Online course functionality is not available for Starter level plans.
More and more services are moving online, and the pet world is no exception! Online courses provide you with the opportunity to reach a much larger audience and give your in-person clients bonus materials that they can access any time, anywhere.
In this guide we will take a look at some basic information about online content in BusyPaws:
If you're looking to learn about how to develop your course content, see our Creating & Editing Lessons help guide. To explore the ins and outs of building your online course structure, check out our Building & Managing Courses article. To look at how clients can gain access to your course content, see our article on Viewing & Interacting With Your Courses.
What is a Course?
In BusyPaws, online content is set up under Courses. Those courses can then be accessed by your clients through their membership subscriptions. This format allows you to create supplemental material for your existing services or build a new online courses that are available to customers that may not be able to meet with you in person.
Courses are broken down into units, which are further split into lessons.
For more information on building courses and adding content to lessons, check out our help guides on Creating & Editing Lessons and Building & Managing Courses.
Courses Dashboard
The Courses Dashboard gives you access to all of your current courses and allows you to create new ones. This page can be accessed easily by selecting the "Courses" icon in the left-hand menu bar.
The main page is split into two sections: the Most Recent Activity card and the Courses, Lessons, and Members tabs.
Once you have set up at least one membership, the Most Recent Activity section will display your recent customer subscription history. Every time a customer subscribes to one of your memberships, their name and membership type will be displayed on this feed. Selecting the name of any client listed here will take you to their Customer Profile page.
This section also displays any messages left for you and your team by customers that have access to your course content. Each message will be displayed with the name of the client that sent it as well as the lesson and course from which it was sent. The message will also have a "Reply in Thread" button. For more information on client course messages, check out the Customer Messages section of our guide on Viewing and Interacting with Your Courses.
As you begin configuring your courses, you will be able to use the tabs on your Courses Dashboard to navigate through and manage your existing course content. The "Courses" tab displays the names of your existing courses along with the number of units and lessons each contains. Selecting any course's name will take you to its info page.
The "Lessons" tab contains all of the lessons you have created that are not currently assigned to a course. It's important to note that each lesson can only be included in a single course, so this list will not include lessons that are already a part of any of your courses. Every available lesson will be listed with its name and checkmarks to indicate whether it contains video and/or text content. Selecting a lesson's name will take you to its info page.
Finally, the Members tab displays a full list of your clients' membership subscriptions. Clients are listed with their name, all of their current and previous membership subscriptions, their course progress, and the number of lessons they have completed. Selecting a customer's name will take you to their profile page.
Checking Course Statistics
Selecting a course's name where it is listed on your Course Dashboard will open its information page.
There you will be able to see the course's basic structure and content. That page also has the Course Statistics card, which displays some basic information about how the course and its content is being accessed by your customers.
Membership Groups | A full list of the memberships to which the course is currently assigned. These memberships give subscribed clients access to the course content. |
Total Memberships | A total count of client membership subscriptions that have given access to the course. This count includes all active, inactive, and paused membership subscriptions. |
Active Memberships | A count of active client membership subscriptions that are allowing access to the course. Note that to view a course a client must have an active subscription to an assigned membership and the course must be published. |
Course Completion | The total rate of course completion for all clients that currently or have previously had access to the course. This value is determined by taking the average of each client's course completion.
i.e. Three clients have access. One client is at 100%, another is at 75%, and the other is at 20%. The Course Completion value will therefore be 65% overall. |
Lesson Comments | The total number of comments received from customers on lessons included in the course. |
Important Notes on Courses
As you start getting your courses set up, there are a few important notes to keep in mind.
Courses must be published and assigned to at least one membership to be accessible to your clients. Only those clients with an active subscription to a membership that includes the course will have access to its content.
Removing a lesson from a course will not delete its content, nor will deleting a course or unit that contains the lesson. Lessons that are removed from courses/units are simply moved back to the available lessons list. They can then be assigned to another course unit.
Comments on lessons are visible only to your team and the client that sent the message. You may choose whether or not you wish to enable comments within a course.
Once a customer has gained access to a course, however briefly, that course will remain listed on their customer profile. Even if the customer loses access to the course in their customer portal account, their course progress will remain on their profile for you and your team to reference. To confirm whether or not a client still has access to a course, you can either check their membership subscription status or log into their client portal account from their profile page.
Now that you know a bit more about courses, you're ready to begin building them for your clients! To learn more specifics about courses and course content, check out our other help articles:
To take a closer look at what courses look like from your clients' end of things, check out our guide on Viewing and Interacting With Your Courses.
Note as well that since courses are accessed through memberships, you will need to have at least one membership set up before any of your clients will be able to make use of your online course content. For more information, check out the articles available in the Memberships subsection under Building Your Service Offerings in our Help Centre.