By default, a new employee is assigned all courses of their department at once when they join. With an extensive curriculum that can be overwhelming. With drip enrollment, a new employee instead starts with a small onboarding block and then receives one course at a time, at a pace you decide.

The feature is off by default and therefore changes nothing until you deliberately switch it on. You configure it per organisation (once; the setting automatically applies to all departments, including departments added later) and you can deviate per department; the department choice always takes precedence.

The idea in one sentence: you used to plan per department when everyone would get what; now you define once what the programme is, and the system decides per person when. The system never touches existing enrollments.

The two routes: mandatory and voluntary

Every course follows one of two routes, controlled by two checkboxes on the course:

• Automatic enrollment: the course is part of the mandatory flow (the curriculum) and is released at the set pace. The system decides the moment, following your rhythm.
• Self-enrollment: the course sits in the library as voluntary offering. The employee decides the moment.

Normally choose one of the two per course. Both at once is possible, but only if you deliberately want employees to be able to take a mandatory course early via the library; the drip skips whatever someone already has.

How it works for the employee

1. Onboarding. At the start, the employee only receives the courses you have marked as onboarding, plus one overview email. If no onboarding is marked, the drip flow starts right away.
2. Drip flow. The first curriculum course is released immediately at the anchor (see below); after that, one course is added per cadence moment. Each release triggers one email, provided notifications are switched on for the course.
3. Library. Optional and historical material sits in the library; there the employee self-enrols at a moment of their own choosing.

The anchor and the rhythm

The anchor is the personal zero point from which the rhythm is calculated for one employee:

• If an onboarding block is marked, the anchor is the day on which this employee completes that block.
• If no onboarding is marked, the anchor is the employee's start date.

From the anchor onwards: the first course is released immediately; the cadence only determines the distance to each next course. With a two-week cadence, someone who completes onboarding on day 6 gets course 1 on day 6 and course 2 two weeks later. Nobody stares at an empty home screen for two weeks.

Good to know about the clock:

• Releases happen via a daily background task. A course therefore appears on or shortly after the cadence moment, not to the second. If you switch the settings on during the day, the first releases follow after the next overnight run.
• The cadence counts from the release date of the previous course, not from its completion. Anyone who finishes quickly simply waits until the next cadence moment; that keeps the pace predictable. Only the very first release depends on completing the onboarding.
• The cadence is calculated in the organisation's time zone.

Before you start (prerequisites)

• Per course, the automatic enrollment checkbox is on and the course is active. Without automatic enrollment the course does not take part in the curriculum; an inactive course is skipped by the drip and does not appear in the candidate list.
• The cadence is mandatory: without a chosen cadence the drip is not active and no courses are held back at the start. This way a half-finished configuration can never block employees.
• Every employee belongs to a department. The drip runs per department; an employee attached only to the organisation receives everything at once.
• If you want an email or notification at every release, switch on notification and notification email per course.
• Set the enrollment period (days) per course if the employee should get a deadline counted from the moment of release; leave the field empty if there should be no deadline.
• The start date on the course no longer steers the employee: everything runs via the personal enrollment date the drip sets at each release. Set the course date to a date in the past (not in the future, otherwise the reminder email skips the course).

Setting it up (step by step)

Step 1: prepare the courses

Per curriculum course you only set properties; nobody is enrolled here:

• Tick automatic enrollment.
• Make sure the course is active.
• Set the enrollment period (days) for the deadline per release.
• Switch on notification and notification email for the alert and email at release.

Stop using "Enrol groups" to roll out curriculum courses. That old route enrols existing employees of a department directly and in full, bypassing the drip. The organisation curriculum fully replaces that planning work.

Step 2: configure the organisation

Edit the organisation. It contains two blocks.

Drip enrollment (default for all departments)

• Switch on enable drip enrollment.
• Choose the cadence (mandatory): every X days or weeks (for example every 2 weeks), fixed day of the month (for example every 15th), or nth weekday of the month (for example every 3rd Thursday).
• With the optional safety limit, the next course is not released as long as more than this number of courses is still open. This prevents pile-up for anyone who falls behind. Leaving the field empty keeps the dosing strictly on schedule.

