Integration types

Integrating Drillster in your environment allows your users to easily start their drills, tests, etc. There are quite a few ways how Drillster can be integrated, and it's up to you to decide which type of integration is best for your situation.

For most integrations, the purpose is to open the Drillster Player for your user, to allow them to start practicing a drill, or to take test. To do this, the following has to be taken care of:

  1. Content authoring – The playable has been created
  2. User provisioning – A Drillster account is set up for the user
  3. Content access management – The user's account has access to the playable

Content authoring is typically performed by your administrative users, using Drillster's content editor. User provisioning and content access management can either be performed manually by your administator in the Drillster web-based user console, or can be automated by using the Drillster REST APIs.

Let's first describe some typical integrations that assume that these prerequisites are already met. After that we'll look into integrations that also include automating the aspects of user provisioning and content access management.

No integration

Integrating Drillster in your environment in not mandatory. Without an integration, your users would have to navigate their browser to https://www.drillster.com, or open the Drillster mobile app, log in with their Drillster credentials, and select a drill in their Library to practice. This requires that the user account has been set up by your administrator in the Drillster web interface, and was granted access to the drill, typically by adding the user to a group.

Trivial integration

If you have a web environment that your users frequently use, and you have the possibility to make modifications to it, you can include a link to https://www.drillster.com in an appropriate place. Your users can follow the link, log in with their Drillster credentials, and follow the same steps as described in the previous section.

Extending the "trivial integration", you could include direct links to specific drills, tests, etc. These links will immediately open the Drillster Player for the indicated playable. The user will still have to log in first with their Drillster credentials. The advantage of such Player links is that the user is taken directly to the correct playable, and doesn't need to look it up themselves. A Player link looks like this:

https://www.drillster.com/connector/player/{playable_id}

This link also works on mobile devices, where the Drillster mobile app, if installed, will be launched automatically.

Embedding the Player in your website

Integrations using a link will open the Drillster website or Player full screen, because the user is redirected to the Drillster website. However, the Drillster Player is designed as a widget, which is a component that can be embedded. This means that the Player will appear within your own website.

Example:

Player widget

Please refer to the widgets documentation to learn how to embed the Player (or other) widgets in your website.

💡 Single Sign-On (SSO)

The integration described so far all require the user to log in to Drillster with their Drillster credentials. Drillster provides options to use Single Sign-On (SSO) that allows your users to leverage the authenticated session they already might have within your environment. Using this eliminates the log in with Drillster credentials step from any integration, and results in a much smoother user experience.

Read the SSO documentation to learn how to user SSO in your integration.

SCORM

SCORM is a standard for cooperation between e-learning content and platforms hosting this content. It is a popular standard, and many LMSs support it. Drillster also supports SCORM. Using the Drillster SCORM Connector is a convenient way to integrate with Drillster, because it automatically takes care of most required integration aspects.

Please refer to the SCORM Connector documentation to learn more.

User provisioning and content access management

These two processes must have been taken care of before your user starts a drill. It ensures that an account is available for your user, and that the account can access the contents (playables) it should be able to access. Both can be done manually, using the Drillster web-based user console, or automatically using the Drillster REST APIs.

What's next

So far, we've covered the basic processes to integrate with Drillster, with the purpose to open a Player for your users to start practicing. From here, you can continue reading about more advanced integration options.

 

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