Activities

A new ability is added to the course certificate functionality of Choo i Skyen. Now it’s possible to add custom short text to the course certificate issued once a participant finishes up the course/activity. The text should not be long – it’s limited by the number of symbols. Once you fill it in, the system will use it in the certificate pdf. Functionality is available both for course leaders on My Page, and Super Admins in Back Office.

How to use:

• Go to the course/activity page, and turn on the setting “Generate course certificate”.
• Put in the text to the text box that is shown, and save changes. 
• Once you change the status of the course participant to “Finished”, the system will generate the course certificate pdf that will include the text you’ve just filled in.

We’ve added an additional block with the fee information to the course settings: in case your organization charges the course participants for not showing up to the course, then you can inform them about the fee for no show. Warning: It is just an informational block, the system does not create the invoices for the no-show fee.

A new premium feature is released – now course leaders and Super Admins are able to have more flexibility in defining who from the course participants should be able to see the attachments added to the course. This update includes the following:

• An ability to add course attachments that should be shown to course participants with “Approved” status. 
• An ability to share course documents with people who have finished the course (course participants with “Finished” status).

How to use once the feature is turned on:

• Go to the course description page/step, either on My Page or inside Back-Office.
• Upload a new document, and choose the type of the document near by. You may choose from the following options: “For all” (then it’ll be working in the same way as today – the document will be publicly available for all people), “For approved participants”, “For finished participants”, “For approved and finished participants”.

Each ability may be turned on separately. Talk to us to get more information.

The autocomplete for course responsible on My Page shows not just the name and surname of the person, but also his/her email address

This block shows the contact information of the person with whom the course participants can contact and discuss questions about the course. The contact information itself is displayed on the course card with the registration. The settings for the display of the block and information in it can be adjusted in the “Activity” page in the course settings.

How to use:
1. Go to the My Page as Course System Super Admin/Course Super Admin/Course Admin/Course Editor
2. Enter to the “Activity” page of the certain course
3. Navigate to the “Contact person” block in the “Activity” page of the course settings
4. Enable the toggle and set up the contact information for your person

We’re releasing an ability to add custom fields for courses of your association. This feature gives you the ability to put extra fields if you feel something is missing in our core fields for courses.

The list of supported field types is the following:

• Text field (small)
• Text area (big text field)
• Checkbox
• Dropdown
• File uploading

By default, this feature is turned off, and you may request it separately. After the request sent to us, we’ll define the list of fields you’d like to add. These fields will be available for all Super Admins and course leaders in accordance with their regular rights, and will not be shown for course participants.

How to use:

• Request a feature, and we’ll set up a list of fields for your organization separately.
• We’ll turn on these fields for you.
• Back-Office Admins will be able to see and edit all the fields from the course card inside the Back-Office course card, settings tab.
• Course leaders will be able to just see (Course Contributors) or see and edit (Course Editors, Admins, Super Admins) all fields on the course card, settings tab.

A Course Administrator now is able to manage participants’ status, using the same logic and limitations as in Back Office. A Course Administrator can change course participant status using a dropdown with statuses instead of 6 separate buttons as it is in Back-Office.

Also, if a Course Admin is trying to change the status of several participants, but some of them already have it, then system shows up a notification that the status will be changed only for some of the participants.

This month we continued working on the new functionality of our public API to provide more possibilities for external integrations. In this release, we’re launching the public API for courses. This means it becomes possible to integrate your Choo i Skyen account and different web portals to get information about your courses/activities in more places. The functionality includes but is not limited to getting the list of published courses, and different details about one course. Talk to us if you’re interested in getting more details. Please note the functionality requires extra charges.

A Course Administrator can now set up and manage the course registration form with the same functions as in Back-Office.
Associated questions have the next managing options: hiding of questions, headings, the number of participants who have chosen each radio option, drag’n’drop of questions. Once optional products will be added, a Course Admin will also be able to use them on radio question options.

Previously, CiS copied courses without course products. Now, the system copies courses with the products (including special prices and discounts), saving their connection to the course registration questions. But for each course product, the system will create a new one for the copied course, so, in the product statistics, it will be different items.

After the new update launched, Super Admins in Back-Office and course responsible on My Page will be able to generate/regenerate the course automatic invoice manually once needed. For that, a new button is added to the participants’ list – “Generate invoice”. 

