SafetyNow sends out notifications for quite a number of events. You can take total control over this, however, and choose exactly what emails get sent out.

Note that not all users have the ability to edit notifications. 

To get started, go to the Application Switcher and click Admin. From there, click Account Management, then Notifications.

This will bring you to a screen showing you all of the notifications that SafetyNow sends out, along with a brief description. Let’s check out the overall settings first though.

Send Email Notifications [1] will allow you to turn on or off all emails that SafetyNow sends out. Clicking on More Settings [2] will allow you to change where the emails come from and who your learners will reply to:

The From Label can be anything, like a name, company name, etc. The Reply Address has to be a valid email address – anyone who replies to an automated SafetyNow email will send their reply to that address.

And that’s it! There are tons of settings on this page, so explore and let us know if you’re not sure what an email is.

Creating a course from scratch is the most common way people create courses, so let’s start there. First, head to the  Author section using the Application Switcher in the upper right. From there, click + New Course in the upper right. You’ll be brought to the below screen:

Let’s go over the basic options first, as labelled in the picture above:

1. The Add Content button, which will add a single slide. Clicking on the arrow on the right of this will bring up the following two options:
2. Add Question, which will let you write a quiz, and
3. Add Cover Slide, which will let you create a custom cover slide
4. Below that is the navigation pane. As you add content, each slide will show up here, and you can switch between them by clicking on them.
5. Turns on Retain. See the linked article for more info.
6. This will start a preview of the course, starting on the slide you’re looking at.
7. This button Duplicates the course
8. Click Publish Course when you’ve finished it completely.
9. Click the X in the upper right to exit the course. All your changes will automatically be saved.

Next, we’ll talk about creating basic slides using the below picture as reference:

1. Type in the title of each slide here
2. This is where you’ll type the content of the slide, as well as add images, videos, etc.
3. This will make the highlighted text either Bold or italics. If no text is highlighted, then this will affect the next thing you type instead.
4. Insert a hyperlink. You can link to any site, it doesn’t have to be in SafetyNow
5. Change highlighted text to Headers, with 1 being larger and 2 being slightly smaller. If no text is highlighted, then this will affect the next thing you type instead.
6. Add a bulleted or numbered list
7. Insert video, images, or audio. See this article for more details
8. Enable or disable comments for this particular slide.

Feel free to make as many slides as you want.

Embedding/Attaching Files

Course slides don’t have to be just text. They can include images, audio, or even video! We’ll cover the two main ways of adding this type of content: hosted elsewhere, or hosted directly on SafetyNow. Both are accessed from the same menu.

First, click the button highlighted below:

This will open up the below window:

If your content is hosted on your own servers or elsewhere, then simply paste the URL into the first box. Otherwise, you can upload your files directly into SafetyNow by clicking the blue link, or dragging them directly into the window.

The following file types are supported:

• Audio: MP3
• Video: AVI, FLV, MP4, MPG, MPEG, MKV, MOV
• Video URLs: YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia
• Images: GIF, JPG, JPEG, PNG, PSD, SVG

Each file can be up to 10GB.

You can also add attachments, which will allow your learners to download any files you wish them to. Below are the supported file types for attachments:

• Documents: DOC, DOCX, PDF, PUB, TXT
• Other: AI, CSV, ICS, JSON, ODS, ODT, PPT, PPTX, RTF, VCF, XLS, XLSX, ZIP

Code Blocks

A new feature of the course editor is the ability to show blocks of code. This can be useful for technical courses where you need to show HTML or other code and ensure that it looks very consistent.

To insert a code block, click the highlighted button below:

This will insert a grey line where you can type or paste the code you need to show. The font is fixed width, meaning that each character will take up the same amount of space, ideal for code. Any HTML or Java placed in a code block will also not be interpreted by the browser and instead be displayed directly.

Hitting Enter will make a new code block, while hitting Shift+Enter will lengthen the existing code block, as seen below:

Once you’re done entering code, simply click the same button in the toolbar again to exit code block mode.

So, you’ve created some slides for your course, and you’re ready to start adding quizzes. Let’s discuss a few key points before getting started.

First of all, every quiz counts towards the learner’s final score whether it’s in the middle or at the end. You can change the passing percentage after you’ve finished the course, however, and it defaults to 80%.

Secondly, quizzes by default will halt a learner’s progress until answered and prevent them from going backwards. This can also be changed with the “Open Book” option in course settings.

Finally, by default learners will see the correct answer to a question if they answer it incorrectly. This can be changed in the settings as well.

Alright, let’s get into the process of making a quiz. First, click the arrow to the right of Add Content, and click Add Question:

This will bring up a menu giving you the option of 7 different question types. First, let’s talk about what a Smart Quiz is.

Smart Quizzes

Smart Quizzes are a bit different from writing a typical quiz question. Instead of writing the actual question, you’ll instead provide the system with a vocabulary word, a fact, or an ordered list. SafetyNow will the generate multiple questions based on the information provided. These questions will be different for each learner, as well as each attempt on the course. They vary from True/False questions, fill in the blank questions, multiple choice questions, and more.

If you want to see what kind of questions each smart quiz will generate, click the eye in the upper right to preview the question. You can generate questions multiple times to get a feel for what the variety of questions are.

Let’s go through the types of Smart Quizzes one by one.

When you make a vocabulary quiz, you will write the definition of 2 or more words you want the learner to know. 3-4 is the ideal number so that the quiz pool is large, but not too bulky for you to write. Once you’ve provided this info, the system will generate a pool of questions challenging learners to match words with their correct definitions, fill in the blanks, or answer true/false questions.

