Export Data Using Amazon S3
This article helps admins export Skilljar data using Amazon S3.
Overview
Use Skilljar Data Exports to send training data to external systems, such as customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, customer success platforms, data warehouses, and business intelligence tools.
When you enable Data Exports, Skilljar creates a dedicated, read-only location in a Skilljar-managed Amazon S3 bucket and populates it with CSV files containing your historical training data. Skilljar refreshes the files on a recurring schedule.
You can connect any external system that supports Amazon S3 to the bucket and import Skilljar training data on a recurring schedule.
Use Data Exports to:
- Analyze Skilljar training data in an external reporting or business intelligence platform.
- Combine training data with customer or business data in another system.
- Build custom integrations without using a platform-specific Skilljar integration.
- Send Skilljar data to multiple downstream systems that support Amazon S3.
Prerequisites
Admins must have Global Administrator permissions in the Skilljar dashboard to enable Data Exports.
Understand Data Exports
When you enable Data Exports, Skilljar assigns your organization a unique prefix inside a Skilljar-managed Amazon S3 bucket, and generates AWS credentials that grant read-only access to that prefix. Your data is isolated to your prefix, and the credentials cannot read any other organization's data.
The export contains CSV files that represent Skilljar training data. The data model corresponds to the objects and fields available through the Skilljar Salesforce integration.
Exported data includes information about:
- Students
- Published courses
- Enrollments
- Course progress
- Lessons
- Lesson progress
- Signup fields
- Promo codes
- Virtual instructor-led training (VILT)
- Groups and group memberships
- Learning paths, path enrollments, and path progress
- Tags and labels
- Course series
- Offers, purchases, promo code pools, and access codes
- Training credit codes
- Domain memberships
- Licenses and license packages
- Student managers
For more information on the available objects and fields, refer to Salesforce: Custom Objects and Their Fields article.
When To Use Data Exports Instead of a Platform-Specific Integration
Data Exports provide an alternative to connecting Skilljar directly to a specific application.
Use the Amazon S3 Data export when:
- Your data warehouse already imports data from Amazon S3.
- Your organization uses an integration or analytics platform that supports Amazon S3.
- You need Skilljar data in a system without a dedicated Skilljar integration.
- You want to control how Skilljar training data is transformed or combined with other organizational data.
The Amazon S3 export provides the underlying Skilljar training data. Your external system determines how the data is imported, modeled, analyzed, or used in downstream workflows.
Enable Data Exports
You need to configure your Skilljar dashboard to enable data export.
To enable data export:
- Open dashboard.skilljar.com/data-export.
- Enter your Skilljar credentials. The Data Export page appears.
- Click Create. The following details are displayed:
- S3 bucket
- S3 prefix
- Access key
- Secret key
IMPORTANT: Skilljar shows the secret key only once. If you close or refresh the page, you cannot retrieve it. If you lose the secret key, click Re-create next to Secret Key to generate new credentials. This issues a new access key and a new secret key, and it invalidates the previous pair immediately. Any connected system continues to fail until you update it with both new values.
Note: Skilljar begins provisioning the export location. Your access credentials appear immediately, but the exported data can take up to 30 minutes to become available.
Connect Data Exports to an External System
Use the credentials generated by Skilljar to connect your external system to the Amazon S3 bucket.
The configuration steps vary by platform. In general, provide the following information:
| Skilljar value | Description |
|---|---|
| S3 bucket | Identifies the Amazon S3 bucket that contains your Skilljar data. |
| S3 prefix | Identifies the location of your organization's files within the bucket. |
| Access key | Authenticates the external system. |
| Secret key | Authenticates the external system together with the access key. |
After you configure the connection:
- Select the CSV files required for your use case.
- Configure the external system to import the files on the appropriate schedule.
- Confirm that the imported data is available in the external system.
Skilljar refreshes the exported data on a recurring schedule [TK: cadence, see C1]. Exports are processed sequentially, so larger data sets can take several hours to process, and file availability times may vary. Configure imports to use the file modification time rather than a fixed time of day.
Deactivate Data Exports
Disabling Data Exports revokes the credentials and stops the daily refresh.
To disable data exports:
- Open dashboard.skilljar.com/data-export/.
- Enter your Skilljar credentials. The Data Export page appears.
- Click Disable.
Skilljar deletes the access key and secret key, and any external system using them loses access immediately. Files already written to the export location are not removed by this action. If you enable Data Exports again later, Skilljar issues a new access key and secret key, which you must add to every system that reads the export.