Training Task Plan Creation

Overview

The most common Training Plans usage suggest having four different moments:

Setting up the budget (Budget Period)
Collecting needs phase (Plan Period)
Validating and Assigning Needs to CSoD (Contribution Period)
Execution phase (Execution Period)

These distinct phases are specified in the Date Criteria of each task plan.
To create a Training Plan Task the user should press the Create Plan button and a new page will open, as shown below:

General Information

In the general information tab, please filled out the following information:

Name: Training Plan Task Name

Description: Training Plan Task Description

Both the name and the description can be translated into the different available languages. To do so press the globe icon in each of the previous fields.

To finish press Continue.

Custom Fields

Next setup options are related to Custom Fields. There are 3 types of Custom Fields supported in Training Plans:

Catalog custom fields – custom fields to add additional information to Trainings in the Catalog.
Training Needs custom fields – custom fields to gather additional information when assigning needs to users.
CSoD User custom fields: these are fields containing information about your users.

The user must then select which custom fields are required and click the Add button:

After selecting the custom fields, they will be present in the Task Plan configuration:

Training Needs Custom Fields Ordering

It is possible to define the order by which the custom fields appear when presented in the Task Plan. To do so, when passing with the mouse over a custom field, a drag and drop icon will appear:

Clicking the icon and dragging the custom field will allow the custom fields to be ordered:

In the end the new order will be preserved:

Training Needs Required Custom Fields

When selecting a specific custom field, it will be possible to define that field as required:

When a field is marked as required, it will be mandatory for that field to have a value when assigning it to a user. Every custom field type except the checkbox type can be marked as required.

Training Needs Custom Fields Default Value

It is possible to define a custom field default value for every custom field selected for the task plan. These values will appear as prefilled when assigning a need to a user.

Catalog Custom Fields

It is possible to have custom field associated with the catalog. However, only two types of customs fields are available: text type and dropdown. These custom fields will allow the L&Ds to add additional information to the trainings in the catalog. These custom fields are Training Plans Custom fields and are not shared with CSoD. The custom fields selection is similar to the Training Needs custom fields selection.

Catalog Custom Fields Highlight

It is possible to highlight Catalog custom fields. When highlighting the custom fields they will be present when a training information is displayed.

Task Plan Preferences

Who is allowed to see the Task Plan?

To select who is allowed to see the task plan the user needs to press the search functionality icon:

ATTENTION: The users selected here will not be automatically given access to the Task Plan. They need to have the Task Plan Admin or Task Plan Viewer role associated. This way it becomes simple to manage who is or not allowed to see the Task Plans. As example it will be easier to remove the access to someone that was included in several tasks, just by removing the role from their profile, thus becoming unnecessary to verify Task Plan one by one to remove the user.

Co-planners

When creating a task plan, the task creator will have the possibility to select CoPlanning for Managers and L&D’s – a functionality that allows contributors to select users to contribute on their behalf.

After launching the plan, editing the co-planning options will still be possible, however, in doing so, all the information regarding the selected co-planner user will be erased and he/she will no longer have access to the task. A warning message will be shown to the task creator.

Hide Training Price to End Users

The Users that are target of the plan will not be able to see any costs involved in the planning.

Create Unknown Courses

Will provide the ability to all users to create courses that are currently not available in the catalog and could be reconciliated later with existing ones.

Create Anonymous Users

Will provide the ability for managers or L&Ds to create users that are currently not registered in the platform and that could be reconciliated later.

Catalog Training

Will provide access to CSoD catalog in two different ways:

All courses: users will have access to all trainings available in the CSoD catalog; can be defined to all users;
Users’ LO Availability: will provide availability to those trainings that are registered as available to users in CSoD platform; can be defined to all users;
Restricted Providers: users will have acess only to the trainings of selected providers (max. 5); only applicable to L&D users.

Authentication Request on lock plan

An extra security feature that will ask for an extra credential confirmation when locking or unlocking the Training Plan.

Budget

The user should select if the task plan requires a Budget or not. If a budget is required for the task, the user should then proceed with the configurations described hereafter.

Type of Organizational Unit (OU)

Selection of which OU type will be the base of the budget (e.g. Division). Group OU is not available in this selection, because a user can belong to more than one group.

Selection of OU’s

The user needs to select which OU’s he/she wants to use in the budget configuration. The selection of the OU’s includes all the components of that OU’s aggregation/hierarchy. For e.g., consider an OU Iberian Peninsula that contains two aggregations (child) – Portugal and Spain. Both Portugal and Spain will be considered during the budget setup.

Important: The user will not be able to select two OU’s that share a subordinate OU . As example, it is not possible to select Europe and Iberian Peninsula, because Iberian Peninsula is subordinate to Europe, and Europe and Iberian Peninsula share Portugal and Spain.

Budget level

The user can choose if the budget is to be managed at OU level or at manager level.

Budget at OU level will be user centric, i.e., the budget will be assigned directly to the users within each OU configured
Budget at manager level will be manager centric, i.e., the budget will be assigned specifically to the managers of the users targets of the plan, and within the manager’s OU and not the users’.

Important:

This feature does not support other relationships besides the manager relationships defined in the system (Direct and Indirect Managers), i.e. custom relationships are not supported.
There can be some cases where the manager of the target user belongs to an OU outside the scope of the budget. For those situations, and whenever the budget is configured at manager level, an extra OU – the manager’s – will be added to the budget structure available for setup.

