eFront eLearning (LMS) integration plugin

Discussion in 'Integration' started by skippybosco, Sep 29, 2008.

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  1. skippybosco

    skippybosco CGI-Central Partner Staff Member

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    Over the weekend I did some dev work and testing of a version of the eFront integration plugin that allows for incremental delivery of content.

    The way it currently works is that when defining a product you select which lesson/course you wish to deliver to the user and at when it is delivered (# day, # week, # month, etc). You can add an unlimited amount of items to the list. When that mark is met the lesson / course is automatically added to the user in eFront.

    Am I missing anything?

    I've considered:

    1) expiring content option (content expires # days, # week, etc)
    2) random lesson/course adding from a pool (add a random lesson/course from a pool every # days, etc)
    3) replacing content (one removed, one added every #days, #week, etc)
    4) User is given the option of which lesson they want to add (can add a new one every #days, #week, etc)

    ---

    Another option I'm considering is merit based discounts.

    1) As a part of completing a lesson/course, a coupon / discount is generated based on your overall lesson / course score.
    2) As a part of completing a test, a coupon / discount is generated based on your test score.

    ---

    Another option I'm considering is assessment based pricing. Imagine a user takes a free assessment (test) with a mix of questions from various areas of your e-learning materials. Based on their performance they are given a discount on the course/lesson or lessons /courses are automatically suggested to them, etc. (example: Out of 10 lessons, you score 100% on two of them as part of your assessment, you get a 20% off or get those two lessons free (in the case of variable priced lessons, etc)
  2. training_solutions

    training_solutions New Member

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    skippybosco,

    I am testing amember trial with the efront plugin. It is telling me this does not work with amember trial version. Is this correct?

    any workarounds?
  3. skippybosco

    skippybosco CGI-Central Partner Staff Member

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    While not a limitation of the eFront plugin, it sounds like aMember trial does not allow non-trial plugins to function with it.

    Essentially this plugin allows you to associate aMember products with (one to many) eFront lessons / courses. When a user completes payment for the aMember product they are automatically added to the associated lesson(s)/course(s). When their product subscription expires it automatically removes them from the lesson(s)/course(s).
  4. aai2on

    aai2on New Member

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    Issue

    I have an issue that has come up with the integration plugin. You have been a huge help in the past, thought I would see what you thought.

    My site offers training for employees. The director at a location will go in and sign up an employee through aMember and your plugin will create the student in eFront. This seems to work fine about 90% of the time.

    My issue is this. When the user signs up in aMember, they are the director. They enter the employees name, as well as other information. When they go to pay, it uses the employees name, but the credit card is typically in the name of the director.

    I am having tons of failed credit card charges.

    :( Thoughts?
  5. jane

    jane aMember Pro Customer

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    Efront seems like it will be a great product to use with aMember. I have various "products" setup in aMember that are my own. Will installing Efront affect these other products?
  6. aai2on

    aai2on New Member

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    aMember and eFront

    eFront and aMember work pretty well together. The only changes you have to make in aMember is to enable the eFront plugin and then associate your products with the Course or Lesson in eFront. The plugin handles the creation of students, disabling of accounts, etc.

    The only issue I have is due to a lot of customization. When a new version comes out, I follow a script to ensure everything gets back together the way I want it. Otherwise, Skippy has done a great job on the plugin.

  7. skippybosco

    skippybosco CGI-Central Partner Staff Member

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    So this seems more of an issue with aMember than eFront, in that it does not have a means to differentiate billing information from account information.

    Depending on who your merchant is, you could disable the checking of name to credit card, this certainly opens a bit of a risk of course.

    The other option would be custom fields in aMember and a modified plugin that uses those fields instead of the standard when creating the account.
  8. jane

    jane aMember Pro Customer

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    I don't want the installation of eFront to affect my other older items in aMember. I just want to use eFront to create new items.... is this possible?
  9. aai2on

    aai2on New Member

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    Integration

    I don't think you would have any problems. If your creating new products, the integration plugin adds a new section to your existing products so that you can associate an aMember product with an eFront Course or Lesson.

    If you have aMember pointing to products in other engines, you would set the eFront integration setting to none. This way eFront wouldn't be modified.

    Since eFront and the plugin are free, it might be good to set everything up locally and test it. The guys at Epignosis have been really helpful in helping me through bugs I have found. Their release schedule is pretty quick and purchased development is pretty reasonable.

    I believe my system is pushing their software pretty hard, but I have no complaints. There was one minor feature that their system lacked and I paid $265 for a custom component to be developed. Within 3 days it was done and ready to implement.

