Configurations on the Training Platform

You can customize the learner and administrator experience on the Microsoft Community Training platform to fit the needs of your specific training program.

In this article, you will learn about the different configuration options available on the Microsoft Community Training platform and how to enable or disable the configurations.

Steps to set the Configurations on the Platform

  1. Login to Azure portal.

  2. Go to App Services from the left-menu.

    Select App Service.png

  3. Click on the app service belonging to your Microsoft Community Training instance.

  4. Select Configuration under settings from the left-menu.

    Select Configurations.png

  5. Go under Applications Settings tab

    Select Application Settings.png

  6. Select the setting you want to edit, Example - If you want to disable learner comments, use the setting Features:CommentDisabled and update it with value “true

    Comment Disabled

    Comment Disabled Editing

  7. Click on save.

    Save Application Settings.png

Certificates Received Metric

Features:CertificatesEarnedMetricsEnabled

The portal allows you to customize the Certificate received metric of the learner dashboard available in the learner's view. You can enable/ disable the metric that shows the total certificates received by the learner. Total certificates received by the learner

By default, this metric is kept enabled with value as True.

Courses Completed Today Metric

Features:CourseCompletionsTodayMetricsEnabled

The portal allows you to customize the Course completed today metric of the learner dashboard available in the learner's view. You can enable/ disable the metric that shows the total number of courses the learner completed on that day (as per UTC time zone). Course completed today

By default, this metric is kept disabled with value as False.

Content Priority for Learners

Features:EnablePriorityForCourse

The portal allows you to specify priorities to the courses while assigning them to the learners. You can enable/ disable this feature on the portal depending on your specific requirements.

By default, this feature is kept enabled with value as True for administrator to assign priorities.

Highest Priority Content for Learners

Features:ShowOnlyRequiredCourses

The portal supports four levels of priorities to be assigned to courses - Default, Optional, Recommended and Required. The administrator can configure the portal to show only those courses to learners which are assigned "Required" priority.

By default, this feature is kept disabled with value as False and therefore all courses are visible to learners.

Learner Notifications

Features:NotificationDisabled

In the learner's view, the portal provides a Notification icon which notifies the learner of any new course being assigned to the learner. The administrators have the flexibility to disable this features depending upon the scenario.

By default, this feature is Disabled with value as False so that learners gets notifications in real-time.

Learner Comments

Features:CommentDisabled

The Platform comes with a functionality where learners can comment on different lessons and initiate a discussion. By default, this feature remains enabled. But, the administrators have the flexibility to disable this function to avoid peer-to-peer interaction over platform. Once disabled, learners will not be allowed to post comment.

Learner Action Events

Features:Events

Microsoft Community Training portal utilizes Microsoft Azure Service Bus to integrate with other supporting Azure services (like Azure Storage, Azure Media Service) for enhancing user experience. All events that trigger the service bus can be tracked and further be used for specific actions. You can enable this feature to get updates on specific triggers.

By default, this feature remains in disabled state.

Enabling Organizations on the Platform

Features:IsMultiOrgDeployment

Microsoft Community Training portal allows you to manage the portal with multiple organization. An organization comprises of a group of learners and administrators on your training platform who have a particular purpose or belong to a specific criteria. You can enable/disable this feature depending upon your requirements.

By default, this feature remains disabled with value False, therefore not allowing administrators to create multiple organizations.

Restricting ability to edit Learner profile for non-Global admin

Features:disableProfileEditForNonSuperAdmin

MCT allows you to restrict ability of editing learner profiles for administrators other than global admin. If you choose to have only Global admin to edit learner profiles in MCT you can set this value to true

Hide Navigation bar for Learners

Features:HideTopNavBarForLearner

The portal allows you to embed the Microsoft Community Training platform in another application with independent authentication mechanism. In such scenario, the administrator can hide the top navigation bar on the learner's view. You can enable/disable this feature depending upon the specific requirements.

By default, this feature is disabled with value as False.

False value

Allow platform embedding

Features:SuppressXFrameOptionsHeader

The portal allows you to embedded the platform into iFrame or webview so that it can be integrated with other applications. You can enable this setting if the platform is required to be embedded into different application.

By default, this feature is disabled with the value False so that embedding is not supported.

Allow external video embedding into MCT

AllowEmbedDomains

The portal allows external website's content to play inside Microsoft Community Training portal as inline lesson. You can add different domains, for which content embedding is required.

By default, it remains empty. You can add domain names into the value field to allow embedding (For Example: dailymotion.com).

Allow embedding

Hide landing page courses

Features:HideCoursesInLandingPage

The portal allows content to be available to the learners only after they login to the platform from the landing page. The landing page for the learners by default shows the names and description of the self-enroll and auto-enroll courses on the platform, this can be avoided by setting this configuration as True.

