What are the highs and lows of delivering a large scale implementation to over 275,000 users? The FA Knows, having recently just launched their learning platform on TheFA.com, leveraging a range of learning technologies to deliver a fully functional, single sign on platform. City & Guilds Kineo & The FA share at Learning Technologies 2015.

1. 29th January 2015
Supporting the
development of
football through digital
Darren Sandbach | Digital Learning Manager | The FA
Lewis John | Solutions Consultant | City & Guilds Kineo

2. • Introductions
• Who are FA Learning?
• Background to need for an LMS
• Grasping opportunities
• A year of digital revolution
Agenda

3. • Lewis John – Solutions Consultant at City & Guilds Kineo
• Darren Sandbach – Digital Learning Manager at The FA
Introductions

4. • Educational arm of The FA
• Responsible for the delivery of a qualifications and CPD framework
to multiple disciplines:
• Coaching
• Refereeing
• Psychology
• Sports Science
• Medical
• Safeguarding
• Talent ID (scouting)
Who are FA Learning?

5. St. George’s Park

6. Current reality of coach education

7. Current online enrolment process
CFA Website
Members’
Services
Login
My Football
Online
Courses
Enrol
Login to
payment
Verify details
Enter payment
info
Confirm 3d Secure
Close
confirmation
Refresh page
Click continue
course
Click launch
Disable pop-
up blocker
Click launch
again

8. Our challenge
• Around 120,000 formal qualifications certified across those 7
disciplines, delivered to some 80,000 learners per year
• 150,000 hours of CPD delivered per season (and growing) for
members of The FA Licensed Coaches’ Club, which is currently
32,000 members strong
• A desire to modernise our approach to learning which is broadly
classroom and pitch based.
• A series of legacy systems underpinning our processes which are
unsupported and stifling our ability to innovate.

9. • Support for:
• Full blended learning programmes
• Automatic pre-requisite checks
• CRM integration
• 52 organisations, with separate Merchant IDs, organising courses and taking
payments from candidates
• Easy to use, streamlining existing processes for both the administrator and the
customer
• Printable certificates
• So much more than I can talk about here…
• BUT…must be cost effective!
Our needs

10. • System was broadly capable out of the box
• Customisations around single sign on, CRM integration and payments
• Enterprise level support meant we didn’t need to recruit or upskill
internally
• Flexible and iterative approach to development and deployment
• We get on well with the C&G Kineo team
• The C&G “umbrella” solved a lot of internal stakeholder challenges
• Cost was right, business case stacked up
Why C&G Kineo and Totara?

11. Introducing City & Guilds Kineo
2 million awards
500 qualifications
10,000 centres
80 countries
Use by hundreds of
organisations
4 million+ users
70+ Partners
Over 200 staff
8 countries
150 blue chip
clients
Ranked # 1
750,000 awards
35,000 members
A global business

12. Introducing City & Guilds Kineo
• Learning Provider of the Year 2014 (Learning Awards)
• Best Learning Game 2014 (Elearning Age)
• US number 1 ranked company
• Brandon Hall (Best Blended Programme)
• LearnX platinum (Best Learning Design Technology)
Award winning credentials

13. Introducing City & Guilds Kineo
Delivering…
Elearning &
online learning
Hosting and support
services
Mobile /
Multi-device
learning
LMS and
Learning Portals
Apprenticeships Consultancy and
Training
Qualifications
and
Accreditations
Marketing and
Awareness

14. Introducing City & Guilds Kineo
Totara: Enterprise LMS for the corporate sector
− Commercial / Corporate distribution of the world leading
Moodle LMS
− Scalable for large enterprises
− A high quality branded experience
− Extensive and rich functionality set
− Cost effective, open-source solution
− No vendor lock in
− Large & active community of users and developers

15. Introducing City & Guilds Kineo
Totara LMS key features (summary)
− Manage and track learning
− Integration with HR and other business systems
− Map organisation hierarchies, job families and roles
− Set and manage individual development plans
− Classroom management and online booking
− Audience and programme management
− Manage team development
− Deliver and support informal and social learning
− Performance management and 360 reviews
− Rich reporting features including automated reports

16. The Solution
Totara LMS (v2.5) Open Source Enterprise LMS with 3x key
customisations:
• Single Sign-On (SSO)
• + Web services to pull through header / footer from thefa.com
• CRM integration – two way (flat-file in, web services out)
• Ecommerce payments – Totara integrated with Barclays SmartPay
• + Massive data import: 275,000 user records & 500,000 historical records!
Staying as close to core as possible: Customisation via ‘Plugin’
architecture/approach.
Let’s look at some of the details… hopefully providing a useful insight!
Solution implemented for The FA

