Schoox is an all-in-one learning and development platform. We have everything you need to train your teams, measure results, and develop the skills people need to pursue opportunities. We provide intuitive experiences that amplify learning and development for everyone and watch your learners thrive.
Prepare for Launch!
Throughout Implementation, your teams across L&D, HR, and IT have exerted massive effort in building content, defining your org structure, standing up technical integrations, and generally learning everything they can about administrating the Schoox platform. You have a target “launch date” on the calendar, and a running checklist of system readiness tasks to finalize and validate. Do your plans include change management actions for your users?
This guide provides a number of recommended actions you can take to simplify the Schoox rollout to your users and maximize engagement post-launch. These include things you can do right in the Schoox platform, and things that you can do externally. A multi-faceted approach will ensure that you are preparing users across the learner spectrum.
Change Management Resources in Schoox
Create an Intro Video
For users switching from another learning platform, or never having used an LMS before, your 1st time logging in can be daunting. Where do I go? What do I click? Schoox has a clever feature that gives you a head-start on this common user conundrum: Academy Introduction Video.
To enable the Intro Video, navigate to the Team Member Settings within your Academy’s settings panel. Then, scroll to the Academy Introduction Video option, where you can activate it for Admins, Managers, and end users.
Note: If you’re using a web video, you can actually set a different video for Managers vs end users.
If you’ll be using a web video (i.e. one you host on YouTube, Vimeo, etc.) then you can input the URL here. If you’ll be using a native video, upload it to your Resources and click More to see the option to set it as the intro video. When a user logs in for the first time, the video will play before they even hit the home screen.
Promoted Content/Courses
The video pop-up during a user’s first login is helpful, but what if they just click through it? Or, what if they want to watch the video again? Another useful option is Promoted Content, which allows you to flag files from the Resources as “Promoted” and feature them on the Homepage.
For this to work, you’ll need to enable the Promoted Content block on your homepage, upload the file(s) you’d like to feature to the library, and flag the file(s) as “Promoted” in the Resources Items Listing area of the Admin Panel. Adding homepage blocks is handled right from the homepage by clicking on the dropdown arrow next to your name, and then clicking “Edit Homepage”: the + icon at the bottom of the editable homepage will allow you to add new gadgets, including the Promoted Content block. Any file-type can be promoted, and you can upload the file(s) to any category in your Resources.
Once the Homepage block is enabled and your files are in place, go to your Admin Panel and expand the Online Training menu in order to locate Resources Items Listing. From here, you can search or scroll for the file(s) you’d like to promote. If you select more than one, use the Priority field to number them in the order you’d like to show up, in descending value (i.e. 10 = top priority, then 9, then 8). Be sure to click Save to lock in your selections.
Your Promoted Content will now show up on the Homepage for any user. Category Permissions will also apply here: users will only see Promoted Content that is stored in categories for which they have visibility permissions.
Note: You can also promote courses, which is useful for displaying recommended training for self-enrollment as soon as users login.
Announcements
One of the under-the-radar benefits of an LMS is that is a common tool for employees across an entire organization. This can be a huge boost to functions like corporate communications, especially in organizations that don’t universally provide email addresses, or don’t have another platform for communication. In Schoox, the Announcements feature is a great way to send messages to all employees or targeted audiences with a few clicks. Like the Promoted blocks mentioned earlier, Announcements can be visible right on the homepage as a gadget.
We recommend placing Announcements prominently at the top of the homepage, so when an announcement is published it’s one of the first things a user sees when they sign in.
Your announcements can contain URLs, images, and even attachments. They will stay visible until a newer announcement is published – so you can even send updated guidance to your users on a regular post-launch cadence, if needed.
To create a new announcement, locate the Send Announcement link under Members in your Admin Panel. You’ll be able to send them out to individual users, or in bulk by identifying job/org criteria (similar to assigning training).
Note: You can also create High-priority Announcements, which get their own Homepage block and can be set to stay visible for a specified period of time.
The High-priority Announcements gadget has a highly visible pink background by default, so your users won’t miss it on their homepage.
