social or Phone Login
ii. Work or School Account
i. Social or Phone Login
This option allows you to use a Google or Facebook based login to Community Training. For Phone based login, please refer to this link for pricing and setup.
Note:
- Please refer to this documentation for social account configuration guide
- Please refer to this documentation for Phone Account Setup Guide
Please refer to this link for pricing information.
1. Global admin contact: Work account email address of the community training portal admin. For Phone login please provide phone number in this format {Country code}{Phone number}.
2. Tenant identifier: The tenant id of your Azure Active Directory B2C tenant. Find your Tenant ID
3. Client identifier: The client id of your Azure Active Directory B2C application. Find your client ID
4. Client secret: The client secret of your Azure Active Directory B2C application. Find your Client secret
5. Tenant name: The tenant name of your Azure Active Directory B2C tenant. Find your Tenant name.
6. User-Flow name: The name of the user-flow configured in your Azure Active Directory B2C tenant. For example, "B2C_1_signupsignin". Find out about User-Flow.
7. Password reset policy: For more information on password reset for local account refer this page.
Note
You will need Azure Active Directory, also known as Azure Entra ID to be setup to choose either option.
- Please refer to this link for pricing.
- Please refer to this link work or school account configuration guide for help with setup.
ii. Work or School Account
This option allows you to use existing work or school account lo login to the Community Training. You will need to provide a contact who will act as the Global Admin on the Community Training. You also have the option to connect your MS Teams subscription to the Community Training instance.
Note
The Disaster Recovery options come at a cost. Please refer to the pricing Calculator to get an estimate of the cost.
The decision to have a disaster recovery needs to be made at installation. This option can NOT be changed later.
9. Once you have made a choice of authentication for the Learner and entered corresponding information, click on Next
Note
The Disaster Recovery options come at a cost. Please refer to the pricing Calculator to get an estimate of the cost.
The decision to have a disaster recovery needs to be made at installation. This option can NOT be changed later.
Note
By default, customer data stays within the region the customer deploys the Community Training instance in. However, the customer can choose to replicate data to a paired region (If Available) for Disaster Recovery purposes. For list of available regions, please refer to this link.
Once you have made your selection, click on Next or Review + Create
10. On the next screen, verify the values entered are correct and click Create.
Note: Deployment takes about 45 minutes. Click on the Notification icon on the top-right of toolbar to monitor the deployment process. After the deployment is complete click on go to resources.
To go to your website, click on the link on the App Service Overview page, or type the website link in the web browser https://Samplename123.azurefd.net" then click on SIGN IN at the upper right to sign in with your Phone number as shown below:
Sign in with your credentials:
Once the deployment is complete and the website is up, refer to the getting started guide to start configuring your learning portal.
Additional configuration based on your choice:
- To setup a mobile app for your instance, follow the instructions given in the create and publish your Mobile App article.
- To setup Teams for your instance, follow the instructions given in the setup Microsoft Teams as learner's endpoint for the platform article.
Get to know about more about Community Training Portal.
- Interactive Demo: Community Training - Interactive Demo
- Documentation: Community Training | Microsoft Docs
- For CT Support Team: Create a support ticket.
Thank you for reading!