For e.g., Lisbon employees are being targeted for a training. Claudia is one of those employees and Ana, Claudia’s manager, is situated in a different location – Spain. When setting up the budget (configured at manager level), even though only Lisbon was configured as the target of the plan, Spain will also be displayed.

Types of Budget

It is possible to select between two types of budget:

Indicative – the user will be notified that the budget is being surpassed but will not be prevented from performing the action [adding a need]. If the budget is overflown and the user accepts to add the need in that situation, the audit log will be registered accordingly.
Restrictive – the user will be prevented from performing an action [adding a need] that surpasses the budget.

Emails

The user should select only the emails templates that requires to be available in the selected task plan:

Training Plan Assigned
Training Plan Due Date
Training Plan Approval Assigned
Training Plan Approval Due Date
Request Training Plan Approval
Training Plan Approved
Training Plan Denied
Assigned Coplanner
Removed Coplanner

Date Criteria

Budget Setup Period

For task plans with a budget configured, it will define the Training Plan dates related to the Budget Setup Period. This period answers the question: What is the period of time when Task Plan Creators (and/or Administrators) may setup the initial budget? This period must end before the starting day of the Plan Period.

Plan Period

It will define the Training Plan dates related to the Planning Period. This period answers the question: What is the period of time when Plan Contributors may enter training needs (Plan Period)?

Execution Period

It will define the Training Plan dates related to the Execution Period. This period answers the question: The training plan is forecasting training needs for what future period of time?

Expiration Date

It will define the Expiration Date related to the Task Plan. This date answers the question: When does the training plan template expire (Expiration Date)?

Default Access Periods

These dates will only be used to help users creating the workflow. The dates will be passed accordingly to the Workflow/Segment configuration.

Default Approve Periods

These dates will only be used to help users creating the workflow. The dates will be passed accordingly to the Workflow/Segment configuration.

Segments

A segment will configure how the training plan need collection will be managed for the defined subset of targets, contributors or approvers. More than one segment can be added to a Training Plan Task; to add more segments the user is required to click the Add

To remove a segment the user needs to press the remove button. At least one segment needs to be .

Important: It is not possible to remove segments after launching a Task Plan.

The following subsections describe each of the available configuration fields.

Who is the target of the plan

Using the search functionality (see section 0), it becomes simple to define the segment target population, whether it is a user or an OU.

For task plans with a configured budget, the target selection must correspond exactly to the Organizational Units selected when defining the budget. It will not matter if the targets are spread across different segments, only that all OU’s previously defined in the budget configuration are included as targets. Since Budget OU’s targets always include their respective OU´s hierarchic subordinated, the respective targets must also include their subordinates.

End User

The End User can participate collecting the needs for himself (target contributor). To do so, this option is required to be configured.

Below, the User will have information about configuring the generic Contributor Section.

The End User will have a particular setting which is the Max Number of contributions. The Max number of contributions will limit how many contributions the End User, and only the End User, can make on his behalf.

Important

If the access period of the end-user contribution line is not defined, end-users will not be able to participate collecting the needs for the task plan (end-user non contributor)

If a target end-user is not a contributor, he/she will only have access to the task plan after the Execution Period of the task has started.

Other contribution levels:

To configure other contribution levels to contribute to the training plan the user can add other relations such as:

Manager (direct or indirect)
Single User
Specific OU
Custom Relationship (which includes the Manager levels from section .2)

To add another contribution level the user is required to click on the ‘Add Contribution level’ icon and select on the Search modal the type of contributor desired.

The user has the possibility to add a user, a OU and/or even a Relationship type as contributors. The relationship type conveys all the manager levels described in section .2. By selecting this contribution type, the user can define manager levels as contributors, being aware that it will not be possible to define higher manager levels without first defining lower ones. E.g., it is not possible to add an Indirect Manager without configuring a Direct Manager first.

The Direct manager can take part by collecting the needs for his team. To do so, the contribution line of the manager level needs to be configured.

Below, the user will have information about configuring the generic Contributor Section.

Configuring Contributor Section

To configure the Contributor Section the user needs to define:

Access Period – the access period needs to be included inside the Plan Period, configured earlier. In this period the user will be able to contribute with the specific role. If the dates for default access period were configured previously in the Date Criteria section (see section .7.5), the date fields in the contributor details model will be already selected, with the possibility to edit.

Approver Required – If the contributions made by this user require or not an Approver. If an approver is not required, the need will be added directly with the Approved status, otherwise it will be added in the Pending Review status and will require a specific approver.

Important: For task plans with a configured budget, when the end-user contribution line is defined it always requires an approver.

Approver – To approve a need the user can select a relationship, a user or an OU to approve the need. It is only possible to select one approver per contribution level; choosing another approver will erase the previous selection. This functionality only selects the direct approver of that level; contributors from higher levels can always override needs previously approved/denied by the direct approver of lower levels.

Important A group or user configured at a specified segment level as approver, need to be configured at a higher level as a contributor:

Valid workflow:

Invalid workflow because Online University is not a contributor:

Invalid workflow because ‘Formation’ is configured as approver at a higher level than it is configured as contributor:

Approval Period – the approval period needs to be included inside the Plan Period and the approval period end date needs to be after or at least equal to the contributor end date. In this period the user will be able to approve or deny the needs. If the dates for default approval period were configured previously in the Date Criteria section (see section .7.6), the date fields in the contributor details modal will be already selected with the possibility to edit.