Microsoft 365 learning pathways is a customizable, on-demand learning solution designed to increase usage and adoption of Microsoft 365 services in the organization.
Microsoft 365 learning pathways offers:
- A fully customizable SharePoint Online communication site – The learning pathways training portal can be customized to add your organization’s help, support, and community content
- Easy provisioning – Provision learning pathways from the SharePoint Online Provisioning Service with just a few easy steps
- The ability to create your own training playlists – with learning pathways, you can create targeted training playlists to meet the unique needs of your environment.
- Up-to-date content – Learning pathways provides content through a Microsoft online content catalog, so the content is regularly updated.
Summary
A SharePoint site needs to get created using the Learning Pathways template. Below is a summary of steps must execute to setup Learning Pathways.
- Setup the Learning Pathways SharePoint site using the template
- Grant the admin rights to the SharePoint team site
- Grant everyone access to the SharePoint team site
- Review the Learning Pathways content
- Create the Learning Pathways app
- Pin the app to the sidebar
Setup of learning pathways
To successfully set up Microsoft 365 learning pathways with the Provisioning Service, the person doing the provisioning must meet the following prerequisites:
- The person provisioning learning pathways must be a Tenant Administrator of the tenant where learning pathways will be provisioned.
- A tenant App Catalog must be available within the Apps option of the SharePoint Admin Center. If your organization does not have an SharePoint tenant App catalog, refer to the SharePoint Online documentation to create one.
Instructions:
- From the Microsoft 365 Admin center, go to the SharePoint Online Admin Center.
- Go to More features > Apps > App Catalog.
- If the App Catalog site opens, skip the rest of these steps.
- If there is NO App Catalog, Select Create a new app catalog site, and then select OK.
- On the Create App Catalog Site Collection page, enter the required information then select OK.
Important notes on a NEW App Catalog:
- Only 1 administrator can be added at this stage
- Allow up to 2 hours for the App Catalog site to get fully provisioned.
- If you go back to the app catalog site while it’s provisioning, you will get prompted to create the App Catalog Site Collection again. Ignore, allow time for the app catalog to get fully provisioned.
- If you attempt to provision learning pathways you and the App Catalog is not fully provisioned, you will be presented with the following error:
This template requires a fully provisioned App Catalog. The App Catalog on your tenant has been created within the last 2 hours. Please wait a bit longer to provision the template.
- The person provisioning learning pathways must be a Site Collection Owner of the Tenant App Catalog. If the person provisioning learning pathways is not a Site Collection Owner of the App Catalog complete these instructions and continue.
Instructions:
- From the Microsoft 365 Admin center, go to the SharePoint Online Admin Center.
- Open the properties of the App Catalog by clicking on the site name
- Select Permissions
- Confirm or add people are Site Admins (formerly known as Site Collection Administrators).
Add Owners to Site
As the Tenant Admin, it’s unlikely you will be the person customizing the site, so you will need to assign a few owners to the site. Owners have administrative privileges on the site so they can modify site pages and rebrand the site. They also have the ability to hide and show content delivered through the learning pathways Web part. In addition, they will have the ability to build custom playlist and assign them to custom subcategories.
Instructions
- From the Microsoft 365 Admin center, go to the SharePoint Online Admin Center.
- Click Sites – Active Sites
- Open the properties of the Learning Pathways by clicking on the site name
- Select Permissions
- Confirm or add people as Site Admins (formerly known as Site Collection Administrators)
Grant the entire organization access to Site
Grant the entire organization access to the Learning Pathways SharePoint site
Provision Microsoft 365 Learning Pathways
- Go to the Microsoft 365 learning pathways solution page.
- Click Add to your tenant. If you are not signed into to your tenant, the Provisioning Service will ask for your Tenant Admin credentials.
- From the Permissions requested dialog box, select Consent on behalf of your organization and then select Accept.
- The provisioning service requires these permissions to create the tenant app catalog, install the application into the tenant app catalog and provision the site template. There is no overall impact on your tenant and these permissions are explicitly used for the purpose of the solution installation. You must accept these permissions to proceed with the installation.
- Complete the fields on the provisioning information page as appropriate for your installation
- Click Provision when ready to install learning pathways into your tenant environment.
- At What will be provisioned click Confirm
- The provisioning process will take up to 15 minutes. You will be notified via email (to the notification email address you entered on the Provisioning page) when the site is ready for access
Validate Provisioning Success and Initialize the CustomConfig List
- When provisioning is complete, the Tenant Admin who provisioned the site, receives an email from the PnP Provisioning Service. The email contains a link to the site.
