Scenario
As a content owner, you want to assign a content item (such as event type [soon to be called event series], track, course, article, video, or codelab) to users.
Solution
Access the content item you want to assign from the Catalog.
Open the context menu (button with three dots) and select View Roster.
The Assignments dialog opens, showing by default everyone currently assigned to the content item (other than those whose assignments have expired). You can add the Is expired filter and set it to Yes to view assignments that have expired for the content item.
Note that expiration is not shown by default and you'll want to purposefully filter to display that detail:
Click Assign or Re/assign.
Assign lets you bulk assign people who do not have an active assignment to the content. Re/assign lets you bulk assign the same people and reassign people whose assignments are no longer outstanding (dropped, completed, exempted). Go deeper.
Use the dynamic filters to find the people you want to assign.
Select the people from the list you want to assign to the content item.
After making a selection, an option appears to Select all people listed.Click Assign.
Optionally, you can set an assignment due date and an expiration date for all people selected.
These dates are automatically populated (but still editable) if you have a Time to complete (due date) and a Time to expiration (expiration date) set up for the content.Click Assign.
The selected team members are assigned to the content item.
Once you assign team members to a content item, you can manage their assignments and track their progress.
Go deeper
Who can I assign content to?
You can manually assign content to anyone who does not have an outstanding assignment to it (not started or in progress), including those who have dropped, completed, or were exempted from the assignment already.
Assign v. Re/assign
We designed the Assign option to let you assign content in bulk without worrying about reassigning people who have already completed, dropped, or exempted it. Re/assign lets you assign anyone without an outstanding assignment to the content, meaning you can assign and reassign content with the same bulk action.
Automatically assign content to team members
In addition to the manual process described in this article, you can also create automated rules to assign content automatically. This is especially helpful for assigning common and recurring content, like compliance training.
Automated rules cannot assign content to people who have already dropped, completed, or been exempted from it. Rules can reassign content assignments that have reached their expiration date.
What about scheduled events, mentorship sessions, and office hours?
Live engagement content (scheduled events and mentorship and office hour sessions) use language other than assignment for those engaging the content. You can add attendees to live events and mentees to a mentorship session. You can add office hour sessions as additional resources to other content items, but you cannot add an attendee to an office hour session directly.
Note that you can assign people to event types (as opposed to adding attendees to scheduled events), prompting them to enroll in an upcoming scheduled event.
Users are prompted to enroll by two separate mechanisms. One is by enabling and configuring the Assignment Creation notification under the Event Type Notifications settings located at the bottom of the configuration page under Event Notifications.
The 2nd prompt is by way of a badge on their profile directing to their My Content page:
Self-assignment and notifications
When people save or launch a content item, they are added as assignees to the content. This means their self-assignments might have due dates or expiration dates, and content owners can make changes to their assignments.
Self-assignments do not trigger a notification. The Assignment Creation notification only goes to people who have been assigned to content by others.
For more on self-assignments please see this section from How to manage assignments.
Notifications nuances with Tracks
Please note that as Tracks can and usually contain other content items such as courses, unless you disable notifications within those child content items inside your Tracks, when you assign users to a Track those child content assignment notifications will also go out along with your main Track assignment notification. To prevent this please disable those notifications you do not want to go out with your parent Track notification.
See also