Organizational Structure in Your LMS: How to Set Up Departments, Roles, and Learner Properties in AcademyOcean

Hi 👋

One of the most common questions we get from platform admins is how to reflect a company's structure inside the LMS and use it in analytics — so reports don't show all learners lumped together, but broken down by department, city, or job level.

This update is our answer.

In AcademyOcean, you can now build your company's organizational structure right inside the platform: describe each employee through properties, set up departments, roles, and levels — and then filter any report by these characteristics.

Here's what's new and how to work with it.

What changed in this update:

→ The "Variables" section has been renamed to "Learner Properties" and moved to Learner Management

→ A new property type has been added — Select (dropdown list)

→ You can now filter statistics by learner properties

→ The learner profile displays properties directly on the page

→ New accounts automatically come with a basic set of properties out of the box

→ Bulk learner import now supports filling in properties via CSV

1. Learner Properties: New Name, New Home

The "Variables" section has been renamed to Learner Properties and moved from Settings to Learner Management. It's a logical change: properties describe specific people, not system-wide technical settings — so they belong next to learner management, not in general settings.

All related labels have been updated across the interface: page titles, create and edit buttons, modals, filters in reports, options in lessons and quizzes. Custom properties now appear first — system properties come after them.

For those who got used to opening it via Settings: a placeholder page remains there with an explanation and a direct link to the new section — so no one gets lost during the transition.

2. New Property Type — Select

A new type has been added to the existing two (string and number) — Select. This is a property with a fixed set of answer options: the admin defines the list of values, and the learner or admin picks one of them.

Typical Select property examples:

Department: Marketing / Sales / IT / HR / Finance

Job level: Junior / Middle / Senior

Location: New York / London / Berlin / Kyiv

Work format: Office / Remote / Hybrid

When creating a property, the admin adds options and can reorder them via drag-and-drop. You can set a default value — it'll be automatically assigned to all new learners.

One important detail: if an option has already been assigned to at least one learner, you can't delete it. The system will show a notice. This protects you from accidental data loss.

Select properties are fully integrated into the platform's ecosystem: they're available in report filters and in CSV import.

3. Filtering Statistics by Learner Properties

Filtering by learner properties is now available in four key reports: Learner Progress, Courses Progress, Quizzes Progress, and Top Learners.

The filter panel now has two new sections:

Custom Properties — properties the admin created manually (types: string, number, select)

System Properties — default properties that come with every account

Three operators are available for each property:

Is — show records where the value matches the selected one. You can pick several values at once — the system will show records matching at least one of them.

Is not — exclude records with the selected value. Records with an empty value won't appear in the results.

Is unknown — show only learners whose field is empty.

The filter panel has a search by property name, and properties are loaded in batches of 50 — handy when you have a lot of them. Text values are compared case-insensitively.

For example:

Want to see progress only for the sales department? Select the "Department" property, the Is operator, the "Sales" value — and the report will only show the learners you need.

Need to find learners with an unfilled property? Is unknown will show everyone with an empty field.

4. Learner Properties in the Profile

A dedicated block with the learner's properties has been added to the profile page. By default, it shows 5 properties — in the order the admin configured in Manage Properties. Pinned properties always come first.

Admins can click Manage Properties right from the profile page — a side panel opens with the full list of properties and the ability to edit values for that specific learner. If you need to change the property structure (order, pinning), there's a direct link to the Properties page that opens in a new tab.

Learners can see their own properties in the profile but can't edit them — the Manage Properties button isn't available to them.

5. Basic Organizational Structure: Property Presets

When you create a new account, the system automatically generates a ready-made set of learner properties — based on the account language. After signing up, the admin already sees a basic structure and can start working right away, without spending time on setup from scratch.

The preset language is automatically pulled from the account's language settings. The architecture is built for expansion: in the future, new properties can be added to the preset and new locales can be supported.

6. Bulk Learner Import with Properties via CSV

If you already have a learner database with filled-in data, you no longer need to enter it manually one by one. CSV import now supports filling in properties during upload.

How it works:

Upload a CSV file — a table opens: rows are learners, columns are data from the file.

For each column, select the matching system property. Email, first name, and last name are mapped automatically.

If a property you need doesn't exist yet — create it right during import via the "Create new property" button.

Once all columns are mapped, the import button becomes active.

You can add all imported learners to one of your existing teams in one go.

The system automatically detects the data type in each column and hides incompatible properties in the dropdown list — for example, if a column contains numbers, string-type properties won't be available. The email column remains pinned during horizontal scrolling — convenient when you have many properties.

Wrap-up

Learner Properties are now a full-fledged tool for building organizational structure inside AcademyOcean. You can describe every employee — their department, role, city, level, work format — and then filter any report by these characteristics.

Renamed and relocated: Properties now live in Learner Management

New Select type: properties with fixed answer options

Filters in analytics: Learner Progress, Courses Progress, Quizzes Progress, Top Learners

Learner profile: a dedicated block with properties and editing capability

Presets: a basic Organizational Structure is generated automatically during signup

CSV import: fill in properties during bulk learner upload