Tuesday, March 1st, 2011
Early morning Tuesday February 22 we released some major layout revisions to the login, training and coach interfaces. An exciting day for us initially as it culminated a few months of new designs and development. We intended to follow this with our standard blog update on the revisions, but unfortunately the day took a tragic turn with the second Christchurch earthquake. So as we reflect on the events of the last week we now have an opportunity to grasp back some sense of normality and look into detail at what has changed for the RedSeed application. There are key functional and layout updates to all three interfaces as well as a series of enhancements, bug fixes and minor revisions that have been included in this and recent releases. We will go through the main updates first with the general revisions & fixes below.
Login
If you login to RedSeed via the standard redseed.me link you will notice a change in the banner and location of the login form. We’ve switched from a wide top banner to a small left aligned style. The primary function of logging in has not changed however, use your email/username and password to login and then choose which course/mode you require depending on your account type.
Training View
The same banner revisions and layout tweaks as applied to the login are in place in the training view now. The primary function of the training view is unchanged (PREVIOUS / NEXT to navigate through course and course structure navigation in the left side bar). There are some functional additions however that are worth noting:
HELP SECTION
New set of help videos (was previously just a single long overview video), now we have separate videos for help on such aspects as ‘Username/Password’, ‘Logging In’, ‘Interface’, ‘Doing the Training’, ‘Final Exam’ and ‘Summary’. The help window can be opened via the HELP link located just beside LOGOUT in the upper right of the now standard grey navigation bar. Once the help window is open just click on the left side menu link for the video of interest and then play. The small x in the top of the help video title bar will close this window and return you back to the training view.
MY ACCOUNT
The ‘Manage My Account’ option is still in place and is accessed via the ‘MY ACCOUNT’ link in the top navigation bar. Previously this form displayed in the main training window. It now pops up in a window like the help area above. You can now edit your First & Last name in addition to the already up-dateable email/username, password and video preference setting. You will also find detail in this pop up about the level (i.e. store/region) your account is assigned to, your assigned coach and also the training courses you are currently enrolled in.
COACH & ADMIN MODE SWITCH
If you have been assigned access to the coaching area (perhaps you are a marking manager for someone or need access to reporting) you will now find an option from within training to switch into ‘Coach and Admin’ mode. This avoids the need to logout and login again into the area and hopefully will mean as a manager you can login just once, do any training you need to and switch across to coaching mode for any marking assignments or other associated tasks. To switch from Training mode into Coach mode use the ‘COACHING & ADMIN’ link in the top navigation bar. Note: if you are not assigned this access then you will not see this link. If you think you should have access to this functionality please contact your HR or Manager as they should have access to set this up for you.
TRAINING COURSE SWITCH
If you are enrolled in more than one course you can now switch between these without logging out and back into RedSeed (much like the Coach & Admin Mode Switch above). If you hover your mouse pointer over the TRAINING link in the top nav bar, a list of your enrolled courses should appear below this link. Click on any of these courses to switch. Note: if you have been working on answers in a course it is important you first save those answers by using either the PREVIOUS or NEXT buttons (as usual moving through the course saves your current answers), before switching into another training course. This feature (like access to RESOURCES, MY ACCOUNT etc) is not available when you are in exam mode – to exit exam mode you must either complete the exam session or abandon if required by logging out.
Coach & Admin View
LAYOUT UPDATES
Just like the login and training views we have revised the layout in the Coaching & Admin interface. The new top navigation bar is in place like the training view. You can use this to Logout, view the Help area and also access the new features described below:
TRAINING SWITCH
As with the option (for those with appropriate access) to switch from Training view to Coach & Admin view, you can now go straight to your training courses while in Coach & Admin mode. The new TRAINING link will appear on the top navigation bar if you are enrolled in any training courses. If you hover the mouse over this link a drop down list of courses will appear, click on a course to switch into training mode. Note: if you have been working on anything within coaching mode (in particular marking a workbook question etc) finish that task before switching modes.
MY ACCOUNT
The training mode has always had the option to edit you Account details directly and while this was potentially possible via the Coach & Admin mode, access to this was a bit obscure (i.e. find your own name in a General User List report and click to open your record, then Edit Details). Now this is much simpler to do with the same MY ACCOUNT link appearing on the top navigation bar. Click this and a pop up will appear with your details to check off and/or update.
BREADCRUMB TRAIL
The main dashboard view is quite similar to the previous version with the Course List and Summary in the upper level and REGION/STORE/USER lists in the bottom level. However we’ve made some changes to what happens when you click on lower level regions or stores to regain some screen real estate. Previously if you clicked down through various levels (i.e. North Island, Auckland, Central City Store etc) you would get a link bar in the top section of the dashboard for each level you go through. We have now moved to a breadcrumb style display that appears all in that top bar. So in the example above instead of 3 bars appearing for each of the levels you will now see NORTH ISLAND > AUCKLAND > CENTRAL CITY STORE in the top bar). Each of these levels are individual links so you can back directly to a certain level, just like previously. In the instance where there is no space along that top bar for all the levels there it should show you top and and closest levels (above and below) just as normal pagination might appear on a standard web page.
PERMISSIONS OPTIONS
Previously the RedSeed Coaching & Admin permissions were effectively limited to HR and Manager user account types and the ability to Issue Certificates. We have now further enhanced this model and can set up specific permissions for both HR and Manager account types relating to the following key options:
Access to Add a New User
Access to Edit a User
Access to Certificates
Access to Add Manager Users or only Trainee Users
The configuration of these permissions is still loaded directly in the RedSeed Application by us. So if you would like to lock down these functions or revise your company permissions please contact us directly for this change. Look forward however to future releases that will add onto this set of options and in time enable the management of these access privileges to specific user accounts within the Coaching & Admin interface.
General Revisions & Bug Fixes
The Training Status CSV (all in one) report now differentiates those who have passed the exam and those who are at the exam stage. For those who have passed the exam a (Completed) description will be added to the Session Name in the Session column.
When a workbook is submitted for marking a popup message will be displayed to explain that any answers in the workbook are in ‘read only’ mode until that marking is completed and released. When logging into a training course where the workbook is still locked for marking this message will also pop up to remind the trainee of this fact. This is in response to the confusion caused by the ability to add answers into training while marking mode was still in process.
In the Coach & Admin mode a specific scenario was triggering a bug where a training session was skipped ahead a session. This was mostly related to switching marking modes via the left side Todays Action list. A fix has been released that will force any marking assignment switches to go via a users details page to prevent this recurrence.
The internet browser Chrome was having grief with some of the javascript style and formatting features we use – an exception for this browser has now been implemented.
Older versions of Internet Explorer were having problems with downloadable pdf files (i.e. Exam result and Workbook pdfs) which resulted in a forced log out/log in scenario. We’ve changed these downloads to open in a new browser window which doesn’t appear to affect the logged in session for Internet Explorer in our tests.
Some further custom client certificate templates have been released over the last few months.
Fixes for formatting bugs in the dashboard lower view.
