Creating and managing ILT and VILT sessions – Docebo Help & Support

Introduction

ILT and VILT courses are organized in sessions, and sessions can be made up of one or more events, formerly known as session dates. Learners do not need to be enrolled in all of the sessions composing an ILT or VILT course, but when you enroll them in a session they will be enrolled in all of the session’s events.

This article is a guide on how to create and manage sessions and events, as well as the attendance and evaluation of the learners enrolled in them.

Creating a new session

To create a new session, select your course from the Course management page by clicking on its description, then click on the plus button in the top right corner of the course page and select the New session option.

In the New session right panel, fill in the session name and the maximum enrollment value, that is, the maximum number of learners (excluding instructors) that will be allowed to enroll in the session. Restrictions may be caused, for example, by the classroom or the webinar room capacity.

Use the Session instructors field to identify the instructors that will lead the session. Start by typing the username and selecting one of the available options. If the instructor you have selected is already assigned to another event, on the same date and at the same time, a warning message will inform you about the overlapping.

When an instructor is assigned to a session, they will be automatically assigned to all of the events included in the session, and they will be able to mark the attendance for all of the events in the session and set whether the participants have passed them or not. Please note that if you set a session instructor without defining an event instructor, the session instructor’s name is not displayed as an event instructor on the course page despite they are automatically assigned to all of the events composing the session. The event instructor’s name is displayed only when you explicitly set it.

Instructors can also create and update the training material for the course. Please note that instructors are not enrolled in the session, so they do not impact the Maximum enrollment quota set in the course's advanced properties nor do they appear in the list of users of the Course summary report.

Move now to the Session Evaluation/ Completion area to configure how the session will be marked as completed for learners. Select one of the available options:

Option	Description
Manual	The session can be marked as completed manually only by Superadmins and Power Users (with granted permissions).
Evaluation based	The session is marked as completed if the session instructors, Superadmins and Power Users (with granted permissions) manually mark it as Passed in the session Enrollments & Evaluations tab. In addition, you can configure a maximum score for the session. The possibility to evaluate learners (Evaluate option) is only available for sessions whose completion is based on the evaluation.
Attendance based	The session is marked as completed when the attendance status in the attendance sheet is marked as Present either for all of the session events or for a custom number of them. If the learner is marked as Absent, the session completion status is set to In progress unless it is already Completed. If the session completion status is Completed, marking the user as Absent will not revert it to In progress. Instructors, Superadmins, and Power Users (with granted permissions) can mark the attendance of learners even when the session completion method is different from Attendance Based, but, in those situations, the session will not be marked as completed.
Training material based	Use this completion method if the course the session belongs to includes a test as training material so that the session is marked as completed (and its events) are marked as attended when the learner completes the test. If the course includes multiple tests, learners must pass them all to mark the session (and its events) as completed.

If there are mandatory additional fields for sessions defined in the platform, move to the Additional Information tab of the right panel, and fill them in. This tab is not visible when there are no mandatory session additional fields set.

Click on Create and edit to complete the session creation. You will be automatically redirected to the session configuration area, divided into three tabs: Properties, Events & Attendance, and Enrollments & Evaluations.

Once a session is created, it is listed in the table of the Sessions tab of the course area.

Managing the session’s properties

The Properties tab includes two sections: General and Details.

The General tab shows all the session details configured during the creation process. From this tab, you can edit these details and eventually set a minimum enrollment value. This value is provided for informational purposes only and does not prevent learners from accessing the session they are enrolled in.

If external calendars are active, from this tab you can enable the external calendar RSVP feature for the session. Examples of integration with an external calendar are Docebo for Google Calendar and Docebo for Microsoft Outlook 365 Calendar.

Move to the Details tab to manage the session instructors and to configure the session self-enrollment deadline. The configuration of self-enrollment deadlines is an option when you have authorized users to self-enroll in the course in the course advanced properties. Possible options are:

Option	Description
Automatic deadline	This option is based on the session start date. When this option is selected, learners can self enroll in the session until the session start date, which is the first day of the first event included in the session.
Deadline date	This option is used to configure the last date when learners can self-enroll in the session.
Dynamic deadline	Use this option to configure the number of days before the session start date when learners can self-enroll. The session start date is the first date of the first event included in the session.

If the E-commerce app is active in your platform, when setting an enrollment deadline, remember that users won't be able to purchase a session after the deadline, although they will be able to add it to their cart.

