“Train Your Team” Quick Start Guide

Introduction

LightSpeed VT was designed to get you started right away, where all you need is a little bit of configuration and you’ll be on your way.

Even though technically you could launch your System right away, that wouldn’t be making the best of the features available to you. So – this article is going to help you put at least a small plan in place before you launch.

We encourage you to use this guide as a sort of checklist to launch. We’ll cover everything from adding content, creating users and teams, planning your training, and managing the system.

Your own organization is going to dictate a lot of what goes into this process, so if helps, you can simply pick and choose which sections of this article that are relevant to you.

One last bit of advice – if your organization is on the more complex side, it could be useful to break this into phases that you can implement over time. That way you can 1) set attainable goals, 2) start to deliver value earlier and 3) continue to add value for your Users as you go.

Before you start

It’s a good idea to give access to anyone else on your team who will be assisting in your planning and building process, so sign into your System and create Users for each of them. Read more about User Creation here if you need some help. Typically you’ll want to create them as the same access level that you have – which is: “Top Admin”. All Top Admins will start off with the same access to the same features, and you can always go back later and remove some privileges from them as you get to know the System a bit better, if needed.

Checklist for this step:

• Add any additional Top Admin users at your main Admin Location.

• Begin to review the LSVT Resources section that comes with your System, and have your other associates look through it as well. These are tutorials on features of the System – such as User creation, Content creation, creating Interactive content, and many more. You can pick and choose and watch what will be most applicable to help you get started.

Remember, you can access those Resources at anytime from within your System by clicking on the “Help Me” tab on the left and selecting “LightSpeed VT Resources”

Planning

This next section is about visualizing what you want your System to look like when you first release it to your organization. Asking yourself a few questions will help you get there: Who is your main audience? (Managers? Employees? Vendors?) Why do they need this training? What do you hope they will get out of it? How long should the training sessions take? How will they easily find and access what they need to train on?

Answer those questions as briefly as you can at first – then you can use those answers to build a picture of what you expect in this initial phase. From there, you can then make that your goal or objective to move towards.

Checklist for this step:

• Picture your goals and objectives for your System

• This may seem early – but it’s an important one: choose a launch date. This can help you plan backwards to complete all of your objectives before launch.

• Decide on which features are priority for you, and then focus on learning about just those features first. The best way to see a full list of features is to check out this support article here. So ask yourself – what do you want or need to get started with? What features are applicable to my organization?

• Take a look at the Leaderboard for example – we highly encourage you start with that in place.

• Visualize what your initial Training Center will look like – decide what content you are going to be delivering and to whom (Make a list of all of your videos, SCORM Courses and other content and list out which teams or job positions need to see it.)

• Consider how your Users are going to access your training. Are you going to just unleash them into the Training Center on their own? Or are you going to ask your Location Managers or Team Leaders to make assignments for them to complete? There are many different ways to Assign Training which you can use to guide your Users down the easiest path to success. (Check out our Assigned Training article here!)

• Begin to put together a launch plan – jot down some ideas on how you will notify your Users about your new platform. What they should expect when they first sign in, how to get started or go through orientation, etc. LightSpeed offers many ways to send out notifications through the Notification Center, Community, Enrollment forms – any many more. (Read about all of our different communication features here!)

• Communication. Be sure to communicate with your Admin team these decisions you’ve made from the questions above, be sure everyone knows your established launch date and your priorities to get there.

Configure The Core System Settings

This section is about the overall configuration of your Platform. This is an important part of your configuration and covers things like your personal branding, if you have any localization (different language) needs, reviewing reporting features, setting up some features, and configuring various System emails.

But don’t be overwhelmed – like we said at the beginning – you could launch right now without any of these steps and still be rockin ‘and rollin – but these are the details that will bring your System to the next level.

Checklist for this step:

Design Elements (The items listed below can all be changed in the Private Label Manager)

• Add your own branding colors and Logo – be sure to make sure it’s legible and the colors of your private label match your branding guidelines.

• Main Menu Carousel Panels – we encourage you to use your own custom welcome message at this step! This is going to be the first thing your Users see when they sign in. If you don’t have one, we do provide a default welcome message. For the images and messages reflected on each of the other Carousel Panels, these reflect what we feel are the most important areas your Users will want to visit – but of course you can (and should) customize these to fit your own organizational needs.

• Page Background – specifically the Training Center section – Is your Hero image (the image across the top of the screen) in place and does it represent your brand? (Did you make sure it does not hinder any text visibility in that space?)

• Main Menu System Modules – these are the quick links found below the Carousel Panels – we start you with the 8 most commonly used links, but you can rename, add or remove them as it fits into your organizational needs.

Emails (Found under the “Theme Settings” section)

• Configure your Auto Email Upon User Creation – this will be the email users see when you create them.

• Configure your Notification Center / LightPad options – this will allow you to set up a direct line of communication from your Users back to you in case they need any help.

