Using Microsoft 365 Learning Pathways in your GCC High Tenant

[Martin Ballard]

Contributors:

Rob Garrett - Sr. Customer Engineer, Microsoft Federal 

John Unterseher - Sr. Customer Engineer, Microsoft Federal

Martin Ballard - Sr. Customer Engineer, Microsoft Federal 

What are Learning Pathways?

Microsoft 365 learning pathways is a customizable, on-demand learning solution designed to increase usage and adoption of Microsoft 365 services in your organization.

Microsoft 365 learning pathways is a customizable, on-demand learning solution designed to increase usage and adoption of Microsoft 365 services in your organization. Learning Pathways consists of a fully customizable SharePoint Online Communication site collection, with content populated from the Microsoft online catalog; so, your content is always up to date. Learning Pathways provide integrated playlists to meet the unique needs of your organization.

M365 Learning Pathways build atop of the Look Book Provisioning Service and templates (https://lookbook.microsoft.com).  In a previous blog post, we detailed the nuances of the Look Book Provisioning Service and additional steps required to deploy templates to GCC High tenants. Since Learning Pathways depend on the provisioning service to create a Communication site with customizations, via a Look Book template, this post details the additional steps to follow those from the earlier blog post.

Challenge – Using Learning Pathways in GCC High

Because of provisioning limitations in the GCC High sovereign cloud, documented installation instructions result in errors.

Microsoft strives to implement functionality parity between all sovereign clouds. However, since each Office 365 cloud type serves a different customer audience and requirements, functionality will differ between these cloud types. Of the M365 clouds – Commercial, Government Community Cloud, Government Community Cloud High, and DOD Cloud, the last two offer the least functionality to observe US federal mandates and compliance.

As Microsoft develops new functionality for Microsoft 365 and Azure clouds, we typically release new functionality to commercial customers first, and then to the other GCC, GCC High, and DOD tenants later as we comply with FedRAMP and other US Government mandates. Open-source offerings add another layer of complexity since open-source code contains community contribution and is seldom developed with government clouds in mind.

Apply Learning Pathways to GCC High

Manual configuration steps detailed below make Learning Pathways in GCC High possible.

Microsoft 365 Learning Pathways offers manual steps to support deployment to an existing SharePoint Online Communication site. Recall from the earlier blog post that the Look Book Provisioning Service is unable to establish a new site collection in GCC High, because of necessary restrictions. We, therefore, deploy Learning Pathways using the manual steps with a pre-provisioned Communication site collection.

Manual setup of Learning Pathways requires experience working with Windows PowerShell and the SharePoint Online Management Shell.  

Prerequisites

Before getting into the manual steps, we must meet prerequisites for manual install of Learning Pathways, the following is a summary:

• Create and designate a new Communication in SharePoint Online for Learning Pathways.
• Create a tenant-wide application catalog (steps below).
• Install the latest SharePoint PnP.
• Perform all steps as a SharePoint Tenant Administrator.

We begin by creating a new Communication site via the SharePoint Administration site:

https://mytenant-admin.sharepoint.us/_layouts/15/online/AdminHome.aspx#/siteManagement/view/ALL%20SITES

Note: Ensure you review the default language for the new site.

Next, check your language settings – choose one of the following three options:

1. Option 1 – You do not want multilingual support:
   1. From the SharePoint communication site, select Settings > Site information > View all site settings > Language settings.
   2. Set the Enable pages and news to be translated into multiple languages switch to Off.
2. Option 2 – You want multilingual support with the default language:
   1. From the SharePoint communication site, select Settings > Site information > View all site settings > Language settings.
   2. Set the Enable pages and news to be translated into multiple languages switch to On.
   3. Add additional languages, and then click Save.
3. Option 3 – You want multilingual support with a different default language:
   1. Create a new Communication site and select the desired default language.
   2. From the SharePoint communication site, select Settings > Site information > View all site settings > Language settings.
   3. Set the Enable pages and news to be translated into multiple languages switch to On.
   4. Add additional languages, and then click Save

Ensure the appropriate permissions for users of the Learning Pathways site:

1. Open the Learning Pathways site collection in your web browser.
2. From the home page, click the Share link.
3. Add students to the Site Visitors group.
4. Add playlist editors of the pathways site to the Site Members group.
5. Add site administrators of the pathways site to the Site Owners group.

We shall now create the tenant app catalog (if it does not already exist):

1. Open the SharePoint Admin center in your browser.
   

   https://mytenant-admin.sharepoint.us​

2. Select More Features in the left sidebar.
3. Locate the Apps section and click Open.
   

   https://mytenant-admin.sharepoint.us/_layouts/15/online/TenantAdminApps.aspx​

4. Select the App Catalog.
5. If you do not already have an app catalog, provide the following details:
   1. Title: App Catalog
   2. Web Site Address Suffix: preferred suffix for the app catalog, e.g. apps.
   3. Administrator: SharePoint Administrator.

Ensure that the latest version of SharePoint PnP is installed – run the following commands within an elevated PowerShell window:

1. Install the SharePoint PnP module with the following (requires an Internet connection):
   

   Install-Module SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline​

2. If the module is already installed, you should update it to the latest version with:
   

   Update-Module SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline​

3. Ensure the module is loaded with the following:
   

   Import-Module SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline​

 

Download Learning Pathways Files

With the prerequisites completed, we shall now download the required files for Learning Pathways.

1. Visit the following location, on GitHub, via your web browser:
   

   https://github.com/pnp/custom-learning-office-365/tree/master/webpart​

2. Download the following files to your workstation:
   

   customlearning.sppkg
   M365lpConfiguration.ps1​

3. Edit the PowerShell script and replace the sharepoint.com references to sharepoint.us.
   The following image is the code locations at the time this post was published.

Uploading the package to the App Catalog

Having downloaded the customlearning.sppkg file, upload it to the app catalog site (which you created/validated in the prerequisites):

1. Open the app catalog site in your web browser, e.g.:
   

   https://mytenant.sharepoint.us/sites/appcat/SitePages/Home.aspx​

2. Click Apps for SharePoint in the left sidebar.
3. Click the Upload button.
4. Select the customlearning.sppkg file.
5. Click the OK button to upload the package.
6. If asked, trust the application by clicking the Deploy button:
   
   
   
   

Run the PowerShell Script

Now, we run the downloaded PowerShell script: M365lpConfiguration.ps1

Note: The script will prompt for credentials – authenticate with the credentials of a Tenant SharePoint Administrator.

Using the script looks like this:

M365lpConfiguration.ps1 -TenantName contoso -SiteCollectionName MicrosoftTraining

For example, if your site is…

https://mytenant.sharepoint.us/sites/LearningSite/

you run:

M365lpConfiguration.ps1 -TenantName mytenant -SiteCollectionName LearningSite

Note: Sites may take a few minutes to be fully available.

Validate Deployment of Learning Pathways

Having completed the earlier steps in this post, including running the PowerShell script without error, you should now see both user and admin pages in your learning site collection:

https://mytenant.sharepoint.us/sites/my-site-name/SitePages/CustomLearningViewer.aspx
https://mytenant.sharepoint.us/sites/my-site-name/SitePages/CustomLearningAdmin.aspx