Managing Live Training Events

Manage live training event features and settings to customize and have even more control over your events and event communications. In this article, we'll review the live training event options available to you, such as how to allow instructors to create an event for students to join a training on a scheduled day and time, how to clone, cancel, and delete an event, and how to create reminder and update emails.

To learn more about creating a live event with a Universal Join Link, check out this article: Universal Join Link for Live Event Lessons (VILT).

Create a Live Training lesson

Instructors can create a live training event as a lesson in their course. 

1. On your Skilljar dashboard, select Course Management to open a list of your courses.
2. Select the course in which you want to provide a live training.
3. Select New lesson and Live Training.

4. Select New Event. 

5. On the next page, input your event details:

• Event name
• Location
• Start and End times
• Available seats
• Instructor name
• Description

6. Optional - Select Create another event to create more occurrences of your event, which will all be unique training events on the same lesson, and fill in the details. 

• Note - these events are NOT related after they are created. At this time, each event created this way is independent and the lesson will be complete when the student attends any of the events in this lesson.

7. Tags

• • • In the Tags section of the "Schedule Event" page: Type the tag(s) you want to add and associate with the event. Enter one tag per line; and/or
    • Click the plus sign (+) in the Existing Tags section and select the existing tag(s) you want to associate with the event. Click here to learn more about Live Training Event Tags: Getting Started with Live Training Event Tags

7. Select Save.

Your new event will now show under the curriculum tab within your lesson.

Once the event has been created you can clone, cancel or delete the event by selecting the three dots (...) to the right.

Note: Upon successful deletion or cancellation of an event, the instructor and any students that have already registered will receive an email notification of the cancellation.

Live Training Waitlists

To enable a waitlist for learners who have expressed interest in joining your event even if it's full, select the Enable Waitlist box. By joining a waitlist, learners will be on standby and if a seat becomes available, they will automatically be enrolled in the event. 

To learn more about waitlists, see Live Training Event Waitlists

Additional settings for Live Training Events

You can manage additional settings for your event by expanding the Settings header on the event’s lesson creation page in your dashboard. 

These options let you modify settings such as disabling automatic completion, making the lesson optional, sending an event reminder email to students, and automatically emailing instructors whenever a student registers or cancels their registration.

There are also further settings that can be added to your Skilljar dashboard, which provide you with the ability to add resources and prevent double booking. These include: 

• Enabling free-form VILT instructor creation.

• Enabling location double booking for live training events.

• Enabling free-form location creation for live training events.

• Providing a list of instructors and locations.

If you're interested in adding the above settings to your organization, please reach out to your customer success manager (CSM).

Sending event reminder emails

Send an automated event reminder email to students at least one hour before the event’s start time. You can choose from sending an existing email template or create a new one (for more about creating email templates, see Customized Email Notifications).

Note: You can only send one reminder email per event.

1. Select Event Reminder Email
   
   
   
   
2. Enter how many hours the message will be sent before the event starts.
   
   
   
   
   • Note: The email must be at least one hour before the event start time. To send the email a day or more before the event, simply type in the hours, for example, two days  = 48 hours. 
3. Choose an existing custom email template from the drop-down selection.
   
   
   
   
   • You can preview the email by selecting Send Preview and make changes to the template by selecting Edit. 
   • To create a new template, select + New Template.
4. When you’re finished, select Save.

Notes on editing a reminder email’s timing: 

If an existing reminder email’s timing is edited to be nearer to the event (for example, from 24 hours to one hour), the student will only receive the email if the original time hasn’t yet passed. For example, there are 12 hours until the event and the original reminder email is changed from 24 hours to one hour before. Since it’s now less than 24 hours before the event, the student will have already received the email so won’t receive another email an hour before. 

If the reminder email’s timing is edited to be farther away from the event, for example, from 24 hours to 48, and we’re already within that 48-hour window (for example 12 hours), the student will receive the email immediately. If you’re still outside the 48-hour window (for example, 62), then the student won’t receive it until the 48-hour mark.

