Documents

With Training Provider you can keep a register of all documents - those stored on your computer system, and those on your shelves.

In order to allow viewing of a document throughout your network you can record a file name and location. This allows the document to be opened via a hyperlink.

As part of your quality control, you can keep information about each document version and about each controlled copy.

Contacts and Meetings

Record details of past and future contacts (ie communications such as phone calls) and meetings.

Get reminders of future contacts and meetings.

Marketing

You can set up any number of Mailing Lists, and assign any number of recipients to each. You can then use the export facilities to prepare data for use with the mail-merge features of Microsoft Word and similar programs.

You can record details of Advertisements.

When you record enquiries about your services (via the Contacts form), you can tag an enquiry as generated by a particular Mailout and/or Advertisement.

People and Organisations

All the usual contact details of people and organisations are provided for - street and postal address, phone, fax, email, etc. For people you can also record personal details like date of birth and emergency contacts.

Staff

Training Provider delivers all the tools you need to manage the training, competency and certification of your staff and contractors.

You can:

• follow a complete process - from skill profiling and gap analysis through to training program development and monitoring;
• or take a simple approach and just schedule training and assessment events and record the outcomes of these;
• or start simple and then steadily extend into other areas as your needs and expertise grow.

Details of each Qualification and each Statement of Attainment achieved by an employee can be recorded. They are then included on a report which summarises all training activity for a selected employee.

Licences (eg a driving licence or a machine operator's licence) and permits (eg a hotwork permit or a confined space permit) can be recorded - together with the relevant periods of validity. Reminders can be generated automatically prior to expiry.

Many reports are available - both for the training manager and for staff members.

Training Provider also gives you many general-purpose Human Resource management features - such as ongoing employment records, staff review scheduling, health monitoring, and more. If you have an existing HR system these parts of the program can be ignored but, if not, then these are added benefits.

Presenters and Assessors

For each training course presenter and competency assessor, details can be recorded of the courses they are approved to deliver, and the competencies they are approved to assess.

These approvals can be for specified periods of time. Reminders can be logged to review or extend the approvals at the appropriate dates.

Utilities are provided to help locate a suitable presenter or assessor (eg based on recorded approvals). You can also readily check their existing schedule of activity before assigning them to a new event.

Clients and Trainees

The people that you train may come to you as individuals paying their own way, or their employer may be paying for their attendance. Full details of employers (including the training co-ordinator and the accounting co-ordinator) can be recorded.

Training Provider allows you to treat the individual or the employer as the client. When a client is an organisation, it can have multiple accounts. This allows learning records to be grouped to suit the needs of the client. eg A large mining company might want you to group records into Exploration, Operations and Administration. To achieve this you can create three Accounts for this client - then each attendance of one of their employees is associated with the relevant account.

A viewer is provided for examining the activity of a particular client or account. This is useful if they are on the phone to you enquiring about past or scheduled bookings and you need a concise overview.

Trainee Licences and Permits

Ensuring that trainees have the appropriate licence or permit before commencing a particular phase of training or assessment may be important in relation to ensuring their health and safety.

Each licence and permit held by a trainee (such as drivers licence, first aid certificate, site access permit, hotwork permit, confined spaces permit, etc) can be recorded in Training Provider.

For each licence or permit held you can record the periods of validity - and specify a date at which to generate a reminder to obtain an extension (and specify the person to be reminded). All reminders are displayed in the integrated task viewer.

Trainee Enrolments

Enrolments are for use in situations where a student enrols with you to undertake a complete qualification or accredited course that involves a number of units of competency, or modules. A complete program can be set out with scheduled dates. The actual dates are recorded as study commences and modules or units are completed, and outcomes are recorded as they arise.

Electronic reporting to state training authorities is sourced from the Enrolment records in accordance with the relevant specifications. Training Provider currently handles this for WA only but the program has been structured to allow other states to be added, and for the changes that occur from year to year (or from one AVETMISS version to another) to be handled with ease.

