An overview of eFront characteristics

1. Quick Overview

2. What is eFront?
 A new generation, all-in-one learning management system
(LMS /LCMS)
 A tool for creating effective distant online learning communities
 It can be used as:
 A training tool
 A communication tool
 An evaluation tool
 A certification tool
 A file management and sharing tool
 It can be used as an autonomous tool but it can also be combined
with:
 Traditional education in classroom (blended learning)
 Tools for synchronous learning (video-conference and virtual class)

3. What’s inside eFront
• An environment to build lessons, to create tests, to organize
content and the learning process (LCMS)
• The end user learning environment (LMS)
• A lot of tools to enrich the communication between users
• Tools to assess learner improvement
• Advanced administration and system customization tools

4. Basic Functions
• Learning Delivery – including content management and
assessment utilities
• Communication tools – basic communication tools
• Reporting – basic reports
• Administration – Everything needed to cover the core functions
• User interface – same across all edition platforms, making it
easy and simple to use.
Click here for commercial editions (more functions)

5. eFront is offered as…
• Software
– The end-user buys the system and installs it on their
infrastructure
– Fixed cost and yearly updates
• Service
– The end-user rents a virtual efront server
– No need to have his own infrastructure
– Automatic system updates and backups
– Monthly payments

6. eFront editions
Tailored for particular segments of distant learning market,
eFront is available in 3 editions. Each edition builds on the
previous in an incremental manner creating solutions with
additional functionality.

7. Core functionality

8. eFront / Community edition
eFront Community is the open-source edition of eFront. It
is a fully flexible eLearning 2.0 system capable of fulfilling
a wide range of learning needs. eFront Community
provides the basis of all eFront editions.

9. Community Yes
Learning Delivery / SCORM Support Commercial
Yes
Editions
eFront community and community++ are SCORM 1.2
compliant and certified platforms. You can import
SCORM packages or export the content you created in
SCORM format and use it in any other SCORM compliant
platform.

10. Community Yes
Learning Delivery / Lessons, courses,categories Commercial
Yes
Editions
Course management is done through the administration's
interface. It involves the management of lessons, the logical
organisation of lessons to categories, the bundling of several
lessons as a course and the enrolment of users to lessons
and courses.

11. Community Yes
Learning Delivery / Content Editor Commercial
Yes
Editions
eFront includes an easy to use WYSISWYG (what-you-see-is-
what-you-get) content editor, to add images, videos,
sounds, java applets and mathematical types in a visual way.
Experienced users can further format content using html.

12. Community Yes
Learning Delivery / File manager & Digital Library Commercial
Yes
Editions
eFront includes an advanced file manager that allows you to
upload, preview, share, zip, rename and delete files. Multiple
files can be uploaded in zip format and eFront will unzip them
automatically. All files uploaded to the special Digital Library
folder are shared and can be downloaded by every lesson user.

13. Community Yes
Learning Delivery / Test Builders Commercial
Yes
Editions
eFront has an advanced internal test builder that
supports several types of tests and a wide range of
question types (shown above). All questions are stored to
a central pull and can be used in different tests.

14. Community Yes
Learning Delivery / Projects Commercial
Yes
Editions
You can create projects with deadlines and assign them
to users. Users must upload their answer to the project,
and the tutor can access it and provide a grade.

15. Community Yes
Learning Delivery / Access Rules Commercial
Yes
Editions
You can control which lessons each user has access to
and the order of lesson completion. This way you can
channel users through specific learning paths.

16. Community Yes
Learning Delivery / Progress Tracking Commercial
Yes
Editions
eFront informs and guides users regarding their progress
inside a lesson and what remains in order to complete it.

17. Community Yes
Learning Delivery / Glossary Commercial
Yes
Editions
Each lesson has its own glossary section. When a definition is
entered into the glossary, the referred word will be highlighted in
its original context within the particular lesson, as shown above,
indicating the definition entered.

18. Community Yes
Communication tools / Basic Tools Commercial
Yes
Editions
eFront includes several communication tools. The list
includes calendar, personal messages, forum, chat and
collaborative content building. The last two are shown
above.

19. Community Yes
Reporting / Basic Reports Commercial
Yes
Editions
eFront produces extensive reports on system access,
generic system characteristics, users progress and lesson
information (shown above).

20. Community Yes
Administration / User Management Commercial
Yes
Editions
eFront supports three basic types of users: Student, Professor and
Administrator. Users must have a basic role, but they can also have
different roles per lesson, allowing a user to be student in one lesson
and a professor in another. Except the three basic roles, eFront can
create descendant roles with fewer permissions, permitting the creation
of "guest" users, that cannot send messages to forum or see the
lesson's content.