Steps in a Process quizzes will ask you to lay out the order of a process. 3-5 steps is usually sufficient, but it can be as large as you want. The questions generated will have learners filling in blanks in the process, answering multiple choice questions about what step goes where, and more.

Factoids are a fun way of generating lots of questions with little information. First, you type in a fact that you want a learner to know. From there, you will type in “distractor words” to replace the various words in the fact you just typed. These words will then be used to create a pool of questions challenging learners to spot untrue facts, fill in the blanks, and more. Here’s an example:

As you can see above, we’ve generated distractor words for multiple words/phrases in the fact, which will generate a large pool of questions! Here’s an example question:

Traditional Quiz Questions

These questions are much more straight-forward. You will write a question, and the system will ask the learner just as you typed it. You do have the option of randomizing the order of answers, however. The traditional quiz types are Multiple Choice, Multiple Answer, Sorting, and Short Answer.

Multiple Choice and Multiple Answer are very similar – learners read a question, then choose either a single correct answer, or multiple correct answers. The order of answers can be randomized, although I suggest turning that off for True or False questions.

Sorting questions allow you to write out a process in its correct order. Those will subsequently be shuffled, and the learner will have to put them in the correct order.

Short Answer questions are slightly different in that they are not graded. The learner is presented with a question, and then types in their response. Those responses will be recorded in the Course Summary for you to see later.

Courses can be assigned individually, or they can be assigned to groups of people. Assigning courses to a group can be incredibly useful in building a curriculum. When you assign a course to a group, that assignment will “stick” and anyone added to the group will automatically get the course. This can be used to create a curriculum for different groups without having to assign the courses to each individual.

Before assigning courses to a group, you’ll have to create at least one group first.

There are two ways to assign courses to a group: by individual course, or through the groups menu.

Assigning individual courses

The first way is to pick a course, and then assign it to a group. Start by going to the Author tab from the Application Switcher and searching for the course you need. From there, click on the Groups tab, as pictured below:

Once on the Groups tab, click on the +Group button in the upper right.

This will open up a window allowing you to search for an existing group. Type in the beginning of the group name and it will automatically pop up below. Click on that group to add it. You’ll then decide a relevance by clicking on the dropdown on the right side. If you want them to take it, then change this to Required. Finally, click Save.

You can see these steps in order below:

And that’s it! Any time someone is added to the group, they will get the course you just assigned to that group.

Assigning through the Groups section

Instead of assigning individual courses to multiple groups, you can instead go to an individual group and assign courses that way.

To start, go to the Admin section under the Application Switcher. From there, click on Users & Permissions, and in the sub-menu that appears, click on Manage Groups.

In the list of groups that appears, click on the name of the group you want to assign courses to. From there, you’ll be brought to a page showing all the members of the group. To start assigning courses, click Relevant Content at the top. To assign a course, click +Content in the upper right.

In the new window that opens up, you can start adding courses, or any other type of content. Just type the beginning of the name to search, then click on the appropriate course. That will add the course to that group, just like if you’d gone to the course and added the group that way.

This view also allows you to see what’s already been assigned to the group in case you need to change it.

After assigning a course, you may need to change the due date, remove a learner from a course, or even pass a user for a certain course. Click any of the below links to jump straight to the section for the change you need to make:

1. Change the Due Date
2. Pass or Reset a learner
3. Set the completion Score
4. Change the expiration date
5. Remove a learner

Getting Started

To make any changes, you’ll need to find the course. First, go to the Author tab and search for the course you wish to preview. Once you find it, click the name of the course to be brought to the main course page. From there, click Learners.

You’ll see your list of learners, and from there you can start making changes.

Change the Due Date

To change the due date, simply click on the number of days due in the Due Date column, as pictured below:

Once you’ve clicked it, you’ll get two options: No due date and  Pick a date.

Clicking No due date will change it so the user won’t have any particular date that they need to take it by. They will not show up as overdue on reports, or get emails about being overdue.

Clicking Pick a date will let you pick a specific date on a calendar. The new due date will show up once you have chosen a particular date.

This will only apply to the single user you clicked, so if you need to make more changes, you’ll need to do it for each learner individually.

Pass or Reset a learner

If a learner has not completed a course, you can manually pass them. This will set their status to Complete and use today’s date as the passing date. To do so, click the circle in the progress column for a user who has not passed the course yet, as pictured below:

Once you click the circle, just click the option to “Mark Complete.”

You can also reset a learner back to the beginning of a course, if they are in progress or have completed it. To do so, click the partially filled circle or check mark for a user (pictured below), and then click Reset Progress.

If a learner was in progress, then they will have to take the course from the beginning. If they had completed it, it will remove their certificate and they’ll have to complete it again.

Set the Completion Score

In the screenshot above, you can see that the SafetyNow account passed the course with 100% on the quizzes. You can change this simply by clicking the score and typing in a new number. It’s as simple as that!

Change the Expiration Date

Not all courses expire, so this may not apply to you. If your course is set to expire, you can change the date to whatever you want it to be. To do so, just click the expiration date in the Expires column, pictured below:

This will bring up a calendar where you can choose a new expiration date.

Remove a Learner

If a learner is required to take a course, i.e. they did not sign up for it themselves, and they have not completed it yet, you can remove their enrollment. This is as simple as clicking the X in the final column, as pictured below: