Speakers: Roster, Workflows and Tasks

Your organization's speakers in one place: everyone you have worked with, the workflows they work through and, with the Speaker Coordination add-on, their tasks and your decisions across every course.

Find them under Organization Settings → Speakers. The section has up to five pages:

• Roster: every speaker your organization has used. Every organization has it.
• Workflows: the steps speakers work through for a course. Needs the Speaker Coordination add-on.
• Agreement Templates: the documents your Agreement Signing tasks send. Needs the add-on.
• Tasks: every speaker task across your courses. Needs the add-on.
• Decision History: every approval and change request on your speakers' work. Needs the add-on.

Without the add-on, the section is the Roster alone.

You see the Speakers section if you have the Organization Administrator or Lecture Speakers permission. Each module's own speakers are on its Speakers page (on the classic pages, the course's Speakers tab).

Speaker Coordination

Speaker Coordination is the add-on for speaker work: workflows, tasks, reviews, reminders and your say over which speakers build their own live audience questions. Everything else about speakers is free.

	Every organization	With Speaker Coordination
Roster, and adding speakers to modules	Yes	Yes
Local and connected speakers, invites, Speaker Portal	Yes	Yes
Speaker profiles, and your overrides	Yes	Yes
The course's live questions link and Audience Polling quizzes	Yes	Yes
Sharing quiz and audience poll results with speakers	Yes	Yes
Connected speakers build their own live audience questions under Speaker Portal	Every connected speaker	Only those a Live Audience Questions task asks
The course's speaker workflow, tasks and one-off tasks	No	Yes
Reviews and Request Changes	No	Yes
Task reminders	No	Yes
Overdue alerts: a daily email to staff of the tasks speakers missed	No	Yes
The Tasks report and Decision History	No	Yes

To add it, contact support@lecturepanda.com.

When the add-on is turned on

Your organization gets a Standard speaker workflow, copied from the starter workflow, and new courses start with it as the workflow their new speakers get. Nobody is emailed or given tasks yet: a course whose connected speakers haven't started their tasks says so on its speaker workflow line, with Give Them Their Tasks.

If the add-on is turned off

Connected speakers stay connected, and your overrides stay. Tasks are kept, but hidden from you and your speakers, and no reminders go out. They come back as they were if the add-on is turned on again. Your speakers still see the course under Speaker Portal, without tasks.

Local and connected speakers

Every speaker on your roster is one of two kinds:

• Local speaker: details your organization typed in and keeps for itself. You can edit every field. A local speaker has no tasks and nothing to sign in to. Typing an email address never links a local speaker to anyone's account or to another organization's speaker. Within your organization, the same address finds the speaker already on your roster.
• Connected speaker: someone who accepted your invite. They keep their own speaker profile (name, title, bio and photo) through their own LecturePanda account, and every organization they speak for shows that same profile. You can't edit it, but you can show your own wording with an override.

Each speaker shows a Local or Connected label, and Invited while a local speaker's invite waits for them. On a course, a speaker you added before this update shows an orange Legacy label instead of Local until you send them an invite. They keep their old speaker link until they accept it, and their row on the module's Speakers page (on the classic pages, the course's Speakers tab) offers Copy speaker link and Email speaker link until then (see Links sent before).

A local speaker becomes connected only by accepting your invite. Accepting is their consent to link their account to your organization. If they already keep a speaker profile because they speak for another organization, your roster entry moves onto that profile, and your typed-in copy of their details is retired. Their page then says that they manage their own profile.

Invites are sent from a module's Speakers page (on the classic pages, the course's Speakers tab).

Roster

The Roster lists every speaker your organization has used, as a table with two columns:

• Speaker: their photo (or initials), name, title and email, as your organization shows them. Click the name to open their page, which lists their courses.
• Status, at the right: their Local or Connected label, and Invited while a local speaker's invite waits.

The roster shows 25 speakers a page, in name order. Below the table, Showing 26–50 of 120 says where you are, and Previous and Next move between pages.

Search with the box at the top. Type the start of a name, of any word in it, or of an email address: jan or smi finds Jane Smith, and so does jane.smith@. A new search starts again from the first page.

Nobody is added from the roster itself. A speaker joins your roster the first time you add them to a course, from a module's Speakers page (on the classic pages, the course's Speakers tab); that is also where you invite them.

