Creating and Maintaining a Course

The following sets out the required steps for setting up a training course within Salesforce. 

1. Navigate to the Course Tab

First up, navigate to the Course Tab. This can be found in the Salesforce navigation bar.

Make sure you are in the 'Training Administrator' application. 

2. Select 'New' and Choose a Course Type

The 'Training Course' type should be selected.

TIP - you can clone an existing Course. Simply pick a course and select 'Clone' from the button on the top right of the screen. This will duplicate all the details of the course to the new course. It won't however, copy any related records over e.g Attendees or Sessions.

3. Fill out the Basic Course Details

  1. Add a Course Name
  2. Add a Course Start Date
  3. Add a Course End Date
  4. Choose a session type
  5. Enter a Capacity (this will default to a value defined behind the scenes and will vary by state). Please contact a system admin if you would like to change the default number)

4. Select a Product

Products are the same as a training qualification. Take a look at this guide to read up on how to manage products - Creating a Training Product

Use the 'Product' field to begin to search for the qualification you are looking for. You can begin typing its name and Salesforce will return the closest matching results. If you can't easily find you product this way, use the search option at the top of the suggested list (with the little magnifying glass) to expand your search net. 

Each Product in Salesforce has three versions - 

  1. Public - these have product codes like CPR
  2. Industry - these have product codes like IND-CPR
  3. RPL - these have product codes like RPL-CPR

Be careful to select the correct product type. 

5. Select a Regional Hub

The St John Regional Hub represents the geographic region in which the training course will take place. 

Use the Regional Hub field and start typing to search for the Hub - e.g Brisbane.

You can now save your new Course record  (just use the 'Save' button). Once saved you will notice that the Course Id field is assigned a unique number.

6. Add Sessions

Sessions allow you to define the structure of a course. For example, multiple day courses may have a session for each day. You can also specify any defined breaks. Sessions can be found under the 'Related' tab.

  1. Select 'New Session' from the options in the top right of your new Course record
  2. Complete the details:
  3. The Start Time will default to the same as the Start Time of the course
  4. The End Time will only populate if the course is only one day in duration
  5. The session name will be assigned for you, appending a session number appropriately. Feel free to override this name if you would like
  6. At this point, you have the option to assign a trainer. This is useful if you already have a trainer in mind. Later in this guide, however, we will run through a handy tool to help you find available trainers and roster them to sessions
  7. You will also notice a 'Primary Trainer' checkbox. This should only be checked if you select a trainer to assign to the course

Add as many sessions as required using the same method.

The system will validate each session you add to ensure that the start and end times fall within the parent Course start and end times.

It is very important to remember to add Sessions! Session records dictate the courses' visibility on the website. Without the right session information, a Course will not show correctly on the website. Additionally, sessions appear on students course registration email's - telling them when and where to be across multiple day courses.

CRITICAL INFORMATION: It is really important to add a trainer to each course session, otherwise they will not see the course on their roster within Salesforce. 

Trainer Sessions

You can add as many sessions to a course as you would like. Generally, sessions equate to days - one session for each day of a Course. However, what if you need to assign multiple trainers to the same day / session of a course? Perhaps there is a high student count, or one of the trainers has some provisional competencies, requiring another trainer to be present during the day. Situations like these, can be catered for using 'Trainer Sessions'. 

For example, perhaps you need a second trainer for day one of a provide first aid course. All you need to do is add your first session as usual and then - 

  1. Select 'Trainer Session' from the top right of the Course screen
  2. Complete the fields as with a normal
  3. You will notice that the system automatically prepends 'Trainer Session' to your session name

When assigning multiple trainers to the same session of a course it is important to use a trainer session. Trainer sessions are excluded from the website as well as from student confirmations.

7. Add a Course Location

Next, you need to define the location at which the Course will be held. You can do this using the 'Location' field. 

The Location field is a lookup, to Salesforce Accounts. The lookup is filtered to show St John training locations. Start typing the location you need and select it from the list.

Once you have added a Location make sure to Save the record!

NOTE - training locations have a room capacity assigned to them. If the room you select for your location does not have a large enough capacity to host the course (based on the capacity defined on the course) then the system will present an error and prompt the choice of a different training location.

8. Course Status - Website Visibility

At this point, the Course is ready to be displayed on the Website for public bookings. The visibility of a Course on the website can be controlled using the course 'Status'. Upon course creation, the Status defaults to 'Pending'. Statuses affect visibility on the website:

  • Pending - not available on the website
  • Open - available on the website
  • Capacity - not available on the website. Courses will automatically be updated to Capacity when attendance numbers match capacity
  • Closed - not available on the website
  • Cancelled - not available on the website
  • Reserved - not available on the website

Additional Important Information: In order to make the course visible on the website, you'll also need to check the box on the course record: Available on Website

9. Add a Trainer

The last step to creating a training course is to add a trainer. We briefly touched during the section about adding sessions. To facilitate this Salesforce has an inbuilt resourcing tool. 

Select the 'Assign Trainer' button from the top right of the screen.

You will be presented with a page showing - 

  1. A list of trainers available for rostering
  2. A list of sessions, to which trainers need to be assigned

Sometimes the list of sessions will appear at the bottom of your page and others, it will appear to the right. Not to worry, this is just the page adjusting to the size of your monitor.

The trainers presented in the list are automatically filtered by the system using a variety of criteria - 

  1. The trainer must be specified as 'Active'
  2. The trainer can not already be rostered to teach a session on another course at a time that overlaps with the course currently being rostered
  3. The trainer can not have holiday/time off booked at the same time
  4. The trainer must have a valid competency in each competency assigned to the training qualification
  5. The trainer must be marked as 'Instruct-able' in each Student Competency assigned to the training qualification
  6. The trainer must be assigned to the same regional hub as the course 

Additionally, notice the 'PROV' column. This specifies that the trainer has only been selected as 'Provisional' for some of the competencies required to teach the course. This refers to the trainers 'Instruct-able' status for the competency. Trainers with a 'Provisional' flag may require an additional trainer to be present.

Next, you can quickly and easily roster available trainers against sessions. There are a couple of ways to do this - 

  1. The coolest way it to use the drag and drop functionality. Simply click and drag any trainer from the available list and drop it onto the required session
  2. Use the 'Add to All' option. This will assign the trainer to all available sessions
  3. Sometimes you already have a specific trainer in mind. It is possible they may not appear in the available list. In this instance, you can simply search for the trainer you are looking for using the 'Trainer' search box against each session

You may notice there is no save button. The page is doing the work for you and saving your changes as you make them.

10. Define a Primary Trainer

The last step is to define a primary trainer for the course. The following demo explains how to do this.