By default, this feature is disabled with value as False allowing learners to view the self-enroll and auto-enroll courses before they log in to the training portal.

Hide landing page

Hide Course Library

Features:HideCourseLibrary

The portal allows you to hide the Course Library from the learner’s view of the platform. You can enable/ disable this feature on the portal depending on your specific requirements.

By default, this feature is kept disabled with value as False for permitting the learner to view the library.

Disable creation of Auto-Enroll courses

Features:AutoEnrollCourseEnabled

MCT portal allows you to disable marking course as Auto-enroll while creating new course. By default, admin can create auto-enroll courses is enabled and to disable this you need to set the value as false

autoenrollcourse

Enable PDF Download feature in the lessons

MCT portal allows you to enable the Download feature for the PDF lessons in the learner’s view of the platform.

EnablePDFLessonDownload

By default this feature is not enabled, you need to add the above configuration and enable this feature by setting value as true. To disable this feature, configuration setting value should be set as false.

pdfdownload

Allow learners to skip videos

Features:EnableSeekingInVideos

The portal allows learners to skip through any video lesson while viewing it on the platform. This capability can be enabled/disabled on the portal depending on your specific requirements.

By default, this feature is kept disabled with value as False, ensuring that the learners DO NOT skip video lessons when they are completing the lesson for the first time. The learners can skip through in subsequent views even when this setting is set as False.

MCT portal allows you to provide a link to an external website on the learner’s homepage for allowing the learners quick access to a preferred website.

Features:ExternalWebsite:Name

Value: Name you want display (Example – Microsoft Community Training)

External link 5

Click or tab on Ok icon to proceed.

Again, click on the New application setting and provide the following values in the corresponding boxes:

Features:ExternalWebsite:URL

Value: Provide the link to which it will be redirected (Example – https://communitytraining.microsoft.com/)

Click or tap on Save icon to complete this process.

External link 6

Switch to the learner’s view on your instance and click on profile picture. Now you would be able to see the external link available on the panel, as shown in image below (visit Microsoft Community Training):

External link 7

Steps to set Default Country for Phone based login

If your instance has phone based authentication and if you want to set a default country flag in login page for all the learners, you need to provide Alpha-2 ISO code for the country you want to be as default flag as value to DefaultCountry application setting.

DefaultCountry

In Value tab, provide the two letter Alpha-2 country code. Example - For setting default country as India, provide the value as IN.

Def_country

Disable MS Teams integration with MCT

deploymentType

When setting up the MCT instance, if you had opted for MS Teams integration with MCT by selecting "Yes" under Enable Microsoft Teams? and would now like to proceed without MS Teams integration, MCT allows you to disable this deeper teams integration using this Application Configuration.

To disable this MS Teams integration, update this app setting with value “0”

Warning

  • MS Teams integration comes with MCT instances with authentication type as "Work or School Account".
  • Once you disable the MS Teams integration, you would be able to add users to the platform via MCT Admin UI.

Disable teams integration

Enable PWA Mobile App

Features:EnableWebAppInstall

The platform supports progressive web applications (PWA). For setting up the mobile app for your training portal, you need to update enable this feature, by setting its value to True.

By default, this feature is disabled with the value False.

Manage course progress retention

UserProgressRetentionEnabled

If the Administrator enables this application setting with the value "True", user's progress for the content will be retained even if content is de-assigned to that user. That means, if a learner is removed from a course and then re-enrolled to the same course, the earlier progress would be retained.

By default, the application setting is marked as "False"i.e. on de-assignment, all the progress of that learner will be deleted from that course.

Mask User details for Admin

MCT platform supports masking of user data, this will help in creating additional security to restrict admin from glancing sensitive user information.

You can enable masking of your user data by setting Features:Masking:IsProfileFieldsMaskEnabled to true

Features:Masking:IsProfileFieldsMaskEnabled

Once the masking feature is enabled, you can now choose what user information to be masked from this app setting.

Features:Masking:MaskedProfileFields

maskthefields

  • Use First Name as a field in app settings to mask first name of the user/admin
  • Use Contact to mask EmailId/Phone number/Contact of the user/admin
  • Use Last Name to mask last name of the user/admin
  • To mask custom Profile Fields, use actual name of the field Eg: State, SSN

Other Flag configurations

Flag Name Description
UserCacheExpiryInHour The user cache expiry time in hours.
Features:AdminNotificationDisabled Whether admin notification is enabled or not.
MaxRetryCountForWebJobs Number of retries for web job failure. This is for internal purposes and should not be tweaked by customers unless advised.