Here we offer a review of the Agylia LMS following an in-depth analysis of the platform – it’s hugely impressive, and setting new standards in mobile learning.
This is a very good LMS indeed. I was quite surprised as to how good it actually is in everything it does.
Agylia is a mid-corporate LMS with solid deployments into extended enterprise and the overall enterprise LMS market. It is not over feature rich, but what it does it does exceptionally well. It is not a fully loaded enterprise standard LMS, but looking at Agylia’s impressive client base it is very good LMS used by a blue chip client base
I must conclude, and Agylia (and one or two others) are really doing well in the mid-market and are driving up into the enterprise market – which is a testament to their quality of engagement and excellence in what they do… no compromises and no bolt ons… Agylia is a pedigree LMS through and through.
Witness… Agylia has a very impressive roster of clients including Microsoft, Deloitte, HSBC and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Configured… not out of the box
The strengths of Agylia are its ability to be configured for deployment in the organisation. This is not an out of the box solution, but an LMS that is highly configurable and integratable with an open API. Agylia have certainly spent some considerable time and effort on this and this is a powerful solution for in-depth integration.
Set up and Integration take place and can last up to 3 months as powerful workflows can be established for the creation of learning pathways and the mapping of an organisations hierarchy into the system, plus sophisticated integrations into HRIS, CRM etc……
While Agylia does not support every feature an Enterprise Standard LMS might, the features that is supports are firstly the ones that really matter and secondly they are features designed and programmed to exacting standards and ones that work.
Below are the features that I found to be the most impressive and ones that make Agylia a standout LMS in my view.
Mobile learning via a Native App (client branded)
Agylia has a client branded native app delivering a very engaging mobile learning experience (Apple or Android supported). These can use SCORM tracking (which is very difficult as they admit), but they are using xAPI tracking…..which is impressive.
The App is well configured and exceptionally easy to use…one of the best yet. The App allows offline learning and re-synches when on line, can handle video, PdF (not great……but there you go as a learning experience) and has a built in pod cast player….very neat. It also offers the ability for users to manage the app storage…..very smart indeed.
Built in LRS
The platform has a built in LRS which is impressive. While TinCan (xAPI) is being used in the platform, it is the native app that is really benefitting from this…..but they do have a strong position in this area of xAPI- LRS as they have one that works!
This combination of xAPI and mobile learning alone makes Agylia a must consider LMS if mobile is a major requirement for your organisation. Let’s be honest as an industry we have talked about Mobile First learning for many years, it is great to see an LMS making mobile first learning work at a truly engaging level as the Agylia App and LRS integration really delivers.
Federated search
Search in LMS is one of my perennial bug bears and an area I really take an interest in when reviewing an LMS. We are dealing with Google users who expect to find everything they need quickly and easily….and become very frustrated when they cannot find what they are looking for.
Agylia is a long way down the road with making search effective in their LMS and likely to get much much better.
Search is built in and tagging is beginning to be automated at quite a sophisticated level and works well. Overall the content management at the back end is solid and easy to use. They are developing Elastic Search to support content indexing and this will only get better and better.
The present search deals with events (ILT) and sessions and the mobile interface works well with the search….very well indeed….hugely impressive in fact.
Content management
Agylia is using a “markdown syntax” editor to make content easy to create in the platform. This little technique makes content creation very quick and easy in the LMS. Something simple but very effective.
Learning Pathway creation
Agylia’s ILT feature supported and fully integrated with a very clever enrolment management which delivers the blended learning option quite seamlessly.
This creation of learning pathways for users allows for seamless integration of ILT and makes for a compelling overall solution. How this is used is of course highly configurable with rules created to allow open access or enrolled access to courses.
Both the enrolment management is very powerful indeed and The approval management feature is very powerful as well. This focus on workflows makes Agylia a very useful platform for organisations
Non-e-mail or “group” e-mails supported…..indicates a strong retail focus.
A Gamification engine built on the LRS
This is imaginative and forward looking. Gamification in an LRS context is where it should be.
User hierarchy is powerful… team dashboards and more
2 levels of learners are recognised…Learner and “team leader” – this will support collaborative learning.
Admin settings for reporting, content management, approvals administration and enrolments etc… can all be set.
Learners can profile themselves (including picture) or be profiled from HR systems (integrations).
Multitenancy
Agylia is a multitenant cloud hosted solution. While customers share the underlying cloud infrastructure, each customer accesses their Agylia instance via separate and isolated web addresses and further isolation is provided through the use of separate and partitioned databases. The ability to independently scale up and out individual microservices based on varying workloads ensures that system performance is maintained even during periods of heavy load.
White labelling
Agylia LMS is available as a white labelled solution. Both Web learner portal interfaces and App interfaces can be fully branded according to customer requirements. Every customer in fact gets their own unique App in the App store, with their own choice of App name. Extended enterprise customers can deploy one or more Web portals and/or Apps each carrying separate brand identities, if that is appropriate for them. Customers are also free to host their Agylia instance (both admin site and web learner portals) at addresses of their own choosing, for example using their own domain (e.g. academyportal.contoso.com).
Agylia Review Summary
This is a hugely impressive LMS that is setting new standards in delivering elearning through mobile devices. The native app solution is one of the best on the market. The LMS has a series of market leading features, including very strong search, a gamification engine reporting to an LRS, so yes – an LRS is included. This LRS really does make mobile learning work.
Visit the Agylia website at www.agylia.com to learn more.
David Patterson
Lead eLearning Consultant
About David
Our lead elearning consultant David Patterson is an expert in training technologies such as learning management systems, and in elearning best practices.
He has helped many public and private sector organisations across the UK, Europe and worldwide to create and deliver engaging, effective elearning.
David is joint author of several research papers including the highly acclaimed Learning Light reports on the UK elearning market.