If you have configured any session additional fields for ILT courses, you can fill them in the Additional Fields area. The mandatory additional fields are identified as Required. If you do not fill them, you will not be able to create the session or save your changes.

Creating and managing session events

Move to the Events & Attendance tab to create a session event. Click on the plus button in the top right corner of the page, and select New event. In the right panel, set the event name, date, description, and time. Make sure that you select the proper event time zone so that it will be converted according to the learner time zone when enrollment notifications are sent to learners.

Tip: You cannot create a single event that spans multiple days. If you need to schedule an overnight event (for example, for nightshift users), you will need to create two separate events: one for the first day and one for the second day.

Optionally, you can set a break time. When setting the break time, the platform will calculate the effective time that learners spend in the event by deducting the break time from the event total time.

In the Event type area set whether the event is:

Event type	Instructions
Classroom (ILT)	Check the Venue checkbox and select a location and a classroom for it. If the number of venues is lower than 40, they are all listed in the dropdown and available for selection. If the number of venues exceeds 40, look for it by typing its name and selecting it among the proposed results.
Webinar (VILT)	Check the Video Conference Tool checkbox. To set up the webinar, configure the webinar tool and the account used to host the webinar (some webinar tools may also require a password). If you are not using a supported webinar tool, select the Custom tool option and enter the webinar URL. This URL is the web page that opens when learners click Join to access the webinar. If you are using a custom tool, you can launch the webinar as an xAPI/TinCan object. This requires development on your side, outside of the platform. At any time, you can change the webinar tool or the account within the tool used for the event. In the Attendance options section, set if the VILT event will be marked as attended for learners as they join the webinar, and/or if they watch the webinar recordings. Move to the Join button options section if you need to set the number of hours before the event starts instructors, tutors and learners will see the Join button (eg. 01:00 = 1 hour before the event starts). The instructor's display time must be earlier than the learners' display time. When configuring this option, remember that tutors are considered instructors.
Both Classroom and Webinar	Check both the Venue and the Video conference tool checkboxes. Having both options enabled allows you to manage those situations where part of the learners are attending the event on-site and part of them are online.

Please Note! At any time, you can switch the event type from classroom (Venue option) to webinar (Video Conference Tool option) and vice versa, as well as enable or disable one of the options. Make sure your users are informed about the switch, if the Notifications app is active in your platform, you can reach learners with a notification.

Creating and Managing Session Events

Optionally, enable the Collaboration tool option to link to an external tool (such as Google Classroom, Miro, NewRow, Klaxoon) available to learners, so that they can collaborate and get in touch with one another for talking, planning, and brainstorming on the course topics. Type the URL of the external tool shown to learners in the event details area.

Finally, you can choose an Instructor for your event. In the search text box, start typing the name of the instructor, then choose it from the list that will appear below the search bar.

Press Confirm to confirm the event creation. To edit the event, access the event configuration area, where you will find two tabs: Properties and Attendance.

Let’s start with the Properties tab. Use the General section of this tab to review and edit the details you set when you created the event.

Move to the Details tab to configure the event instructors for the event, if different from the session instructors. If you assign an instructor to a single event within a session, they can mark the attendance for the learners attending that specific event but will have no control over the other events or over the session. In this scenario, the instructor will neither be able to upload nor manage the training material assigned to the course.

The Attendance tab shows the list of learners enrolled in the session, and thus in the event. From here you can manually mark that the learner attended the event by clicking on the ellipsis menu at the end of the user row and selecting the Mark attendance option. The right panel shows the attendance sheet for the selected user and you can mark whether the user has attended the event or not, together with the number of attended hours. You can mark the attendance for several users at a time by selecting them with the checkbox next to their names, clicking the Choose action button in the bottom right corner of the table, and selecting the Mark attendance option.

Please note! When you manually mark attendance for an event setting the user’s status to Present, the session completion date will be the scheduled day for the latest event of this session

Managing events

To manage the events of a session, select the session in the Sessions tab of the course, and move to the Events & attendance tab.

Click on the filter icon on the left side of the table and use the available options to filter the events according to their attendance type, instructors, start and end date, properties, locations and videoconference tool. Click on the Columns selector icon to select the columns you want to include in the table or search for events by typing a keyword in the text search area.