A speaker's page

Click a speaker's name to open their page:

• Profile: their profile as learners see it, the same view as on a course's speaker page: their photo, name, title and bio, with their label and email above the bio.
  • For a local speaker, Edit opens the speaker form with Name, Title, Speaker Photo and Speaker Bio. Click Save Speaker. The change shows on all your courses. Their email address isn't edited here.
  • For a connected speaker, the profile is theirs, shown with any overrides you have set. Edit Overrides opens them (see Overrides).
• Organization onboarding: with the add-on, a connected speaker's onboarding tasks with your organization, which you review here. The section shows while the onboarding is unfinished and goes once it is done; their signed agreements stay under Signed agreements.
• Signed agreements: with the add-on, every agreement the speaker has signed with your organization, newest first: each signing task's signed rounds, on any course or in their onboarding, so you can find them later without opening each course. Each row names the agreement template and the task, where it was signed (the course, or Organization onboarding) and when, with Download signed copy and Download certificate. Only agreements: files and quiz questions stay on their tasks.
• Courses: their upcoming courses, each with its date. Each course's name opens the speaker's page on that course.
• History: their Past courses, and the Decisions you made on their work.

Back, in the button bar at the foot of the page, returns to the roster.

Overrides

A connected speaker's profile is their own, but you can still choose how your organization shows them. An override is your organization's own wording for one field of their profile: their name, title, bio or photo.

To set one, click Edit Overrides in the Profile section of the speaker's page, on the roster or on a module's Speakers page (on the classic pages, the course's Speakers tab):

1. Edit Overrides lists Name, Title, Bio and Photo, each showing the speaker's own value.
2. Turn on the switch for a field (for example Override title). An editable copy of their value appears, with their own value under it, after On their profile:.
3. Type your organization's wording, then click Save Speaker.

To clear an override, turn its switch off and click Save Speaker. Your pages go back to the speaker's own value.

Good to know:

• Only your organization sees it. An override shows on your course pages, certificates and emails. Other organizations keep showing the speaker's own profile.
• The speaker can see it. Their profile tells them which fields your organization shows its own way, for example State Pharmacy Association shows your title as "Chief Pharmacist".
• Profile changes aren't reviewed. When a connected speaker edits their own profile, the change shows on your pages at once, except in the fields you override. Overrides are how you control what your organization shows.

Workflows

Needs the Speaker Coordination add-on.

A workflow is your organization's ordered set of steps that a speaker works through on a course: sign an agreement, send a bio, upload slides for each session, and so on. Every speaker on a course has their own workflow, picked when they are added and changeable on their page; the course's Speaker workflow is the one new speakers start with: see The course's speaker workflow.

Workflows lists your organization's workflows in a table. Each row shows the workflow's name, how many steps and tasks it has, and how many courses and speakers use it, for example 2 steps · 5 tasks · Used by 3 courses · 12 speakers. Click Edit on a row to open the workflow and see its steps.

The workflow new courses start with is marked Default: it becomes a new course's Speaker workflow, which in turn is preselected for each speaker added to that course. To change it, click Make Default on another row. Courses already set up keep theirs.

Organization Onboarding

The page has two parts, each with its heading. Above the Workflows sits your Organization Onboarding: the one workflow each connected speaker works through once for your organization, not once per course, which is why there is only one. Until you set it up, the section is a blank dashed card reading Set Up Organization Onboarding; click it to start from the starter onboarding or blank. Once set up, the onboarding shows as a row like the workflows, with its steps and tasks, how many speakers have it and how many are still onboarding. A connected speaker starts it when they accept your invite or are added to a course; a speaker whose workflow is No tasks on every course of yours still to come is not asked to onboard. Edit opens it. The red delete button on the right, Turn Off Organization Onboarding, turns it off after a confirm: speakers stop getting onboarding tasks, their unfinished onboarding tasks are removed (files they sent are kept), and finished ones stay in their history.

Starting a workflow

Click New Workflow in the button bar at the foot of the page, then choose:

• Start from a starter workflow (Standard speaker): the editor opens with the starter's steps in, unsaved. Change anything you like. Once you save it, it is your organization's own, and editing it never changes the starter.
• Start blank.

The Standard speaker starter has two steps:

• Before the course, once, due 14 days before the speaker's first module: Update your bio and headshot.
• For each module, repeated for each module the speaker speaks in, due 14 days before that module: Upload your slides, Write quiz questions and Learning objectives (a Form from the Learning objectives preset), all reviewed.