Support Resources
The days immediately following your rollout typically see a high volume of support tickets generated. Usually, these are just issues with system access, like password resets, or questions about training completions from your old system. The ubiquitous Help button at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen in Schoox is a great resource for you and your users.
You can find more information about it in our Support Guide, but an important consideration for change management is configuring the Help button to work for your teams, based on 3 user groups: Members, Managers, and Admins. You can, for instance, enable the article repository in Support Center for Admins and Managers but hide it from Members. When Members or Managers click Contact Support you can redirect them to an internal support inbox while sending Admins directly to Schoox Support.
The Show Me How feature, powered by WalkMe, is another useful tool in your support arsenal. Users can browse common actions in Schoox, or search for one they need help with, and Show Me How will provide on-screen instructions. A user’s job-level permissions will also dictate what populates in Show Me How. An end user with no management responsibility won’t see a tutorial for Reporting, for example.
Other Change Management Ideas
User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
There’s likely a multitude of compelling reasons you switched to Schoox, or chose Schoox as your first-ever LMS. User experience (UX) is commonly among those reasons. During the training and configuration phases of implementation you would have designed your homepage to optimize the UX, configured categories to best suit your users’ training needs, and made other decisions with your users at the forefront.
Even with those considerations in mind during the build-out process, it’s likely that you’re seeing the platform primarily through the lens of an Admin. This unintended bias can result in key features being excluded, or at minimum inadequately explained in your user guides. UAT can help identify gaps in system configuration and documentation before you launch to the broader organization.
An effective UAT should have the following 3 elements:
• A defined test group across user types (end user, manager, etc.)
• A defined sequence of actions to perform in Schoox, along with an objective scorecard of whether users are able to perform the functions successfully.
• A defined period of time for testing (1 hr sessions in-office with a provided device; 3-day testing on personal device on user’s own time; etc.)
The feedback from UAT will allow you to proceed or pivot accordingly.
Train-the-Trainer Sessions
Whether your organization is a small one with a flat structure, or a massive one with a complex hierarchy, your localized leaders can be a hugely impactful resource when rolling out Schoox to your users. They work more closely with your end users, are the first line of troubleshooting when issues arise, and can become promoters or detractors of your L&D efforts based on the experience they have with your platforms.
To foster a positive experience with Schoox out of the gate, many of our most successful platform rollouts have included Train-the-Trainer (TTT) sessions in their launch plans. Depending on the complexity of your organizational hierarchy, as well as how complex are the permissions you are delegating to leaders in your platform, this could be a single call or a series.
For example, review the permissions enabled for this user type:
A training plan for this group should include assigning training, approving enrollment requests, reporting, signing off On the Job Training, and event management, and sharing content & announcements with team members. Plus, you would want to cover the standard experiences for all users, such as navigating the platform, finding training and content, reviewing the dashboard, and contacting support. It’s a good idea to draft an agenda for the TTT session(s) and share that in advance it should align with the functionality you’ve enabled for them and should overlap with any launch documentation you create.
User Guide(s)
While virtual training and intro videos can be helpful in showing your users live-action navigation in Schoox, sometimes it’s best to break down a topic with step-by-step explanation and screenshots for visuals. User guides in the form of a PDF are perfect for this because they are downloadable, printable, and self-paced. The Schoox “Knowledge Base” support site is a great place to get inspiration for how to write up your own guide (e.g. Helping Your Users Get Started In Your Academy), but ultimately the use case for your organization is going to vary drastically from the perspective of articles from Schoox or even other similar organizations.
You’ll also want to consider the variance in user experiences for your users, for instance end users vs managers. While end users will primarily be completing training, manager permissions may include assigning training and reporting. Additional functionality means additional preparedness for that user group.
Treat your user guides like job aids or technical manuals: the more prescriptive and detailed your guidance, the more impactful the resource.
Launch Support “Office Hours”
For a more hands-on approach to supporting your users during rollout, consider setting up a virtual meeting space in which to answer questions, troubleshoot, and provide tips on launch day. This may be best reserved for managers, who can consolidate questions from their teams, rather than opening the “office hours” to your entire organization. A major benefit of this on demand support option is avoiding elevated ticket submissions.