Getting started

Open the Training Director app by navigating to the “People” section and clicking Training Director.

Once you’ve opened the app, you’ll see 4 tabs at the top of the screen: Employees, Positions, Classes, and Sessions. 

Employees: Provides a list view of all active employees on your team. This is where you can view, assign, and evaluate training sessions based on employee.

Positions: Lists all active positions imported from the Positions app. Here, you can create and assign multi-class curriculums based on company position, allowing for a more tailored training experience. 

Classes: Lists all created training classes. This section is for creating new classes and assigning them to multiple trainees at once. 

Sessions: Provides a list view of all employees’ training sessions. Here, you can evaluate specific sessions by searching and/or filtering for the desired class and employee.  

Note: If no employees or positions have been added to your platform, the Employees and/or Positions sections will appear blank.

To add employees:

1. Go to the Employees app (People category of the top navigation bar, select Employees)
2. At the top of the main screen, select the “+” button to add an employee
3. In the popup that appears, add in the employee’s information (name, photo if applicable, position, and their manager)
4. Click submit to add and repeat this process for any additional

To add positions: 

1. Go to Positions app (People category, select Positions)
2. Click “+” button at the top of main screen
3. In the popup, add the position name, an image of the position (if applicable), the department the position is within, and the person that the position reports to
4. Click submit to add this positions and repeat these steps to add more positions

Creating a new class

To create a new class, follow these steps:

1. Create the course material
2. Add a new class and enter General Information
3. Add course material in Documents tab
4. Set up Test 

Step 1: Create the course material

Before adding any class, you must create the content that drives the training.  Here are common types of training content and great tools for creating each:  

• Slide shows: Microsoft Powerpoint comes with a variety of design templates for visually engaging presentations
• Text-based documents: Microsoft Word provides a range of powerful formatting and editing tools for different styles of text and the ability to add tables, charts and images
• Videos: Camtasia is a video editing software that includes features for recording your screen, adding annotations, importing media and more

Step 2: Add a new class and enter General Information

Once you’ve created your course material, you’re ready to add a new class. Click on the Classes tab and find the “Add Class” button located at the top of the screen.

Clicking the “Add Class” button will bring up a screen for creating a new class. Start by entering a name, description, and creator of the class. Then, optionally assign the class to a series if it is part of a multi-class set and a department if the class pertains to a specific section of your team.

Once you’ve entered all the necessary information, click “Submit” to create the new class. A flyout will appear with the newly created class and its current details. Here, you can make adjustments to any of the previously entered fields, as well as these additional class settings:

Scoring weight: The relative importance of a class in terms of percentage toward overall grade

Session duration: The estimated time that a class should take to complete (determined by you)

Recurring class settings: Enables scheduled, recurring classes. This is for classes that should be repeated every few months (renewing a license, certificate, etc.)

Class permissions: Control what folders/materials your trainees have access to, as well as other behaviors of class. This can be variable based on your training structure:

• Access to Class Folders: Trainees have access to material housed in the main class folder (typically information that is relevant to everyone taking the class)
• Access to Session Folders: Trainees can access material in their training session for that class (useful for trainees uploading their own work, also for sharing material that is specific to an employee)
• System emails: Automatically have emails sent during the Assign, Start, Done, and Complete phases of training session
• Allow class to be evaluated without saving Test Results: Useful for practice runs of a test without impacting trainee’s actual grade

Assigned trainers: Trainers that are selected here are able to evaluate training sessions for a particular class and provide constructive feedback to trainees

Class instructions: Provides pre-class context for trainees to know what to do before, during and after a training session

All of these fields can be edited at any time if the class changes. 

Step 3: Add course material in Documents tab

Now that the general details of the class are entered, you can upload all of your course material using the “Documents” tab. Here, you can add a new document by clicking the “+” button. 

Clicking the “+” button will bring up an “Add Document” popup:

Click on the icon next to “File” to bring up the File Manager, and choose from which location you will be importing a file:

• Select from your computer: A file on your local storage
• Select from Appward cloud: A file housed on Appward’s server (opens “File Explorer” app to find cloud file from Organization, Personal, or Public folders) 
• Select from Appward documents: A file previously stored in Appward’s Document system via the “Documents” app

Enter a description of the document (this will appear as the title of the document), as well as any of the checkboxes that apply:

• Test Document: Indicates that this document will be used during the assessment portion of the training
• Trainer use only: Will only be visible to trainer (useful for solution guides, past trainee results, etc.)
• Copy to session folder: Creates a copy of file and stores it in respective class session (allows for file access in session folder)

Click “Submit” to add the document, and repeat this process for all documents you would like to add to a class.

Step 4: Set up a Test

At the end of a training session, it’s common to have a test to evaluate the trainee’s ability to comprehend the subject material. To create a test for a class, go to the “Test Setup” tab.

Here, you will add:

• Pre-test instructions (optional): Type any important instructions for before a trainee starts the assessment
• Question(s): These are what you’ll be creating as prompts for your trainee to answer
• Post-test instructions (optional): Type any important instructions for after a test has been completed (this can include requesting feedback from trainee for class improvements)

To add test questions, click on the “+ Question” button.

A popup will appear for customizing a new question:

Question(s) can:

• Be formatted as either written responses or multiple choice

• Hold a point weight (1, 2, etc.) for more/less important questions 

• Have a header which appears at the top of the question (commonly where the actual question will go, will appear in bold)

• Contain custom-formatted descriptions/answers with ability to attach images, video and audio for a richer learning and evaluation experience

• Contain question and answer attachments as needed for completing/evaluating questions

Once you are done setting up your question, click “Submit”, and repeat this process for as many questions as you’d like.