Naming Conventions for ILT/Webinars (Events vs. Sessions) - Best Practices

J
Rank
Userlevel 1

Hi Docebo Community! Does anyone have best practices for naming conventions of ILTs? 

Our previous LMS only had the course name and then date. I’m curious how folks are differentiating between event & session and if you’re even adding dates to the name? For example, if we run a course called Feedback Skills every so often both virtually & in-person I’m thinking of following the pattern below: 

course > sessions > events 

  • Feedback Skills > virtual > June 29
  • Feedback Skills > virtual > August 5
  • Feedback Skills > in-person > Oct 2

Or is it confusing to have the date as the event title since the date appears anyway?

 

How are other folks doing it?

 

Thanks for your help!

26 replies

lrnlab
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +7

Hi @jweston218 if I’m not mistaken, you shouldn't need the event date in your title (unless you prefer to have that in your reports) since the user, when registering for the course will need to pick a session date (event). Identifying then as wither Virtual or In person is a good idea though since that info is not that obvious for users to see. I would avoid using this symbol “>” in your titles as it may not read properly in reports...try using a simple dash instead.

J
Rank
Userlevel 1

Thanks so much for your quick reply Irnlab! To clarify, I’m not planning on including any symbols in the titles, that was to show what would go in the course vs. session vs. event field. That is where we’re struggling.. there are so many places to add a name! 

lrnlab
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +7

@jweston218 i understand. You can also use the Event name field to call it something else. For instance, Morning group/afternoon group or “for all” / “for managers”, etc.  

Anders
Rank
Userlevel 4
Badge

We name our sessions by month, year, and time of day. For example: 

  • November 2021 - 15:00 CET (9AM EST)

For us, this made sense because there’s not really anything else that’s different between the sessions. (We sometimes run a morning and an afternoon class, so that’s why we also need the time of day.)

Each event is then named by the content of that particular lecture, like:

  • Introduction and demo
  • Configuration
Cindy McElhinney
Rank
Userlevel 6
Badge +4

@jweston218 So we played around with lots of variations of course name and session name to ensure that our notifications (user enrolled in webinar and webinar session starting) were as clear as possible to the user. We have two scenarios illustrated by these two examples”

Course Name: WINGS Power User Training

Session Name: Fri, Feb 28 at 9:30am PST/12:30pm EST

Like @Anders we use the day, date and time in the session name exactly the way we want the user to see it in the email notifications using the [session_name] shortcode. Mostly though because the [session_dates] short code is not to our liking. (It includes the seconds indicator which just doesn’t look good) 

Our other example includes the name of the partner organization that we are running the workshop for: 

Course Name: SET the Climate Workshop

Session Name: BGCGG, Mon, Jun 14 at 9:30am PST/12:30pm EST (where BGCGG is whatever partner we are doing the workshop for)

 

Annarose.Peterson
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +5

@jweston218 , we also follow the practice as @Cindy McElhinney and @Anders of putting the date/time in the session title, especially since we have people who would be attending training from many different time zones (in the cases of our virtual events), adding the time with the timezone is just another chance for us to remind users what timezone the training is taking place when notifications get sent.

The event we title as either Day 1, Day 2 or Lecture 1, Lecture 2, etc.  

Annarose Peterson (She/Her)
J
Rank
Userlevel 1

Thanks so much everyone for your suggestions / examples!

 

@Cindy McElhinney you make a great point about email notifications, thank you! Can you share what you enter in the “event” name ? 

Cindy McElhinney
Rank
Userlevel 6
Badge +4

@jweston218 So we don’t add “events” to sessions as we don’t really have a need for them and it’s not required to have an event for a session. We simply have the “ILT” webinar (i.e course) and then multiple sessions for each course. I like that this functionality exists and maybe some day we’ll have a need for it. Also, when the new ILT functionality was released earlier this year, I looked at events and found it curious that you couldn’t include the event information in a notification - that is, I don’t see an event fields as short codes so I am wondering how folks who have the need for this additional level of detail on a session are informing users of those details. It looks like there might be some suggestions already in the ideas portal to add this. Certainly weigh in if I have that wrong or if anyone can comment on how they are using events.

