Communications
This entry provides a conceptual overview for how LearningBuilder communicates with system participants. The entry differentiates between process-based and ad hoc communications and introduces the automations engine.
Communications Overview
LearningBuilder helps organizations harness their communities by making sure everyone stays in touch. As a credentialing management system, LearningBuilder’s great strength is that you can use the system to manage process-based communications. Programs can choose where in a process someone might receive a notification, establish schedules for notifications, and communicate with members based on their status or next steps. LearningBuilder can also communicate with system participants independently of their process or process status through ad hoc communications.
When we think of communications, we tend to think of e-mail, but the system has several alternative communications methods. For outbound messaging, the system offers an SMS messaging protocol that alerts e-mail recipients on their mobile phones that they have a message. The system also offers extensive on-screen prompts to make sure system participants know what is expected of them.
All distributed communications such as e-mails and SMS messages are logged in the person’s Communications History.
Process-based communications
Process-based communications have the following components:
The content of the communication
The trigger for the communication
Conditions for the communication
The following sections describe these options in greater detail.
Communications content
LearningBuilder offers an extensive set of tools to allow programs to define the contents of communications. For email communications, programs use the Automations Engine to manage e-mail Templates. These templates allow programs to write text specific to that point in a member’s progress. Each template includes the text an organization wishes to communicate to all recipients and allows substitution variables to draw from the member’s profile or application to personalize and establish context.
For additional information about managing email templates, see http://help.learningbuilder.com/learningbuilder/default.aspx?pageid=manage_notifications#pageid=manage_email_templates.
Communications triggers
LearningBuilder allows each program to determine when to send a communication. Triggers include two varieties: actions and schedules.
Action-based triggers occur when an action is performed. The best way to think about a triggered action is that it happens when someone clicks a button. For example, when a person clicks the Submit button to send an Application for review, the system will trigger an Action. Every workflow button a system participants sees can potentially be connected to a notification.
Scheduled triggers work with Action-based triggers by essentially “clicking the button” on behalf of a member on a timed basis. In some cases, the configuration is just that: specify an Action to occur on a scheduled basis. In other scenarios, we skip the Action part and just go straight to the communication. We can schedule communications to occur daily, weekly, monthly, or annually.
Conditional triggers
In many cases, programs will want to send notifications to everyone that is in a particular stage of their application process. For example, a program may want to send a notification to anyone who has not completed the application within 10 days of the application deadline. In other cases, programs may want to be more selective. For example, they may want to send a notification to anyone who has failed to achieve 50% of their continuing education requirements when they are 75% through their recertification cycle. LearningBuilder lets program specify the subsets of communications recipients by defining comparison rules (such as an attribute = a value).
Ad Hoc Messages
Administrators may send ad hoc emails to Members from the Member Search page. By selecting one or more Members, the Administrator may compose and send the email via LearningBuilder. The system will confirm the message is queued.
Bulk Email Distribution
Administrators may send bulk email distributions to Members from the Member Search page. This operates similarly to the ad hoc email process but provides a more robust distribution option.
The Member Search currently allows Administrators to filter the results by various criteria, including Role and Status. LearningBuilder can be configured to enable other selection criteria, such as Expiration Date. By clicking the box to "Select All" Members displayed for the search criteria, the Administrator may compose and send bulk email messages via LearningBuilder to a subset of the Member community. Please note, however, that the system limits the number of emails sent via this method to 2,000 (the maximum search result records). To send a bulk distribution over this amount, Heuristics can assist the client to configure and send the email independent of the restrictions in the user interface.
Report Distribution for Enhanced Reporting
The Enhanced Reporting Module in LearningBuilder provides the ability to email reports to specific email addresses. The emails may be sent ad hoc by clicking the envelope icon in the Reports menu bar. For automatic distribution of reports, the Administrator may schedule the report to be sent to one or more recipients in a variety of formats. The report distribution may be scheduled on a recurring basis.
SMS Communications
To improve open rates, programs may use LearningBuilder’s SMS Messaging module. This feature was introduced with Release 10.2 as an optional module.
When a notification is set to send an SMS message, a person receives both the selected e-mail and an SMS message message that contains the email subject line, plus a link to view the full email on the Member’s Communications History page.
Members must "opt-in" to receive text messages and may "opt-out" as they wish. Administrators can see delivery status information, so that they can tell whether a given message was sent via SMS and if it was successfully queued for delivery. The opt-in process satisfies all regulatory compliance requirements by identifying the purpose of the notifications, the expected frequency, the fact that data rates may apply, and how to opt-out in the future.
On-screen communications
In addition to distributed communications such as email and SMS Messaging, LearningBuilder offers extensive on-screen communications tools, including:
A Dashboard announcement that displays up to two Content Blocks of the program’s choosing
“Growl” messages that display when a participants performs an Action
An upcoming “Announcements” feature (in product backlog) that allows program administrators to deliver messages to system participants when they log in to the system