It has no live audience questions task. With the add-on, speakers build live audience questions only when a task asks for them: add a Live Audience Questions task to a step that repeats for each module, such as For each module, if you want them to.

Steps and tasks

A workflow is made of steps. A step is a group of tasks with one due date. For example, Step 2: For each module, due 14 days before each module.

1. Enter a Workflow name.
2. Click Add step. Under Due, choose when it is due: a number of days before or after the start, on the day itself, or No due date.
3. Give it a Step name (optional). Without one, it is called Step 2, and so on.
4. Decide whether it repeats:
   • Repeat for each module off: Each speaker gets these tasks once for the whole course, due from the start of their first module.
   • Repeat for each module on: Each speaker gets these tasks once for every module they speak in, each due from that module's start.
5. To hold the step until the one before it is finished, tick Starts after the step before is approved. See Starts after the step before is approved.
6. Click Add task in the step. Fill in the task's Title, Instructions for the speaker, Task Type, Priority, any Attachments, Needs review and reminders, then click Add task.
7. Add more steps and tasks the same way, then click Save.

The task types:

• File Upload: the speaker uploads one or more files.
• Live Audience Questions: the speaker builds their live audience questions for the module, on the task. Saving at least one question finishes the task. It goes only in a step that repeats for each module: a step that happens once doesn't offer it, and a step holding one can't stop repeating. Live audience questions are per module; put them in a step that repeats for each module.
• Quiz Questions: the speaker writes questions of any type, for you to copy into one of the course's quizzes.
• Agreement Signing: pick the Agreement template it sends. Only templates that aren't drafts are listed. On a template your organization countersigns, choose Who countersigns. Then, for each field, choose Who fills it. With No template: the speaker clicks Complete, the speaker marks the task complete.
• Form: you write the questions as fields, and the speaker answers them on the task. See Form fields.
• Custom: the speaker marks the task complete.

Needs review means your organization approves the work before the task is done. It is on by default for File Upload, Quiz Questions and Form, and you can turn it on or off for any task.

Drag steps and tasks by their handles to reorder them. Drag a task onto another step to move it there, or use Move to step…. The order on screen is the order speakers see. Due dates are worked out from each module's start, in the course's own time zone.

Steps are a guide, unless you make one wait

Speakers see the steps in order, and their current step is the first one with something left to do. They can still finish a later step early, unless it starts after the step before is approved.

Form fields

A Form task asks the speaker questions you write, each one a field: a disclosure, their learning objectives, a confirmation that they read what you sent. Choose Form as the Task Type, and build the questions under Form fields.

While the form has no fields, Start from offers Blank or a ready-made set of fields to edit:

• Learning objectives: one list, Learning objectives, one objective per line. You can add the answers straight onto one of the course's credits when you review the task: see Approve and Add to Credit.
• Conflict-of-interest disclosure: a yes or no question on financial relationships with ineligible companies, a Details box for the company and the relationship, a tick box confirming the disclosure is complete and accurate, and a date.
• Read and acknowledge: one tick box, I received and reviewed these materials. Put the materials in the task's Attachments, and the speaker confirms they read them.

Click Add field for each question of your own. For each field, choose its Type, write its Label (the question) and, if you like, Help text shown under it. Turn on Required for a field the speaker must answer before they submit. The arrow buttons move a field up or down, and the trash button removes it. A form holds up to 30 fields.

The field types:

• Short text: one line.
• Long text: a paragraph.
• List (one per line): several entries, one per line, such as learning objectives.
• Yes / No: one of the two.
• Checkbox: one tick box, for a confirmation. On a required checkbox, the speaker ticks it to submit.
• Choice: one of the Options you list, one per line (2 to 20).
• Multiple choice: any of the Options you list.
• Date: a date.

Needs review is on by default for a Form, so the answers come to you to approve or send back with Request Changes. Turn it off and the task is done as soon as the speaker submits.

The speaker fills in the form on their task, can save their answers as a draft and come back to them, and submits once every required field is answered. You see the answers on their task card once they submit: see Reviewing a task. The Tasks report's spreadsheet lists them too.

When you change a Form's fields and save with Save and update courses in progress, speakers whose task isn't done get the new fields, and the answers they saved to the fields you kept stay.

