UNC SPICE
What can eLearning do for you? For the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), eLearning is used to create educational tools to combat hospital-born illnesses.
With their Statewide Program for Infection Control and Epidemiology (SPICE) program, professionals in Outpatient, Dental, and Home/Hospice care can take advantage of continued education to help with infection prevention.
Working with Element Learning, an eLearning Agency in North Carolina, we handled API integration of TalentLMS into WordPress Development.
Serviced Provided
Work We Performed:
- WordPress Development
- TalentLMS API Integration
- Third-Party Plugin Customization
- Custom Plugin Development
- Front-End Development (HTML/CSS/JS)
- Back-End Programming (PHP/MySQL)
Customized Solution
WordPress Altered:
- Custom REST API in WP
- Altered User Registration
- Admin Panel Modifications
- Custom Shortcodes
- Custom Database Tables
- Automated Plugin Installation
Development Accomplishment
How we made sure our client was covered!
When Patrick Sloan, from Element Learning Inc., chose us to handle the TalentLMS API Integration for the SPICE project, he was already a little behind schedule. As soon as we received the green light (on a Thursday), we started working on a prototype of the Custom API Integration Plugin. By the end of the following Sunday, Patrick received a working prototype to show to his contacts at UNC.
Before we even received our down payment, we had surpassed the 50% completion milestone. While we rarely work before receiving a down payment, we were confident that our efforts would be greatly appreciated. As Patrick revised the scope, we tackled all of the development efforts to ensure that the ideas behind the project were delivered within our expertly crafted solution.
Project Scope
While TalentLMS already had a plugin for WordPress, it was more focused towards allowing users to purchase courses by integrating some of the API into WooCommerce.
The scope of the project was to house the course information within WordPress, so that users wouldn’t have to leave UNC’s website for browsing the available modules.
In order for this project to be considered complete, users needed to be able to register through one form that was designed to trigger different functionality.
The first, to send user submitted data to another system (outside of WordPress) for processing.
That data was then sent back to WordPress through a custom API, which would then register users into both WordPress and TalentLMS.
The external system was designed to determine which course the user was going to be enrolled in on TalentLMS.
Not only were we to integrate the API for TalentLMS, but we were also to create a custom API within WordPress to process incoming data.
Users needed to be enrolled into the TalentLMS courses and their progress needed to be displayed from the WordPress website.
TalentLMS API Integration
We started off with the plugin authored by TalentLMS to give us a foundation. We then stripped out everything that the client didn’t need.
From there, we started setting up functionality to take advantage of the API Calls the client did need.
Our code touched the Administration Panel, created a custom API in WordPress, installed Custom Database Tables, handled Installation, overhauled the Registration process, implemented several custom shortcodes, modified User Profiles, and handled two-way API integration of TalentLMS.
Back-End Development
The downside to back-end development is there isn’t much to showcase on the front-end of a website.
Most of our code automated several tasks as well as handled sending and receiving data from TalentLMS.
The only front-end development was the single template we created to display the course modules to the end-users.
Near Complete Integration!
The only thing we could not complete was being able to take the courses within WordPress.
Users were still required to navigate to TalentLMS to navigate through the course modules.
To assist with a seamless experience, we used TalentLMS’ GoTo Links to automatically log the user into TalentLMS when the link was clicked.
After Action Review
Our choice to re-purpose the TalentLMS Plugin was based on the budget that was available. The plugin provided the API code and had several code elements already in place.
All we needed to do was expand on what was available in order to create the desired functionality. This allowed us to provide several thousand dollars worth of additional value in a smaller budget.
We enjoy projects like this because we get to do something that others have not yet performed. However, most of the work is on the back-end and we do not have a lot to display.
The project involved a good bit of customization. We are not limited by what third-party resources provide and will forge a new path to ensure our client’s ideas are brought to life.
You can join both Element Learning and UNC as satisfied clients by reaching out to us today and letting us know what your project ideas are.
No matter what your ideas are, we are standing by to provide you with expertly crafted solutions!
Testimonial From this Project!
I found a delightful development partner in Mr. Ervin. Incredibly thorough, savvy enough to pinpoint gaps in project scope and make appropriate logical connections. Chris has been a guiding hand through a long, complex project with many moving parts and kept a watchful eye and lent a hand long past the deliverable date. Unparalleled and prompt support.
Chris also is unique in the freelancer community in that each step of his process is thoroughly explained and documented in detail. Expectation and milestone management is clearly outlined and agreed upon and all of those were met or exceeded. I would easily work with Chris again.