21. Community Yes
Administration / Technology Commercial
Yes
Editions
eFront uses current web technologies and standards to
ensure an excellent user-experience. Amongst others we
follow AJAX, LDAP, UNICODE, SCORM, n-tier-architecture,
MODULAR extensions, CSS and strict DTD.

22. Community Yes
Administration / Multilingual Commercial
Yes
Editions
eFront has full administrative support for adding or
modifying languages. Internally all content and function is
unicode (UTF-8) enabled. The only thing needed to add a
new language is to translate a language file.

23. Community Yes
Administration / the Administrator Commercial
Yes
Editions
The administrator can control any aspect of the system
through an easy to use interface. New modules support
allow him to extend the functionality of the system.

24. Community Yes
Administration / Modular Commercial
Yes
Editions
Modules allows you to extend the basic system
functionality as needed. Modules are installed and
activated through the administrator interface.

25. Community Yes
Administration / Themes Commercial
Yes
Editions
Examples from a plethora of themes available. Themes can
adjust color, layout and blocks position according to the user’s
preferences.

26. Interface / Customization and Community Yes
Commercial
Usability Editions
Yes
eFront can be adapted according to your needs. E.g. you can re-
arrange the main page components via simple drag-and-drop
(shown above), you can select the active components for your
lesson, or you can change the visual theme of your installation.

27. Community Yes
Interface / Search Commercial
Yes
Editions
Search functionality is always available. You can
effectively search inside lesson content, personal
messages or forum messages, to obtain exactly what
you are looking for.

28. eFront commercial editions
The commercial editions of eFront build on the
functionalities of the community edition in an
incremental manner, to offer more complete and
powerful solutions for segments of our customers.
Educational – Suitable for educational organizations
Enterprise – Encompassing advanced Human Capital
Development functionality.

29. eFront commercial editions / eFront Educational
eFront Educational is a flexible solution, combining the
functionalities explored below to those offered in the
Community edition. Tailored for educational
organizations and colleges, it brings support for the latest
eLearning standards together with advanced reporting
capabilities.

30. Learning Delivery / Smart Content Educational Yes
Import Enterprise Yes
Compatible with a variety of file types, eFront makes it easy to
convert existing data directly into the database, e.g. Zip and
PDF files can be imported and eFront will transform them
directly into the working content tree, using folder names as
unit names within the lesson.

31. Educational Yes
Learning Delivery / Certifications Enterprise Yes
Certificates are awarded depending on a predetermined set of
objectives being satisfied e.g. the course certificate above was awarded
once the user passed all three course lessons in the order of
completion, within the deadline date set and with a score above the set
threshold.
User’s homepage indicating the achievement of a certificate in the course.

32. Educational Yes
Communication Tools / Surveys Enterprise Yes
Creating a survey is made simple and flexible, with many options
available to the creators, e.g. respondents can remain anonymous
and there is a wide variety of question types to choose from.
Once the survey is published, the invited users will see a
notification on their homepage and until when they should
complete it.

33. Educational Yes
Communication Tools / Notifications Enterprise Yes
This feature allows for customised automated emails to be
created for any event. These can be restricted to certain users
and activated/deactivated, as above in black/red, accordingly.
Very easy to manage, an efficient and reliable way to inform
users automatically.

34. Educational Yes
Ecommerce / Shopping Cart Enterprise Yes
Shows users which courses they have chosen to enroll
into, indicating individual as well as total prices and any
discounts available, as shown above. The voucher feature
allows users to enter a discount voucher code, which
accordingly will adjust the balance automatically.

35. Ecommerce / Voucher and Discount Educational Yes
Support Enterprise Yes
Vouchers and discounts can be entered by administrators, with
the option of setting voucher codes, discount percentages and
start dates. This gives administrators full control over which
users are eligible for the discounts.

36. Educational Yes
Ecommerce / Balance Support Enterprise Yes
A very user friendly feature, permitting users to prepay an
amount towards their future purchases whilst simplifying the
associated administrative process.

37. Social Extensions / Facebook Educational Yes
Integration Enterprise Yes
Facebook integration allows users to login to their eLearning
facility and facebook simultaneously, to view their facebook
profile on their eLearning homepage. Once connection with
facebook has been established, there will be no need to login
separately, as shown above.

