Learner Onboarding is designed to streamline the online enrolment and onboarding process by enabling the creation, updating, and completion of forms directly within your aXcelerate account.
Administrators can track form completion through the enrolment dashboard, and increase completed enrolments by simplifying enrolment forms to gather only essential data.
Once enrolled, learners can provide additional details via the Learner Portal before starting their course. This process ensures mandatory fields are completed before learners can access their course, redirecting them to incomplete forms if necessary, thereby simplifying reporting and ensuring all required information is collected efficiently.
Key benefits include:
- Fewer Incomplete Applications: Reduce the size and complexity of your enrolment forms by removing optional fields and collecting on.
- Streamlined Enrolment Process: Simplify the enrolment and onboarding process by allowing forms to be created, managed and completed directly within the aXcelerate system.
- Improved Data Management and Compliance Reporting: After logging into the Learner Portal, Learners are automatically prompted to finish any incomplete forms before accessing their course, ensuring learners have provided the right information.
Note: Access to the Form Builder will require the user to have the Form Builder and General Settings permissions enabled against their user. The Enrolments Dashboard permission will be required for users to view the Enrolments - All section within the Form Builder.
Tip: We recommend reading our Tailoring Your Online Enrolments to Suit Learner Onboarding Help Article for tips on using Learner Onboarding with Online Enrolments.
Learner Onboarding Pricing
While forms can be created and previewed for free, the ability to publish and use forms is a billable addition to your aXcelerate subscription. To discuss pricing please reach out to our Sales Team for a personalised quote.
Learner Onboarding Overview
To access Learner Onboarding hover over the Settings cog, then select Form Builder.
The Form Builder contains four sections; Forms, Custom Fields, Portfolio Setup and Enrolments.
Forms: Where new forms can be created and existing forms can be viewed and updated.
Custom Fields: Custom fields allow you to create and manage fields to capture additional data such as allergies or dietary requirements. For more information please see the Custom Fields help article.
Portfolio Types: Can be used to create groups to sort and store documentation Learners may need to upload as part of their enrolment process. Items uploaded to a portfolio step will be available in the Portfolio section of the Contact profile. For more information please see the Contact Portfolio help article.
Portfolio Checklists: Create Portfolio Checklists to define the documentation a learner must provide during their enrolment. Items uploaded as part of a portfolio checklist will be available within the Contact’s Portfolio under the linked category.
Enrolments: A dashboard where form enrolment submissions can be viewed. This data includes in-progress and completed enrolments, the onboarding status of the enrolled learners, and the form used. Data can be filtered to display enrolments that meet certain criteria such as enrolments completed within a date range or onboarding status.
Onboarding Form Elements
Name
Description
Steps
A step acts as a container and holds sections and fields within the form. You may choose to build your form using one or multiple steps, depending on how you want to segregate your form fields. For example, one step may contain contact details and another may contain information related to prior schooling.
Sections
A step must contain at least one section.
Form Elements
Form elements can be added to your form to collect the information your organisation requires for a learner to enrol. The different elements are:
Fields - are pre-built with standard details and include information such as Contact Details, Nationality, Schooling, Signatures and more.
Custom fields - can be created to collect information that is not already available within fields. Custom fields can be linked to several specific areas within the system.
Portfolio - fields will allow you to collect required documentation such as certificates or licenses during enrolment. Portfolio fields are by default mandatory although may be made optional. A Portfolio Checklist can be added, if there is a set number of documents a Learner must provide to proceed with their enrolment.a
Welcome & Completion Message
The Welcome & Completion Message will allow you to add a welcome message that is visible at the beginning of the form and a completion message that will be shown once Learners have completed the form. These messages are optional.
Creating a new Onboarding Form
Settings
- Hover over Settings, select Form Builder then select Forms
- Select + New, add a name to the form and select Create
- Select an Icon, add a Step Title, and then a Section Title. Each step must have at least one section, although you may choose to add additional sections within a step by selecting the Add Section button
- Add Form Elements by expanding the Fields, then drag them into position within the form. By default fields are mandatory, however, they can be made optional by hovering over the field and enabling the ‘optional’ flag
- Fields can be reordered by selecting the field, then dragging it to the desired location and then dropping the field in place
- Once all fields have been added to the current step, if required, select + Add Step to create a new step and repeat the above steps until all steps and fields required have been added to the form
- Select Welcome & Completion Message to add a welcome message or completion message. If these fields are left blank these sections will not be visible to the Learner
- Select Preview to view the form as a Learner would when trying to enrol
- Once your form is complete, select Publish. Once published a form may be linked to a qualification or class and learners can begin enrolling
Note: A form can contain a maximum of 10 Steps, while each Step can contain a maximum of 10 sections.
