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The External Enrolment URL option is useful if you wish to redirect users to a site outside of the Openlearning platform i.e for payment, registration and enrolment of the learners directly in your organization. 

External Gateways are now configured at the Institution level and can only be set up by an Institution administrator. Once a gateway has been created, it can be reused as an external enrolment URL or as a payment method across multiple programs, courses, and classes. This means you no longer need to configure a separate gateway for each individual item.

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Add an External Gateway in your Institution Settings

Step 1

Go to your Institution Settings > External Gateway page.

Step 2

Click Add external gateway. A dialog titled Set up your integration endpoint will appear.

Step 3

Fill in the following fields:

Name: a label to identify this external link. This is how the external gateway will appear when you select it on the pricing page setup, so use something recognisable.

Destination URL: the target URL of your web application / registration website / form, where redirects or data will be delivered (for example, https://example.com/webhook).

Enable Signed Data Transfer (JWT): optional. When turned ON, OpenLearning transmits user, course, and pricing data inside a signed JSON Web Token (JWT) sent via POST request. This lets your application verify that the request genuinely came from OpenLearning and has not been tampered with. We recommend enabling this for any gateway that handles payment.

If it's just to redirect the learner to an external site, you can just toggle this OFF

Note: Please ensure that you include the https:// prefix as well, otherwise, it will not redirect properly.

Step 4.

Click Save.

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Select the gateway on your Class or Programs pricing page

Once your External Gateway is saved, you can apply it to as many programs and classes as you like.

Setting it up on your Class
 

1.Go to Course Setup > Classes in your Course.

2. Find the class you would like to update with the link and click Edit.

3. Click on the Pricing tab, you can choose to have this appear as a Free or Paid course.

• If Free is selected, tick the checkbox - Redirect learners to an external gateway for enrolment and select the gateway that you set.
• If Paid is selected, enter your pricing details and select the gateway that you set.

 Setting it up on your Programs

 

1. Go to Institution Settings >  Manage Programs > Programs

2. Find the Program that you would like to update with the link, click Action > Edit.

3. Click on the Pricing tab, and under Enrolment Cost, you can choose to have this appear as a Free or Paid.

• If Free is selected, tick the checkbox - Use an external gateway for enrolment and select your gateway that you set.
• If Paid is selected, enter your pricing details and select the gateway that you set.

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That's it! Once this has been set up, any users who click on the Join Now button on your landing pages gets directed to the site that you set above.

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Customisable fields (optional)

The following template variables can be used to customise the course enrolment URL:

• $user_name - the user’s full name

• $user_id - the user’s OL user ID

• $course - the course title

• $course_id - the course’s OL ID

• $class_id - the OL ID of the class they might be enrolling into

• $context - the name of the institution, if there is one

• $price - price

• $currency - currency

• $access_code - access code

The following template variables can be used to customise the program enrolment URL:

• portal_path

• user_id

• qualification_id

• institution_id

• external_user_id

• price

• currency

If the URL entered has any of these template variables within the URL, Openlearning will replace each with the respective value automatically.

e.g.

https://www.example.com/$context?user=$user will link to:

https://www.example.com/hogwarts?user=Harry%20Potter

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Custom label for Join Now button

• This will allow you to set a customised button label to something applicable to your use case, for example: Join waitlist, Register here, Book your slot...
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Custom landing page message for unenrolled learners

• This will allow you to set a customised text on the landing page for unenrolled learners.

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When to use the external enrolment

• If you would be linking the class via SSO or if you would be inviting the learner in manually to the course after they have completed the registration outside of the platform.

• If you are hosting your own payment gateway and want to use that instead of our built-in payment gateway, you would need to use this together with the External payment gateway settings as per our article on Custom Payment Gateway. 

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Typical use case

A course / program is set up with the External Gateway as documented above.

1. Interested users land on your course or program landing page and click on the Join Now button.
2. They get redirected to your site/web application to complete the registration.
3. Once they have completed the registration, you can enrol them into the course or program;
   • Manually as per our Enrolment Guide here.
   • Set up the integration via API or LTI and add them to your course.

If you have further queries or need any assistance with this, please don’t hesitate to contact our Customer Success team via email at support @ openlearning.com.