Course Specific Escalation Messages

How to configure Course specific escalation messages

Overview

Escalation messages are notifications that serve to remind learners, and their supervisors, of encroaching or overdue training due dates. The Standard reminder escalation notification uses a training block variable that can include details of multiple outstanding mandatory courses to be completed. Administrators are able to configure these escalation messages as course specific when individual due date trigger intervals are reached. Course specific escalation messages allow for more precise and relevant communication, ensuring that targeted reminders are received for each overdue course. This approach improves user engagement and gives clear information which course has reached it's due date.

Configuration Steps

There are two areas to configure to enable course specific escalation notifications. The first is the Escalation models that define message intervals and texts. The second is the reminder Notification that mainly selects the Escalation model to use and recipients among some other filtering settings.

Escalation Model

The Escalation model function defines trigger intervals and message texts for reminder notifications of incomplete mandatory trainings. Any number of escalation models can be configured to provide flexibility for different reminder notification filter scenarios; for example, different enrolment identifiers (Mandatory, Recommended, Optional, or Compliance) or filters (meta tag, user attribute, or recipient based).

When creating an Escalation model it’s possible to manually configure the desired intervals or
select to have a daily reminder. The options are described below:

• Escalation messages: This option requires individually creating each escalation message
  including the trigger (x days before/after), the subject and text. Due to the repetition of
  creating multiple messages for different days, it can be more efficient copying the ‘Text’
  field message content to paste into subsequent reminders.

• Daily reminder: This option only requires entering a period of days before and days after the
  participant due date for a single email text block to send. With this approach it is simpler,
  but does not allow gradual stepping up of the escalation; e.g. slowly increasing frequency or
  setting read receipts.

When creating individual Escalation messages the Escalation time field trigger intervals are created either a number of days before or after the training due date. The use of a minus symbol ' - ' before a number represents days before the due date, 0 is the due date, and any positive integer is days after the due date. The Subject and Text fields are where the message text are populated. On the right hand side are variable placeholders that are used to personalise messages with training and user details. The standard escalation model messages contain variables $traininglist_block_start$ and $traininglist_block_end$. For course specific escalation model messages these can be removed and replaced with $course_name$ which can be added via the Course related folder Name variable. The $course_name$ variable can also be added to the Subject field to personalise the message subject.

Escalation models once configured can be added as a condition to Standard reminder notifications.

Notifications

In the Notifications function edit or duplicate the Standard reminder notification (Registration status information > Reminder e-mails > Standard reminder (ID 84)). Where the standard reminder notification is still desired to alert of multiple trainings simultaneously select the Duplicate option.

In the Condition tab there is a Send notification per course checkbox that needs to be ticked. This is unticked by default and ticking will enable course specific messages by essentially ignoring the $traininglist_block_start$ to $traininglist_block_end$ variable placeholders in the escalation model message text (if present).

At the top is the Please select the escalation model for reminder emails selection field to select the desired escalation model. The Enrolment status checkboxes ticked would normally include ‘Enrolled’, ‘In progress’ and ‘Personal syllabus’ which represent non-completed training. The ‘Identification’ checkboxes relate to the Participant administration Automatic enrolment workflow. This can be used when different escalation models are required for different enrolment identifiers (e.g. Compliance requires more frequent reminders and stronger messaging than Recommended).

Advanced Filtering

Like any notification further filtering is possible to send for specific conditions. The Filter tab enables meta tag related filters (e.g. Provider), the User filter tab enables personal attribute related filters (e.g. Master client), and the Recipient tab determines who receives the notification (Learner or Supervisor). Therefore, it could be that there are separate reminder notification configured for different training providers, different clients, and recipients.

Having a separate reminder notification for Supervisors as the recipient is common. These would normally use an Escalation model with less reminders.

Related Articles

Automatic Enrolment and Recertification
Escalation Models