Esri e-Learning: Frequently Asked Questions from Esri Canada Customers
What is Esri e-Learning? Who is using it in Canada? How can I gain access to it? How can I manage learning progress? Where are the latest updates about it? In this blog post, you will find answers to these and other frequently asked questions from our customers about Esri’s online training resource. So, keep on reading to unlock the power of Esri e-Learning for yourself and your entire organization.
Q: What is Esri e-Learning?
A: It’s a growing collection of more than 450 self-paced resources which include: web courses, videos, training seminars, tutorials, massive open online courses (MOOCs), white papers, documents and more. All these items are continuously updated to reflect the latest functionalities of the ArcGIS platform.
- It’s available anytime from any web browser.
- Users can complete, restart and review unlimited resources.
- Learning progress can be tracked to keep a learning schedule and provide visibility for managers.
- Built-in tools are available to create custom learning plans for individuals or for entire teams.
For more than two years now, Esri has provided unlimited access to these resources, to anyone, within an organization with qualifying product(s) under the Esri Software Maintenance Program, at NO EXTRA COST! This is unmatched in the industry.
Important Tip:
To complete web courses and tutorials, users will need to have access to the appropriate software licenses. If you are new to ArcGIS, you can activate a free 21-day trial. If you are an existing user, you can use your organization’s licenses or consider purchasing an ArcGIS Personal Use license for a small annual fee and deploy the platform on your personal devices to take the time to learn, from the comfort of your home or from elsewhere, outside busy and often distracted work hours.
Q: Who is using Esri e-Learning?
A: Thousands of Canadians have taken advantage of this benefit over the last two years, and many more new users are joining in each month.
Fun Facts & Figures:
40,300 e-Learning courses and tutorials were completed since it became a maintenance benefit in 2016.
18,203 e-Learning courses and tutorials were completed in 2018 alone.
4,912 individuals launched an e-Learning item in 2018.
650 Canadian organizations used e-Learning in 2018.
Most popular topics in 2018 were:
- Getting started with GIS
- Working with ArcGIS Pro
- Using Python to implement automation
Q: How can I access Esri e-Learning?
A: If your organization has a qualifying product current under the Esri Software Maintenance Program, anyone in your organization can have access to Esri e-Learning.
Esri e-Learning is part of the Esri Academy. If you are navigating to the esri.com site, you can find the Training section under the Support and Services menu, or you can sign in with your Esri account, and the Training section will be available in the menu under your name and picture in the top-right corner of the page.
Esri Academy Course Catalogue main page.
It includes, at no extra cost, all items listed as FREE or REQUIRES MAINTENANCE in the catalogue.
*Instructor-led courses listed on this site with a USD amount are for US-based customers only. For Canada-based customers, you can find almost all the same courses at esri.ca, in CAD, at a lower cost.
All members of an organization can have access to Esri e-Learning. To do so, they will have to be granted the “Access e-Learning” permission by the My Esri Administrator in the My Esri portal and use the same credentials to sign into the Esri e-Learning that appears in My Esri. Administrators can provide that information to you if needed.
My Esri is the license management portal for your organization. Traditionally, it was only used to access downloadable files and to find authorization codes for ArcGIS licenses when new purchases came up or new versions were ready to install. My Esri is now a more robust portal with many functionalities, including assigning permission for e-Learning access, which is linked to your software maintenance program period managed in My Esri.
I know this can be confusing, so let’s go over this in more detail.
First, YES, it’s possible to use the same credentials for My Esri, ArcGIS Online and Esri e-Learning to streamline the user experience. But NO, those are not the same systems, and you might need to sign in when navigating from one system to the next if your browser settings do not keep you logged in.
To enable the streamlined sign-in option, ArcGIS Online Administrators need to “Enable Esri Access” for ArcGIS Online users. This will only tell the systems to allow the same credentials to be used for all three. It will not assign “Access e-Learning” permission automatically. This task needs to be completed by a My Esri Administrator following the steps below:
- Log into My Esri (https://my.esri.com/).
- Under the User tab, search for the organization member on the list.
- If they are connected to your organization’s account in My Esri, they might already have been granted the permission by default. If it’s the case, no action is needed, but it’s worth verifying that they are using the same credentials to sign into the Esri e-Learning, as the one that appears in My Esri, under the organization’s account. If it’s different credentials, the e-Learning system will not be able to validate the qualifying product(s) on maintenance, and items listed as “Requires Maintenance” will not be unlocked.