    Excellent support from Epignosis and the community.
  10. skippybosco

    skippybosco CGI-Central Partner Staff Member

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    aai2on, Out of curiosity, what functionality did you have built? Was it included in the public version or a private module?
  11. csf97

    csf97 New Member

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    I just recently set up some courses on eFront and am now ready to start looking at setting up the commerce end.

    Our company will be selling the courses both to individuals and to groups. I need to know if the combination of the aMember and the eFront plugin will allow me to:

    1. Charge a different price per course depending on whether it is an individual or a group that is signing up (i.e. allow for a group discount)?

    2. Allow a company to register all their employees and have the option to pay for everyone with one company credit card - or indicate they will send a corporate check?

    I haven't tried aMember at all, so I'm wondering, when they sign up for aMember is the login automatically created for my eFront?

    Thanks for any info - I am a bit confused as to how all this works right now so any help appreciated.
  12. skippybosco

    skippybosco CGI-Central Partner Staff Member

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    Hey CSF97,

    1. aMember can do this a couple of different ways a) through a separate product with it's own unique signup link that has an alternate price than the standard one b) through use of coupons


    aMember does not currently support the notion of buying multiple copies of something and differentiating distribution. Could be done, but quite a bit of customization.

    eFront educational or enterprise may provide that feature. If you have not already, ask the guys in the eFront forum
  13. grantswaim

    grantswaim New Member

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    You should be able to do this with aMember's coupon feature also. Consider this:

    • You sell a company X number of seats to your online course (even give them a volume discount if you want)
    • They give you the funds up front (company check, credit card payment, etc) for the X number of seats at the agreed upon price per seat.
    • You then use aMember's coupon generator to generate X number of coupons to cover the prepaid seats that give a 100% discount to the course you sold.
    • The company then distributes a coupon to each employee so they can self-register and use the coupon to gain instant access to the course.

    SkippyB, you are about to win me over to eFront from Moodle. The more I look at eFront the better it looks :)
  14. skippybosco

    skippybosco CGI-Central Partner Staff Member

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    Great idea!

    Glad to hear it!

    3.6 is going to be a very nice release, due out at the end of May. While there are some interesting things coming in Moodle 2.0, most of them are already in eFront today. I suspect we'll see a lot more conversions in June :)
  15. skippybosco

    skippybosco CGI-Central Partner Staff Member

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    While the existing version of this plugin is working fine for the upcoming 3.5.3 release of eFront, I am making some enhancements to support the native API that ships with eFront as well as some better error handling and messaging and potentially Rebuild DB functions if I can get to it.

    Let me know if you have any special requests you would like to see and I'll try and work them in.
  16. csf97

    csf97 New Member

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    Thanks for the information Skippybosco and Grantswaim. I'm going to give the plugin a try and see if it will do what I need it to do.

    One question that I still have is does aMember assign logins for eFront - still confused as to how that process works. I guess what I need to know is how will eFront know what course to allow the people who sign up through aMember to participate in?
  17. gswaim

    gswaim CGI-Central Partner

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    csf,

    I have not actually performed this integration but I have followed it closely and feel qualified to answer your questions.

    Basically the eFront registration is disabled. Your visitors actually register with aMember and aMember updates the eFront database with username, password, and course enrollment info. Any changes in this info in aMember is automatically pushed to eFront; however, eFront and aMember maintain seperate databases.

    You typically log into aMember which logs you into both aMember and eFront automatically. When you log out of eFront you get logged out of eFront and aMember automatically.

    eFront "knows" which course you have access to based on information pushed to it from aMember. You set up a subscription product in aMember that gives you access to a given course. As long as your subscription is current aMember keeps you enrolled in the course in the eFront database. When your subscription expires, aMember changes your enrollment status in the eFront database and you no longer have access to the course.

    Hope that helped...
  18. skippybosco

    skippybosco CGI-Central Partner Staff Member

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    @gswain: wow, can I hire you as my Public Relations manager? :)
  19. trevan

    trevan New Member

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    Can the aMember product be registration in eFront?

    I have an aMember/eFront site and I'd like to charge for membership to the site, and then offer one course for free. I know how to create products in aMember, set the price, and link them to courses in eFront; but how do I setup a paid membership to eFront from aMember?

    Has anyone done this? It doesn't seem like it should be very difficult, but I haven't figured out a way to do it. Any hints would be greatly appreciated.
  20. skippybosco

    skippybosco CGI-Central Partner Staff Member

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    This question is unrelated to eFront.

    You're basically just asking how to set up a product that has a recurring payment model.

    Assuming you have a supported payment plugin enabled (PayPal_r,etc) you will have a "Recurring Billing" checkbox in your product configuration that will attempt to automatically rebill when the subscription period set for the product expires.

    If you need more specifics I'd suggest starting a new thread on the topic so it doesn't get ignored as an eFront only question :)
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