On the very first occasion that Training Provider was used to submit an electronic report in WA, the submission was approved by the state training department - thanks to extensive checks built into the software which advise the user of data-entry errors before the electronic files for submission can be generated.

Training and Assessment Events

If you conduct courses or competency assessments that are independent of the type of Enrolments described above, these parts of Training Provider are for you. A single training event (referred to as a scheduled course) can be recorded, together with the people attending, the presenter(s) delivering the training, the resource(s) and venue(s) used, and of course ultimately the results for each attendee.

Scheduled competency assessments can be associated with scheduled courses, or stand independently. This is useful if you conduct assessment-only events for employers. eg People undertake training, go back to the workplace to gain experience and then, some time later, you visit the workplace to undertake assessments.

Many viewers and reports are available to assist your management of these events, the people that attend them, and the presenters and assessors that run them.

For instance, there are:

• viewers that summarise the activity of trainees, presenters and assessors;
• viewers to check the usage and availability of resources and venues;
• reports which summarise past or future training and assessment events (ie event schedules);
• reports which present all the details of a single selected event;
• attendance sheets for individual events - which can be marked off as participants arrive;
• reports which summarise all training, assessment and certification records of a trainee.

Qualifications and Statements of Attainment

Details of each Qualification and each Statement of Attainment achieved by a trainee can be recorded.

They can be included on a report which summarises all training activity for a selected person.

If you are authorised to issue Qualifications and Statements of Attainment, Training Provider can print them (in an AQTF compliant format) straight onto your certificate stock (so you can choose your headers, borders, logos, etc).

Venues and Resources

Details of all available venues (eg a training room) and resources (eg a data projector) can be kept - whether they be your own or those available to you by hire or lease.

Bookings can be recorded - and overlapping bookings are prevented.

A utility is provided to help locate a suitable venue for a new event - based on type, location and/or current bookings.

For each resource you can record the venues at which it can be made available.

The common expenses associated with using each venue and resource can be recorded.

Tasks and Reminders

Reminders can be logged at many places within Training Provider.

Examples include reminders about:

• a contact/enquiry follow-up;
• a forthcoming meeting;
• follow-up actions from a training or assessment event;
• expiry of a period of approval for a presenter to deliver a particular course;
• a forthcoming audit;
• follow-up actions from an audit;
• expiry of a licence or permit;
• expiry of a loan period for a controlled copy of a document;
• a review of a staff member;
• a venue booking; etc.

Each reminder can be associated with a particular person who is to ensure that the reminder is acted upon. Each user can configure Training Provider to automatically display reminders when the program is started each morning. A task should never be overlooked again!

When reminders are displayed in the Actions and Reminders Viewer, or in printed reports, they can be limited to:

• tasks due today, or in any specified period;
• tasks to be completed by a particular person;
• tasks of a particular type (eg contact follow-ups); or
• a combination of these.

Like all reports within Training Provider, the Actions and Reminders report can be emailed - so it could be emailed to the person responsible for reminders that have not been acted on by the due date.

Audits

You can record past or future audits, and information arising from them - including details of any follow-up actions required.

Reminders can be automatically generated about forthcoming audits and then about any follow-up actions.

Email

When bookings for scheduled courses or competency assessments are made or changed (eg someone changes from wait-listed to booked), a booking confirmation can automatically be emailed.

In addition, all reports in Training Provider can be emailed. So, for instance, you could:

• email a report summarising outstanding tasks to a member of staff; or
• email details of a forthcoming training event to the presenter; etc.

Security

To get into any Training Provider data you need a valid logon name and password (assuming that a password has been set).

The system administrator can create individual logon names but it is also possible for users to share one if required.

In addition to simply controlling logon there are a number of security levels in Training Provider which can be used to limit access to various areas of the data. eg You might restrict access to staff member's details for instance, or allow certain users to only read (rather than also write) this data.

Installing the Training Provider data file on a secure server and assigning appropriate file access permissions via the server operating system can enhance the security provided via MS-Access.