The starter onboarding's Conflict-of-interest disclosure, renewed every year, is a Form from the Conflict-of-interest disclosure preset.

Attachments

Any task can carry files and links for the speaker: a speaker handbook, a slide template, a policy to read. They are under Attachments in the task's dialog, for every task type: Files and links the speaker gets with this task.

1. Click Add attachments.
2. To add a file, click Add file and pick a PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, image or text file, up to 25MB. It uploads straight away, and the dialog's save waits for the upload to finish.
3. To add a link, click Add link, enter a Link title and a Link URL that starts with http:// or https://, and click Add link.

A task holds up to 10 attachments. The trash button beside one takes it off. Click a saved attachment's name to open it in a new tab.

The speaker sees them on their task card, under Attachments, each opening in a new tab, and they stay on the card once the task is done. The links open for the task's speaker and for your staff with the Organization Administrator or Lecture Speakers permission. One-off tasks take attachments the same way.

When you change a workflow task's attachments and save with Save and update courses in progress, tasks still in progress get the new list. Tasks that are done or marked Not needed keep the attachments they had.

Materials with a sign-off

To have speakers confirm they read your materials, add a Form task from the Read and acknowledge preset and attach the materials to it. The speaker opens the attachments, ticks I received and reviewed these materials. and submits.

Starts after the step before is approved

A step's tasks are open from the start, so a speaker can work ahead. To hold a step until the step before it is finished, for example so that slides come only once the agreement step is approved, tick Starts after the step before is approved on the step, under Repeat for each module (or Renews, on your Organization Onboarding). The first step doesn't have the setting, since no step comes before it: a step you drag to the top, or that becomes first when you remove the step above, drops it.

Its tasks stay Not yet open until every task of the step before is approved, completed or marked not needed.

• While the step waits, its tasks show as Not yet open. Speakers see them on My Tasks, with Opens after Step 2 is approved., and start them once they open. No reminders go out for them until then.
• When the step before is finished, the tasks open, and the speaker gets an email listing them. When the step before repeats for each module, its tasks in every module count.
• If a task of the step before is reopened or its decision undone, the waiting step's tasks that the speaker hasn't started go back to Not yet open. Work the speaker has started stays open.
• To open one task early for one speaker, click Open now on it in their Tasks window. The speaker gets an email listing it, and it stays open from then on.

The email that gives a speaker new tasks lists the open ones, then a line for the rest, for example 2 more open after an earlier step is approved. A task that is Not yet open when a change takes it out of the workflow is deleted, since the speaker never started it.

Task instructions

Instructions for the speaker uses the same editor as your course materials. You can format the text and add links, images and videos (YouTube, Vimeo or Wistia). Speakers see the instructions formatted, with the videos playing right in the task. Anything that isn't safe to show is removed when you save.

The same editor is used for Description when you add a one-off task for one speaker in their Tasks window.

Saving changes to a workflow

Saving changed steps makes a new version of the workflow. While courses use it (it is a course's Speaker workflow, or a speaker on the course follows it), the save asks which of them get the change:

• Save for new courses only: speakers already on the workflow keep the steps they have. Their course can move them to the new version later with Update to version on its speaker workflow line.
• Save and update courses in progress: lists the courses using it that haven't ended, with how many speakers on each follow this workflow and have unfinished tasks. Untick any you want to leave alone. Speakers on these courses who follow this workflow and have unfinished tasks get the new steps, and an email listing any new tasks. Speakers on another workflow, and speakers who finished, keep theirs. Courses that have ended aren't changed. A speaker on No tasks moves to the new version quietly, for when they get tasks again.

To use different steps on one course alone, add another workflow here with New Workflow and pick it on that course, for its new speakers or for a speaker already on it.

Deleting a workflow

Use the delete button on the workflow's row, or Delete Workflow in the editor. You can't delete:

• the workflow new courses start with: click Make Default on another one first;
• a workflow courses are still using, as their Speaker workflow or a speaker's: Switch These Courses First lists them. On each course, pick another workflow for new speakers and for the speakers following this one, then delete it.

Otherwise you are asked to confirm: the workflow won't be offered for courses any more, and courses that have ended keep their speakers' tasks as they are. Click Delete.

Agreement Templates

Needs the Speaker Coordination add-on.