Stephanie Dreiling
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +4

This is a thread that is much needed! Thanks for getting it started @Cindy McElhinney , I had it on my list to ask, but hadn’t gotten it posted yet! I have really struggled figuring out the best use for all the different names! What we have finally settled on for now, is: 

Course Name: (Full Name of Course)

Session Name: (Short Name of Course &/or count of Session) - we often offer 5 or 6 sessions of each ILT we offer

Event Name: (Same as Session Name) I just copy and paste to save myself time here.

 

This has become a heavily tested and researched item for us to figure out how it displays in Notifications and how tracking/reporting works. Like seeing all the other suggestions as well. I hadn’t thought about putting in the time/date but that is great, because at first glace when you need someone to select a session to attend they have to click into each one to figure out when it will actually be held! May be a change we look into! 

Stephanie D.
Dahveed
Rank
Userlevel 5
Badge

@Cindy McElhinney @Stephanie Dreiling  You are brilliant!

I have been having an issue with course notifications and how to present the dates and times to the learners. When I experimented using the short code, the dates / time  / locations looks bad in its formatting. Utilizing the Event Name / Session Name as a way to present the class times might just be the work around we needed!

My current way was to just include the a calendar file and a link to the course so they can look in the system to see the date, time and location. 

Brilliant

(Sorry for going a bit off original topic)

David (aka Dahveed)
Cindy McElhinney
Rank
Userlevel 6
Badge +4

@Dahveed I don’t know about brilliant speaking for myself not @Stephanie Dreiling ...she really is brilliant:wink: But at any rate, I’m glad you found some helpful nuggets! 

J
Rank
Userlevel 1

Thank you all!!!

H
Rank
Userlevel 2
Badge

@jweston218 So we don’t add “events” to sessions as we don’t really have a need for them and it’s not required to have an event for a session. We simply have the “ILT” webinar (i.e course) and then multiple sessions for each course. I like that this functionality exists and maybe some day we’ll have a need for it. 

Hi, @Cindy McElhinney! 

Henderson from the Docebo Customer Experience team here. :relaxed:  I just wanted to check in with you on this, as it sounds like you may be referring to the soon-to-be-deprecated “Webinar” course type. Is that correct? I just wanted to make sure you were aware that these Webinar courses will be migrated to ILT courses with the January release. The transition is detailed in the below KB articles:

 

Transition to the New Management of Classroom Courses and Webinars

 

Webinar Courses Migration to VILT Courses

Cindy McElhinney
Rank
Userlevel 6
Badge +4

@Henderson.Valentine Yep - I am aware! Thanks!

LMSica
Userlevel 5
Badge

@jweston218 So we played around with lots of variations of course name and session name to ensure that our notifications (user enrolled in webinar and webinar session starting) were as clear as possible to the user. We have two scenarios illustrated by these two examples”

Course Name: WINGS Power User Training

Session Name: Fri, Feb 28 at 9:30am PST/12:30pm EST

Like @Anders we use the day, date and time in the session name exactly the way we want the user to see it in the email notifications using the [session_name] shortcode. Mostly though because the [session_dates] short code is not to our liking. (It includes the seconds indicator which just doesn’t look good) 

Our other example includes the name of the partner organization that we are running the workshop for: 

Course Name: SET the Climate Workshop

Session Name: BGCGG, Mon, Jun 14 at 9:30am PST/12:30pm EST (where BGCGG is whatever partner we are doing the workshop for)

 

I love that you included the two time zones in the session name. Brilliant! 

