Learn About the Components of an Enablement Site

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Describe how your Salesforce org and enablement site relate to each other.
Describe the apps on your enablement site for managing and publishing content.
Explain the differences between public Trailhead content and private enablement site content.

The Parts of an Enablement Site

Your enablement site is built on multiple components that rely on a few different systems. Some configuration is done in your Salesforce org and requires a Salesforce admin. Other details are configured on your enablement site, which is a related but different system.

Diagram that illustrates how your Salesforce org and enablement site are separate systems that share data.

These components and systems work together to deliver personalized content to the right learners at the right time. Let’s take a look at how these different parts contribute to the experience that you want to build.

Enablement Site

Your enablement site is the website where learners find and complete content, and where content creators and release managers prepare and publish content.

When your company signs up for an enablement site, you’re creating a branded experience. Users visit your custom URL, which is a private subdomain of trailhead.com, to access your content. For example, Pure Aloe might use purealoe for its subdomain name, which makes its custom URL:

http://purealoe.my.trailhead.com/

All the enablement site users for Pure Aloe access the subdomain at the same URL. To learn more about setting up a subdomain, check out the Enablement Site Configuration module.

Trailmaker

Your company’s content creators and release managers prepare and publish content in Trailmaker, a publishing platform for adding content to your enablement site. Trailmaker is available only to users with the appropriate permissions, and is actually three apps in one: Trailmaker Content, Trailmaker Release, and Trailmaker Settings.

Trailmaker Content

Trailmaker Content is where content creators:

Set up the trails, modules, and units they want to publish.
Paste the content for units from a draft that they authored and reviewed in a word processor or collaboration tool.
Create quizzes.
Import and customize content templates.
Preview modules and units that they’re working on, and share the preview links with other collaborators.
Download content that’s in their local workspace (the content downloads as a .zip file, known as a backpack).

Pure Aloe has a content creator, Cindy, who is responsible for writing the content, reviewing the content with subject matter experts, and preparing the final content for publication.

Trailmaker Release

Trailmaker Release is where release managers:

Plan and manage which content to publish.
Validate that all the content to be published is ready to go.
Preview all trails and modules that you plan to publish as part of the same release.
Publish content.
Download backpacks for content that’s been published.

You add your trails and modules to a release, a record that lists all the content that you want to publish together. When you publish the release, all the associated content is available for learners to find and complete.

Your company can designate a release manager, a user who coordinates all the work required to develop, review, and publish content by a certain publication date. A company typically wants users to receive new and updated content at a predictable or planned time, such as for a major announcement, initiative, or contractual fulfillment.

The Pure Aloe release manager, Marisol, manages all the Pure Aloe content releases for their enablement site. She makes sure that each planned release contains the trails and modules that the team wants to publish.

Trailmaker Settings

Trailmaker Settings is where admins:

Configure an enablement site with a company’s branding such as a logo, color, and banner image.
Customize links that appear in the footer for each page.
Specify the filters that learners use for finding trails and modules.
See how learners have rated your published modules.
Export all published content in a backup file format to preserve your team’s hard work.

The Salesforce admin at Pure Aloe, Joseph, is responsible for configuring and maintaining these settings, in addition to his admin responsibilities in the Salesforce org for Pure Aloe.

Published Content

When a release manager publishes a release, the content is in production, which means that it’s available for learners to find and complete. Content creators can then assign relevant content to their teams and surface content in the flow of work.

Public and Private Content

On Trailhead, all content is public. Anyone can access it and earn badges and points. Searches on Trailhead return only public Trailhead content that Salesforce has published.

On your enablement site, all content is private. Only credentialed users with access to the enablement site and permission to access the appropriate content collection can see it and earn the badges and points. Searches on your enablement site return only private content that your company has published.

A trailmix can combine public and private content. On your enablement site, learners can see trailmixes that contain only private content and trailmixes that combine public and private content. Learners can’t see trailmixes that contain only public content.

Hemanth, the new Pure Aloe sales rep, is looking at the Stay Secure trailmix. The trailmix begins with the module Security Basics, from Trailhead. Next is the module Security Fundamentals at Pure Aloe, from the Pure Aloe enablement site.

