How do I run orientation and training sessions?

Overview

Almost every onboarding process has a session in it. There are three ways to run one, and they differ mostly in how much administrative work they cost you.

This article is for administrators adding an orientation or training session to a sequence.

1. When is a description-only step enough?

When the session is not shift based.

The dedicated Training and Orientation step types carry a title, a description and attachments. They can tell someone a session exists and what to expect. They cannot show when it runs, and nobody can take a spot from inside them.

Keep them for a session you schedule by hand, an external session, or one you confirm and mark complete yourself.

2. How do I make the session a real, bookable thing?

Put it on your schedule, which means it needs an opportunity.

Create one called Orientation, or Training, and publish each session inside it as a shift. Each shift carries the date, the start and end time, and the number of seats in the room. The sessions now have capacity, they fill up, and attendance is tracked exactly like any other shift.

3. Route one: how do people sign up inside the step?

The step becomes the sign-up, so there is nothing to click out to and nothing to come back from.

Create the Orientation or Training opportunity and publish each session inside it as a shift.
Add a Fillable form step to the sequence, and build its form with a Shift calendar section showing that opportunity.
The person opens the step, picks a session, reserves it and submits.

Their reservation and their step completion happen in the same action, so nobody has to be told to go and sign up somewhere else. The sequence stays the only place they have to look.

4. Route two: how do people sign up on the opportunity page?

The step points them at the session opportunity's own landing page.

Create the Orientation or Training opportunity and publish its sessions as shifts.
On that opportunity's recruitment workflow, turn on auto-approve, so registering approves them instead of queueing a request for you.
Point the step at that opportunity's landing page.
They register, are approved a moment later, and reserve the session they want.

Because the page is a public door, people outside this sequence can use it too.

5. Which two approvals get confused here?

These two sound alike and do very different things.

Auto-approve on an opportunity approves someone for the opportunity behind the shift they actually reserved.
Auto-assign opportunities on a form approves them for every opportunity you selected, on submission, whatever they reserved.

Sessions want the first one. The second is for approving someone for the roles they applied for, and reaching for it here would approve people for a session they never booked.

6. Which route should I take?

Prefer the in-step calendar.

It is fewer clicks, and nobody gets lost between two pages. Reach for the landing page route when the same session is also open to people outside this sequence, because an opportunity page is a public door and a sequence step is not.

Either way the session ends up as a shift with attendance against it, so the record that someone actually turned up is the same record you get for every other shift. That matters later, when you need to prove who is trained.

Summary

The Training and Orientation step types are description only. They cannot show dates or take sign-ups.
To make a session bookable, create an Orientation or Training opportunity and publish each session as a shift.
Route one puts a Shift calendar inside a Fillable form step, so reserving and completing happen in one action.
Route two points the step at the opportunity landing page with auto-approve turned on.
Auto-approve on an opportunity is not the same as auto-assign opportunities on a form. Sessions want the first.
Prefer the in-step calendar unless the session is also open to people outside the sequence.

Running orientation and training sessions on Vome