Cornerstone OnDemand and edX for Business Integration - Catalog Synchronization

The learning management system (LMS) course catalog is synchronized on a daily basis. New courses and course updates are communicated from edX to the LMS using oAuth 2.0 as the authentication protocol. edX courses are available within 24 hours of enabling the integration, and are classified as online content in the LMS.

Content delivered to the system via the edX integration is categorized as the online content training type. Because online content is updated via automatic synchronization, any manual changes made to online content metadata may be overridden in the Course Catalog and Course Console. For more information about how the online content training type behaves in the Course Catalog and Course Console, see the following:

Note: Only purchased courses are synchronized to the LMS catalog.

Note: All courses are automatically defined as available for mobile consumption and can be used on the Cornerstone Learn app.

PERMISSION NAME PERMISSION DESCRIPTION CATEGORY
Course Catalog - Update

Grants ability to manage and edit training items listed in the Course Catalog and also grants access to the Course Console, where training can also be managed and edited. This permission also grants access to the Popular Requests and Highest Rated widgets on the Learning Admin Console (in conjunction with the Learning Admin Console - View permission). This permission also allows administrators to reversion online courses via the Course Console page. This permission also allows administrators to access an Edit Training option for training items included as objectives in Development plans.

This permission can be constrained by OU, User's OU, Training Type, Training Item, Provider, ILT Provider, User's ILT Provider, User, User Self and Subordinates, and User's LO Availability. This is an administrator permission.

Note: Adding an OU constraint and a provider constraint to this permission results in an "AND" statement.

Learning - Administration

Training Data

The Cornerstone OnDemand and edX for Business integration can communicate the following metadata fields to the LMS catalog:

Field

Description
ID

The unique ID of the course
Title The course title
URL The course URL (used to redirect users to the provider’s course)
IsActive Specifies whether the course is available in the edX catalog. When a course is no longer available, it is defined as inactive in the LMS catalog
Description

The description of the course
Thumbnail The course thumbnail image
Languages The list of available languages for the course
LastModifiedUTC The time of the last modification made to a course (UTC)
Duration The course duration
Subjects The list of subjects, mapped to the LMS subject taxonomy

Online content metadata can be edited via the Course Catalog. The following fields may be overridden when edX sends course updates:

  • Course Title
  • Course Description
  • Duration
  • Available Languages
  • Thumbnail
  • Subjects (Only edX subjects are overridden. Subjects added by the administrator are not affected)

View Courses Loaded to the Course Catalog

To view courses which have been loaded to the Course Catalog using the integration:

  1. Navigate to Admin > Tools > Learning > Catalog Management and click the Course Catalog link.
  2. Click the Refine your search link on the Course Catalog search page.
  3. Click the Provider filter and choose the edX provider as the filter.
  4. Click the Search button. The courses that are returned in the search are courses that were loaded via the integration.

Learner Progress Data

When a learner completes a training item, their training completion is automatically recorded on their LMS transcript. Training progress data is communicated by the User Progress API, protected by the provider's authentication.

The following data is communicated to edX when learners launch edX courses:

Parameter

Description
userGuid The user’s identifier in the LMS
sessionToken The current session token that is used to authenticate the call to the LMS when Basic Access Authentication is used
callbackUrl The Progress API callback path
subdomain Cornerstone’s portal name. Example: company.csod.com
registrationNumber The current user registration number

Considerations

  • Only courses launched from the LMS can be tracked by the integration.
  • Custom fields are defined with an empty value for edX courses.
  • The Active button is disabled for edX courses and can be only edited by edX via catalog synchronization