• Assigned Personnel
• Overdue Personnel
• Personnel Due in 30 Days
• Personnel Due in 60 Days

Now you can add overdue or assigned personnel to a class session all at once.

This can be used in several situations. For example:

• A change has been made to a procedure, and all personnel who have been assigned the procedure must attend a training session: Select “Assigned Personnel” to add them all to the class session.
• A training class is held quarterly and you need to prioritize enrollment for overdue personnel: Select “Overdue Personnel” on the enrollments window, and then add more students as needed.
• All Overdue personnel have been enrolled, and there’s still room for more: Select “Personnel Due in 30 Days” or “Personnel Due in 60 Days” to add more personnel who will be due for retraining soon.

• Training Manager User Guide (html)
• Training Manager User Guide (pdf)

Many of you contacted us and requested an option to define a “grace period” for new hires in order to give them a reasonable amount of time to complete the training before it would appear “Overdue” on the status reports. I’m happy to announce that this option is now available in the current version of Training Manager.

Now you may set the “Initial Training Due Date” when adding an Assignment as shown in this example:

As you can see, the initial training is due “By Hire Date + 30 Days”. The training status for the first 30 days will no longer appear as “Overdue”. Instead, it will appear as “Untrained” if it hasn’t been completed during the first 30 days. This lets you know that the training is required, but it is still within the grace period. The status will change to “Overdue” if it hasn’t been completed after 30 days, otherwise, it will change to “Up to date” after it has been completed.

We hope this feature will help to make the status reports more useful for your organization. Thanks to everyone who provided the feedback leading up to this enhancement.

Requirements:

The list of courses should be in a comma-separated-values format (.csv). If you have the list in MS Excel, you can use the Save-As function to save the file as a .csv file. A .csv file can be opened in MS Excel, or in Notepad. For example, here is a sample listing of 2 courses in .csv format and displayed as text:

Sample Data:

CourseTitle,CourseNumber,CourseCategory,DefaultLocation
Introduction To Customer Service,CS101,Internal,Training Room #1
Advanced Customer Service,CS400,Internal,Training Room #2

The field delimiter is a comma. If your course information contains commas in the actual field values, you will need to use a text qualifier as shown below:

CourseTitle,CourseNumber,CourseCategory,DefaultLocation
“Customer Service, Introduction”,”CS101″,”Internal”,”Training Room #1″
“Customer Service, Advanced”,”CS400″,”Internal”,”Training Room #2″

Note that in the above example, a comma appears in the CourseTitle field. In order to include this data in the import and prevent the program from seeing the comma as the separation before the next field, quotation marks are placed around the field values.

Testing:

You may run a test import by copying the example data above and pasting it into an empty notepad file. Save the file with the extension .csv on the end, and then import the data using the menu option Tools –> Import –> Courses.

Can I upgrade to a server database and copy the data from my existing database to the new one so I don’t lose my existing work and have to enter it again?

Yes – the basic process is to create a backup file of your local database before the switch over, and then restore it to your new server database. Here are the specific steps:

1. Backup your local database (menu option: File –> Backup). This will create a compressed backup file containing your data.
2. Install and configure the remote database server. For instructions, select the link for your product near the top of the follwing page: Database Server Setup Instructions
3. Install the network edition of the software on your computer.
4. Connect to the remote database server (menu option: Tools –> Database Connection)
5. Restore your local database backup copy to the server (menu option: File –> Restore). Select the backup file that you created in Step 1, and then click the Restore button.
6. You can then install the network edition on additional user’s computers and connect them to the remote database server (Step 4).

Note: if you are currently licensed for a standalone version of the software only, you will need to purchase an upgrade license key to continue adding new data to the server database. For a link to purchase the upgrade license, contact us through the Support page on our website at www.kzsoftware.com. Let us know which edition you are upgrading from, and we will provide you with a link to purchase an upgrade license.

You may create assignments on the Assignments tab which will set required training for individuals based on the criteria you have chosen.  There are three types of Assignments which you may create on the Assignments tab: Group, Job, and Individual. When a user has been assigned a course, it is “required”, and it will show up on their status report as either “Overdue” or “Up to date”.

Group Assignments

If you create a Group assignment, it will be automatically assigned to everyone in the chosen group.  When new people are added to the group, they will also have that assignment automatically set up for them.  You may also choose “All Groups” if you have an assignment which you want to be added for everyone.

Job Assignments:

Job Assignments are similar to Group assignments, except that they are applied to everyone within a particular Job Role rather than people within a particular organizational group.

Individual Assignments:

You may use Individual assignments for one-off specific requirements.

More Details:

When a course is Assigned, the status will be “Overdue” until it has been completed per the criteria in the Assignment. The Assignments mean that the Course is absolutely “Required”. The Status for a Required course will not be “Up To Date” until it has been completed. For example, if a course is required every year, but it has never been taken, or it has not been taken within the past 12 months, then it will be “Overdue”. If it has been taken at any time within the past 12 months, then the status will be “Up To Date”.

The Overdue and Upcoming Status report displays all records that are either Overdue or with an expiration date within the next X days. Scheduling a Class Session within X days will not have an impact on the Status. The only way for the status to change to “Up To Date” is to complete the course. For example, consider these cases:

Case 1:

• Assignment: Course required once / year.
• Current Date (example): 4/1/2009
• Last completed: 1/1/2008
• Expiration Date: 1/1/2009
• Status: This course is “Overdue” because the expiration date is in the past (1/1/2009).

If you add a “Completed” training record before the expiration date, the status will then be “Up To Date”, and the new Expiration Date will be set for 1 year after the new completion date.

Case 2:

• Assignment: Course required once/year.
• Current Date: 4/1/2009
• Last Completed: 1/1/2009
• Expiration Date: 1/1/2010
• Status: This course is “Up To Date” because it was last completed on 1/1/2009, and it doesn’t expire until 1/1/2010.

If you have set the report filter to only show courses with an expiration date within 30 days, this record will not be included on the report (because the expiration date is more than 30 days away).

If you have set the filter to show courses with an expiration date within 365 days, this record WILL be included on the report (because the expiration date is within 365 days). However, the status remains “Up To Date” because the expiration date has not yet passed.

Here are the steps to install the software on a PC without internet access:

1. Check whether .NET 2 is already installed – look for an entry “Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0″ in the Add/Remove programs list in Windows. If it is missing, use a computer that is connected to the internet, and download it to your removable media using the following link: Download .NET 2
2. Download the setup file from our website to a cd, flash drive, etc, by right-clicking on the download link for the Edition you need, and then selecting ‘save target as’ to download the setup file.
3. Copy the files from your removable media to the computer that doesn’t have internet access.
4. Run the .NET installation first, and then run the software installation.

The Standard Edition of Training Manager is a standalone version designed to run on a single computer.  It is intended for departments or organizations where one individual is responsible for training records tracking.  This version cannot be networked or shared by multiple people.

Training Manager Enterprise Edition:

The Enterprise Edition of Training Manager is designed to run over a network.  In this version, the database resides on a shared network computer accessible to all the workstations on the network.  This version allows for an unlimited number of computers to connect to and use Training Manager, sharing the data located on the central database. 

License Details:

The cost for either edition is a 1 time fee for the current version of the software.  You are not required to pay an ongoing monthly or yearly fee to continue using the software.

Your purchase provides you with a license key which will work in the current version of the software without limitation. Your purchase also provides you with free minor updates as they become available. Major upgrades may incur a 50% upgrade charge after one year; however, you are never required to upgrade, so you may continue to use the current version as long as you want at no additional charge.