Tip: The logo that appears alongside the Welcome Message when the Learner accesses the form is drawn from your system’s Learner Portal settings, specifically the Light and Dark Logo images.
Editing a published Onboarding Form
Settings
- Hover over Settings, select Form Builder then select Forms
- Locate then select the form you with to update
- Select Edit Form
- Make the required changes, then select Publish
The updated form will now be available for Learners to complete.
Note: Learners who’ve already completed the form won’t be affected, while those still completing it will be prompted to use the updated form once published.
Linking an Onboarding Form
Setting the default form against the Qualification is considered best practice as once applied, this default will automatically set against any new courses created against the qualification.
Tip: Workshop types will inherit the default form set against the linked Qualification.
To link at the Qualification level:
- Navigate to the Qualification update page for the appropriate course
- Scroll to the Default onboarding form field and select the published form from the dropdown
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and select Submit to save your changes
To link at the class level:
- Navigate to Classes and locate the qualification you want to edit
- Select the pencil icon to the right of the Class you will link your form to
- Scroll to the Onboarding form field and select the published form from the dropdown
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and select Update Class to save your changes
To remove or update the linked form:
- Navigate to the relevant update page (steps 1 and 2 from above)
- Locate the Onboarding form field and select the ‘x’ to the right of the current form
- Select the new form from the dropdown
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and select Submit to save your changes
Learner Onboarding Form Capture
Form Capture allows you to record the information a learner provides when completing their Onboarding form. After an Onboarding form is completed, a Portfolio Item will be created against the Leaner’s contact record with a PDF file attached containing the form information. This includes any custom fields that have been added to your Learner Onboarding forms.
Form Capture for Learner Onboarding is enabled by setting a Portfolio Type for the completed PDF to be stored against.
To set the Form Capture Portfolio Type, navigate to the Learner Portal & App settings section of your System Settings, then scroll down to the Learner Onboarding section and select the Portfolio Type from the dropdown. Select Save Leaner Portal & App settings to save this change.
Parent/Guardian signature
The following conditions need to be met for these fields to become linked within your Onboarding Form:
- The DOB and Parent/Guardian signature fields must be in separate steps.
- The step containing the DOB field must be before the step containing the Parent/Signature field. (This doesn’t need to be directly in order, other steps may be added in between, provided the DOB step is before the signature step.)
- The DOB field must be mandatory for the conditional formatting to occur. If the DOB field is optional, all learners will see the Parent/Guardian signature field, instead of just those who are underage.
Note: If the above conditions are not met, the optional/mandatory settings against the individual fields will be followed.
Learner Onboarding Payment Step
A Payment step can be added to your Onboarding form to allow payment to be taken within aXcelerate, as part of the onboarding process. This will require a learner to pay any linked invoices issued against the enrolment prior to accessing their course materials.
The following conditions must be met for the payment step to detect an invoice or invoices requiring payment within your Onboarding Form:
- The payment step must be included within the form.
- The invoice or invoices must be linked to the same enrolment as the onboarding form.
- The invoice or invoices must be created prior to the learner accessing the onboarding form.
- The invoice or invoices must have a balance to be paid, if a $0 invoice is generated then this will not prevent the learner from accessing their course.
Note: If the above conditions are not met, the learner will be able to submit the onboarding form and access their course without making payment.
Tip: If a form has been published and had enrolments recorded, the payment step cannot be added and a new form would need to be created to include the payment step.
Payment Scenario recommendations
It is important to take into consideration how you are billing your learners when making the decision to take payments through Learner Onboarding. We have included several recommendations below based on common scenarios:
Holding classes: If your organisation is using holding classes it is important to plan if you require payment upon enrolment into the holding class, or if you plan to take payment when the student is enrolled into the class they will complete their enrolment.
If your holding class does not require a payment upon enrolment, we would recommend that the Onboarding form payment step is applied to the class enrolment where the invoice will be raised as this will ensure the student must pay the raised invoice prior to accessing their course.
