Now that your child account is configured, it's a good idea to assemble training and education resources, and make them available to your users. Below are some links that your users might find useful.
- HUG - Higher Logic's Users Group community. This is a great resource where users share insights, experiences, and helpful resources. The discussions and blogs are a portal to smart and experienced people who are always ready and willing to help.
- Academy - Higher Logic's education center. This is the access point to our many educational opportunities: monthly webinars, in-person events, and our e-Learning portal, Academy Online.
- Knowledge base - Higher Logic's product documentation repository. It features a "global nav" on the left which simplifies moving between topics, as well as "predictive" and "filtered" search capabilities.
- Support Center - Higher Logic's ticket-creation portal. Users can create "support tickets" when they experience issues with the product. They can also view a personal list of existing tickets to check the status of pending issues.
User education
In addition to providing the above links, consider which tasks and what functionality have been configured to be available to the child account's admins and users, and then organize education materials that will enable them to make the most of their account. These materials could be the nucleus of an account-specific, custom "user guide" that focuses on the child account configuration options, such as branding and asset management.
Another benefit of a custom user guide is that it can combine product knowledge (e.g., how to create a message) with account-specific guidelines (e.g., color scheme, template specifics, and message-approval processes), while not showing features and options that aren't enabled or available in the account.
Child account planning
Below are some things to consider as you develop a use-case plan for your child account.
Which elements of the product should my users have access to?
- Have a plan before you provide access to the account.
- Map out key tasks the child account users will need to accomplish.
- Decide if there are areas child account users should avoid using.
- Investigate permissions to restrict or internal instructions for users to avoid certain areas.
How would I like to handle education resources that include product features that my users are restricted from using?
One option is to leverage Higher Logic's education resources and explain beforehand that the material will include features that are not available to them.
- Provide users with a list of available features.
- Have a session before or after leveraging Higher Logic's resources to explain your internal plan of usage. This is where it's key to outline your rules and how the account should be used, including things to avoid. Be sure to have instructions for internal workflows, such as the approval process of messages and creating messages using approved templates.
Another option is to create your own user guide. This allows you to customize the training to meet the needs of your users.
- Preview Higher Logic's training videos and provide links to those that are appropriate for your users' account and tasks.
- Document the goals and benefits of using the product.
- Provide instructions per user type for the tasks they will be handling and how to accomplish those tasks
- Encourage collaboration among internal team members for shared learning.
Do you have branded templates that you want your users to use?
- Create a message using that branded template and make it available as a sample for your users.
- Populate the heading and text areas of your sample message with helpful text, such as the purpose of the section, what types of information to include, and character limits (for example, in subject lines).
How can I best support my users?
- Consider a structure in which a child account user's first avenue for assistance is an experienced, internal user.
- Consider designating one or two users as "primary contacts" for your Higher Logic account for support-related requests. This helps filter out potential "internal process/policy" questions that can be handled internally.
- Partner limited-access and inexperienced users with more experienced users and teams that they can reach out to with questions and get other forms of assistance.
- Determine whether it's worth the time investment to create your own user documentation and, if so, what it should include (such as features and functions of the product; how to name messages; how often and when to track messages; and how to request internal changes to templates).
- Review Higher Logic education resources and determine how you can best leverage them for child account users. Consider including links to specific topic videos (which are more consumable and relevant) instead of entire product videos.
- Schedule regular check-ins with child account users, especially in the early days of adoption, to monitor how things are going; be prepared to make necessary adjustments.
Looking ahead...
After the child account has been active for a while, admin users should regularly (monthly, quarterly and/or annually) review tracking and reporting metrics to see trends in, for example, what recipients are interested in.
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