Notifications are pre-scheduled email messages that inform learners about their training assignments. As an admin, you set up these notifications as part of every campaign to keep learners on track. This article covers the process of creating and configuring your campaign notifications.
We recommend writing your notification messages prior to setting up your campaign notifications. Doing so gives you time to plan and craft messages that work well. For guidance on your message content, read Writing Checklist for Notification Messages. For overall communications strategy guidance, read Training Communications Strategy.
The Notifications Panel
The Notifications panel holds all of your campaign’s notifications and is where you add and edit your notification messages. Here’s how to find it:
- Navigate to Campaigns via the Manage menu.
- Locate the campaign that you want to create notifications for from the displayed list, and select it. This opens the campaign.
- Select the option to View and Edit Notifications listed under Notifications. This opens the Notifications panel within the campaign.
- Add a notification with the plus (+) icon or select the pencil [icon] to open existing notifications, such as the default Welcome notification.
- After opening a notification, close it by selecting the “x” for that message.
The system creates the list of campaign notifications in the order that you add them, with the earliest-created first. We recommend you plan the notification schedule in a document first, then set them up once you're sure about the quantity, order, and timing.
Notification Types
Four notification types are available to you. Most admins create one Welcome and one Completion notification and several Reminder and Past Due notifications to keep learners on track:
- Welcome notifies learners that a campaign has begun and it’s time to start working on the training assigned to them. Every campaign includes a pre-loaded Welcome message to let learners know about their training assignments. You can update this message and its settings.
- Reminder reminds learners that they have training assignments to complete.
- Completion notifies learners that they’ve completed the training you’ve assigned to them and may include a link to a certificate (if you added one to the campaign).
- Past Due notifies learners that the campaign has closed without their completing it, offering next steps.
Timing Your Notifications
When deciding on how frequently to send notifications, consider your learners’ schedules, your organization’s communication patterns, and the urgency of your training content. Each campaign needs one Welcome and one Completion notification. Reminder and Past Due notifications serve as your primary engagement tools—and you can schedule as many as you need. Read Timing Campaign Notifications for guidance on the best schedule for your notifications.
Notification Settings
You can modify settings in your notifications, including writing unique subject lines, personalizing who notifications appear to come from, and sending copies of notifications to learners’ managers.
Subject Lines
Write a unique subject line for each of your notifications to engage users and prevent emails from landing in their Spam folder. If you don’t write a subject line, the system will use the following defaults:
- Welcome: “You have a new workplace skills assignment.”
- Reminder: “Don’t forget your workplace skills assignment.”
- Past Due: “Your workplace skills assignment is past due.”
- Completion: “You’ve completed your workplace skills assignment.”
Subject lines have a maximum limit of 255 characters. Some subject lines can trigger spam filters, so talk to your IT team about spam filter compatibility.
From Email Address & Name
- From Email (optional): Choose an email that works for your organization, such as your general HR inbox or a training-related email address. Although users cannot reply to this email address, it will appear in learners’ inboxes as the sender email address. If you leave this field blank, the system uses “no-reply@emtrain.com.” If you choose to enter a From Email, you must coordinate with your IT team to prevent spam filter issues and spoofing.
- From Name (optional): Enter the name of the sender as you want it to appear in users’ inboxes. If you leave this field blank, the system uses “no-reply.”
Both the From Email and From Name fields have a maximum limit of 255 characters.
Reply To
For this field, we recommend entering the email you want learners to send replies to. This is helpful for users who may need to contact you with questions. Some admins create a special inbox for this purpose and use it for all campaigns. If you leave this field blank, learners will not be able to send a reply to notification emails.
Set up a dedicated email address to which learners can send training questions or request deadline extensions. Consider using a shared inbox that multiple administrators monitor to ensure timely responses to learner inquiries. For example, you could create a training@yourcompany.com inbox to capture questions from learners.
Cc Manager
This setting allows you to have the system send a copy of notifications to learners’ managers. The default setting is No. Enabling this option can help managers track their direct reports’ progress. If enabled, copies of the notification go to the email address that appears in the Manager field in learners’ user profiles in Emtrain. If the Manager email address is missing from a user’s profile, a cc email won’t be sent, even if this setting is enabled.
Adding the Message Body
Your next step is to move the notification messages that you drafted into the message box for each of your campaign notifications. The messages in your notifications play a crucial role in how you communicate with learners about their training assignments. We expect that you have written your notification messages in a separate file and you will be moving those pre-written messages into each notification as you set up your campaign notifications.
The message body of notifications has a maximum limit of 65,500 characters.
Formatting the Message Body
After adding your prewritten message to a notification text field, you can style it with formatting tools.
For detailed guidance about how to use these tools, read Formatting Text in Campaign Notifications.
To prevent formatting issues, we recommend pasting your prewritten notification messages into a plain text editor before adding them to the notification message field. Some word processing documents contain hidden CSS and HTML tags, which cannot be removed in our notification message editor. By pasting text into a plain text editing tool like Notepad first, you can fix this preemptively.
Saving Your Work
Save a notification by selecting the Save button for the notification that you want to keep. The Save button is clickable only when you make a change. If you add text and then revert to the original version, the Save button won’t activate.
You must save a notification each time you create one and every time you make a change to it. If you don’t save your changes, they will be lost as soon as you navigate away from the Notification panel.
If you make a change to a notification that exceeds the character limit for the message body or one of the notification fields, the Save button will be inactive (grayed out) until you reduce the character count.
Testing with ‘Send to Individuals’
Use Send to Individuals to test a notification message. This sends it to your email so that you can see how the notification will display for learners. A test message can only be sent to users on the account.
To send a test, enter editing mode for the particular notification message you want to test by clicking the pencil icon. Then select the Send to individuals button for the notification message and enter your email. Note that you cannot enter a From, To, or Subject line for test messages.
The system displays a success message after you enter an email address and select the Send Notification button. However, if you entered an email address for someone that is not included in the account's user roster, the email will not be sent.
If you wish to make updates to the notification after testing it, be sure to select the Save button after you make your changes. For guidance, read Editing or Deleting Campaign Notifications.