Organisation curriculum (order and onboarding)

• Add courses from the candidate list. It shows all active automatic-enrollment courses that are visible to the organisation or already in use at a department. Adding only links; it enrols nobody.
• Number the order; the Number in sequence button does it in one go. Order numbers must be unique; duplicate numbers are rejected on saving.
• Tick onboarding for the courses a new employee should receive immediately at the start.

Save. That completes it: all departments follow this automatically, including departments added later.

Step 3: deviate per department (exceptions only)

Edit the department and choose under setting for this department:

• Follow organisation default (the default): the department follows the organisation setting; the form shows what that currently is.
• On, with custom settings: this department uses its own cadence, limit or curriculum; fields you leave empty still follow the organisation.
• Off for this department: no dosing, even if the organisation is switched on.

If a department links its own active automatic-enrollment courses, its own curriculum fully applies there; the organisation curriculum no longer counts for that department.

Step 4: library (old and optional courses)

Courses that are not (or no longer) mandatory go to the library: tick self-enrollment on the course and switch automatic enrollment off. On the department curriculum, the → library checkbox does this in one action. With self enrollment days you set the deadline that applies from the moment an employee self-enrols.

The checkboxes in the curriculum

• If a course should arrive immediately at a new employee's start, tick onboarding.
• If a course permanently no longer belongs in the mandatory flow, tick remove and optionally switch on self-enrollment for the library.
• If a course needs to be out temporarily, for example for a revision or a new translation, do not remove it but set the course to inactive: it stays in the curriculum, the drip skips it, and it flows along again automatically as soon as you activate it.

Rule of thumb: onboarding is about the start of the flow, remove is about the end of the course in the programme, and inactive is about a pause.

With remove, only the link with the curriculum disappears; the course itself continues to exist and employees who already have it, keep it.

Keep the onboarding block small (one to three courses), or mark nothing if you have a lot of existing staff; see the pitfall below.

Emails

• At the start, a new employee receives one overview email with their courses (the onboarding block).
• At every release, the regular "you have been enrolled" email follows, provided the email notification is switched on for the course.
• New in the library: when new offering appears in the library, a daily email announces it to employees who can see it and are not yet enrolled. You switch this email type ("New in library") on or off per organisation on the email types page; the text can be adjusted there.
• Self-enrollment gives the employee a regular enrollment confirmation.

The deadline reminders then work per released course as you are used to.

Good to know

• Existing employees keep their current enrollments; the system never takes anything away and never enrols twice. Curriculum courses they are still missing are added at the set pace, one per cadence moment.
• Pitfall with onboarding: the drip for an existing employee waits until the onboarding block is completed. If you mark onboarding courses that existing staff never had, they in particular receive nothing new until they complete that block. With a lot of existing staff, prefer to mark no onboarding at all, or only courses everyone already had.
• You define the curriculum once, relatively; it then automatically applies to every new employee from their own start date. Yearly replanning is no longer needed.
• Want 12 courses in 6 months (the familiar schedule)? Set the cadence to roughly every 2 weeks.

Practical examples

The new employee at a long-standing customer. A customer has built up sixty courses over five years. A new employee used to get everything on day one; now only the onboarding block, followed by one course every two weeks. Nobody has to plan anything for it.

The existing employee, halfway. Someone has completed thirty of the sixty courses. The drip does not touch what is already there; what is missing is added calmly, one course per cadence moment.

The organisation with two hundred departments. Setting it up once at organisation level is enough; all departments follow automatically, including the department created next month.

The department that is different. The IT department links its own courses and thereby gets a fully independent curriculum, the field service chooses "on, with custom settings" for a calmer rhythm, and the odd department is explicitly off. The department always takes precedence over the organisation.

Five-year-old courses. History and optional depth go to the library (self-enrollment). Employees choose their own moment, receive a confirmation and hear about new additions via the library email.

A new course in the running programme. Set the checkboxes and add the course to the organisation curriculum at the right place in the order. Nobody is enrolled at that moment: new employees receive it automatically in the flow, and for existing employees it comes by as soon as it is their turn.

A course temporarily offline. Set it to inactive; the flow continues with the next course. After reactivation it flows along again for everyone who still misses it.

The employee who falls behind. The safety limit holds back new releases as long as more than the set number of courses is open. That way it no longer piles up.