About Audience Mapping

Learning resources, curricula, and home page announcements are made visible to appropriate groups of users through target audience mapping. When a user enters the LMS, the system will determine the resources and content that the user can view by comparing the audience definition of these objects to that of the individual. In this manner, the user can be presented with a highly targeted list of opportunities that have been tailored by the training community.

KEY POINT: In the LMS, user data mirrors your organization's data structure.
This is expressed in a hierarchy of domains, levels, and elements.

A domain is a type of data used to categorize users, such as "Job Title", "Business Unit", or "Manager/Not".

A level is a grouping of elements within a domain, such as "Sales" within "Job Title" or "East Region" within "Business Unit". A level is used as an extra layer of granularity in between the broad data type of a domain and the specific value of an element. Not all domains require levels to sub-divide them.

An element is one value within a domain, such as "Sales Manager", "East Region Sales", or "Yes-Manager".

Below are some sample domains, elements, and levels for a fictional organization.

Domains	Levels	Elements
Business Unit	East Region	East Region Sales East Region Operations
	West Region	West Region Sales West Region Operations
	Technology	Infrastructure Group Client Operations Support New Ventures Team
Job Title	Sales	Sales Manager Sales Associate VP, Sales
	Installation	Installation Associate Installation Trainee Installation Supervisor VP, Installation Operations
Manager/Not		Yes a Manager Not a Manager
Location		Atlanta New York Los Angeles Chicago

The LMS will create and populate domain data when processing the data feed from your organization's data source.
As departments, job codes, and the like are added to or dropped from the source system,
the LMS will automatically stay in sync with these changes.

Each LMS user must appear in one element of each domain that is defined in the system.

An audience for a learning resource, curriculum, or home page announcement is a set of people that is described by elements or levels in one or more domains. Audiences are assigned to courses or curricula to make these items visible, or required, for members of the audience.

Audiences can be defined by:

• Identifying specific elements of a domain to be included -- such as "Sales Associate" and "Installation Associate".
• Identifying entire levels of a domain to be included -- such as "Sales". If a new job title "Sales Trainee" is added in the Sales level, it will automatically be included in the audience.
• identifying only the exceptions to the audience -- such as ALL BUT "VP, Sales" and "VP, Installation Operations".
• Joining elements from two domains with an "AND" relationship -- "Sales Associate" AND "Los Angeles" would result in any sales associates that are also in Los Angeles.
• Joining elements from two or more domains with an "OR" relationship -- "Sales Associate" OR "Los Angeles" would result in any sales associates or anyone in Los Angeles.

The LMS default is to include all specified elements, and to join multiple domains with an "AND".

The resource audience can be found on:

• The Audience Tab of a resource.
• The Audience Tab of a curriculum.
• Audience mapping for a specific class instance on the Maintain Facilitated Sessions screen.
• Audience mapping for a selected venue for instructor-led class sessions.
• Certificates: The audience of a certificate may differ from the audience set on a specific resource that is part of the certificate.

Precedence

The primary audience of a resource is typically the broadest group possible.
Other audiences may then be added to expand or refine who can see a specific resource.
Users who have a security role in the LMS will see any resources with an audience that falls within their their highest-access role.

Precedence and Audience mapping on resource screens

The Primary audience tab of a resource is typically the core audience for this resource.
Other audience tabs can be used to expand or refine who can see a specific resource and/or classroom session.

Admins - for users who have an admin security role in the LMS, they will see resources in the admin console that have an audience that falls within the resource audience mapping of their highest Role (for more on Roles and Role levels, see Managing Users / Using People & Security).
Note: the system has an option that shows the admin, when functioning as a learner, to see resources based on the domain mapping on their Person profile, and not based on their admin Roles. This is normally the system default option.

The resource audience can be found on:

• The Primary audience tab on Maintain Learning Resources.
• Course Catalog curricula: the audience on this curricula determines who can see the course in the Catalog.
• Additional audiences on the resource audience tab. These are often created to have targeted required audiences or targeted audiences with specific expiration requirements.
• A Mapping Curricula may be created for targeted required audiences or targeted audiences with specific expiration requirements.

Audience mapping is also available on the following screens. These screens allow an administrator to refine who can see a course/ class in the LMS; however, these audiences will not affect an administrator’s ability to view a resource.

• Audience mapping for a specific class instance on the Maintain Facilitated Sessions screen.
• Audience mapping for a selected Venue for Instructor-led class sessions.
• Certificates: The audience of a certificate may differ from the audience set on a specific resource that is part of the certificate.

Related

To learn more about audience mapping and management, select from the list below, or from Help navigation.

The Audience Tab

Audience Tab: Domains and People

Viewing Course Audience