Jessica Overby
LMSica
Userlevel 5
Badge

Hi Everyone, 

Here is what we came up with before the new ILT functionality was introduced. I would spend some serious time analyzing your naming conventions and involve multiple stakeholders to ensure you are capture necessary information. Also, keep in mind the end-user perspective. A really long name with abbreviations and irrelevant information will impact their experience.

When I created these conventions, we were using the old classroom functionality; you cannot search by keyword for the location and date fields, so I added them to the title. For the event name, I added the course abbreviation to specify the course on the Agenda custom page widget. 

  • Course Name: Division_Course Name_Year (recurring courses)
    • AGS New Security Officer Orientation (NSOO) - I add a year if it is a recurring course (e.g. 2021)
  • Course Code: Training Type_Course Abbrv._Divsion Abbrv._Year Created
    • NH_NSOO_AGS_2020
  • Session Name & Code: Location Abbrv._Start Date_Course Abbrv. 
    • ATL 6/30/2020 NSOO
  • Event Name: Course Abbrv._Day X of X
    • NSOO Day 1 of 3

Ideas for Improvement: 

  • Include the time zone
  • Include day of the week

This has worked well for us with reporting, searching through sessions in the admin area, and email tags. 

A few things to keep in mind: less is more, only include what the learner needs, think about reporting, don’t use unique special characters (for possible future implementations), and keep it consistent by documenting your naming conventions and training admins.

 

 

Jessica Overby
Cindy McElhinney
Rank
Userlevel 6
Badge +4

@jweston218 So we don’t add “events” to sessions as we don’t really have a need for them and it’s not required to have an event for a session. We simply have the “ILT” webinar (i.e course) and then multiple sessions for each course. I like that this functionality exists and maybe some day we’ll have a need for it. 

Hi, @Cindy McElhinney! 

Henderson from the Docebo Customer Experience team here. :relaxed:  I just wanted to check in with you on this, as it sounds like you may be referring to the soon-to-be-deprecated “Webinar” course type. Is that correct? I just wanted to make sure you were aware that these Webinar courses will be migrated to ILT courses with the January release. The transition is detailed in the below KB articles:

 

 

@jweston218 Hey everyone, so @Henderson.Valentine pointed out that when I was explaining our process I was describing our naming conventions for Webinars, not the new ILTs. And as such, I misstated that we don’t add events. I apologize for any confusion I may have causes with my response(s)

So with the new way, you add the ILT, add the sessions, then add the events. You do have to add an event because the event is where you indicate the time for the event session. So in our use case for the new VILT here’s how we name the fields:

Course Name: WINGS Power User Training

Session Name:  Fri, Feb 28 at 9:30am PST/12:30pm EST

Event Name: Session # (or the Partner Name we are running the session for)

We use a combination of Course Name and Session Name in the notification. For now we always have 1/1 between session and event. I don’t foresee us needed to have multiple events for per session.  I am curious though how other people with multiple events per session inform the user of each of the events as I don’t see any event short codes in Notifications so I am a little confused by that.

Again, sorry for any confusion. I hope this clears things up… a little maybe:nerd:

steveninfinger
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +5

Is there a unique identify for events provided by the system that could be copy and pasted for the event name? For us we want to be able to report on each event, so having a unique identify would be very helpful as the name for event. It would also be used when troubleshooting, because we’ll know the specific event to go to.  

Steven Infinger
H
Rank
Userlevel 2
Badge

Is there a unique identify for events provided by the system that could be copy and pasted for the event name? For us we want to be able to report on each event, so having a unique identify would be very helpful as the name for event. It would also be used when troubleshooting, because we’ll know the specific event to go to.  

Great question, @steveninfinger! While it may not provide much information for your learners, the Event_ID that the system generates can be used by your team for identification and troubleshooting purposes. This can be found in the URL that is displayed when you are editing the Event. In the screenshot below, my Event_ID is “65”. 

