How to Moodle

How to Moodle

How to Moodle

How to choose a workplace Moodle

Known variously as Enterprise Learning Management Systems, Corporate LMS, Business Learning Management Systems or simply ‘workplace LMS‘, if you’re new to e-learning in the workplace, one of the hurdles in deciding on the suitability of a platform is terminology. But once you know what you’re looking for, making a choice can be as simple as answering three questions: what are you teaching, to who, and how often?

Multi-tenancy Moodle pricing options

In the Moodle ecosystem, there are two pricing options for multi-tenancy Moodle: SaaS/per user (Moodle Workplace, developed and maintained by Moodle HQ) or open source/free to use (IOMAD, developed and maintained by ELD).

We’re an open-source specialist, so this page will focus on IOMAD, but what suits you best will be a combination of budget, growth plans and general preference, so there’s a guide to all your multi-tenancy Moodle options here.

Using Moodle in the workplace

Are you moving your in-person training online, or do you already offer e-learning to staff that you’d now like to sell externally? Do you want to white-label branding for multiple clients, or do you need to devolve administration for a complex corporate hierarchy? Or do you just want to simplify the process for your in-house training by automating record-keeping and recertification? To help you figure out which Moodle you need in your workplace, here are the questions to ask:

1. What are you teaching?

If you’re delivering courses to a single organisation or one-off courses to multiple organisations, then standard Moodle will suit. But because there’s no long-term storage capability in this flavour of Moodle, archives and records will need to be held separately.

2. Who are you teaching?

If you’re delivering CPD or compliance-based training to multiple organisations (or any organisation with complicated reporting structures), classic IOMAD automates records archiving and white-labels the user experience, from log-on to log-off.

3. How often are you teaching them?

If you’re delivering in-house training with regular re-certification requirements, then an IOMAD Office configuration does the hard work of remembering (and reminding) all the appropriate users that it’s that time of year again, then storing the results.

Moodle vs multi-tenancy Moodle in practice

In teaching terms, Moodle is a single ‘classroom’ and everyone takes their training in it. Standard Moodle has no long-term storage capabilities or reporting privacy, so once a course has been completed, all records are wiped, ready for a new cohort. In comparison, IOMAD allows you to hold courses in a central location, then give simultaneous access to multiple learners from multiple tenants, all through individual ‘doors’ for privacy.

On top of that, as IOMAD was designed for the workplace, all enrolment and completion records are automatically archived for compliance tracking, reporting and administrative functions can be devolved and configured on a per-role/per-tenant basis, and every step of the user experience can be fully white-labelled – from log-in to log-off. You can even customise the language pack to use sector-specific terminology in your dashboard.

In short, as IOMAD is built on a core Moodle framework, all LMS functions and features are present, so Moodle manages per-course users and activities, while IOMAD instructs per-tenant behaviours, i.e. course access/enrolment/MFA/SAML/SMTP, etc.

IOMAD vs IOMAD Office

Classic IOMAD allows for per-tenant personalisation so that administrative devolution can be applied to multiple individual companies, so IOMAD Office is simply a reduction in configuration parameters, scaled to a size that suits. All of the multi-tenant functionality is still available, but you’d only set up one tenant (your company), so the administrative devolution automatically applies to your departments.

  • Create a single tenant, and apply your company branding, including a workplace URL, preferred theme, logo, favicon, and CSS

  • Create your department structures in line with your org chart and reporting hierarchy, ready for course access parameters to be set

  • Configure each course with the appropriate access type, choosing from self, manager assigned, or automatic assignation, depending on role or department

  • Create role-specific capabilities with associated administration and reporting access, then assign that role where appropriate

  • Set re-certification parameters, notification triggers, and competency-based enrolment in line with your compliance requirements

  • As course enrolment and completion records archiving is in-built, you can automate workplace recertification in line with requirements

How to find your IOMAD hosting level

One of the best things about Moodle is that it’s open source, so you can download and use it for free. If you want your workplace Moodle to be equally budget-friendly, then open-source IOMAD is what you need…

Just like standard Moodle hosting, IOMAD hosting is priced in line with GB usage, and you can find the process for calculating yours here.

Multi-tenancy Moodle FAQs

Sometimes, but it depends on the platform you choose. Open source software (i.e. Moodle and IOMAD) is free to use, so you just pay for the supplementary services (hosting level, support time, etc), while SaaS models charge on a per-user basis, which can obviously rack up the costs as your learner base grows.

The choice shouldn’t be based on the size of your organisation, but on what you need your LMS to do.

If you can separately keep records of who did what, when, and when they need to do it again, then standard Moodle will be fine; if you’d like to automate those bits of your workplace training, then IOMAD Office is a better option.

Absolutely.

As IOMAD is Moodle under the hood, you’re essentially adding a specific suite of plugins to increase the functionality of your site. And if you change your mind later, removing them is like running a version upgrade.

The only thing to remember is that it’s always a ‘bundled’ action – the plugins aren’t functional individually, so the full code package has to be replaced for either option.

Yes, but only Moodle Workplace.

As MoodleCloud is a SaaS solution, it’s not compatible with the open-source nature of IOMAD.

As IOMAD is Moodle under the hood, to see what courses can look like, use Moodle’s two free demo sites: Mount Orange, which is pre-populated with courses, activities and users, and Sandbox, where you can try out the various features yourself.

To see what the multi-tenancy bit looks like in action, you can play with the core features here, while everything else you might need to know about IOMAD (including how-tos and FAQs) is here.

Got general questions about how things work? Our FAQ page covers the basics.

Want to ask something specific? You can raise a ticket directly in our Helpdesk system.

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