Agreement templates are the documents your Agreement Signing tasks send. Upload a PDF, place where the speaker (and, if your organization countersigns it, the countersigner) fills in and signs, then pick the template on a task.

Agreement Templates lists your organization's templates in a table. Each row gives the template's name, its signers and how many fields it has, for example Speaker · Countersigner · 6 fields. A template is marked Draft until it has a document and its signers are named as its countersign setting says.

To add one, click New Agreement Template in the button bar at the foot of the page, enter an Agreement template name and click Continue. The template builder opens on its own page, where you set everything else.

The speaker always signs first. On a template your organization countersigns, the person named on each task then countersigns: you choose who on the Agreement Signing task, under Who countersigns.

Building a template

Click Edit on a template's row to open the template builder, which fills the page. Above the document sits the template's settings bar: the Agreement template name, the Your organization countersigns this agreement checkbox, and a Draft label while the template isn't ready. Everything on the page saves as you change it, the settings bar as well as the document: the name saves when you pause typing or leave the field, and a brief Saved. confirms it. Upload the document, then place the fields each signer fills in. If something is missing, such as a document or a signer, the settings bar says what to add.

The builder's signers are named for you: Speaker and, on a template your organization countersigns, Countersigner. Keep those names. If a signer is renamed, added or removed, the template stays a draft and the message says what to fix: This document's signers must be named Speaker and Countersigner. Fix the signer names in the builder. or This document's only signer must be named Speaker. Remove or rename the other signers in the builder.

When you are finished, click Back in the button bar at the foot of the page to return to the list.

Changing and deleting a template

Rename a template or change whether Your organization countersigns this agreement in the settings bar at the top of its builder page. Either change warns first: Agreement Signing tasks that use the template can't send it to a speaker until each task's document settings are saved again (and, with countersigning on, say who countersigns); documents already sent go on as they are. Click Turn On or Turn Off to go ahead. Turning it on adds the Countersigner signer in the builder. Turning it off removes that signer and every field assigned to them from the document, so the bar first asks Remove the countersigner and their 2 fields?; click Remove to go ahead or Keep to leave it on. After the setting changes, a task that sends the template may say The template changed: check the task's document settings. Open the task, check its document and save it.

To delete a template, use the red delete button and click Delete to confirm. Tasks that use it will ask you to pick another template. Documents already sent can still be signed.

Tasks

Needs the Speaker Coordination add-on.

Every speaker task across your courses, as a report. Pick what to show:

• Needs review: work speakers sent that waits for you;
• Open and Overdue;
• Not yet open: tasks whose step waits on the step before;
• Done;
• All, which also lists tasks marked Not needed.

Each row gives the Task, its Type, Status and when it is Due, the Speaker, the Course and the Module: the module of a repeating step's task, or Whole course. An onboarding task has no course: its Course reads Organization onboarding, here and in Decision History. The report shows 25 tasks a page. Download Spreadsheet downloads everything the current choice shows. The spreadsheet adds an Answers column, last: a Form task's answers, each answered field on its own line as Label: answer.

Nothing is decided here. Open a task to see it in its course's speaker window, where you can review or change it: see Reviewing a task. The emails LecturePanda sends you when a speaker sends work open the same window.

A link can open the report on one choice: the Overdue alerts email opens it on Overdue.

Overdue alerts

Turn on Overdue alerts, under Show tasks, to get an email once a day while any speaker task is overdue. It is just for you: each staff member with the Organization Administrator or Lecture Speakers permission turns it on for themselves, and nobody gets it until they do.

A task is overdue once its due date has passed in the course's timezone and it still waits on the speaker. Tasks waiting for your review aren't overdue, nor are tasks marked Not needed, an Agreement Signing task waiting on your organization, or tasks of a speaker whose workflow is No tasks or who is no longer on the course.

The email lists the tasks that went overdue since the last one first, then the rest still overdue, by course and speaker (onboarding tasks under Organization onboarding), each with its type, due date and how many days overdue it is. View Overdue Tasks opens this report on Overdue. On a day with nothing overdue, no email is sent.

Decision History

Needs the Speaker Coordination add-on.

Every decision on your speakers' work, newest first: Approved, Changes requested and Decision withdrawn (an Undo Decision). Each row gives the Date, the Decision, the Item, the Speaker, the Course, who Decided by and any Comments. Download Spreadsheet downloads all of it.

A speaker's own decisions are also on their page, under History.