It’s fairly common to use SSO and have Userids created automatically on first login. By default, users will be defined with the Learner role and placed in the Imported Users Organizational Unit. Sometimes, users will then be moved from there into a function-specific Organizational Unit so that function-specific courses can be assigned, or just to keep things tidy. (You can automatically have users assigned to Org Units based on information received from the Identity Provider (IdP), but this is typically only used for ‘full-org’ coverage, and requires the same OU names being used in SAP Enable Now and the IdP.)
In such a scenario, the Imported Users OU effectively becomes an ‘inbox’ for “new users who need to be assigned to the correct OU and/or Role”. The problem is then how do you get notified of these users, without having to go into Manager and check the Imported Users OU every day. In this post, we’ll look at how to do this.
We’re going to make use of one of the standard Manager reports – because we can have this scheduled to run automatically and sent to us. There is no report that will just list “everyone in a specific Org Unit” – the User Report will only list users who have reviewed some content (although you can do this via Power BI) so we will use the Users by Progress report. However, in common with several of the Manager reports, this reports on an Assignment. So we will need to create an Assignment we can use. This will actually help us, as it allows us to provide some additional information to new users.
For the ‘course’ that we’ll use in this assignment, I’ve just created (and published!) a simple Book named New users start here, and included in this a single Book Page named Welcome. This one page contains some generic ‘welcome’ text – but could contain any other set-up information you may want to give users (such as installing Desktop Assistant). But we will take advantage of this by including a text that asks the user to send an email to the Training Admin. This then gives us an initial notification that the user has been created in SAP Enable Now.
We now need to make sure users will see this course. This is where the Assignment comes in. Back in Manager, go to menu option Administration > Assignment, and create a new Assignment. Set the Selected Object as the one-page course (you may find it in Unsorted if its parent is not published), and set the Selected Identity as the Imported Users Org Unit (this will make sure it is only seen by users who are in this Org Unit).
Other settings you should use are:
- Display as: Object and sub objects (actually, anything except Object only will work)
- Weight: 1 (so it is listed at the top – just in case they somehow have other assignments)
- Allow Search: Deselected
- Show Description: Selected (if you provided a Description for the Book)
- Color: Set to something bright, so it stands out (again, just in case they somehow have other assignments)
Now, all new users (who reach the Learner View – consider distributing a URL of (for example): https://globocorp.enable-now.cloud.sap/#learner/) will see this course:
We could just leave things there – new users will see this course, and then send the Training Admin an email as our notification. However, some users may not open the course (despite our best instructions!) or may forget to send an email. So we’ll go back to the report we identified earlier.
Select Manager menu option Reporting > User by Progress. When prompted, set the Selected Identity to Imported Users, and run the report. This gives us a list of all users in the Imported Users Organizational Unit, along with the number of courses assigned to them and their progress (if tracked). We don’t care about any of the tracking information; we just care about the list of users – because these are the new users we need to assign to the relevant Org Unit.
The last step is to get this report generated automatically, and sent to us. To do this, click on the Save button on the upper-right of the report area. Enter a name for this report when prompted. Once you’ve done that, you’ll see a new button of Subscribe in the upper-right. Click on this, and you can specify how often you want the report to run – in this example, at midnight every weekday. (If you want to change the timing of the report generation, you can do so from Manager menu option Reporting > Report Scheduler.)
On the schedule specified, you will receive an email containing an Excel spreadsheet attachment which provides the exact content of the report, as shown above. You can then use this to identify if there are any users in the Imported Users Org Unit that you need to progress.
The downside is that this email will be sent every time, even if there are no users listed in it. But at least you’re receiving notifications, and will know to go into Manager and process these users…