How to use:

• Go to the course card, and open the list of participants
• Choose one or few participants having “Approved” status
• Click on the “Generate invoice” button
• The system will show up a confirmation message asking if you’re sure and if you want the invoice to be sent out via Multikanal

Limitation: course automatical invoice may be issued manually only for course participants having “Approved” status.

To make sure the accountant information is correct in all published courses/activities in your association, new functionality is released. Now you can set up the list of emails for people who should be notified once the new course/activity is published. Also, a new email template is added for this purpose. The full functionality includes the following:

• Go to Back-Office Settings, and open a new setting – list of email addresses who should be notified once the course is published
• Go to Back-Office Settings – Course emails, and find the new template inside – “Published courses notification”, and change the text to be suitable for your association
• Once everything is set up, emails from the list will be notified each time a new course/activity is published, both from the Back-Office and My Page
• Responsible people should have Super Admin/Course Super Admin access to be able to login to Choo and check if the accountant information published on the course is correct

A small adjustment is added to the course setup for offline courses. Now for all courses created from the Back-Office and from My Page, it will be possible to set up just one time per each date – either “from” or “to” (before the update both “from” and “to” time was required). It is still possible to set up a course date with both “from” and “to” time as well.

If you’re generating invoices for a few people from the same company at once, and all of the participants will have the “company pays” option, they will be grouped into one or a few invoices (additionally, invoices may be divided by PO-number and reference).

How to use:

• Go to the course card, and open the list of participants
• Choose one or few participants having “Approved” status
• Click on the “Generate invoice” button
• The system will show up a confirmation message asking if you’re sure and if you want the invoice to be sent out via Multikanal

Now your course leaders (Super Admins, Admins, Editors, Contributors) are able to see two additional columns on the list of courses available for them on their My Page. These columns are the following:

• Number of people registered for the course (including all participants with any status except Cancelled) / Number of approved participants (participants having status Approved or Finished)
• Number of places available for the current course (if applicable)

In the current release, we’re launching an ability for setting up a separate sender email for each course separately. It means you can decide which email will be used as “from” email for all automatic system notifications connected to the course (e.g, email about participant status changing, etc). Previously, the system always used the email defined as “email for outgoing system notifications” defined in the onboarding form.

How to use:

• Open the course card in the Back-Office or on My Page.
• Go to the “Activity” tab/step.
• Find a new field “Activity sender email”.
• By default, the system shows standard email for outgoing system notifications for your organization. You can change the email (just the main part, without the ability to change the email domain). 

On My Page, this field is available for Course Super Admins, Admins, and Editors for viewing and updating, and Contributors are able to read only the new field.

New columns are added to the Participants report available both in the Back-Office and on My Page for course leaders. The additional columns are the following:

• All extra fields for members available for your organization
• Gender
• Address fields (Address line 1 and 2, Postcode, etc)

We have added the ability to create an e-learning course, for those cases when participants will take a course on a third-party online platform. The e-learning course has a similar setup compared to offline courses, however, there are differences in the following aspects:
– Participants of the e-learning course will not receive reminder notifications for the course
– For e-learning courses the registration of the participants is mandatory
– When setting up and creating an e-learning course, the administrator/editor must indicate a link to the e-learning system in which the participants will be trained.

The ability to create an e-learning course for the organization is regulated by the setting for the organization. The setting is disabled by default.

An administrator in the CiS system is able to organize different accounts, account places, and MVA categories into сourse product category to use it later. This set of parameters is connected to the invoice issuer. Course Administrators can manage сourse product categories for all product lines from My Page as well.

An administrator manages a list of сourse product categories in Settings. He can’t delete the course category, but the admin is able to set the “Inactive” status. Inactive status means that this category will not be shown for all new courses created after status changed, so it does not affect all existing courses.

NB: By default, the project number is set as “Not defined” for all course products. If “Not defined” category is selected then it can’t be edited from My Page.
In case no course product category is set up for association, the system should work as today.

A new feature has been added – now a course administrator also has an opportunity to set up discounts for obligatory and optional products from My Page.

Also, there is a new approach to set up the value of the coupon. Previously, the next validation rule was applied: you can’t set a discount bigger than the smallest price of the product, taking into account “Early bird” special prices. Now coupons can be set up with any value, and the system will calculate the correct price when the coupon is applied. This feature partially solves the problem of a 100% coupon.

Now there is new functionality for Course Administrator that allows adding optional products to the course from My Page. Course Administrator has quite the same rights for adding the optional products as for the mandatory ones: adding the name of the product, price and product category. Moreover, Course Administrator сan link them to the course questions.

