Setting up your manager settings is one of the most important things you can do in Bridge.

ONE. How are managers created?

Managers are created by assigning a specific user ID (UID) as a manager UID upon user import.

This requires mapping a manager UID field either through manual import or via auto CSV.

The import above (in addition to other fields) would update the user info for Stephanie Learner to showcase that Stephanie Manager is her manager.

No additional action is required to assign the Bridge manager role to a user.

There is also no other way to assign the manager role to a user. When inspecting Stephanie Manager from Admin > Users & Permissions > Manage Users > Modify Roles, you can see that the “manager” role is checked while also grayed out. The only way to remove the role is to remove this manager UID from any users affiliated with the manager user.

TWO. What permissions do managers have?

We have a sample roles & permissions tracker for download here.

Managers have the ability to see their entire reporting line, both direct and indirect reports, as far as viewing learners in the admin settings and viewing their enrollments in Analytics. They cannot modify any user data.

An admin can see all manager groups by going to Admin > Users & Permissions > Manager Groups > Filter By > Manager Groups. Here is Stephanie Manager’s Learners:

For Stephanie Manager, she will only see “My Learners” in Bridge:

She can create any smart or manual groups based on only the data from her reporting line.

She can also see only her reporting line in the Analytics Transcript.

THREE. What actions do you want your managers to take?

The default setting in Bridge is for managers to be able to create any content they want in Bridge and enroll only their learners in that content. There are a couple ways to restrict some of these actions based on your end goals.

The first is that an Account Admin can limit manager permissions in account settings.

Make sure to hit save at the bottom of this page. What will happen is that managers will shift from this view where they can see the Author navigation:

In the example of Stephanie Manager, she will then have this view once permissions are limited:

At this time, creating content and enrolling in content are connected as one permission. It is possible to create a custom role where managers can enroll their learners without an ability to create content, but this would need to be a custom role.

Another option is to request frome Bridge support to use the feature that will enable content editing to owners. This feature allows only authors and collaborators to edit their content.

If Stephanie Manager had created her own content, she could search in the filters for “Only My Content” and return only content where she’d have editing privileges.

She could add collaborators to this content if she wanted this course to show with the same filter for other users in her organization.

Enrolling learners in content can be done at the individual user level for anyone in the reporting line or at the group level when the manager searches “My Learners” under Groups.

FOUR. What notifications do you want your managers to receive?

A summary notification can be enabled (or disabled) to send a digest email every week to managers through Admin > General > Notifications.

The send date directly aligns with the day that the email was enabled. If you are particular about the day that you would like for it to send, we suggest turning it off until ready.

The digest email will include all overdue required coursework and coursework that is due within the next seven days.

Clicking on the “View All Items” button will take the manager to the Analytics Overview page.

Clicking on any learnable titles in the email will show the learnable landing page.

FIVE. What training do you want your managers to see?

There is likely content that you will want your managers to see specific to their roles as leaders in your organization. Read here on making smart groups smarter, including how to leverage a value in your user management upload to create a manager-specific group (at this time, there are no role-based smart group options). 

We have an article here on how smart groups and categories work together (like magic!) to expose the most relevant content to the most relevant learners.

Creating a manager group and exposing a category of content to those managers will look like this on their My Learning page:

It will look like this in their Learning Library:

Please reach out to support@bridgeapp.com if you have any questions.

We have an article here with ways to increase manager engagement in Bridge.