Introduction to Integrations – NovoEd Help

NovoEd is a program delivery platform that enables users to build and roll out engaging and effective learning experiences at scale. This article is for customers who need to integrate other technologies with NovoEd to create a learning stack that matches their needs.

NovoEd provides integrations in 4 key areas to enable customers to manage their learning operations at scale:

Single Sign-on
Content Integrations: SCORM, Micro-Learning Libraries & Third Parties
Learning Portal or E-Commerce Integrations
Compliance System of Record

Many customers begin offering learning experiences on NovoEd with almost no integrations in place and add them as they discover new needs for operational scale. This article is an introduction to NovoEd’s integrations.

Single Sign-on

NovoEd’s Single Sign-on (SSO) feature enables learners to log in to the NovoEd platform with their existing company username and password, and prevents learners from having to remember a password specific to NovoEd.

To enable SSO in NovoEd, customers should consider the following:

Customers must already have an Identity Provider set up that supports a SAML 2.0 interface
NovoEd must become a SAML consumer to the NovoEd customer’s identity provider
IDP-init (Identity provider initiates SSO) or SP-init (Service provider initiates) implementations

In addition to a streamlined login experience for learners, introducing Single Sign-on into a NovoEd institution also enables the option to offer courses that are open to everyone within the organization, where Admins will not be required to manage enrollments.

For more details on this integration and configuration, see Single Sign-On.

Content Integrations: SCORM, Micro-Learning Libraries & Third Parties

For customers looking to incorporate outside content in their learning courses, the NovoEd platform accepts several types of content integrations:

SCORM - A SCORM file (Sharable Content Object Reference Model) packages course content and makes it consumable by other learning technologies. SCORM packages can easily be uploaded into NovoEd and embedded directly into the flow of the learning experience.
Micro-Learning Libraries - Customers that have subscriptions to micro-learning libraries (and have obtained the right to use the content) can include this content in their NovoEd course by uploading an AICC package. Common examples of micro-learning libraries include Grovo and LinkedIn Learning.
Third-party content - Other third-party content that is not in SCORM or AICC format can be IFramed (Inline Frame) into NovoEd and embedded onto lecture pages.
Other - NovoEd supports video files, audio files, documents, and natively built visual content as well.

These integrations enable course builders to weave a variety of content sources seamlessly with NovoEd features, providing a richer and more diverse experience for their learners. For more details on how to integrate content, see Content Integrations.

*Please note: Customers are expected to follow intellectual property laws and obtain the appropriate permissions before using third-party content.

Learning Portal or E-Commerce Integrations

Learning Portal and E-Commerce integrations help ensure NovoEd customers advertise their learning experiences to their target audience. In addition, these integrations also enable NovoEd learners the ability to discover relevant courses on their own.

Different factors help determine which integrations make the most sense for NovoEd customers, such as:

Type of audience - Internal employees, employees from other companies, consumers who have paid for the course, or consumers who discover the course organically and enrolled through a custom website/CRM
Goals - How do learners log in to the NovoEd course? How do learners discover the right course?

To better understand which integrations match each NovoEd use case, see Selecting a Learning Portal or E-Commerce Integration for more details. For more information on specific integrations, see the following articles:

Compliance System of Record

NovoEd is a social learning platform that creates large amounts of user-generated content. For customers with compliance requirements (e.g. within a heavily regulated industry), NovoEd offers API integration options to remove data for all user-generated content from course offerings.

For more details on these APIs and recommended workflows, see the following articles:

Selecting a Learning Portal or E-Commerce Integration

This article provides information to help NovoEd customers decide on a few foundational integrations and offers recommendations based on a customer’s target audience and goal.

Audience: Internal Employees

For organizations targeting internal employees for learning experiences, there are several options for sharing NovoEd courses. Organizations may have an established learning portal that brings learning experiences from various sources together in one place e.g. Learning Management System (LMS) or a portal system (like Degreed).

Determine the best option based on scale and goals:

Goal: Customers that do not want learners to manage a NovoEd password for security and provisioning reasons. Integrations with systems for listing or keeping the results of training are not desired.

For customers with this goal, NovoEd recommends enabling a Single Sign-on integration into the customer’s identity provider so participants can use their existing corporate password to log into NovoEd. In this option, NovoEd customers can add learners who should have access to each learning experience by uploading a CSV file into the NovoEd platform. After the NovoEd course is over, customers can download completion data and detailed progress results (in CSV files).

Goal: Customers want to list the course on an LMS for employees to be assigned to or discover on their own, give employees the ability to enroll in these courses, and have final completion results recorded back in the LMS.

We encourage all our corporate clients to utilize the following integrations if they intend to deliver learning at scale and use their LMS as the learning portal as well as the system of record for completions. Please note that the following integrations may require support from your internal LMS/IT team.

AICC- Most LMS support AICC, a standard that allows courses on NovoEd to be listed on an LMS and allows NovoEd to record learners’ results on the LMS. Read this article on how to utilize an AICC integration.
The AICC integration should be paired with a SAML 2.0 Single-Sign-On integration to enable learners to enroll in NovoEd courses through AICC on their own. Read this article for more details on setting up SSO.

NovoEd has integrated with Cornerstone On Demand, Workday, and Saba to name a few, mostly through the AICC integration.

if you do not have IT support or scale to implement the above integrations, however, you still want results of training recorded in your LMS as the system of record, there is a manual workflow you can follow:

List your NovoEd course manually on the LMS only visible to learners who are supposed to have access.
Upload a CSV of learners who should have access to your NovoEd course. Learners will receive a welcome email with instructions on how to log in.
After training is over, download a CSV of completion outcomes from NovoEd and upload it back to your LMS.