38. Educational Yes
Social Extensions / System Timelines Enterprise Yes
Users can see their own history of actions whilst yielding
administrators with an overview of what users are actually
doing on the learning facility.

39. Educational Yes
Social Extensions / Lesson Timelines Enterprise Yes
Each lesson has its own specific timeline, providing
transparency of everyone’s actions for all parties associated
with the lesson.

40. Educational Yes
Social Extensions / User Wall & Status Enterprise Yes
Users with common lessons can write on each other’s walls, in
an attempt to effectively utilize tacit knowledge within the
organization. Users can also update their status, to keep
anyone connected up to date

41. Educational Yes
Reporting / Test Reports Enterprise Yes
Administrators and supervisors can check to see how many
users have completed a specific test, how many times they
tried and their average score, allowing instant access to any
user’s performance.

42. Educational Yes
Reporting / Test Reports Enterprise Yes
Test analysis, a feature of test reporting, allows for a quick and
accurate comparison between all completed test scores,
providing supervisors with valuable insights of individual
performances.

43. Educational Yes
Administration / Groups Enterprise Yes
Consolidation of users into groups allows administrators to
auto-assign a variety of common content and settings, to all
group users. A necessary feature for larger organizations,
allowing administrators to efficiently, accurately and
effortlessly register new users and manage existing ones.

44. Administration / Extended User Educational Yes
Profiles Enterprise Yes
Administrators can customize the details required when
users register, to contain more fields of information,
which can be set as mandatory or optional. Above are
some examples of fields that can be added, although the
standard details required from any registering user are
set as default.

45. Administration / Auto-update Educational Yes
support Enterprise Yes
With paid editions, customers are able to auto-update their
version of eFront, whilst maintaining their database intact, as
long as their license is still valid. Customers can compare their
installed version to the latest available, to make sure they are
up-to-date.

46. Learning Delivery / SCORM 2004 4th Educational Yes
edition Enterprise Yes
SCORM 2004 4th edition is the latest and most technologically advanced
collection of standards and specifications for web-based eLearning.
Based on new standards for API and content object-to-runtime
environment communication with many ambiguities of previous versions
resolved, has helped create a more robust test suite which helps ensure
good interoperability. Combines the ability to specify adaptive sequencing
of activities that use the content objects while allowing the sharing and use
of information for multiple learning objectives or competencies across
content and courses for the same learner within the same LMS.
All this gives users a faster and more complete experience and allows
providers to set more stringent learning paths that users must comply to.
eFront is one of the first systems to offer this level of support for SCORM.

47. Educational Yes
Learning Delivery / Lesson Capacity Enterprise Yes
The administrator is able to set a maximum number of users
per lesson and the access period after registration, ensuring
lesson capacity is maintained.

48. Educational Yes
Learning Delivery / Linked Lessons Enterprise Yes
A very useful and ergonomic feature for creating lessons, which
permits the sharing of specific data between lessons e.g. a video
in one lesson can be used in other lessons. This saves time and
space, as the data is only stored once. As you can see above, such
a link is easily achieved by sharing a folder with existing lessons.

49. Educational Yes
Reporting / Time Constraint Reports Enterprise Yes
The administrator has access to a plethora of time constraint
reports, from users on a course to most active users, instantly
yielding valuable information, which prior to eLearning, was
too time-consuming to compile.

50. Educational Yes
Reporting / Event Reports Enterprise Yes
Adjustable to a specific user, lesson or course, these reports
summarize all events related to the variable selected e.g.
certificates issued for and historical job positions of the
selected user, plus many more…

51. Educational Yes
Reporting / Group Reports Enterprise Yes
A report on a group of users, to yield various information
including, registration and last login per user, lessons related to
the group, group user traffic and access time.

52. Educational Yes
Reporting / Certificate Reports Enterprise Yes
Generates a report showing users who obtained a certificate of
a particular course, within a specified time frame, with
certificates about to expire and of a specific certificate key.

53. Educational Yes
Reporting / Participation Reports Enterprise Yes
Offers a high level overview of user’s participation in the
various eLearning mediums e.g. content viewing, tests,
projects, forums. These can be time constrained per user,
group, specific lesson or course.

54. Educational Yes
Reporting / User reports generator Enterprise Yes
Build your own reports through an easy to use user interface,
the user reports generator . The generator is based on a
number of conditions and reporting columns.

55. Educational Yes
Skill Gap / Tests & Analysis Enterprise Yes
Examines the capability of users in pursuing a role according to
predetermined criteria (reflected in the questions created and
chosen, as shown), ensuring that the organization efficiently
allocates its human resources.

