Summary
When you begin the pathway creation process it’s important to have a good understanding of the users you want to have completing the pathway, whether it be individual users, specific departments or the whole organisation. It is at this stage that you can begin exploring how you’ll add these users to the pathway. In this guide we’ll cover the basics of how to allocate users to a pathway using allocation rules.
Step 1 - Navigate
You can find the allocation rules page on your platform by going to the following, whilst logged in as a site administrator:
Site administration > General > Manage pathways > *Pathway name* > Allocation rules
Step 2 - Create
In order to allocate users to a pathway you’ll need to start by creating an “Allocation rule” within which can be one or more “Conditions” all of which a user must meet in order to be allocated the pathway.
Creating the allocation rule
The allocation rule can be created by clicking the “Add rule” button in the top right of the allocation rules page.
When you click the “Add rule” button a new window will open, allowing you to provide a relevant name for the allocation rule and apply a start date, due date and end date for all users allocated the pathway as part of this specific allocation rule. For example, using the allocation rule below, all users allocated to the pathway using this allocation rule will be able to start the pathway immediately after allocation, they’ll have 2 months to complete the pathway and the pathway will no longer be visible on their dashboard on the 1st January 2034.
Adding conditions to the allocation rule
Now that you've created the "empty" allocation rule, its time to add some conditions which users must meet in order to be allocated. To add conditions to your allocation rule you’ll need to click on the “Bullet-point list” icon to the right of the allocation rule name or you can click on the name of the allocation rule itself.
This will take you to the allocation “Build rules” page, whereby you can then click “Add condition” to add a new condition.
Once you’ve clicked “Add condition” a new window will open on the page as shown below.
This is where you create the condition a user needs to meet as part of the allocation rule. It can be challenging to figure out how best to reach your target users as the grouping can be unique and include a mix of users from across your organisation. We’ve provided some basic examples of conditions that can be used to target unique groups below.
Example 1 - Induction pathway for all staff
For an induction pathway for new starters you may want to use a condition such as the one shown below. This will ensure that all new accounts on your platform (created after a certain date) are allocated the pathway.
Example 2 - Managers-only pathway
If you’re building a pathway which is aimed at managers within your organisation you could use the condition below.
Example 3 - Finance department pathway
To allocate a pathway only to members of staff within your Finance department, the allocation rule below would achieve this.
Step 3 - Enable
Once you’ve built your allocation rule and established one or more conditions within the rule which a user must meet to be allocated the pathway, you can activate the allocation rule. To do this, click the toggle underneath the heading “Active” within your allocation rules page.
This process isn’t instant, as it requires a scheduled task to run within the back end of your site in order for users to start being allocated. This can take around 5 minutes and in some cases longer if there are a large number of users being allocated to the pathway.
Once the allocation rule has run, you’ll see the number of users affected increase, you can also verify this by heading over to the “Users” tab within the pathway to see which users have been allocated.
If you require the allocation rule to continuously run to bring in new users that match the established conditions then the allocation rule can remain active. If the allocation rule only needed to be used once then you can disable the allocation rule by re-clicking the “Active” toggle, this won’t impact any users who have already been allocated to the pathway using this rule.