This process is heavily manual and we only recommend it for a proof-of-concept or pilot program.

Goal: Customers want to list courses on a custom corporate course listing, give learners the ability to enroll in these courses, and have final completion results recorded back in the LMS.

Course Listing API and SSO

Customers can use the NovoEd course listing API or a manual process to list courses in a custom corporate website. A SAML 2.0 Single Sign-on integration is required to be able to allow learners to enroll on their own. Learner completion data remains on NovoEd in this scenario.

xAPI and the LMS

For customers that have an LMS used for learner completion data but do not want to use it for course listing, NovoEd recommends our xAPI integration. Please note: most LMS require the purchase of xAPI as an add-on. Customers should check that this feature is enabled before choosing this integration option.

Goal: Customers that want to list courses on Degreed and have final completion results recorded back onto Degreed.

In Q2 2021, NovoEd's Degreed integration was released. Please see our article, Degreed LXP Integration, for more information.

Audience: Employees of Other Companies

For NovoEd customers that are training providers and have sales teams selling to other companies, the simplest approach is to have one course per client under the same NovoEd institution. With this approach, there are two main options:

Training providers can add their client’s administrators to the course to access learning data and see the progress of their employees.
Alternatively, training providers may also add learners from different clients to the same course. However, this option makes access to learning data more difficult as clients could not be added as course administrators. Course admins would be able to see data from different clients.

NovoEd has a premium offering available for customers that desire to offer separate institutions (with dedicated integrations) for different clients. Please note that there is an additional charge with configuring integrations for clients on NovoEd if each new client requires a new institution and/or new set of SSO configurations/integrations. Customers should ask their customer success manager if their client is an existing customer of NovoEd. This could make the integration path quicker.

Managing many client configurations is not an easy task. NovoEd recommends that customers keep track of which integration options each client has chosen using this simple table (filled with sample responses):

Key Questions	Client 1	Client 2	Client 3
Is the training program listed in a learning portal?	No. Training program welcome email is sent to those eligible	Yes. On the LMS, AICC integration	Yes. on a custom corporate website
How are users provided access to the training program?	CSV upload on NovoEd	On the LMS self-enroll based on role	Self Enroll
How do users login to NovoEd?	SAML 2.0 SSO	SAML 2.0 SSO	SAML 2.0 SSO
What NovoEd course type is utilized to control access properly to the training program?	Closed enrollment	Closed Enrollment to ensure enrollment happens through AICC launch	Open within the organization
Are the final results of training synced back into a system of record? How?	No	Sent back to LMS through AICC	Yes, xAPI integration with LMS

Audience: Consumers who have paid the course fee

NovoEd integrates with Shopify, an advanced e-commerce platform. Shopify enables customers to build and host their own online storefront. The integration with Shopify allows customers to seamlessly enroll learners into NovoEd courses. Courses can be offered for free or for a fee on Shopify, and leverage a webhook notification to automatically send the enrollment data to NovoEd. The details of this integration see Integrating with Shopify.

NovoEd customers who offer public courses for a fee use NovoEd as their system of record for progress and completion. For customers that would like to get completion data out of NovoEd and into a system of choice, please explore details on the xAPI integration or the NovoEd Salesforce sync app. Customers may also build a custom integration by pulling data from the enrollment API.

Audience: Consumers who discover course offerings and enroll through a custom website or CRM

For NovoEd customers that manage course offerings and learners on a CRM (e.g. Salesforce) or on a custom storefront, there are several options available to help scale the program:

Goal: Customers that want to list courses on a website using Salesforce as the CRM and get the results of user completions back into Salesforce.

NovoEd has a Salesforce app designed to sync data from NovoEd into Salesforce. This integration enables customers to build courses on NovoEd and use the Salesforce app to sync the listing to Salesforce automatically. Customers may build custom course landing pages on top of the listing information from NovoEd on Salesforce.

This integration requires a team of Salesforce developers on staff, as building the course listing and managing the enrollment process cannot be done without additional work. If this integration path is desired, NovoEd recommends using Salesforce as the identity provider and adding a SAML 2.0 Single Sign-on integration. An SSO integration allows learners to access their accounts on the Salesforce CRM as well as the NovoEd course.

Customers may choose to use NovoEd JSON API to manage registrations if there is a custom workflow, application, or approval process within Salesforce. After learners are enrolled in NovoEd, the NovoEd Salesforce sync app will sync back their completion results into the Salesforce instance.

Goal: Customers that want to list courses on a publicly available custom storefront.

NovoEd has a course listing JSON API that enables customers to pull the courses created on NovoEd. Please visit this help desk article for more details on JSON API.

With this goal, customers have two options for managing how learners enroll in NovoEd courses:

The offering is public and anyone can enroll. In this option, customers do not want this data to be present in any other system than NovoEd. No integration is needed in this case.
The offering is not public and customers have a custom storefront to manage applications, payment, and other criteria required by the organization. Customers can use the NovoEd JSON enrollment API to manage learner registrations. If the customer’s organization has an identity provider that all learners can sign in through, the SSO integration can also be utilized.

Both of the above options result in learners remaining in NovoEd. Customers can use the NovoEd JSON Enrollment API to pull the final status of a learner after the course has concluded and then save the data into any other system of choice.

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