56. Educational Yes
Skill Gap / Tests & Analysis Enterprise Yes
Invited users will receive a link on their homepage to access
and complete the test. The results will indicate which users
are most suitable for the role, thus maximizing productivity. A
valuable tool for organizations, which has the potential to take
workforce productivity to new levels.

57. Enterprise extension / Certification Educational Yes
paths management Enterprise Yes
Certificates can be further managed to include an expiry date
e.g. the above certificate will be valid for twelve months and
users must repeat the course upon certificate expiry. This is
particularly useful with courses covering evolving topics, in an
attempt to keep course users as up-to-date as possible.

58. Educational Yes
Administration / Archive support Enterprise Yes
When you delete a user, lesson or course, it is
automatically moved to an archive folder in order to avoid
loss of valuable data.
The administrator then has the option to fully restore or
permanently delete the data and free up storage space,
as shown above.

59. Educational Yes
Administration / LDAP support Enterprise Yes
LDAP support and an extensive XML API, provide the means to
communicate with other systems. In conjunction with other
administrative features, allows for the creation of a secure
environment e.g. where you can restrict the IP addresses that
have access to the system.

60. eFront commercial editions / eFront Enterprise
eFront Enterprise combines the functionalities explored
below to those offered in the Educational edition.
Tailored with larger organizations and companies in
mind, it offers solutions for the management of their
most valued asset – their employees. Based on a
coherent approach to human capital management which
keeps the workforce actively engaged, the eFront
Enterprise platform offers the means of aligning learning
programs with business goals to cultivate employee skills
and knowledge associated with business performance.

61. Enterprise Suite / Track job Educational No
Enterprise Yes
placements
Allows for job specific searches and/or in conjunction with
branch location i.e. specific job roles in specific branch
locations. It also allows for skill specific searches or a search of
employees within a specific job role across all branches.

62. Enterprise Suite / Branch Educational No
Enterprise Yes
management
Provides a quick overview of all branches, their location details,
number of employees at each branch and where each branch
reports to. By selecting a particular branch, further information
such as employee details and job positions can be viewed, thus
yielding conclusive information in an effective manner.

63. Educational No
Enterprise / Branch Theme and Url Enterprise Yes
You can define a different theme and access url for each one of
your branches. Users will see a different interface as well as
different course catalog according to their branch.

64. Educational No
Enterprise Suite / Branch Reports Enterprise Yes
Shows users within a particular branch, indicating last login and
jobs assigned, lessons enrolled in and total access time per
user, similar to group reports.

65. Enterprise Suite / Branch Supervisor Educational No
Role Enterprise Yes
Supervisors are considered as the administrators of their
branch, with privileged access to features and control of users,
within that branch. Branch supervisors have access to the
categories shown above, and each category has numerous
options e.g. add/delete users, assign users to job roles or
courses, add/delete job positions, create groups of users, plus
many more. Branch Supervisors are able to access these
options from their homepage via an organization link.

66. Educational No
Enterprise Suite / Skills management Enterprise Yes
Skills are easily created and categorised, and assigned to users
once they have fulfilled certain criteria, e.g. pass a specific test
associated with a skill, or can be assigned by the administrator
directly if a user already possesses the skill.

67. Enterprise / Competency Educational No
management Enterprise Yes
This allows for a search of various skills, simultaneously
required to perform certain tasks e.g the three skills searched
above matched only two user’s skill-sets and thus their
competency in performing desired task.

68. Educational No
Enterprise / Employee transcripts Enterprise Yes
An example of an employee transcript showing evaluation
remarks by supervisors on their performance and
achievements.

69. Educational No
Enterprise / Employee transcripts Enterprise Yes
An example of an employee transcript showing overall and
individual test scores (and date test was taken) plus lessons and
courses the user has already completed.

70. Educational No
Enterprise Suite / Managing users Enterprise Yes
Users can be managed by branch or job position, as
shown above, but also by location and department.

71. Enterprise / Assign courses base on Educational No
job role Enterprise Yes
This ensures users are automatically enrolled into courses and
lessons depending on their job role e.g. Business Development
Managers will automatically be enrolled into the courses
shown above.

72. Educational No
Enterprise Suite / Skill based search Enterprise Yes
Allows for skill based searches across the whole organization, a
particular branch or within a specific job position i.e. in the
above example, 3 people within the whole organization have
the experience in managing people skill.

73. Learn more