Payment plans: The payment step will check for invoices raised against the enrolment, where there is a remaining balance. Depending on the frequency of your payment plan instalments this may mean that the learner will have no invoices issued prior to accessing the learner portal meaning they would not be required to make any payment prior to accessing their course or they may have multiple invoices linked to the enrolment, which would all require payment prior to accessing the course.
Conversely if only one invoice has been raised prior to the learner commencing their course, they would only need to pay the singular invoice to access their course. Failure to pay additional invoices generated after they have completed the Onboarding form would not prevent further access and this would need to be actioned manually.
If using payment plans, we would recommend taking payment when the learner enrols, either by including a payment step within your Wordpress plugin, or creating an invoice as a part of your enrolment API call.
Third-party payment: The payment step within an onboarding form requires the learner to make full payment prior to submitting the onboarding form or accessing their course and does not allow for an invoice to be issued to a third party or employer for payment.
At this time we would recommend that courses allowing for invoicing or third party payments are processed as part of the enrolment process either by including a payment step within your Wordpress plugin, or creating an invoice as a part of your enrolment API call.
Manual enrolments: If a manual enrolment is being created the invoice will need to be raised and issued prior as part of the enrolment. If this step is skipped, the learner will be able to progress through their onboarding form and access their course without providing a payment. When taking payment using the onboarding form payment step it is important to confirm the invoice has been issued against the enrolment to ensure the learner is required to complete payment as part of their onboarding form submission.
View Onboarding progression
A learner’s form progression can be viewed from the class matrix, individual enrolment level or the Learner Onboarding dashboard.
Forms have four statuses and will progress through these in order:
- Not Started
- In-progress
- Complete
- + Enrol
To view progress at a class level navigate to the relevant class and update the View field to show Onboarding. The status will be available to the right of the learner’s name.
To view progress for an individual enrolment navigate to the contact and select the enrolment in question. The current status will be visible in the Qualification details and Units of Competency Status section under Onboarding.
Note: A form submission may be reset by selecting the reverse icon or deleted by selecting the bin icon to the right of the form status.
To view from the Learner Onboarding dashboard navigate to the Form Builder and select Enrolments- All. Enrolments can be filtered to show only those that meet specific criteria using the tabs.
Learner Onboarding Reports
A learner’s form progression can be also be viewed through the Class Enrolments- Warehoused report by applying the Form Submission Status filter and Display Field. The filter can be used to view results with a particular status such as Not Started and the display field can be included to view that data within the generated report.
Note: Additional reporting functionality is planned as a future improvement.
Completing a form as a Learner
If a Learner is enrolled into an Onboarding form, this will appear within their current activities tab as part of their class enrolment.
The welcome message will be displayed and the Learner will be able to select Let’s go to begin.
The learner will then progress through the form, completing all required fields. If a payment step is present, the learner will see any invoices that have been issued for their enrolment.
Select pay to view the invoice, and save a copy if required. To pay the invoice, the learner will select Pay Now, which will redirect to the payment gateway where the student will complete their payment.
Once the learner has submitted their payment and answered all required questions, they will then be able to select Save in the bottom right corner to save their responses and submit the completed form.
Once submitted the learner can then access their course and begin their learning.
The learner is able to leave the form at any time by navigating away from the tab or selecting the Exit button in the top left of the form.
Learner Onboarding F.A.Q
What user permissions are required to use Learner Onboarding?
The Form Builder and General Settings permissions are required to access Learner Onboarding and the Form Builder. Additionally, the Enrolment - Add and Enrolment - Update permissions will be required for a user to update a Learner's Form enrolment. This is because the form enrolment is part of the Learner's overall class enrolment.
Will a returning learner be required to fill out all of their details again?
If a learner has previously submitted an Onboarding Form, any existing fields will be pre-filled with that data. The learner would only need to complete any new fields or update existing fields if the information has changed since their last submission.
Can I archive a form if it is no longer in use?
A published form can be archived by navigating to the Form section within the Form builder and then selecting the three dots to the right of the form you wish to archive. Select Archive to archive the form.
Can I update a form once it has been published?
If a form has been published but has not received any submissions, it can be edited by selecting ‘Revert to draft.’If a form has been published and has received submissions you will instead need to select ‘Edit Form'.
How do I enrol existing students into the onboarding form after adding the form to an existing class?
Select the Enrol option to the right of the student's name to enrol them.
Can I delete an individual learner’s form enrolment?
Can I customise the Form Capture Template?