17. The Solution
Overview
LMS
The FA Website
Barclays Smart
Pay
The FA’s CRM
System
User accesses via SSO
1. Completion data
returned from the LMS to
the CRM
2. Request for award
creation from the LMS to
the CRM
1. Historic course
completion data passed to
the LMS.
2. User details send daily
to the LMS
3. Return the unique
identifier for any awards
created in the CRM
User is redirected to Barclays Smart
Pay to transact payment, for access
to courses
User is redirected back to the LMS once
the payment process has been completed
1. LMS requests additional
user profile details for new
accounts
2. LMS requests dynamic
header / footer

18. The Solution
Single Sign-On (SSO)
Totara LMS integrated with TheFA.com account management:
• User logs into thefa.com website (or creates account)
• User clicks on link to the FA Learning from the website main menu
• User is automatically logged in to the LMS using cookie-based authentication (using
encrypted domain cookies)
• NB Solution uses data mapping to pull through the key profile data (username, first
name, last name, email etc) - required where account information has been
created/updated since last CRM sync (via daily import)!
• …to create a seamless user journey from the website to the VLE

19. The Solution
Single Sign-On (SSO): User authentication
LMSthefa.comBrowser thefa.com user management
User submits credentials
Authenticate user
[Authentication successful]: Create cookie
Redirect to LMS page requested
:Request LMS URL with cookie
Decode cookie and extract FAN
Create / Update user account
:Response requested page on the LMS
Authenticate user
Decode cookie and extract firstname, lastname and email address

20. The Solution
Web services – consistent header / footer across ‘thefa.com’ sites

21. The Solution
CRM integration
Pulling and pushing data from The FA’s CRM:
• The FA has CRM containing completion records of users who have taken
courses (completed learning) historically
• Several courses require [pre-requisite] courses to be completed to ensure the
learners have the right grounding [before signing up to some training courses]
• Hence, users’ historic training records need to be fed through to / back from
the LMS (nb learners can sign up for training outside the LMS)
• Totara RPL, Programs and Audiences used to manage pre-requisites (via
historical completions import). Web services used to send data to the CRM.

22. The Solution
Ecommerce – payment process
The FA required a robust payment mechanism using Barclays SmartPay
[payment gateway]. Kineo adopted a modular approach based on a plugin
architecture:
• Payment Enrolment plugin
• Promotional Code Manager plugin
• Smart Pay Gateway plugin
• Promotional Code report source
• Courses Purchased report source

23. The Solution
Ecommerce – Totara process steps
LMS SmartPay
User selects session
System 'reserves' space
:Parameters and user directed to SmartPay
User completes payment in SmartPay
System enrol user on course
System marks user as 'booked' on face-to-face session
User accesses course
:Notifiaction of successful payment
User is redirected to Payment Results screen

24. The Solution
Ecommerce – payment process
User accesses
The FA website
and authenticates
User clicks a link
taking them to the
LMS (user is
automatically
assigned via SSO)
User clicks ‘Find
Awards’
User clicks a
category of
courses
User clicks ‘View
Award’
User clicks
‘Access Award’
User selects face-to-
face session and
enters discount code.
User selects ‘Confirm
Details’
User is redirected
to Barclays Smart
Pay to complete
payment
User is redirected
to the course page
for the award
purchased
Start
Finish
1 2 3 4
5
6789
User confirms details.
User selects ‘Pay’
10
High-level user journey for a typical user purchasing access to a specific award.
• Orange: User is accessing The FA’s website
• Green: User is accessing the LMS
• Blue: User is accessing Barclays Smart Pay Hosted Payment pages.

25. The Solution
Massive data import!
In order to capture all prior learning completed we needed to import all
[historical] completions for all users (despite the fact that our target
audience is sub-50k for the first year):
• 275,000 user records imported
• 500,000 historical records imported/processed and mapped to Totara
course and program RPL completions
That’s a lot of data to import/process!

26. The Solution
Screen shots – ‘Find awards’

27. The Solution
Screen shots – ‘View awards’

28. The Solution
Project review
This was a fantastic project to work on! We thoroughly enjoyed working
with Darren and The FA team. Some of the key success factors were:
• Close working partnership
• Very detailed scoping and specification, with thorough documentation
• MoSCoW prioritisation approach to phasing, to ensure the platform
could be delivered to schedule but met the core project needs
• Plugin approach to developments – staying as close to core
functionality as possible to ensure the maintainability of the solution
• Most of the complexity is ‘under the hood’ but vital nonetheless!