Groups vs. Channels - they're quite similar animals, but they perform quite differently! Using them together can be a super powerful way of sharing knowledge with your teams and your targeted learners.
What are Groups on HowNow? 🤔
You can organise your Users into Groups (sometimes referred to as 'Learning Groups') on HowNow. Normally the starting point of this could be to create your Groups based on the departments that you have in your organisation. For example: 'Finance', 'Marketing', 'Tech'.
You may want to set up your Groups based on team members' positions (Job Roles) within your organisation, or the length of time they've been a part of the business.
For example...
Role-based Groups - Whether Business Analysts or your Designers, putting these team members together, will make assigning exclusive content (key to their development), a seamless process.
Length of time at the Company - Groups such as 'New Starters', 'Veterans' or '3-6 Months' are ideal for tracking what your team members within a Group/department, are individually learning, so you can identify knowledge gaps, and Experts (i.e, potential content creators).
Can a User be in more than one Group?
A User can be in multiple Groups. For example, a Finance Manager is best placed in the 'Finance' Group, but can also be suitable for the 'Manager' Group. This is useful if your organisation's Manager all need to train on the same managerial-based Skills, separate from their core Skills.
For example...
Justin is a Finance Manager
He is added to "Finance Team" Group
Justin needs to lead a team of 6 new accountants next quarter
He is therefore added to the Leadership Group
How many Groups can we create? 🔢
You can create as many Groups as you like! Personalising the content available to your Groups, is one of the primary benefits of creating Groups (see Channels below). The number of Groups you create will likely depend on the size of your organisation, but do avoid creating too many sub-Groups, as you may find there could be quite a bit of cross-over.
What are Channels on HowNow?
Think of Channels as 'Topics'. Channels are used to categorise and organise the content that is created on HowNow. For example, if you create a training course on Excel - you may tag the Channel as 'Excel'.
Why do you assign Channels to Learning Groups?
Channels are fantastic for upskilling your team members and entire departments - being able to keep track of what they know, and when they are ready to use that knowledge.
Assigning Channels doesn't just have to be about improving your Groups' skillsets, but can also be used to give your team members access to subject matters that may be of personal interest to them, outside of their daily Job Roles.
Tip: An essential Channel to create is the 'Onboarding' Channel. Assign it to the 'New Starters' Group, as you may want all of the new people joining your organisation to do a series of onboarding courses, to become familiar with company policies, benefits and history.
The following image, gives a visual representation of how a Sales Channel can be of use to differing Groups (in this case, based on region).