Click on the ellipsis button at the end of the event row to perform one of the following actions:

Action	Description
Edit	Edits the event details.
Duplicate event	Makes a copy of the event. In the right panel, type the name of the copied event and set a date for it. Optionally, you can assign the same instructors to the new event. When an event is copied, the new event will be created with all of the details of the original event, except for the venue assignment (for on-site courses) and enrollments. Access the new event details page to assign a location and a classroom to it. When duplicating events, take into account that the duplicated event may overlap other events already created in your platform. In order to prevent this behavior, enable the Prevent overlapping of ILT sessions option in the Platform Advanced Settings, ILT tab. Remember that this option only works when duplicating events, and not when creating new ones.
Send email to instructors	Send an email to all of the instructors of the event, or to a selection of them. When you select this option, a slideout panel will open for you to compose the message and select the sender and the recipients of the email. Under the message area, you will find a list of shortcodes that can be inserted into the message of the email, by copying and pasting them. This option is disabled when no instructor is assigned to the event, or when none of the instructors has a valid email address.
Delete	Deletes the event. When an event is deleted, the event date and the user data regarding the event attendance are deleted as well.

You can perform the same action for multiple events. Select them by checking the checkbox at the beginning of the event’s row and click on Choose action at the bottom right corner of the page to:

quickly assign instructors to all of the selected events
send an email to all of the instructors of the selected events. Unlike what happens when the action is performed for a single event, you cannot select individual instructors.
delete the selected events

Managing enrollments and evaluations for sessions

Learn more about enrolling and evaluating users in ILT and VILT sessions in the dedicated article of the knowledge base.

Managing sessions

All of the sessions included in an ILT or VILT course are listed in the course Sessions tab. From here, click on the item in the Events column to access the event management area and on the item in the Enrolled Users column to manage the session enrollments.

Click on the filter icon on the left side of the table and use the available options to filter sessions according to their instructors, start and end dates, location, attendance type, and other details. Click on the ColumnsSelector icon to select the columns you would like to include in the table, or search for sessions by typing a keyword in the text search area.

Click on the ellipsis menu at the end of the session row to perform one of the following actions:

Action	Description
Edit	Edits the session’s details.
Print the session attendance sheet	Create a physical registration page that learners will sign to mark their attendance. Learn more on attendance sheets.
Learner view for the session	Understand what the session page will look like for learners. This page shows information for each session in which the learner is enrolled. Click on the arrow icon in the session’s row, to see information about the location together with the map preview.
Duplicate the session	Make a copy of the session. In the right panel, type the name of the copied session and select how many duplicates you want to create. In order to select the repetition frequency, select the Set Sessions Frequency option and use the corresponding dropdown menus to select the frequency. Finally, set whether to copy session additional fields (remember that the enrollment additional fields are not duplicated). If there are mandatory session additional fields in the platform, the Additional Information tab becomes visible in the right panel. If you do not fill the additional data, you will not be able to duplicate the session. The duplicated session will be created with all of the details of the original session, except for the venue assignment (for on-site courses) and enrollments. Access the new session details page to assign a location and a classroom to it. If the duplication is carried out by a Power User, remember that the owner of the duplicated session is the Power User who duplicated the session and not the user who created the original session. The duplication of the events composing the session is carried out with a background job, and the time needed for the background job to be completed depends on the number of events in the session. For this reason, not all of the events of the duplicated session may be listed in the Sessions tab right after the duplication. Should this happen, refresh your page to monitor the events' duplication progress.
Send email to instructors	Send an email to all of the instructors of the session and to all of the instructors of the events composing it, or to a selection of them. When you select this option, a slideout panel will open for you to compose the message and select the sender and the recipients of the email. Under the message area, you will find a list of shortcodes that can be inserted into the message of the email, by copying and pasting them. If the events scheduled in the future have at least one instructor, you can restrict the email sending only to the active and the future events by selecting the corresponding option. This option is disabled when no instructor is assigned to the session, nor to the events composing it, or when none of the instructors has a valid email address.
Delete	Deletes the session.

From the Sessions tab, you can perform the same action for multiple sessions. Select them by checking the checkbox at the beginning of the session row and click on Choose action at the bottom right corner of the page to:

quickly assign instructors for all of the selected sessions
send an email to all of the instructors of the selected sessions and of their events. Unlike what happens when the action is performed for a single session, you cannot select individual instructors.
delete the selected sessions

Deleting a session

When a session is deleted, the events, the users’ data about the event attendance, and the session training material not also available in the Central repository are deleted too. The users in the session waiting list and those enrolled only in the selected session are unenrolled from the session and moved to the course waiting list, independently from their status in the session when it was deleted. The users who previously enrolled in the deleted session and also enrolled in any other session of the same course will not be moved to the course waiting list, and will keep their enrollments in the other sessions.

