Connecting a learning management system or online community to Rhythm gives Certifications, Membership, or CRM the credentials and rules they need to keep that outside product aligned with your records. You manage each connection under System & Security › Integrations, on the settings page for that product.
Learning Management Connections
Canvas LMS, Cadmium Elevate, Blue Sky Path LMS, and Honor Education connect Rhythm to a learning platform. Certifications uses these connections to send course activity to the learning platform and, for some connections, bring results back into Rhythm.
Warning
If your association uses a learning platform other than these four, Rhythm does not have a native connection for it. Selling training in Rhythm and sending enrollment or fulfillment data to that platform requires a custom integration, not a standard setup. Support does not scope this work, and building it typically means creating API credentials so the other platform can call the Rhythm API on a schedule, such as every few hours, to pick up new purchases. Connecting Rhythm to a payment processor such as Stripe does not change this behavior. Stripe keeps the payment transaction in Rhythm, but it does not send anything to a learning platform that has no Rhythm connection of its own.
| Connection | Where to find it | Can be disabled or removed? | What it stores beyond the credential |
|---|---|---|---|
| Canvas LMS | System & Security › Integrations › Canvas LMS | No — after you configure it, the Console has no switch to turn it off and no control to remove it. | Which certification course types get their own Canvas section for each organization. |
| Cadmium Elevate | System & Security › Integrations › Cadmium Elevate | No — same as Canvas. | Whether Elevate sends its own registration email after a Rhythm purchase; which course types register automatically; the credit status written back to Rhythm; and whether a credit write-back marks a course registration complete. |
| Blue Sky Path LMS | System & Security › Integrations › Bluesky eLearn | Yes — an Enable Connection switch turns it on or off without removing the setup. | Which course types register automatically; optional automations that create a certification when a course is completed, or create a missing course automatically, each with its own default program, course type, or training provider. |
| Honor Education | System & Security › Integrations › Honor Education | Yes — each connection has its own Enable Connection switch, and you can delete it from the list. | Which certification course types the connection covers; an optional test mode that limits synchronization to one course, one course offering, and optionally one contact. |
Canvas, Elevate, and Blue Sky each support one connection in your Rhythm account. You use the same settings page to set up the connection and return later to change it. Honor Education works differently because it uses a list of connections, although the Console hides the option to add another one after your Rhythm account already has at least one.
Tip
Canvas and Elevate have no Console option to turn them off or remove them, so plan carefully before connecting either one for a trial. Contact Rhythm support if you need a Canvas or Elevate connection taken down.
For Blue Sky Path LMS, matching depends on entering the same product identifier in more than one place. A course completion updates the correct program in Rhythm only when the external product ID is entered in both the course's purchase settings and its certificate settings. If the value is present in one place but missing from the other, the completion often will not reach the program you expect. Blue Sky's webhook notifications may also carry a shorter product or event code than the one used later. The sync that grants access matches on the full external product ID tied to the course offering fee, not the shorter code from the webhook. The same idea applies across these connections: when a registration appears in Rhythm but never reaches the learning platform, check that the platform's own course identifier, sometimes labeled something like Remote Product ID, is entered and matches what Rhythm is sending.
A few behaviors happen automatically once registration syncing is on for one of these connections. If a card is declined, the course registration stays in Draft and is not sent to the learning platform as a completed registration. Only a completed purchase syncs as a real registration. Registration syncing generally follows your order's status rather than the invoice's payment status, so an order marked complete can grant learning-platform access even if its invoice is still unpaid. Reverting that order back to Open afterward does not reliably take the access away again. If someone is removed from a course and later re-added, the learning platform needs to receive and process the cancellation before it accepts the new registration. If the learner still shows as registered on the platform's side, the re-registration attempt can be rejected as a duplicate.
The first time someone without an existing Rhythm account signs in through Elevate, they are guided to set up a Rhythm account. Rhythm checks them against your existing contact records, including an email verification step, before returning them to Elevate. Elevate's own Report API is not a source Rhythm pulls data from, so plan to get Elevate reporting data directly from Elevate rather than through Rhythm. Also be aware that turning on an LMS connection that issues its own certificates can change what the Print Certificate action shows in Certifications. A learner may see the connected platform's certificate instead of Rhythm's own template. Turning that connection back off changes what prints in the Console, but it does not necessarily remove the print option from the Portal.
When a Learning Connection Doesn't Match What You Expect
If a learner's information looks wrong in a connected learning platform, first confirm which platform is involved and whether that person is matched to a different Rhythm contact record. A name or credit that changes unexpectedly after someone signs in through a learning platform sometimes comes from the connection's own identity or email matching, not from anything visibly different on the contact's profile. If a purchase or fulfillment never reached the learning platform, trace that specific attempt instead of assuming a broad failure. Check whether Rhythm sent it, whether the platform rejected it, or whether the platform never picked it up. This is especially useful when the problem happens intermittently rather than every time.
