Letting people sign themselves up

Self sign-up lets learners register themselves from a registration page on your subdomain, instead of you adding or importing them. They still need a signup code, so it is open to the people you give a code to rather than to anybody who finds the page.

Where it lives

Self signup is its own section in the left-hand admin menu, a sibling of People rather than part of it.

Switching it on

1. Choose Admin at the top of the page, then Self signup in the left-hand menu and Settings.
2. Switch on Enable external self-signup on your subdomain.
3. Decide whether to switch on Require administrator approval before learners can access the platform.
4. Choose Save changes.

Each setting has an Information button beside it if you want the longer explanation before you commit.

Deciding about approval

With approval off, somebody who registers with a valid code is in, immediately.

With it on, registering creates a request instead, and nobody gets access until it is approved. Those requests arrive in Approvals, alongside everything else waiting on you, rather than in a queue of their own inside Self signup.

You are told when one arrives: every administrator is notified, and the notification names the person and the signup code they used.

Approval is the setting to choose if the code might travel further than you intend, since a code shared beyond its audience only produces requests rather than people who can sign in.

The registration page

The Registration page field holds the link learners use. It is read only, with a Copy button, so it is something you distribute rather than something you choose.

Signup codes

A learner needs a valid signup code as well as the link. Codes are managed on their own screen, which appears in the Self signup menu once the setting above is switched on. It was switched off on the account this article was checked against, so the steps for creating a code are not written here yet.

The signup codes list has two tabs. Active holds the codes people can sign up with. Archived holds every code nobody can use: the ones you archived, and the ones switched off, whether by you or when you set up positions. To bring a code back, choose Activate from its row menu. If your account uses positions, a code has to name a position before it can be activated: choose Edit, pick the position, and switch it on there.

What a signup code gives the people who use it

A signup code decides the job of everyone who registers with it, so their training is assigned from their first day. Without positions, a code can set a job title, location, department, company and manager. Leave them empty and people join with none.

If your account uses positions, a code names a Position instead, and that is all it sets: the job title, department, location and company come from the position, and so does who they report to. An active code must name one. If the position you need does not exist yet, type its name in the list and choose New position to create it without leaving the code.

With positions on, switching self-signup on does not create a first code for you, because there is no position to choose on your behalf. Create one yourself.

A position that a signup code names cannot be deleted. Point the code at another position first.

Setting custom field answers on a signup code

A signup code can also answer your people fields for everyone who uses it, under Set on signup. Use it for anything the code already tells you about the people using it, such as the region or cohort a code was made for. The person signing up is never asked; the registration page still only asks for their name, email address and code.

A field marked Required must be answered on the code before an active code can be saved, and the message names the field. Answers are checked when you save the code, so a problem shows up in front of you rather than when somebody tries to sign up.

The answers are saved on the person as they are created, before their training is assigned, so a field that assignment rules use counts from their first day. After that they are ordinary answers on the person: you can change them there, and nothing overwrites them.

What happens after you save

Nobody is emailed and nothing changes for anybody who can already sign in. The registration page starts accepting people with a valid code, and — if you asked for approval — their requests start appearing in Approvals.