Special prices for the mandatory course products could be set up by Course Administrator from My Page. Special prices have the same managing option for Course Administrator as for Administrator in the back-office: name of the period, Start and End dates, price value.
Course Administrator has all the necessary managing rights for adding, deleting, editing the special prices from My Page.

After the Sprint 2 release, you and your course admins will be able to set up a sender email for a separate course. The system will send out all course notifications from this email. Since we need to verify the sender domain for each association in order to be able to send emails from the domain, there is a limitation. Admins and course responsibles will be able to edit the first part of the email, while the domain is the same for all admins and responsibles of the association.

How to find:

• Open the course card or wizard on the “Activity” step/tab, either in the Back-Office, or on My Page.
• Go to the “General information”/”Generell informasjon” block, and find a new field there – “Activity sender email”. By default, the field should contain the verified sender email for the organization, but you can change the first part of the email.

A Course Administrator gets an opportunity to add a person from the observers’ list using the autocomplete field. It is possible to search for a person on the list by name. To prevent errors the personal email and mobile number will be shown during searching.
Regarding the managing options for a Course Administrator, only one person could be added to a course at once and new participants will be always added with “Waiting for approval” status as in the back-office. A Course Administrator can also remove any number of participants from the course at once.

A certificate about course participation could now be generated and sent to the course participant. Administrator and/or Course Administrator can choose whether to send a certificate via e-mail during changing the participant status to “Attended”.
Additionally, there is a button “Send certificate” on a course: an Administrator and/or Course Administrator is able to pick participants having “Attended” status and send them out an email with a certificate at any time. So, a new email template was added in the back-office Settings.
Also, course participant having “Attended” status is able to download the course certificate as PDF from the course page on My Page at any time.
The template for the course certificate could be customized for each organization. The default view is as on the following screenshot.

In this release, we’re launching a big update in activity settings related to invoicing to make this part more flexible and customer friendly. The upcoming updates should make the course invoicing process easier and it should fit most business needs.

With the update, Admins and course responsibles are able to decide the following:

1. How to approve a course participant
   1. Manually – in this case, “Automatic approval” setting should be turned off. Please note, that it is not possible to issue course invoices automatically in case you’d like to approve course participants manually.
   2. Automatically – in this case, “Automatic approval” setting should be turned on. In this case, you’re also able to decide when the course invoice should be issued by the system.
2. In case you’re using automatic approval of a participant, you can decide when to issue an automatic invoice
   1. At registration – in this case, a course participant will be approved automatically once he/she finishes the course registration, and the invoice will be automatically generated right away.
   2. On selected date – in this case, a course participant will be approved automatically once he/she finishes the course registration, but the invoice will be automatically generated on a selected date in the future. The system will calculate this date by default for you based on the earliest course date, but you’ll always be able to change it.

Additionally, we’re creating a new setting that allows choosing the default approval mechanism for each association separately. You’re able to choose if you want all your courses by default to be created with or without the “Automatic approval” setting, which option should be chosen inside (“At registration” or “On selected date”), and how many days before the course date you’d like to use to calculate the invoice date (e.g, it can be 2 weeks before the course start date, or 30 days).

Important notes:

• All people who will pay by card during the course registration process will be approved automatically and will get invoices automatically right away, no matter what’s chosen inside the “Automatic approval” setting.
• If you choose automatic invoice generation on a chosen date, the system will generate a bunch of invoices and group them by the invoice receiver, PO number, and reference.
• In case you choose automatic invoice generation on a chosen date, this date can’t be earlier than tomorrow. All invoices will be generated at 6 pm on a chosen date.

How to use:

• Open course card or wizard in the Back-Office or on My Page (for course leaders)
• Go inside course settings in Back-Office, or to the “Registration” tab/step on My Page. Now inside the existing “Automatic approval” setting, you’ll find the new following options:
  • “When to issue automatic invoice”: “At registration” or “On selected date”. Both options are available only in case “Automatic approval” is turned on.
  • “Invoice issue date” that is unlocked in case the “On selected date” option is chosen

Previously, it was possible to turn on this setting to allow people to edit their registration details before a date chosen by admin/course responsible. Now we’re removing the date from this setting. It will be possible to turn on the “Edit registration information” setting without any particular date. If the setting is on, all course participants will be able to edit registration details before they get invoiced for the activity.