Skip to main content
All CollectionsManagePrograms
Programs: A beginners guide
Programs: A beginners guide
Bianca Wetter avatar
Written by Bianca Wetter
Updated this week

This article delves into the world of Programs in Sana, a versatile tool designed to enrich your learning and development strategies, allowing you to build a learner's journey through a set of steps that the user needs to complete.

To effectively utilize Programs, it's important to understand when they are most beneficial and when other options might be more suitable.

​​When to use Programs

When not to use programs

  • Creating structured learning journeys: Use Programs to design and manage structured learning journeys that guide learners through a series of courses and activities.

  • Blended learning: Implement Programs to combine various learning formats, such as Live sessions and self-paced courses, complemented by emails.
    ​

  • Automation: Leverage Programs to automate content assignment and notifications, increasing efficiency and reducing the need for manual intervention.

  • Explorative courses: Programs are structured and linear journeys, so for explorative courses, use regular self-paced courses and organize them with Tags to allow flexible exploration.

Best practices

Maximize automation with enrollment rules

Create enrollment rules to automate assignments of the Programs to relevant groups of users using smart groups or groups. For example, you can enroll all new HR employees in New York to a HR onboarding Program automatically based on their start-date/role/department.

Incorporate a variety of content types, including Live sessions, self-paced learning, in person-events and emails, to increase engagement.

Increase activation with emails

Use automated emails to enhance engagement, such as sending pre-reads or welcome messages to provide important course information to the learners as they go through the Program.

Drop-feed content with staggered assignment

Use staggered assignments to maintain engagement by gradually unlocking course steps over time, based on completion or a set schedule. If you set deadlines within the Program steps, users will receive automatic reminders to help them stay on track with each newly unlocked step.

Organize the Program with sections

Use sections to break down the content of longer Programs into more digestible parts.

Use cases

Svea Solar automated its onboarding, achieving a 100% completion rate

πŸ’‘ Svea Solar automated their onboarding, allowing new employees to be automatically assigned to the correct programs based on their team and location. This automation reduced manual effort and supported the company's growth from 700 to 1200 employees, ensuring a consistent and efficient onboarding experience. Read more about it in their case study here: https://sanalabs.com/customers/learning/svea-solar.


Get started with Programs

Now, let's dive into the essentials to get started:

  1. Creating a program

  2. Adding content and sections to a Program

  3. Assigning users to your program

1. Creating a Program

  1. Go to Manage > Programs

  2. Click New program

  3. Add a title and click Save

  4. Click on settings in the created Program to add optional cover image, program description & connected certificate, then click Save

Add Program admins

If you would like to assign another user (group admin or admin) to oversee this Program you can do so by adding them as administrators of the program

  1. Go to the Program

  2. Go to Administrators at the bottom right

  3. Click Manage admins

  4. Type in users name

  5. Click Add

πŸ’‘ If a user's name does not show when typing, please check that their user role has been set to group admin or administrator


2. Adding content and sections to the Program

Adding content

  1. Go to the Content section and click Add content

  2. Search and Add your content and click Save

  3. Each content will become a step in your program

  4. For each step in your program, you can:

    1. Choose whether you want it to be assigned immediately, after completion of the previous step, or on a fixed date. ​(More information about staggered assignments, here)

    2. Set a due date relative to the assignment date.
      ​(More information about due dates, here)

  5. Save you outline by clicking Save

If you want to edit your program outline, you can read more about it here

πŸ’‘ The course or Live you want to add in your Program needs to be Published and Visible in Manage

Sections within a Program

You have the option to create Sections inside the Program. This makes it easier for the learner to understand and follow the program-overview, offering a more streamlined and organized experience.


Sections have the following characteristics:

  • A section can have a title and a description

  • It’s collapsible and expandable for easier browsing through the Program

  • Each program step within the section still acts as a standalone step, with its own staggering rules, due dates, etc. The section is simply a wrapper for organizational purposes

To add a section, follow the same process as adding a step:

  1. Click Add Step

  2. Select Add Section

Using this feature, you can sub-divide your program into various sections - essentially breaking down a larger program into smaller portions easy to digest from a learner's perspective


3. Assign learners

To assign a users to a program follow these steps:

  1. Assign learners by clicking on the People tab

  2. Click Enroll and choose Enroll once or Create enrollment rules

  3. Click Save

To enroll a user once

Use enroll once if you want to assign learners or a group to your program one time.

πŸ’‘ If adding a smart group to enroll once, it will only add the current members of the group and will not update automatically if new users are added to the group

To use an enrollment rule

An enrollment rule lets you assign all users matching a rule that you set up.

To create an enrollment rule

  1. Click on the People tab

  2. Click Enroll

  3. Select Create Enrollment rule

  4. Add a name for the enrollment rule

  5. Create a rule to match users. You can filter on groups and custom attributes

  6. Set the Program start date

  7. Preview the users' matching to make sure they match what you expect.

  8. Click Enroll, and the learners will be notified via email or Slack

If you would like to learn more about more advanced enrollment rules, see here

Program start date

Choose when learners are assigned to the program:

  • Now: Instant enrollment with notifications.

  • Set a specific start date: Choose a future date for enrollment.

  • Select from a specific attribute: Use advanced features for customized start dates using this guide)


FAQ

What do I need to do to create smart groups and programs?

To take full advantage of the user attributes and automation you will need to set up SSO (see more information here) and link your HR system with Sana via SCIM (see more information here).

For more information, please contact your CSM.

Did this answer your question?