- If they are not part of your organization’s account on My Esri, they can be invited using the simple invite process that can be launched from the left menu by clicking on the “Invite User” option. The process only requires a valid email address, preferably a work address.
- Step one requires entering the email address for one or many users.
- Step two is where the permission is assigned (Access e-Learning) from the drop-down list.
- Step three offers the option to send the default email to the user to ask them to complete the acceptance process or to add a custom message at the top of the default email for added information or to ask users to pick a particular set of credentials to follow your organization’s guidelines. To confirm the invitation, the Administrator will need to click the blue button at the bottom of the page.
Once the new member receives the invitation email, they will need to follow the steps described in the text to accept the invitation and confirm the completion of the process. Then, they are in!
For individuals who would like to request permission from their My Esri Administrator but are not sure who that is, they can use any other Esri account or create a public one to sign into My Esri and access this form to request the e-Learning permission (Esri account number is required). Once submitted, it will send an email to the My Esri Administrator who can simply accept the request to link the individual to the organization’s account and assign the “Access e-Learning” permission. Upon completion, an email will go back to the requestor with the steps to accept the invite and choose the appropriate credentials to assure the same are used for the My Esri organization’s account and the Esri e-Learning site.
Second, if the organization members you want to invite are not using ArcGIS Online, you shouldn’t worry. They can still be linked to your My Esri organization’s account and granted the “Access e-Learning” permission. The e-Learning access does not require a Named User from either ArcGIS Online or Portal for ArcGIS.
Third, those new members will not have access to any functionalities in My Esri to manage licenses or access downloadable files unless those permissions are granted to them. If they log into My Esri, they will only see their profile and your organization’s name and address. Most of them will never go to My Esri again because the Esri e-Learning, as we saw earlier, is located on a different page and managed in a different system. Only permissions are managed in My Esri.
Q: How can I manage learning progress for my team and I?
A: Esri has provided tools for individuals and managers to have full visibility on the progress being made on each plan when they are assigned to specific team members. This means Directors, HR Managers, Coordinators and Supervisors can now create and assign learning plans for ArcGIS users or new to GIS individuals from their organization by using the Esri Academy tools to track and manage progress on all Esri e-Learning resources. Isn’t this awesome?
My Academy section called My Learning Plans.
The Esri Academy page includes the My Academy section, which offers a dashboard to manage all activities and the My Learning Plans section to keep track on progress done for all learning plans you assigned or for those assigned to you. It is possible to create, modify, copy, assign and share learning plans. There is no limit on the amount of learning plans you can have to help you manage learning progress for your entire organization.
Those plans can be set up in as little as a few clicks of your mouse and edited as needed. Then, GO! It’s nothing fancy, but it can bring a lot of possibilities to get your teams up to speed and to be successful and regularly update their skills on constantly evolving GIS technology.
Important to note:
You will find e-Learning items listed as Learning Plan. When you open them, multiple types of resources will be included. These plans have either been created by Esri or by users of the ArcGIS community and shared publicly. You can start with one of them, but beware that most contain instructor-led courses for US-based customers only. Canada-based customers will not see their learning plan progress evolve or show as “completed” even if they took the same course in Canada. We recommend you use the existing Learning Plans as recommendations to build your own and only include “FREE” and “REQUIRES MAINTENANCE” items. That way, the tool will be fully functional, and progress will be accurately tracked and managed on the dashboards.
Q: Where can I find e-Learning and other training news for Canadians?
A: Esri e-Learning is in constant evolution. New items are released each month. In the last half of 2018 alone, over 50 new items were added. Wow, that’s a lot!
This blog post is too short to list them all here, so I created this public Learning Plan for you to review the latest items released since July 2018: What’s New in Esri e-Learning for Canadians?
You can also navigate to the Esri Academy page, and under the Learning Plans tab, do a search by keyword. Use “Canadians” to narrow your search. Feel free to copy it and edit it to make it your own and pick only the items you want to complete or assign to someone else.
Learning Plan icon to look for on the Esri Academy website.
You can also choose to stay on top of the news around e-Learning and other training solutions by subscribing to Esri Canada’s monthly training news (Training Learning Lineup) via our Communication Preference Centre.
Example of the monthly Training Learning Lineup.
I hope this inspires you to include Esri e-Learning in your team’s training plans for 2019. Take full advantage of this benefit your organization can access, at no extra cost, with qualifying product(s) current on maintenance. If you have questions or would like assistance in getting started, leave a comment below, and we will contact you privately to provide the appropriate resource.