Training Courses and Training Schedules - Part 3 - Creating Training Courses

Creating a Training Course

First, navigate to Competency > Training Courses > Create Course tab.

There are a total of four steps to complete when creating a new training course.

New Training Course Step One of Four

Step 1 of 4 provides the following fields of which, only the Name (and, where shown, Select Facility) is required to move to the next step:

• Name of the training course; this is a required field and must be unique - no other training course in the account can have the same name, otherwise the user cannot move to the next step
  The Name should be descriptive (although not too long) as this is the item displayed when searching.
• Select Facility - this field is only shown in enterprise accounts where the user has more than one facility available; when shown, it is a required field. Changing the facility reloads the form so that the look-up fields reflect the facility selected.
• Cost (Per Person)
• Duration (Hours)
• Training Company - this field uses a smart search tool; when a user starts to type in this field it searches the companies on the system. It does not allow a user to add free text information here.
• CPD Points - a user can set how many CPD (Continuing Professional Development) points this course will award. The US equivalent of CPD Points are “CEU Points” (Continuing Educational Units).
• Training Objective Types - if a user chooses a built-in objective type (such as Controlled Documents, Equipment, Materials or Reagents), they can link this course to a specific object by clicking the edit (pencil) icon of the field, Objective Name.
  Training Objective Types can be added/removed by clicking the spanner icon, which is only shown to users with the permission “Courses:Edit Objective Types” (please see information below on Managing Training Objective Types).
• Objective Name - this field only appears if one of the built-in objective types (Controlled Documents, Equipment, Materials or Reagents) is selected; a smart search tool allows linking to one of the records of the type selected. For Controlled Documents, only authorised documents are returned by the search.
  
  For example, if the training objective type, Equipment is selected, a pop-up window will open where existing equipment names can be searched for. By starting to type the name of the piece of equipment, a list of matching results will build below. Click the ‘+’ button in the ‘Actions’ column to add the corresponding equipment record. This will link the equipment to the training course and close the pop-up window, returning the user back to the ‘Step 1 of 4’ screen.
  
  
  
• Course Overview - a free text field where information about the course can be entered
  
  

Managing Training Objective Types

The system Training Objective Types (Controlled Documents, Equipment, Materials and Reagents) are not editable and they allow linking the course to a specific record. Other training objective types can be added but they won’t provide a field to link the course to an object here.

Deleting a training objective type requires the permission “Courses:Delete Objective Types”, and a type cannot be deleted while it is in use by any training course, training event or staff review objective.

Instructions on how to manage this configurable look-up field can be found in the article Managing Configurable Look-up Lists.

New Training Course Step Two of Four

The second step is to add trainers to the training course. The Trainers field lists all contacts of type Trainer for the company selected on the previous step, each with a tick box; tick the box beside each trainer to add them to the course. A Filter box above the list can be used to narrow the list down. If no Training Company was selected on the previous step, the list will be empty. It does not allow a user to add free text information here.

Contacts have to be linked to a company, must be declared as ’trainers’, must be active and must have their Visibility set to Public for the system to find them and list them in this step (and in the course’s Trainers tab). The section below describes Setting Contacts as Trainers of a Company.

Setting Contacts as Trainers

Once a company is added to the system, it should become available in ‘Step 1 of 4’ without need of any special settings. If there are known trainers within that company who will deliver any of the courses created, they should be declared as trainers within their Contact record.

Tip

To declare a Contact as a Trainer of a company: Navigate to Laboratory Management > Contacts > Search Contacts and find the person or create a New Contact in the adjacent tab In the contact's General tab, locate the field, Company If it's empty, start typing the name of the company and click it when it appears below; the search-as-you-type field will offer matches in a dropdown list Click the tab, **Other**, in the contact's record Click the edit (pencil) icon under Contact Type and select the type, Trainer

New Training Course Step Three of Four

Next, an address for the training course can be added. All fields apart from Training Country accept free text. Clicking Training Country opens a dropdown list to allow the user to scroll and select the country required.

If a Training Company was selected in Step 1, an Import Training Supplier Address link is shown next to the Training Address label. Clicking it, and confirming the prompt, copies the address, city, county, ZIP/postcode, country and address notes from the company record into these fields, replacing anything already entered.

New Training Course Step Four of Four

Training Details can be entered in this last step. This field is a rich-text editor, so the text can be formatted, and it can be left blank. Clicking the button, Create Training Course completes the process.

The new course will appear on screen after clicking Create Training Course. Its fields will remain editable, for users with the permission “Courses:Edit Courses”, until it’s inactivated. The Set as Inactive option is found in the Actions dropdown menu for users with the permission “Courses:Enable/Disable” and triggering it, removes the course from the list of options when scheduling training events. This can be reversed: an inactive course shows a Set as Active option in the same menu instead.

Next step:

The next article Scheduling Training Events

Previous step:

The previous article covers Training Permissions