Mzinga Program Best Practices

1. Mzinga Program Best Practices Client Logo

2. Program - Best Practices

3. Introduction/Improvements – Best Practices • A couple of upfront Mzinga Improvements: • Adding in a fail safe so admins cannot re-publish the last published program until the version transition completes • There will be a message at the top of the Program Versions screen saying, “A new version is currently being processed for this program. When processing is complete the versioning feature will become available.” • The “Make a New Version” option will also be removed from the Program Versions screen until the Version Transition is complete • October 1st, 2014 released to CHA Test • There are also some queuing improvements being made to the system to improve the version transition speeds • Improvements on October release and a full re-right on the January 2015 release

4. Program - Best Practices

5. Planning - Best Practices • Planning • Ask a few simple questions • Is this Program about the resources, courses, events, etc. • Is the Program about timing? Done by date xx/xx/xxxx • If there is a date, what are all the dates, assigned, completed by, is there a grace period • What learning resources are in this program and do they need any special consideration

6. Planning - Best Practices • Planning Questions Answered • Is this Program about the resources, courses, events, etc.? • Most Programs should be Status driven which makes them about the resources • For example, users need to complete course 101 and event 101 and they are complete • Remember a Status Driven program can be changed to a Date Driven Program • A Date Driven can NEVER be changed to a Status Driven

7. Planning - Best Practices • Planning Questions Answered • For the 2 below questions – Do a timeline • Is the Program about timing? Done by date xx/xx/xxxx • If there is a date, what are all the dates, assigned, completed by, is there a grace period • Do a timeline for date driven to assure the timing is correct for the expected outcome • If this is a yearly item, make sure it’s set up for renewal • A basic Program based on the calendar-year can be found at the: Mzinga CXC

8. Planning - Best Practices • Planning Questions Answered • What learning resources are in this program and do they need any special consideration? • Know the material inside the Program to assure the correct outcome for the user • Are there any courses with assessments? • Events in the Program • This can be an issue if they are not updated after user complete in a Date Driven Program

9. Planning - Best Practices • Planning Questions Answered • Questions so far?

10. Program - Best Practices

11. Date Driven- Best Practices • Date Driven Program • Use Date Driven Programs when the dates are what determines the users progression through the program • Start with a Status Driven if there is at all a question about the type of Program needed • A Date Driven can NEVER become a Status Driven Program • A Status Driven can be change to a Date Driven • Do a Timeline if you are doing a Date Driven • Know the resources and any dates associated to them in the Program • Date Driven Program are system intensive for Publishing and re-publishing • Know the Methods (1 and 2) before re-publishing

12. Date Driven- Best Practices • Date Driven Program • Know the Methods (1 and 2) before re-publishing • What are the two re-publishing methods? • Method 1: Ignore completed users. • By using Method 1, any user in a completed status will renew on the newly published version, however, any user still in progress with the program must complete any newly added requirements to complete the program. • Method 2: Validation completion for all users associated to the current program version. • All students are reprocessed no matter what their status is and they all need to complete the newly added resource(s)

13. Program - Best Practices

14. Status Driven- Best Practices • Status Driven Program • Always Start with a Status Driven if there is at all a question about the type of Program needed • WHY? • A Status Driven can be changed to a Date Driven • A Date Driven can NEVER become a Status Driven Program • Know the resources and any dates associated to them in the Program • Status Driven Program are system intensive publishing and re-publishing • Know the Methods (1 or 2) before re-publishing

15. Status Driven- Best Practices • Status Driven Program • What are the two re-publishing methods again? • Method 1: Ignore completed users. • By using Method 1, any user in a completed status will renew on the newly published version, however, any user still in progress with the program must complete any newly added requirements to complete the program. • Method 2: Validation completion for all users associated to the current program version. • All students are reprocessed no matter what their status is and they all need to complete the newly added resource(s)

16. Program - Best Practices

17. Common Pitfalls - Best Practices • Program Common Pitfalls • Starting with a Date Driven Program • Why do we not start with a Date Driven Program? • A Date Driven can NEVER become a Status Driven Program • A Status Driven can be changed to a Date Driven • Not knowing the Methods (1 or 2) before re-publishing • Always using Method 2 • This is a much longer process because it needs to do all users associated to the program

18. Common Pitfalls - Best Practices • Program Common Pitfalls • Not knowing the impact on the system • For Example, there is a Program with 1000 users and 10 resources that needs to be republished • Admin creates a new version and hits publish and uses Method 2, takes a total of about two (2) minutes for the admin to complete this task • Do we know the impact of this action?

19. Common Pitfalls - Best Practices • Program Common Pitfalls • The Impact • On the backend, there are 10 or 12 processes that need to take place for each of the users on each of the program resources • Items like course and event statuses, dates, date ranges, user statuses for each of the resources etc. • Just for the ease of math, let say there are 10 checks for each user and for each resource • That means we have 10,000 rows processing in the queue • Then for each user there is also a check for letters, yes or no a letter needs to go out for the resources. There are about 100 letters in the system that need to be checked

20. Common Pitfalls - Best Practices • Program Common Pitfalls • The Impact Continues • That adds another 100 checks to each of the 10,000 processes so we have 1,000,000 rows queued for this one program • Lets say there are 5 hospitals that are doing the same type of republishing today, that’s 5,000,000 (Five Million) rows that were added to the Mzinga backend and all it took was 2 minutes for 5 admins • In Addition, lets keep in mind that CHA has approximately 4746 active Programs that have 724,488 active registrations associated to them

21. Common Pitfalls - Best Practices • Program Common Pitfalls • Additional Impacts • One of the things that the Mzinga engineers have noticed, Thursdays seem to be the highest traffic days • Maybe spreading out the days items are being published would help speed the queuing processes • Think about off peak publishing hours • Or at least when half the users are off line • East and West coast time of day

22. Common Pitfalls - Best Practices • Program Common Pitfalls • Other Impacts • At any given time CHA can have 30,000 to 50,000 users logged into the application taking courses, registering for courses and events and just using the application. • This will also have an impact on how fast publishing and republishing programs • Again consider the time of day when publishing • East and West coast times

23. Program - Best Practices

24. Methods of Publishing - Best Practices • Methods of Publishing • Method 1 Ignore completed users • Students who are in a Completed Status are not processed • By using Method 1, any user in a completed status will renew on the newly published version, however, any user still in progress with the program must complete any newly added requirements to complete the program. • Method 2 Validation completion for all users associated to the current program version. • All students are reprocessed no matter what their status is and they all need to complete the newly added resource(s)

25. Q&A

26. Thank You!