Managing a Trainer

Creating a trainer in Salesforce falls into two distinct steps -

  1. Create the trainer record
  2. Ensure the trainer's competencies/instructables are current and up to date

1. Creating a New Trainer Record

Before creating a new Trainer record you must make sure they have a Salesforce license. To do this you will need to contact your Salesforce Administrator. They will handle purchasing a Salesforce License and ensure a login is assigned to the new Trainer.

The first thing to check before making a brand new trainer record, is whether the new trainer already exists as a student. You can use Salesforce global search to do this. You can type anything you like to find them - their name, email, phone, student number.

If the new trainer does not exist as a student you will need to create a brand new record for them. To do this, select the 'Contact' tab from the Salesforce navigation bar at the top of the screen. 

Once you have selected the Contacts tab, you can use the list selector to see a full list of all the St John Trainers. 

To create a new trainer select the 'New' button from the top right hand corner of the screen. After selecting new, be sure to select the type as 'Trainer' before selecting next.

Fill out your trainer's details! This includes personal details such as email address, DOB and phone number but also fields vital for AVETMISS compliance like the Unique Student Identifier. 

Trainer User

The trainer user field is a very important one! In this field you must lookup and select the user created by your Salesforce Admin for your new trainer. For example, if a trainer named 'Joe Bloggs' needs to be added, you should search for 'Joe Bloggs' in this field and select the corresponding Salesforce user. 

This is very important to ensure that when a trainer is rostered to a course in Salesforce that they are provided the proper visibility of that record and have the permissions they require to administer the course. NOTE - trainers can only see the courses they are rostered to and no others.

Regional Hub

It is important to assign each trainer to a Regional Hub. This is the geographic region in which they will undertake training activities. 

To assign a trainer to a Hub, simply use the 'Regional Hub' lookup field, search for the correct Region and select it.

The chosen regional hub forms part of the logic for the rostering wizard inside Salesforce so it is important to get this right.

Trainer Status

For this field simply define either 'Inactive' or 'Active'.

The 'Trainer Status' field determines whether a trainer is active. Trainers that are not active will not appear in the Salesforce rostering wizard. 

The trainer status can be easily updated at any time using the 'Trainer Activation' button in the top right hand corner of all trainer records.

2. Converting a Student to a Trainer

If your new trainer already exists as a St John student, it is easy to convert them to become a trainer.

First, navigate to the existing student record using the Salesforce global search (as described at the start of this guide). 

Next, select the 'Make a Trainer' button from the top right hand side of the screen.

You will be presented with a pop up to complete all the required fields for transforming your existing student into a St John trainer. Simple fill these out and select 'Save'.

Once you have saved your new trainer the system will ensure that  - 

  1. The trainer will maintain their original St John Student number
  2. The trainer will be assigned to the St John Trainer Account inside Salesforce

3. Trainer Competencies

Upon the creation of a trainer you should check their 'Student Competencies' to be sure that everything is in order. 

For a trainer that has been converted from an existing student, this should be straight forward as their competencies should be up to date! For new trainers their competencies will need to be entered into the system.

To see a trainer's competencies, ensure you are on your new trainer record and select the 'Related' tab. On this page you will find the 'Student Competencies' list.

Click the 'View All' link for a more extensive list with more information about each competency.

From the 'View All' list you will be able to see the achieved and expiration date for each competency. You can review these to make sure they are all correct. If you need to edit any of them, you can use the edit link on the right hand side of the screen.

Creating a New Competency

If your trainer is brand new, you can add their competencies into the system manually. From the student competency list simply select 'New'.

You can then complete all the required details for the competency -

  • Competency - search for the competency you would like to add e.g HLTAI0001
  • Competency Achieved Date
  • Competency Expiration Date

Once you are done, save the new record.

If you are creating more than one competency record use the 'Save and New' button to add multiple competencies into the system quickly.

NOTE - A student should only have one Student Competency record per competency. For example, any given student should only have HTLAI001 once. As the trainer takes St John training courses in the future their existing student competency records will be updated with new information. For example, if a trainer retakes HLTAI001 again, their existing competency will be updated with a new achievement and expiration date. This ensures that every student in the system has an up-to-date and accurate set of Student Competencies. 

4. Trainer Instructables

As well as ensuring trainers have their competencies and expiration dates in order, you also need to define whether each trainer has been assessed as instructable. 

You can do this by selecting 'Edit' against a trainers student competency (as described above). Once you have selected edit, scroll to the 'Teaching Information' section. Here you will find a the field - 'Instructable'. This field has the values - Yes, No or Provisional:

  • Yes - the trainer is instructable. If their competency is also up to date their teaching status will reflect as green
  • No - the trainer is not instructable. Their teaching status will remain red
  • Provisional - the trainer has been assessed as provisional for the competency. Their teaching status will be green

It is important to keep the 'Instructable' field up to date for all trainers. The rostering wizard in Salesforce uses this in its logic to decide whether a teacher can teach a certain course. To teach a course a trainer must have been marked as 'competent' and 'instructable' in the competencies attributed to that course. If these have not been kept up to date, the trainer will not show up in the rostering selection. 

NOTE - trainers with provisional values will show up in the rostering wizard. In the wizard however, there will be a flag denoting that the trainer is only provisional in some of the competencies required to teach the course. This is a prompt for the rostering team to ensure that another trainer is present on the day of the course to assess proceedings.

5. Trainer Qualifications

There are a couple more qualifications to add before your new trainer is complete. These are not first aid qualifications, rather qualifications required to teach. These are added using the 'Trainer Qualifications' list.

First, ensure you are on your newly created trainer record. Then, select the 'Related' tab and scroll down to find the 'Trainer Qualifications' list.

To select a new one, use the 'New' button from the list. Then, search for the competency you would like to add and fill out the supporting fields. Once you are done, select 'Save'.

There are only a couple of Trainer Qualifications available in the list. The TAE and Language, Literacy, Numeracy being the most common. 

More can be added to the list to capture any qualification requirements that may arise in the future.