Showing event dates/times on your Course Details page

If you want to show a specific Live Training lesson's event date/times on your Course Detail page (seen to user pre-registration), scroll down to expand settings, check "Show on Detail Page" and "Save Lesson." See below for how this appears to users.

The steps above create one Live Training lesson event on your specified date and time.

Students can register for more than one live training event in a single lesson. Learn more here.

If you create a Live Training lesson with a single Live Training event, you can use the course-level “Register In Single Event Live Training Lessons” setting to automatically register students for the single Live Training lesson event. 

Learn more: Register students in Live Training events automatically

Close Registration for a Live Training Event

If you are looking to close registration for an event before it starts so that new students cannot register, you can update the event's Available Seats to Zero. This will not allow any new students to register but will still allow previously registered students to join the event when it starts. 

Live Training Event Table

The Live Event Table will show you any Live Event that has been created for a lesson in a table format, allowing you to filter, sort, and search for a specific event. The default filter is set to show you all Future or upcoming events. 

The Events table can be filtered by event type (Past Events, Future Events, or All), and/or event status (Active, Cancelled, or All).

Each column is sortable. By clicking on the column label, you can rearrange events within the table to sort them by ascending or descending order. The sorting default is by “Start Time” ascending. You can clone, cancel or delete the event by clicking the three dots to the right.

• Cloning/Editing Events will bring you BACK to the ILT table after you Save your event

Edit a Future Live Training Event

Clicking the Event Name in the first column of a Future Event takes you to the Event Details page and allows you to edit:

• Start Date/Time
• End Date/Time
• Timezone
• Total Seats (Optional)
• Instructor
• Description
• Post-Registration Instructions
• Tags

Any changes made will need to be saved to take effect.

How it works for Students

Before registering for your course, a student can see the live events on your course details page (step 7 above). They can then self-register and self-cancel for the live training that works best for them. Users can download these events to their calendars and will receive email confirmations for any registrations and cancellations.

Please note: Students are not able to register for WebEx events after they have started, if a student attempts to do this, they will be met with an error message. Click here to learn about tracking attendance and adding scores for Students.

1. From Course Details, users can see the available date/times for the lesson(s) (if completing step 7 above) under the About this Course heading, after your course's long description.
   
   
   
   
2. Once they register for the course, in the live training lesson they will be able to select the time/date that works for them.
   
   
   
   
3. When a user registers, they can download the calendar item for that event and will receive an email confirmation with event details.
   
   
   
   Email confirmation:
   
   
   
   
4. Users can cancel their registration, which allows them to choose a new event as needed and sends a cancellation email confirmation.
   
   
   
   Email cancellation confirmation:
   
   

For Cancelled Events

• All students registered for an event that is canceled by a Skilljar Admin will receive an event cancellation email (This is similar to the email Skilljar sends students for deleted events). Please note, this email notification is not customizable. 

• The event will be removed from the Live Training lesson (no longer listed as an option for registration).
• The event will be removed from the Training Domain’s Calendar ([academy]. [yourcompany].com/calendar).

Things to consider

• If a student launches the event from the training domain, the Live Event lesson will automatically be marked as 'attended'.
• After an event, to manually update attendance, as well as set scores, or success statuses, check out this article: Update Scores, Success Status, and Attendance for a Past Live Training Event
• If you have sequential navigation turned on for this course (where lessons must be taken in order), a user cannot proceed to the next lesson until they're marked attended.
• If the event date/time has passed, the event will no longer be listed for students to select.
• If you've reached the designated maximum seat total per event, the event will no longer be listed for students to select.
• Students will not be able to register for a course if there are no seats left in any live training lesson, and publishing settings have enforced a limited checkout quantity based on available live training lesson seats. 
• While students typically self-register for live events, you can use our Add/Remove buttons from the dashboard to enlist or remove them on their behalf. Learn more.
• The ‘Launch Zoom Event’ button becomes available for students to select 3 minutes before the meeting is set to start.