When deleting VILT (webinar) sessions, make sure you are deleting them directly in the platform, rather than in the external webinar tool.

Importing sessions and events via CSV

You can bulk import sessions and events via CSV files, speeding up the creation of sessions and events in your platform.

Notes on Adobe Connect V2

If you are integrating with Adobe Connect V2, when selecting Adobe Connect Meeting or Adobe Connect Seminar as Video conference tool, you can optionally select a template and a folder to it. If your event will be carried out on Adobe Connect Seminar, the template selection is optional, while the association to a room is mandatory. Find out more in the Adobe Connect article of our Knowledge Base. Because of a limitation in Adobe Seminar, it is not possible to create two seminar events that overlap in time. There must be a gap of at least 30 minutes between one seminar event and the other. If two seminar sessions overlap, both events will be created in the platform, but only the first-created event will be created in Adobe.

If you import webinar ILT events via CSV, the value of the sco-id attribute is available in Adobe Connect.

Moreover, an additional option is available among the Attendance Options. The option name is Mark the event as attended if the user spends at least % of the total time of the webinar in the webinar tool. Use this option to set a minimum percentage of time that users have to spend in the event in order to mark it as completed. The percentage is calculated on the event total duration.

When setting the minimum percentage of time, please consider that the event actual duration may be different from the estimated one, since it may start or finish before or after the estimated time. In order to avoid little delays impacting the event completion, we suggest not to set the percentage to 100%, but to keep it at 90-95% maximum.

When selecting the Mark the event as attended when the user joins the webinar attendance option, the percentage value set in this area will not be taken into consideration.

If you select the Mark the event as attended if the user accesses the recordings attendance option and the user accesses the webinar recordings, the event will be marked as completed upon accessing the recordings, even if the user did not attend the webinar or attended it without reaching the minimum attendance percentage.

When the Mark the event as attended if the user spends at least % of the total time of the webinar in the webinar tool option is selected, you can track the time spent by learners in Adobe Connect V2 session using the Webinar Tool Time in Session field in the new Custom Reports.

Notifications

If you want your users and managers to immediately know when certain events have occurred, make sure that the Notifications app is active in your platform, and that you have correctly created and configured the following notifications:

Notification	Description
ILT session changed	Triggers when changes are made to an ILT session’s date, time, location, or when the session Maximum Enrollment Quota value is changed in the Properties menu, Catalog Options tab. Depending on the selected target, it notifies users enrolled in the session, instructors enrolled in the course session/events, and Power Users who have visibility over the course (irrespective of whether they have visibility over users enrolled in the session or not) or all Superadmins.
ILT session deleted	Triggers when an ILT session is deleted by a Superadmin.
ILT session starting	Informs parties of when their ILT session is about to or already has begun.
New ILT session created	Triggers each time an ILT session is created by a Superadmin or Power User. It is sent to all users enrolled in the course. When selecting Users as recipients of this notification, use the Custom Selection option to filter the recipients by selecting only the users still not enrolled in any session of the course (but only enrolled in the course) and/or the users on the waiting list of at least one session of the same course. This selection prevents the sending of unnecessary notifications to the users already enrolled in a session of the same course.
User approved into ILT session	Notifies the audience that a user has been approved by a Superadmin for an ILT session. Users receive this notification when they are approved. Power Users must be assigned the course and the user to receive the notification.
User enrolled in ILT session	Notifies the audience when a user has been enrolled in an ILT session. Please note that this does not apply to self-enrollments requiring Admin approval.
User has failed ILT session	Triggers when a Superadmin or instructor fails a learner in an ILT session.
User has passed ILT session	Triggers when a Superadmin or instructor passes a learner in an ILT session.
User unenrolled from ILT session	Notifies the audience when a user has been unenrolled from an ILT session.
User waiting to be approved to an ILT session	Triggered when a user self-enrolls into an ILT session. The notification is always sent when the course enrollment policy is set to Admin approval, and when it is set to Free but the user is placed in the course waiting list because the session is full.
User was declined from an ILT session	Triggered when the Superadmin rejects the self-enrollment of the user in an ILT session.

Please Note! Users and managers will only receive the notifications if the Notification feature is active in the platform and if you, as the Superadmin, have properly set up the notifications listed above.

Docebo Help

How can we help?