 

steveninfinger
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +5

Thanks, @Henderson.Valentine! I looked at the URL hoping there was a number there, but the number was so small, I didn’t think it’d be unique. I suppose since here’s not a lot in our system yet, it does make sense. I agree, it won’t make sense for the learner, but by time they pass the Course name and the session name, the event name shouldn’t matter (for our use case). Internally, however, we need to be able to distinguish individual events for reporting and troubleshooting. 

Steven Infinger
Cindy McElhinney
Rank
Userlevel 6
Badge +4

For anyone continuing to follow this thread, I confirmed today that using the [session_dates] shortcode will print all of your events as follows (as in this example for a video conference):

  • 6/16/2021 3:00:00 pm - 6/16/2021 4:00:00 pm (Your time, America/New_York)
    Video Conference
  • 6/16/2021 4:00:00 pm - 6/16/2021 5:00:00 pm (Your time, America/New_York)
    Video Conference
  • 6/17/2021 9:00:00 am - 6/17/2021 10:00:00 am (Your time, America/New_York)
    Video Conference

I am going to continue putting the date and time exactly as I want it to appear in a notification using a combination of the course name and session name so I can use these shortcodes and avoid the session_dates shortcode. IMHO I just think this short code is super hard to read. I do not care of the seconds indicator in the time and am not crazy about it defaulting to “Video Conference” which is just not what we call it (we use Webinar or Workshop). The added benefit of seeing date and time (in the session name) when you’re looking at list of sessions without having to open the session is another advantage. Of course I understand for more complicated scenarios with multiple sessions and multiple events this may not work as well or even at all. Hopefully Docebo will beef up with the shortcodes at some point allowing more flexibility for notifications. 

I’ll be interested in following this thread as others hop on and come up with other creative ideas on this topic.

 

hwolfehall
Rank
Userlevel 5
Badge

Like others, we are using a combination of the data points that are decision points for our learners so that when they look at the list of available sessions, they can know from the title alone which one(s) are appropriate options. The list seems to have a character limit to what it displays in the dropdown, so we’ve limited it to the fields we feel are critical for our learners - and the short formats. 

All of our live sessions are in Pacific time, so we don’t include the timezone reference, but we have a large LEP/multi-lingual population, so we include Language as a critical data point.  

Session Name:  

  • Location - Short Date, Short Time (Language)
  • Clarkston - Sept 01, 8:30AM (English)
  • Webinar - Dec 15, 3:00PM (Korean)
JGildea
Rank
Userlevel 5
Badge

We tend to use the intended audience and date for our Session name and the specific date and time for the Event name.

 

Example:

Course: Communication and Feedback

Session: Session for EMEA, January 31, 2022

Event: Start Time: 11:00 a.m. (BST)

 

One of the reasons we do it this way is because of the way Docebo works with Outlook Invitations. The Outlook Invitations Title shows Course - Session - Event, and when we reused the Course Title, it would replicate 3 times in a massive and confusing title in Outlook. 

With the above example, the Outlook invitation will display:

Communication and Feedback -  Session for EMEA, January 31, 2022 - Start Time: 11:00 a.m. (BST)

 

The challenge with this method:

The CALENDAR widget in Docebo shows only the event title. So, someone looking at their calendar will see only: Start Time: 11:00 a.m. (BST) with no actual course name showing. So they’ve got to click on it to see. We’re starting to add the Course Title to the Session Description so that it will show up on the calendar better.

Jennifer Gildea, Talent Development Manager @ BlackLine
D
Rank
Userlevel 6
Badge +2

Our world has changed with the new course player. Date and time information is right at the first level when choosing a session. 
 

 

JGildea
Rank
Userlevel 5
Badge

That looks beautiful - if they can add the ACTUAL COURSE TIME between the date and the time zone, this would be just about perfect.  That’s the only thing keeping this from being a one-click enrollment.

Jennifer Gildea, Talent Development Manager @ BlackLine

Reply


Terms & ConditionsCookie settings