• Configure your Enrollment Emails – this is similar to the User Creation email but they include a link for Users to “Enroll” themselves, versus having their User already created.

• Set your “Exit URL” – this is (usually) the URL to your Sign In Page that you set up when you first signed up – place that link here unless you want it to be something different.

Sign in Page Management (This section is managed separately from the items above – under 100 – Account -> “Sign in Page Management”) Note: If you are using SSO (Single Sign On) through your own System you may likely skip this step.

• Update your logo and check your email settings
• Decide on whether you want to include a Privacy Policy or ToS – we offer default versions if you’d like to use ours – this is a simple toggle on or off.

Access Levels (This section can be managed under “Access Level Management”)

• Top Admin, Manager and Learner are the 3 basic levels we create for you to start with. At this point you can consider if you’ll need to use more or less Access Levels. Keep in mind that a Manager C Access Level can be utilized as a “Team Leader” position – where they only have access to users on their own team. This can be a good one to activate right now so when the time comes to organize your users into Teams, the team leader position will be ready.

Content Roles (This section can be managed under “Content Containers” and then the “Content Roles” Tab)

• You can create specific Content Roles for specific Job Positions (Cashier gets Cashier content, etc…) Or you can create a more ‘general’ role like, “Learner” and put everything into that Role. It’s really up to you and your organization. A couple of examples may be creating Roles for New Hire Orientation, Sales Team, Front Desk, Service, Maintenance, etc… and then within those Roles is where you add Courses that these Users should see. This way a Sales person can only see the Sales content when they sign in – so it’s not as overwhelming or confusing to find what they need to be training on.

Linking to Your Organization (API, SSO)

Integration with a backend System, CRM, Salesforce, etc. has become a more and more common practice – and LightSpeed is prepared to help you set that up. If you need assistance with integration, you can look through the API section of our Support site, or contact us to schedule an integration review meeting with our team.

Email: support@lightspeedvt.com
Phone: 1-800-HEY-LSVT (1-800-439-5788)

Content! Begin to Populate Your System With Your Media

If you have existing content ready to go, you can fly through this part relatively quickly – all you need to do is gather your media resources and begin to add them to the Media Library. They’ll upload and encode to a format specifically designed for our own proprietary video player. If you have SCORM content, you can add those directly within the Create/Edit Courseware section.

At this point we highly recommend you to take advantage of our Interactive Video Composer and see for yourself what it’s capable of. You can turn a standard, straightforward voice-overed powerpoint presentation into a whole new level of User engagement. If you want your Users to get more out of this experience we highly recommend it!

Also in this phase you should take a look at the different Course Types that are available to you – Standard Video, Interactive Video, SCORM, YouTube embeds, Live Events, etc… And check out our Testing capabilities as well.

Checklist for this step:

• Gather and organize any media / content you have and add it to the Media Library to start encoding – and at the same time create an outline for your content – how will it fall into Categories, Courses and Chapters. You can use our blank outline template for this step!

Need additional help on this step? Check out our tutorial on Courseware Best Practices which covers creating your Training Center Outline – this is found under the LSVT Resources Onboarding section:

• If you plan on guiding your users through a specific learning path, plan that out in this step – think about and write out what path you want each role to take to complete their training or even earn a certification. (So think about how the Sales guys will need X training, the Front Desk needs Y training, etc…)
• Now head to the Create/Edit Courseware section to begin building your Categories and Courses.
• If you do not have any tests or assessments – we encourage you to create them now – based off of the content you intend to launch with. Testing is an amazing way to keep your Users accountable – and what better way to gauge if they’re actually learning something? LightSpeed also features robust reporting to help you see how your Users are doing… Who is doing well, who is struggling and who could use a little help.
• Add any supplemental documents such as PDFs or workbooks to the File Vault – these documents can be Location specific as well – so if only one of your Locations needs to see something you can display it for their eyes only.
• Plan and create any Certificates – do you want to award your Users a certificate for completing a certain set of training? Maybe they graduated from new hire to full team member – and completed their training on it – give them something to hang on the wall!
• Do you run any Live Events? Add them to your outline – You can create recurring Live Events via Zoom and other services right within the Training Center.
• Add gamification through the Leaderboard feature. We highly recommend you take a look at this during this phase and see what it’s capable of – it’s a really powerful tool that’ll help keep your Users engaged – where they can compete for a higher spot on the Leaderboard – visible to the whole organization!

Configure Locations and Teams to Better Organize Your Users

This section is about organizing your Users so they’re seeing the content they need to see, and to help your Managers keep tabs on their specific teams.

Earlier you configured your Access Levels and Content Roles – now you can consider Locations and Teams. With these in place, it will make your life easier over the longer term, when you’re up and rolling and adding new Users. As we’ve repeated in each section – just take it slow, you don’t have to set it up all at once. Consider this a starting point to get you thinking along the right lines.

