The American Board of Radiology has a Gateway product and the software Intiva allows an administrator in a clinical area to manage the accounts/profiles for physicians assigned to that administrator. It would be great if we had a Role for User Administrators who the Site Admins would assign specific users to the User Admin (So the Department of Emergency Medicine Faculty would all be assigned to a staff person in that department for example).
The User Admin would be able to:
Print transcripts (for individual users or the entire group of their assigned physicians)
Add external credits
Enroll users in CME activities
Uneroll users from CME activities (when there are no reg fees associated with the course)
Send reminders to their assigned user(s)
Update profile (an automatic email should go to the user letting them know their profile has been updated and by whom).
There should be a User Admin dashboard (reports) that tells the User Admin:
How many credits are pending for their group including the close dates for the courses
How many credits were awarded to their group (sorted by time frames)
Contact information report for all users assigned to them
Upcoming course enrollments for their specific users
Down the line, it would be ideal if this Role could also pay registration fees for multiple users in one transaction.
Because we are a medical specialty society, we don’t need this kind of admin role most of the time; however, we do have a handful of times a year (maybe 4?) when being able to register multiple people from a single account would be nice. The biggest problem with this, though, is attendance–if a User Admin registers 5 people from their practice for a regional meeting, how would EthosCE be able to differentiate them? And what happens if 4 of the 5 people have existing accounts–how would a new account be set up for a new person who isn’t doing their own registration? As everyone knows, the current setup is one registration per person, which ensures the ability to mark attendance for individuals, and allows those individuals to claim credit on their own accounts.
Our system is set up with an SSO, and ALL user records are created and maintained in our AMS–no accounts are created or housed on EthosCE–so that adds a layer of complexity that is frankly beyond the scope and intention of an LMS. I would like to see DLC try to create an add-on feature for something like this because I don’t think that would be an easy build into the core and isn’t something all users would want or need.
Another consideration is whether or not DLC could provide an acceptable level of security for purchases on EthosCE. Currently, when someone purchases a course or registers for a paid meeting on our site, they are routed to PayPal to complete their purchase because of security. Purchases were made through EthosCE at one time, but I believe (and Ezra can correct me if this is wrong) that this was disabled 3-4 years ago because DLC didn’t feel they could provide adequate security for credit/debit cards.
I used to work in a specialty society. I loved it. Each user would still have a unique ID and a unique account. So, it would be like a Site Admin logging in and registering specific people into courses. It would not be one account associated with multiple people, but multiple individual accounts managed by an assigned User Admin. So in your example of 4 of the 5 people having accounts, the 4 users would have already been assigned by a Site Admin to the User Admin. But you bring up a good point and that is creating accounts for new users.
In our environment we have a policy regarding passwords and not sharing them, so new people would have to set up their own accounts. We would need to figure out communication around that.
I see the value of being able to assign a practice manager to each person’s account in that practice, even on our end. Often, the practice manager or nurse manager is the person who calls asking for help finding a certificate, and they don’t know the physicians’ logins so their hands are tied. I can see this being a valuable feature, if only to allow AAs or practice managers access to very limited information like transcripts, etc.
We do not customize our software-as-a-service product.
But I think there is a little confusion about what’s being discussed here. I see:
The ability for one non-admin user to manage the account of other users for the purpose of printing transcripts, updating profile, etc. We are aware of this feature request and it is under review, so please vote for it here if you are interested. It’s not currently been implemented as a customization or as a core feature.
The ability for an admin to log in as another user (Masquerade). This is a core feature and I think(?) this may be what Linda is referring to when she says she has this feature.
Thank you Ezra. I was trying to rely from my phone and clicked on the wrong thread.
But for practice managers, department education coordinators, external partners, etc. Having that ability to manage learners assigned to them would be wonderful.
However, serious consideration would be needed for certain functions like resetting passwords and merging accounts which I think should be centralized functions of Site Admins.
Yes, we are very interested and have many departments asking for a role like this. We are fairly decentralized, and department coordinators would appreciate the role suggested by @ldcaples. Departments regularly ask about proxy enrolling learners for paid courses and being able to add external credits.
