Where Skilljar Is Going Next: Announcing New Products to Elevate Customer Education

The difference between customer education teams that are thriving and teams that are facing cuts is the ability to demonstrate company-level business impact.

Hello, dear Skilljar customer 👋

At Connect, our customer education industry conference, over 300 customers, partners, and customer education professionals came together to learn more about Skilljar’s  perspective on the future of Customer Education. As such, there was no better time to share our vision going into 2024. We unveiled our goals and the path forward for our product.

We’re thrilled to share the highlights around upcoming product features with you directly— some available now, and more coming in early Spring 2024. We didn’t want to limit the exciting news to Connect attendees alone—so we’ve put together a sneak peek for you here, as well as hosted an on-demand Product Showcase to walk you through our latest roadmap.

In the Product Showcase,  you’ll see:

• Details on our vision for where we want to take customer education
• An in-depth walk through of the features we’re sharing today
• A sneak peek at what we’ve got in store for the rest of 2024

Our Expanded Vision

In the past year we’ve heard a common theme from our customers: In tight times, showing how Customer Education boosts metrics like Net Revenue Retention (NRR) and reduces support costs is crucial. If teams can show that connection, it greatly increases the chances of additional investment coming their way.

We took this insight to heart, and we’re expanding our vision to focus on two key elements.

1. We will continue to empower you to run an effective education program at scale. This includes innovating on the core functionality Skilljar delivers as an external Learning Management System such as courses, certification, monetization, global availability and an incredible learner experience that evolves with your company.
2. Second, we now aim to help you link your education efforts to key business outcomes. We look to support our customers in their efforts to measure the impact of Customer Education and prove its ROI. With new features, we will enable you to tie your efforts to positive company revenue, and we will give you concrete, actionable insight on how to improve upon this impact.

The goal? Both of these key focus areas will enable you to uplevel your training programs to key business functions. Education is a product in itself, and your Academy deserves to be at the front-and-center of business impact.

Kicking off 2024: Helping you run an effective education function at scale

Today’s announcements are focused on the first part of our vision, helping you continue to expand the reach of your content and manage an effective program at scale. In our Product Roadmap Presentation you will hear more about our plans to help you connect your results to the essential metrics that drive your company’s value.

Let’s dive into the upcoming releases!

What’s New at Skilljar

#1 Introducing Content Syndication: Extend the reach of your content and easily embed your Skilljar courses into another LMS.

Available today, Content Syndication allows you to create and host your course in Skilljar, and easily syndicate access to that course directly in any LMS your customers use, such as Cornerstone, Seismic Learning (formerly Lessonly), or Litmos. In just a few clicks, you can share your courses directly in your customers’ LMS, not just in your own Academy.

Imagine you’re the Head of Customer Education at Acme, and your customer Hooli has a pressing need to educate all its employees about Acme’s security policies. Instead of requiring Hooli employees to enroll in Acme Academy, you can effortlessly deliver your “Acme Security Basics” course directly to Hooli’s workforce by syndicating it into their existing LMS. It’s a seamless way to reach all Hooli learners instantly.

Content Syndication is available today for courses you want to syndicate into Cornerstone. Syndication with Seismic Learning, Litmos and other xAPI-enabled LMSs will be available in the coming months.  

Here’s how Content Syndication will change how you distribute course and lesson content:

Add a Skilljar course to your customer’s LMS in mere seconds.

All you have to do is select your courses, download a small, launch configuration file using xAPI or cmi5, and share it with your customers for easy import into their LMS.

Maintain control over course content syndicated in a different LMS.

When you update a course in Skilljar, it is automatically updated for all learners, including learners accessing the content from the syndicated LMSs. There are no extra steps for your customers so you can keep consistent content across platforms.

Sell your courses wherever your learners are.

Expand your market by selling courses directly where your learners are. With Content Syndication, your customers can access your courses without needing to visit your Academy.

In-depth analytics for syndicated courses.

Gain comprehensive insights into how your courses are consumed across different LMSs. Skilljar’s dashboard and your customers’ LMS provide detailed analytics on learner engagement and progress, eliminating the need to have separate access or data reports.

Learn More about Content Syndication

#2 Skilljar AI: Generate content faster directly in Skilljar with three new AI features.

In 2023, customer education teams began experimenting with generative AI capabilities across the board. We believe that AI is one of the most effective ways to help training teams create content faster. TSIA data has validated this, in a recent survey to their Education Services members on current and future use of AI solutions, 65% of respondents are investing in AI for one or more content-related activities such as content development, translation, video scripts and exam question writing.  

This is why we’ve built three new AI features directly into Skilljar. Going from a good first draft to ready-to-go course content still requires human experts like you, so all of our AI features provide suggestions that allow you to review and edit.

Learn more about our AI features

Generate Short Descriptions

Using the existing content in your course and lessons, we suggest a concise and compelling short description with just a single click.

Automatic Learning Objectives

Create a list of learning objectives to include in your long description, automatically crafted from your course content.

Instantly Generate Quizzes

With the click of a button, Skilljar’s AI will automatically generate a set of five to ten quiz questions using your course and lesson content. You can review the questions, edit answers, and seamlessly import the questions as a quiz or question bank.

Our three new AI features are available today, included in all Skilljar plans.

#3 Skilljar Actions: Create custom workflows that run themselves and spend less time on manual tasks.

One issue that many customer education teams face is juggling hundreds of small repetitive tasks in order to keep the whole learning system running smoothly. Skilljar Actions is here to help by automating these tasks, freeing you up to focus on more important aspects of your Academy.

Automation has already been a powerful tool in Skilljar for email messaging, course re-enrollment, and webhooks. We’re expanding the power of our automation with the ability to automate common learner management tasks. Automation also helps you keep learners consuming content throughout their entire journey with you, not just during onboarding.

Now, you’ll be able to automatically:

1. Add a learner to a group
2. Remove a learner from a group
3. Enroll a learner in any course

Skilljar Actions is now available, included in all Skilljar plans.

Here are just a few examples of how you can use Actions to automate common, repetitive tasks:

• Auto-enroll learners in courses or exams based on their progress or certification status
• Group certified learners for easy tracking and reporting or tailor your Academy homepage to learner groups
• Unlock advanced courses for learners after they complete onboarding modules

Learn More about Skilljar Actions

#4 Custom Enrollment Reports: Track and export the enrollment data and metrics that matter most to you.

Good customer education teams track key program and business metrics, but great ones share and act on these metrics. We found that our customers needed more control over our Enrollment Analytics to make them ready to share with others. Our updated Enrollment Reports now have customization options and include paths, allowing you to track and export the most relevant data for your needs.

Here’s how you can customize your Enrollment Analytics to focus on what matters:

• Filter rows by date (registration date, completion dates, completion status, due status, certificate expiration date, latest activity, expiration )
• Filter by content (domain, course, path, label, course titles)
• Filter by learner group
• Choose which columns to hide or show
• Save and reuse your preferred report views

Learn More about Custom Enrollment Reports

Custom Enrollment Reports is now available, included in all Skilljar plans.

Join us on the journey

We’re excited about these new developments and the potential they hold for your business in 2024. To dive deeper into our roadmap and features, keep an eye on your inbox on February 6, 2024 for our Product Roadmap Presentation.

Here’s a handy summary of the features announced today:

• Content Syndication: Available today for Cornerstone—Seismic Learning, Litmos and other xAPI enabled LMSs next
• Skilljar Actions: Available today
• Skilljar AI: Available today
• Custom Enrollment Reports: Available today

Stay tuned for more as we continue to innovate Customer Education together!