Community Connections
Higher Logic, Clowder, and Forj Community connect Rhythm to an online community platform your members use. Membership and CRM use these connections to keep member data, organization data, and community access rules aligned. Once your data reaches the community platform, that platform controls what happens to it next, including a member's public profile address on that site. Rhythm does not create or manage that address, and Rhythm cannot explain how the community platform builds or changes it on its side.
| Connection | Where to find it | What it stores beyond the credential |
|---|---|---|
| Higher Logic | System & Security › Integrations › Higher Logic | An account code and key issued by Higher Logic; which contact roles are sent as community memberships; a default time zone for events pushed to the community; whether the community was previously integrated with an older system; switches to stop sending organizations or events; an optional single test contact; and repeating tables that map additional contact and organization fields, and community opt-in fields, beyond the standard data Rhythm sends. |
| Clowder | System & Security › Integrations › Clowder | No credential of any kind — only a name, which extra contact and membership fields to send to Clowder beyond the standard information, and which of those sent fields should be publicly visible on a member’s Clowder profile. |
| Forj Community | System & Security › Integrations › Forj Community | An API key and secret; whether the connection is active; an option to send only members instead of every contact; an optional single test contact; a member opt-out field; and field-and-group mapping between Forj’s own profile fields and groups and your contact or membership fields, set up through two dedicated mapping screens. |
Each of these community products supports one connection in your Rhythm account, which you set up and change on a single settings page instead of a list.
Tip
If you send a profile-image field to a community platform, make sure the value is a publicly accessible image URL. A link that only works for signed-in Rhythm users, such as an internal file-service address, will not display as a profile image on the other side.
When you decide how a contact's membership feeds a community field or group rule, plan for contacts who have no active membership or whose membership status is blank. Base that decision on a membership-specific field rather than a general contact status field, so someone without a current membership record is treated consistently as a non-member instead of falling through the mapping unexpectedly.
For Higher Logic's role-based communities built around a committee, membership in that community follows how you set up the underlying committee. If a committee has no defined term dates, Higher Logic has no way to know when a member has rotated off it. As a result, people who left the committee can keep community access longer than you expect.
Rhythm currently imports only limited summary activity from a few community platforms into Rhythm. Bringing in broader activity data from a community platform, across every supported platform, is not something you can turn on through these connection settings. It would need to be requested as a product enhancement.
If the custom field you need to sync already exists in Rhythm, check whether the community platform's own field mapping can reach it directly before assuming you need a new feature. Higher Logic's and Forj's field mappings, described above, often cover this without any change to Rhythm itself.
Warning
Reactivating a contact who was previously deactivated does not reliably restore what a connected product had before. Higher Logic subscription preferences can come back reset instead of matching what the person had previously chosen, and a reactivated learner in a connected LMS such as Elevate may lose course files, progress, test data, or prior registrations rather than picking back up where they left off.
Logging in to the Portal is separate from being signed in to a connected community platform, and connecting one of these products does not set up single sign-on by itself. A member signed in to the Rhythm Portal is not automatically signed in to Higher Logic, Forj, or a connected learning platform. That requires single sign-on configured separately between the two products. Without it, a second sign-in on the other site is expected. When an association wants a genuinely seamless experience between an external website and the Portal, single sign-on is generally better than embedding the Portal inside that website.
Because single sign-on depends on both products, the experience can vary depending on where someone starts: the organization's website, the Portal, or the connected platform itself. It also depends on how that platform handles its own redirects, sessions, and sign-out. A successful sign-in to the Portal does not prove that a connected site's own sign-in or sign-out is configured correctly. That site may have its own session behavior to check when something looks wrong after logout or when sign-in from a connected platform is inconsistent.
Access to an external community or exchange site is also separate from access to the Rhythm member Portal itself. Even after a connection is set up, a person still needs their own Rhythm user account, created through account setup, before they can sign in to the Portal. Trouble signing in to the outside site and a missing Portal account are two different issues.
Course Types, Credit Mappings, and Community Field Rules — What's the Difference?
These three settings sound similar, but they control different parts of the connection:
- A course-type registration decides which of your certification course types are sent to the connected learning platform. It does not change what happens after a course is there.
- A credit mapping (on Elevate, and as automations on Blue Sky) decides how results coming back from the learning platform, such as a completed course or credit, are recorded in Rhythm. For example, it can set which credit status to use or whether completion is marked automatically. Whether a result is recorded as a course registration or as a certification matters beyond Rhythm, too: it decides whether a downstream site or portal can show someone's course completions and their organization certifications in one unified list, or needs separate views for each.
- A community field or group rule (on Higher Logic, Clowder, and Forj) decides which of your contact or organization fields are sent to the community platform. For Higher Logic and Forj, it also controls how those field values place a member into the right community group.