- Wait at least 60 minutes – if you proceed with the following steps you may encounter this error:
Microsoft 365 learning pathways has a configuration issue. Please see the browser console for detailed logs. For assistance check out the issues list at https://github.com/pnp/custom-learning-office-365/issues. {CustomLearningAdminWebPart – TypeError: Cannot read property ‘Categories’ of undefined}
- Go to <YOUR-SITE-COLLECTION-URL>sites/<YOUR-SITE-NAME>/SitePages/CustomLearningAdmin.aspx. Opening CustomLearningAdmin.aspx initializes the CustomConfig list item that sets up learning pathways for first use.
Explore Learning Pathways
Explore the default content provided in the site and web part.
Create the App
- Login into Teams using an account that can upload apps
- In Teams click on the App Store icon in the app bar in the left of Teams.
- When the store opens type “App Studio”
- Click the “Add” button to install the app
- After the App Studio app opens click on “Manifest Editor”
- In the Manifest editor tab look for “Create a new App”
- Complete the required information
- Details – App details
- At App names, enter in the Short name and Full name
- At Identification,
- Click the generate button
- Enter in the Package Name and Version
- At Description, enter in the short and long description
- At Developer Information, enter in the name and website
- Ignore Partner Information
- At App URLs, enter in the privacy and terms of use
- These should be internal websites!
- At Branding, upload the full and transparent icons
- PNG format
- Capabilities – Tabs
- At Add a personal tab, click Add
- Enter in the name, entity ID, content and website URLs
- For SharePoint the URLs must start with https://<tenant>.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/teamslogon.aspx?SPFX=true&dest=/sites/<teamsite>
- Click Save
- Finish – Domains and Permissions
- At Valid Domains, confirm the SharePoint domain of our tenant has been added, otherwise click Add
- Ignore Device permissions
- At AAD App ID, enter in the GUID for a SharePoint: 00000003-0000-0ff1-ce00-000000000000
- At Single-Sign-On, enter in the SharePoint domain URL
- Finish – Test and distribute
- You may see some warnings, in general these can be ignored
- Click on Install to install the app for yourself. After the app is installed, it will load the Learning Pathways portal. Confirm it’s functioning as expected.
Package the App
- Go back to the App Studio in Teams
- Click on “Manifest Editor”
- Click on the Learning Pathways app
- Look under “Recently created apps” for the “Learning Pathways” app and click on it.
- Click on “Test and distribute” tab
- Click the “Download” button to package the app for import.
- You will see a pop-up indicating the package was exported and it file name.
- It will download to your default downloads folder on your PC.
Uploading the App
- Go backing into Teams and click on the “Apps” icon
- Click Upload a custom app
- Browse to the downloads folder to locate our package and click “Open”
- The app will now appear in our Tenant App Catalog
- Allow around 30 mins for the app to appears in the Teams Admin Console
Create a new policy
- Go to Microsoft Teams admin center > Teams apps > Setup policies
- Click “Add”
- Enter “Collaboration” as the name of the new policy
- Set the following
- Upload custom apps = ON
- Allow user pinning = ON
- Confirm the “Pinned apps” that are listed are identical to the apps listed in the Global policy
- Click “Save”
Assign a new policy to people
- Go to Microsoft Teams admin center > Teams apps > Setup policies
- Select the “Collaboration” policy by clicking to the left of the policy name
- Select “Manage users”
- In the “Manage users” pane, search for the user, select their name then select “Add”. Repeat this step for each user.
- Select “Save”
Making the App available
- Go to Microsoft Teams admin center > Teams apps > Setup policies
- Click on the “Collaboration” policy
- Under “Pinned apps” click “Add apps”
- Browse for the app, select it, then click “Add”
- You will now see on how the app listed. The default is at the bottom you can highlight the app and move it up. If you are satisfied with the position click “Save”
- Allow up to 2 hours for the policy settings to sync with the O365 backend systems.
- Log out and log back into Teams (or access Teams in the browser) and you should see the new app appearing in the side bar.
Uninstall process
SharePoint:
- SharePoint admin to delete the Learning Pathways teamsite.
Teams App:
- Remove the app from the side bar
- Within the Teams Admin Centre go to Teams apps – Setup Policies
- Click on the “Collaboration” policy to open the properties
- Under Pinned apps select the app then click remove
- Click Save
- Remove the app from tenant app store
- Within the Teams client go to Apps – Built for xxx
- Beside the app click on the 3 dots for more options
- Select “Delete“
- Place a tick mark beside “I understand” then click “Delete app”
Now It’s Your Turn
So that’s how Microsoft 365 learning pathways works
Which finding from today’s report did you find most interesting? Or maybe you have a question about something that I covered.
Either way, I’d like to hear from you. So go ahead and leave a comment below.