Stay Secure Trailmix, showing modules and links to an external activity and video.

When Hemanth clicks the Security Basics module, he ends up on Trailhead, because Security Basics is public content. When he clicks Security Fundamentals at Pure Aloe, he stays on the enablement site for Pure Aloe, because this module is private content.

The branding options in Trailmaker Settings help distinguish an enablement site from Trailhead. The Pure Aloe enablement site is branded with the company’s logo and color. And the menu options are also different between Trailhead and an enablement site.

Module on Trailhead, showing the Trailhead logo.

Module on an enablement site, showing the Pure Aloe logo.

Enablement Site Data in Your Salesforce Org

Because an enablement site is an extension of your company’s Salesforce org, Salesforce admins help set up the connection between the two environments.

User Permissions

In the previous unit, we learned about the different roles that your enablement site users fulfill: content creators, release managers, and learners. Each role needs the appropriate user permissions, which a Salesforce admin configures in Setup in your Salesforce org.

When your company is ready to implement an enablement site, the Enablement Sites (myTrailhead) permission set license becomes available in your org. Select this license for permission sets that you create for your enablement site users so that you can enable the appropriate permissions.

Permissions, permission sets, permission set licenses… what do all these things mean? How are they different? To learn more, check out the Resources section at the end of this unit. For a refresher on typical enablement site roles, check out the Get Started with an Enablement Site unit.

Content Collections

When you create content for your company, consider the different audiences that find and consume your content. Different disciplines across the enterprise have different needs to help them become successful in their roles.

To give each audience access to its specific content, you can create content collections that are accessible for specific users. A content collection is a group of trails or modules that you want a certain audience to access. The content in a collection is visible only to the users who have permission to access that collection.

When you first set up your enablement site, you also create your company’s first content collection. Then, from Setup in your Salesforce org, you can create more content collections to suit your company’s unique enablement requirements.

Trail Tracker App

Recall from the previous unit that content creators want to assign content and report on its completion progress. In your Salesforce org, you can install the Trail Tracker managed package, which syncs data every day from your enablement site to your Salesforce org. Trail Tracker adds capabilities for assigning and reporting on content and opens up possibilities for automating your business processes to scale change management and drive adoption of learning. You can automate assignments, notifications, and reminders, and show specific modules based on a field that a user selects.

Learning Paths

Your Salesforce admin can also assign modules that users can complete in Lightning Experience.

Learning Paths panel in Lightning Experience, showing a module assigned to the user.

A user can discover assigned content by clicking the Guidance Center icon (1) in the global header. The Guidance Center panel (2) shows content related to the page they’re on and other modules that the admin assigned to them. A user can also click Go to Learning Home (3), which navigates them to Learning Home in Salesforce.

Learning Home in Lightning Experience, showing a module assigned to the user.

Learning Home shows content on these tabs:

The Required tab (1) shows assigned modules with a due date.
The Suggested tab (2) shows assigned modules with no due date.
The In Progress tab (3) shows modules that a user has started.
The Completed tab (4) shows modules that a user has finished.

In both the Guidance Center panel and Learning Home, the user doesn’t navigate to your enablement site. They can complete your content, including quizzes, directly in Salesforce, keeping them in one place to save time and drive Salesforce adoption.

Trailhead in Slack

A learner can search for, favorite, and share trails, modules, and trailmixes from your enablement site using the Trailhead Slack app. A learner can also see a summary of assigned modules and trailmixes, and quickly check their progress on any modules they’ve started but haven’t completed.

The Trailhead app in Slack, connected to the Pure Aloe enablement site.

User Authentication

All the users who access your enablement site are credentialed users who log in with a username and password. They have user records in your Salesforce org, with permission sets that have the appropriate permissions enabled for their role in your enablement site. You have some options for selecting the service that you use for authenticating users.

Salesforce Identity for Enablement, which uses the Salesforce Identity access management service with your enablement site as a connected app.
Trailblazer, which uses a separate profile that provides access to multiple Salesforce products.

You select an authentication provider when you first set up your enablement site.

Next Steps for Pure Aloe

Whew! You covered a lot of important considerations in this unit.

In the next unit, you take a look at how different roles in your company work together to create, review, and publish content.

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