Learning campaigns

How to use our new learning campaign feature

Robert Shough avatar
Written by Robert Shough
Updated this week

What are learning campaigns?

Learning campaigns are the way in which learning content is assigned to your people in CybSafe.

With Learning campaigns you can:

  1. Define distinct campaigns with specific goals. Decide whether completing the campaign will earn the CybSafe certificate

  2. Choose which modules you want to include in your campaign and whether they are mandatory or not. Your people will see these modules on their Learning page as usual.

  3. Define your audience based on specific criteria - e.g. who’s recently failed a phishing sim?

  4. Schedule the campaign for any point in time - and the parameters for it ending or restarting.

CybSafe offers you two ways of setting up a campaign. To start go to Guide -> Learning -> Learning campaigns and select "Create Campaign". You will then see two options:

  • Create campaign: define your own content and audience that will go into a learning campaign.

  • Choose a template: select from a number of pre-made campaigns CybSafe has created for you, with modules grouped by theme and topic.

option to create a cybsafe learning campaign from scratch or choose from a template

How to create a learning campaign

If you wish to setup a campaign with content and an audience defined by you then select "create campaign" and follow the below steps.

Step 1: Configuration

  • Choose a name for your campaign. This will only be visible to admins.

  • CybSafe certificate: You can designate if a campaign should award a certificate upon completion.

Step 2: Audience

  • This functions like nudges and alerts. Use dynamic filters to define who'll be enrolled in the campaign and be assigned the modules. You can see an estimate of how many people are involved below.

  • You can add as many filters to an audience as you wish. You can also choose if the audience must match all rules or only any of the ones chosen.

  • If the audience filters are left blank, then all uploaded users will be added as the audience.

Step 3: Choose your content

  • Select content from our entire module library to include in the campaign.

  • Choose whether modules are mandatory or optional.

    • Mandatory modules will record progress and be required to complete the campaign.

    • Optional modules will be shown separately and will not be accounted for in progress by default, unless they start them.

Step 4: Schedule your campaign

  • On this page, you can schedule your learning campaigns. There are two types of end dates campaigns: custom and continuous.

  • Custom end date campaigns have a distinct start and end date. They will only run between the dates and times specified.

    • At the end of the campaign, progress will no longer be tracked. Completion rates for any campaign, even for those that have finished, can be viewed in the campaign reports page.

  • Continuous campaigns don't have a defined end date. Instead you'll be asked to specify:

    • A completion deadline, which is a time period you'd like users to complete the campaign within after they enrol. This will influence 'campaign notifications', which have now replaced what we previously termed 'learning reminders'.

    • When to reset progress. This gives you the option to force people to retake the campaign again after a given period. There are three options for this:

      • Each year after the campaign started.

      • Each year after the campaign was completed by a given person.

      • Each year after a given person joined the organisation (proxied to when they were added to CybSafe).

Step 5: Notifications (New)

This step allows you to set up automated notifications for users in the campaign. For more information on these, please see the separate article here. This is the same functionality as before, however it is now part of the flow for an improved experience.

Step 6: Review

  • Check you're happy with everything and click create to set up your campaign.

  • If anything doesn't look right - you can use the links to return to the relevant sections to make amendments.

What happens next?

Once your campaign starts, enrolled users will see modules appear in their Learning page and to do list.

They'll be reminded to complete them by CybSafe's out-of-the-box notifications (if enabled), or your own nudges on supported platforms (if you've elected to set them up).

Statuses:

Scheduled

Once a campaign is configured, it will be available in the list of campaigns. Assuming it doesn’t start immediately, it will appear as 'scheduled' status. At this point it can be deactivated or edited to an admins content. People won’t be able to see any effect of the campaign, nor will it affect progress.

Started

When a campaign starts, those in scope at that time gain access to modules. Any associated nudges etc. will fire and people's overall progress will be adjusted accordingly. As people complete modules, their progress is recorded and visible in 'learning reports'. Upon completing all modules each person is issued with a certificate if relevant, and/or sent a congratulatory nudge.

When a campaign has started, it’s still possible for an admin to change any aspect of a campaign (save for removing modules), however anyone who has already started the campaign already won’t be affected by these changes, only those who enter it, or who have had progress reset will.

Ended

If and when a campaign ends, your people will lose access to the modules and can no longer contribute to progress. If someone didn’t complete the campaign on time, then they’ll be registered as 'not complete'. In future iterations it is envisaged that an ‘overdue’ process will be implemented to kick in at this point. This would continue to provide access to enable someone to complete, however progress would be recorded separately.

Continuous campaigns & resetting

If the campaign is a continuous campaign, upon completion, the progress of a person will remain complete until they are next reset. Upon a reset they will return to zero progress on that campaign and be required to take the modules again.

You can reset based on:

  • When someone started the campaign.

  • When someone finished the campaign.

  • When someone joined CybSafe.

Edge cases

  1. Overlap in campaigns

    If two campaigns are running at the same time, the person will be enrolled in both. If these campaigns target some of the same modules, then they’ll only be required to do the module once. Completion will count towards both campaigns.

  2. The grace period

    The grace period is a safety net for administrators in order to prevent someone from having to do a module again, within a specific period of time. This is set at the customer level. For example - if someone completed a particular module for campaign 1 on the 1st January, but was then assigned campaign 2 with the same module included on the 1st February (with the the grace period was 90 days), they wouldn’t have to do it again in campaign 2. If the grace period was only set to 10 days, then they would.

  3. Enrolment rules

    Campaigns are actively enrolling for the whole time they run.

    If someone didn’t qualify at the start of a campaign, but later qualifies, they’ll be enrolled automatically in the campaign within 2 hours, so long as they haven’t already been enrolled previously.

    Once someone is assigned a campaign, by default they will stay in it until the end even if they’re no longer eligible - unless you chooses otherwise (there is a learning setting for this).

Changing campaigns that are already live

Can I change my learning campaign after it has started?


Yes, you can now make the following changes to your learning campaigns:

  • Change the name, certificate status, reset methods and completion deadlines

  • Change the end-date or make it continuous

  • Flip modules between optional or mandatory

You can also make the following changes in a limited capacity

  • Add additional modules to the campaign

  • Added modules will only be assigned when the user is next eligible for the campaign, which means when they enter it for the first time, or their progress on it is reset.

  • Change audience for the campaign

  • Users will only be removed from the campaign if the audience is changed, if they are set to do so via learning settings.

You will not be able to:

  • Change the start date for the campaign after it has started (goes without saying)

  • Remove modules from the campaign - this is non trivial in terms of working out progress

Please note: any changes you make to learning campaigns will not be effective immediately, changes will usually reflect within an hour.


Migrating to Learning campaigns

If you are still assigning content to your people via group management, you will need to migrate to our Learning campaigns by mid January 2024.

Find out how to migrate in our article, Migrating to learning v2: what to expect.


Still have questions?

If you still have questions, you can contact the CybSafe team via support@cybsafe.com. We’re on hand to help resolve any further issues!

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