Checklist for this step:

• Use Teams to organize your Users into smaller groups. If you want to utilize Team Leaders – activate the Teams Plus feature found under System Settings.
• Use Locations to organize your Users. If you have physical Locations (out there in the “real world”) – we recommend simply creating a Location for each physical Location. This way you can keep all Managers and Employees from those Locations in one place. If that is not the case – then maybe there is some other way you’d like to group your Users – or maybe you only need one Location for all 5000 users to sign into. If you’re not sure – give us a call and we’ll give you best practices we have for your specific scenario.

Ready to Add Users to Your System?

This section is about creating your Users. Are you ready for this step? If not, just come back later! Hah! My Dad used to say, “If I’m not back in 5 minutes, just wait longer!” (Actually it was a quote from Ace Ventura, always good for a laugh.)

This section should have you asking yourself how you plan to get your Users into your System. As you worked through the sections above – did you create Teams and Access Level structures? Now you can begin to place people in these positions or prepare to enroll them.

There are several easy ways to add Users to the System – you can create them one by one, you can use the “invite” feature which will email them a link to sign up with, you can create an Enrollment link which is similar to the “Invite” feature but has a few additional options, you can use a Bulk Import tool (add all of your users to an excel sheet that we’ll provide for you and add them all at once!), or maybe through the API – if you are utilizing SSO.

Checklist for this step:

• How will your Users be accessing the System? Are they signing in through the Sign In page or through SSO? (Again, contact us for SSO assistance!)
• Do you need to export a list of Users from an existing LMS or other System? You can prepare that list during this phase.
• After you launch, consider this – how will new Users be added from here on out? Ask yourself how that process will work so everyone is informed ahead of time and make a plan!
• If you have a lot of users to add, we suggest you prepare for a bulk User import, take a look at this article and the template found here.
• Is there any historical training data to import? (In some cases we can help import your historical data – if you’re moving from an existing LMS to ours – but that is determined case-by-case – give us a call to discuss!)
• Add Users to Teams – this step can be completed during the Enrollment process or the Bulk User Import process – where you can automatically assign members to their teams right within the forms – or manually!

Let’s Talk About Reporting

Reporting is the main accountability tool you have in your hands to see how your Users are succeeding. There are MANY different reports LightSpeed offers – take the time to familiarize yourself with them and you’ll be able to easily see who’s doing well, who’s struggling, and who needs a little help!

Checklist for this step:

• Learn all about reporting on the Support site or through the LSVT Resources tutorial content (as we mentioned earlier, found via the Help Me tab on the left of your screen when you are signed in).
• Set up automated “Watchdog” reports – these reports are designed to “bark” at you – which basically means – they’re going to alert you when people are doing well OR doing poorly – and you receive them right in your inbox. You can get them daily, weekly or monthly to keep an eye on what’s going on. Navigate to the Reports -> Watchdogs section to take a look!

Ready to Launch!

It’s no good delivering an amazing learning platform like LightSpeed VT if nobody uses it!

While we might like to think if we build something great and put it out into the world, then that’s enough to draw people in… but we’ve discovered, at least for some, that simply opening it up is not going to give you the best result for the time, effort and money invested in what you’ve done.

We recommend planning out how you will inform or “market” your new platform to your organization to get your Users to engage and adopt the System.

This step of the launch process may be as simple as sending all of your Users an enrollment link with a welcome email. Or this may be sending out a communication to all employees that your new learning platform is now available and give them instructions on how to sign in.

You could even hire a marching band to get the message out!

Whichever route you choose to get your Users into the System, remember this is your chance for a great first impression!

Checklist for this step:

• Do you have a great message ready to send to your Users to get them excited about getting started?
• Have you recorded anything like a welcome message to prepare them? Remember you don’t want to just throw them in and say “Swim!” Give them an understanding of what to expect! At least show them how to doggy paddle.

You’ve done it – The launch was a success – now what?

So here you are – you’re live and running – things are looking great – but now you’re ready for more – so how do you get more from LightSpeed VT?

Ask yourself the following questions and discover new ways to use your System – and then if you have any questions, give us a call for any help you may need.

Checklist for this step:

• Am I making best use of all available features? (Using the System is the best way to discover all of the features! Or looking through the features here!)
• Do you have plans to add more interactive content in the future, to make your content more engaging for your Users? We’ve found that by adding interactivity, User engagement and retention increases 1000% – no exaggeration there. When you guide your Users through your content rather than just plopping them in front of a DVD – the ROI is huge!
• Have you utilized the Leaderboard to help motivate people to participate more? For them to Sign in more? Engage more?
• Do you have a plan in place for your Admins or Managers to continually create new training Assignments to keep Users coming back and learning? (Have you considered incentivizing the training and rewarding those who succeed?)
• Could other parts of your organization benefit from what LightSpeed VT offers?

That’s all there really is to it! Good luck out there – stay safe, and we wish you all the success in the world.