Courses for people who are already with you
Overview
Courses do two different jobs, and it is worth naming them separately.
During onboarding, a course is a gate: something somebody passes before they start. For people who are already active, a course is an offer: something to go deeper with, or to stay current with.
This article is about the second job. It is for administrators deciding what to offer once somebody is already contributing.
1. The same builder, a different job
The builder is identical, so there is nothing new to learn. What changes is who you point it at and why.
If you need to know how to build a course chapter by chapter, that is covered by the onboarding material. Here the question is not how but what to offer, and to whom.
2. What an optional course is usually for
Four patterns cover almost everything organizations actually build:
- Depth in a role somebody already does, so they can take on more.
- Cross-training into a second role, which makes your schedule easier to fill. This one quietly pays for itself, because the person who can cover two roles is the person who saves a shift from going unfilled.
- An annual refresher for a certification that expires.
- Background on your cause, for people who want it, with no obligation for people who do not.
3. Who should see it?
You rarely want every course visible to everybody. Restrict a course and only people who meet your conditions will find it.
The conditions are the same family used across Vome:
- Active in the database
- Finished a specific sequence
- Assigned to an opportunity, or to specific opportunities
- Age
- Linked to a site
- Profile tags, matching any, all, or none of the tags you pick
They combine with AND, so each one you add narrows the audience.
The most useful condition here is usually assigned to an opportunity. An advanced course for your kitchen team is genuinely confusing to somebody who drives deliveries, and gating it on the role means the offer only reaches people it could apply to.
4. Attention: an unrestricted optional course is noise for most people
A required course can be unrestricted, because everybody has to do it and its relevance is not in question.
An optional one is different. If you offer everything to everybody, your course list becomes a wall that people scroll past, and the specialist course you actually wanted somebody to take is buried in it.
So the default for an optional course should be a condition, not an open door. Ask who this is genuinely for, and set that as the rule.
5. Expiry and renewal
A course can expire, which is what you want for compliance training that has to be redone.
You choose how the clock runs:
- From completion, so each person's expiry is dated from when they finished. This is the usual choice for certifications.
- From start, dated from when they began.
- A fixed date, the same for everybody. Right when a policy year ends on a set date regardless of who trained when.
Two things make this genuinely useful rather than just a deadline:
You can point people at a shorter renewal course instead of the full original. Somebody renewing their food handling certificate does not need the introduction again, and being made to sit through it is how renewal turns into a chore people avoid.
You can warn them before the expiry date rather than after it. Turn on expiry notifications and set how many days of lead time. Telling somebody their certification lapsed last week is an administrative problem you created; telling them it lapses in thirty days is a reminder they can act on.
6. Which should I offer?
- Optional depth. Courses people can take if they want to, with nothing riding on it.
- Recurring refreshers. Certifications that expire and have to be renewed on a schedule.
- Both. Optional courses to go deeper, plus required renewals for anything that expires.
- Neither, for now. Keep courses for onboarding only. You can add this later without rebuilding anything, which is the point worth remembering: this is not a decision you have to get right before you launch.
If you are unsure, start with a renewal. It has a real deadline attached, so it is the one where the tooling saves you actual work rather than just offering a nice option.
Summary
- A course is a gate during onboarding and an offer afterwards. Same builder, different job.
- Optional courses usually mean depth, cross-training, refreshers, or background on your cause.
- Cross-training makes your schedule easier to fill, which is the most underrated reason to build one.
- Restrict a course with the standard conditions. Gating on opportunity assignment is usually the most useful.
- An unrestricted optional course is noise. Decide who it is for.
- Expiry runs from completion, from start, or on a fixed date.
- Point renewals at a shorter renewal course, and warn people before the expiry date.
- You can add all of this later without rebuilding your onboarding courses.