TalentLMS

TalentLMS
Original author(s) Epignosis, eFront
Written in PHP
Type Learning management system, Technology, Course Management System

TalentLMS is a SAAS eLearning platform (also known as a Course Management System (CMS), or Learning Management Systems (LMS), or Virtual Learning Environment (VLE)).

It is primarily positioned as an employee training tool for small to medium enterprises that places special emphasis on usability and workflow over feature breadth, but can also accommodate larger installations with thousands of registered users. The platform offers tools for content creation and re-purposing, test building, assignment management, reporting, internal messaging & discussions, surveys and others. It can also be used to sell courses online. [1] [2] [3]

TalentLMS is used by many organizations and businesses world-wide including education, retail, construction, public sector and non profit companies. Notable users include Shopify, Cpanel, Acquia (the creator of Drupal) & the University of Arizona.[4] TalentLMS is commonly included in lists of well known SaaS learning systems, with independent comparison matrices between learning management systems often favoring it for its workflow and usability characteristics.[5][6][7] [8]

History

Initial development of TalentLMS began in 2011, with the first public beta made available on June 2012 [9] and the first stable version made available on October of the same year .[10] The system got regular updates throughout 2013 and 2014 introducing additional features such as Gamification, PowerPoint to video conversions, Zapier[11] integration, support for LDAP and SAML authentication and support for coupons and discounts. In late 2015, an app for iPhone and iPad has been revealed to be in development, set to provide an streamlined mLearning experience. It is currently being translated using Transifex

Features

TalentLMS supports a number of features standard to software in this category, including support for selling courses and certifications and extensibility options.[12]

Integrations

TalentLMS comes with built in integration for various external services and products, such as payment processors (Paypal and Stripe) and eLearning industry standards such as Experience API (Tin Can API) [18] & SCORM. It also comes with a WordPress plugin [19] and internal support for BigBlueButton for videoconferencing.

TalentLMS was the first learning platform to offer integration to the Zapier platform ,[20] a service that enables web apps to communicate letting the user build complex coordinated tasks. This enabled TalentLMS to integrate with any Zapier-compatible web app, a list which includes Dropbox, Evernote, Salesforce.com, Gmail, Twitter, MailChimp and Trello.

It also supports SAML and various providers of SSO like OneLogin, Okta [21] and Microsoft Azure.[22]

In August 2015 TalentLMS released an integration with Shopify, an ecommerce-oriented computer software, that serves to set up and run online stores. Thanks to the integration Shopify may be used as a marketplace where the TalentLMS courses authors are able to sell their products. Also it allows exchanging or sharing both courses and information between TalentLMS and Shopify.

The TalentLMS WordPress plugin has been also updated [23] in August 2015, introducing an integration with WooCommerce, which is a popular open source plugin giving WordPress full ecommerce capabilities. Features that were introduced with the update include the ability to integrate TalentLMS courses that are available for sale into the WooCommerce products list, as well as the ability to populate the WooCommerce product categories with TalentLMS course categories.

As of October 2015, TalentLMS has received a possible integration with Zopim.[24] It allows for live chatting with TalentLMS learners without leaving the Learning Management System.

Extensibility

Besides its built-in integration with various external services, TalentLMS also provides a REST based API [25] that can be used to extend the platform and integrate it with other proprietary or open source products and custom services.

The TalentLMS API provides programmatic access to the platform's resources such as users, courses, categories, groups, and branches, enabling external clients to query, update and create new e-learning resources. The API requires an API key for authentication.

TalentLMS offers a native PHP wrapper around the Rest API. It can also be integrated with Ruby programs and Ruby On Rails based websites through a Ruby gem wrapper that gives access to the platform's REST API in a convenient to use form .[26]

Business Model

TalentLMS is offered as a commercial Cloud service, with several plans in different price points, from a free tier supporting a limited number of users and courses, to "unlimited" premium tiers. Billing can be annual or on a monthly basis, with users allowed to switch plans at any time.[27]

Technology

TalentLMS is written in the PHP programming language and hosted on Linux based infrastructure. The front-end makes use of modern HTML5 features and Ajax-based interaction.

See also

References

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Tuesday, February 09, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.