16 July 2021
Salesforce and LMS integration: Integrating your LMS with Salesforce
Kenny McCormack
Senior Solutions Architect
Learn how to sync your LMS with Salesforce and reap the benefits of integrating your courses with your CRM.
Do you use your LMS to sell courses or rely on maintaining long-term relationships with the people who enrol on your courses? If so, syncing your LMS with Salesforce will help you to work more efficiently and be more targeted in your approach.
A Salesforce and LMS integration can be either one-way or bi-directional. This will depend on if you just need Salesforce to be able to communicate with your LMS or if you’d like information flowing both ways between the two platforms.
Why integrating your LMS and Salesforce makes sense
Cost-effective and efficient
If you’re using Salesforce as your CRM and also using an LMS, such as Totara Learn or Moodle LMS, you can save a lot of time and money by removing duplicated processes. By automating user creation, enrolment and learning pathways across Salesforce and your LMS, you will dramatically reduce your administrative burden.
Better relationships
If everything your LMS knows about each user’s learning is integrated with Salesforce’s customer journey and customer service tools, you have the opportunity to build better, longer-lasting relationships with learners.
More effective marketing
Similarly to the previous point, syncing your LMS with Salesforce makes it easier for you to sell more courses. Salesforce will already know which of your learners completed the course ‘How to integrate Salesforce with your LMS’, so they can immediately be targeted with marketing for your new course ‘Advanced Salesforce and LMS integration’.
How to integrate your LMS with Salesforce
There are a few different ways of integrating your LMS with Salesforce. The right approach for your organisation will depend on what you want to achieve by integrating Salesforce with Moodle LMS, Totara or another LMS. Here are some of the most common LMS and Salesforce integration options and how they will help your organisation.
User provisioning from Salesforce to LMS
This means that when contact records are created on Salesforce, either directly or from an existing integration that already automatically creates users on Salesforce, they will also be added as new users on your LMS. This can be achieved automatically or at set intervals.
An expanded version of this type of integration would see new users automatically enrolled on particular courses depending on what they bought from your e-commerce site.
The process for this user provisioning integration between Salesforce and your LMS might be:
- Your customer registers on your e-commerce site.
- A contact record is created for them on Salesforce.
- Your customer buys something on your e-commerce site.
- A purchase line item is created on Salesforce.
- Salesforce creates a user account on your LMS.
- Salesforce enrols the user on the LMS based on the e-learning they bought.
This integration will require a mapping of the user on the LMS to the contract record on Salesforce, as well as a mapping between products on your e-commerce site, the relevant product in the CRM and the related course on the LMS.
Self-registration authentication on your LMS
Using a self-registration authentication integration, a contact record is automatically created on Salesforce when a user registers themselves on your LMS. The Salesforce contact record identifier is stored on your LMS and matched with the relevant user account to ensure the two accounts are continually linked. This will allow you to be targeted in your marketing messaging.
Once the Salesforce contact record and LMS user account are linked, you can easily sync between the two. When a user updates their profile settings on your LMS, this would automatically update the Salesforce contact record.
This integration setup might entail:
- Products in Salesforce are mapped to products (such as courses) in your LMS e-commerce component.
- A Salesforce line item is added each time your customer buys a course.
- Your customer is enrolled on the course they bought. The Salesforce record shows what has been purchased, which can be used to inform Salesforce workflows and automation.
Pushing learning completion records from your LMS to Salesforce
You might want to send data from your LMS to Salesforce. This will require a mapping between the two systems.
Once it’s set up, you can automatically send enrolment information, completion or attendance data, certificate issues and other information straight to Salesforce to inform your CRM activities.
Embedding Salesforce forms in your LMS
Using forms created in Salesforce embedded in your LMS, you can initiate a desired workflow in Salesforce.
For instance, one of your learners might want to request that a reasonable adjustment is made for a course they’re taking on your LMS. You can embed within the course a reasonable adjustment form you’ve created on Salesforce.
Submitted the form will initiate a Salesforce workflow that results in the reasonable adjustment request being reviewed and the appropriate action taken.
Interested in integrating your LMS and Salesforce?
If you’ve got any questions about integrating Salesforce and Totara, Moodle Workplace or Moodle, feel free to fill out the form below and we’ll be in touch.
