Blanchard Exchange can send calendar invitations for all live events associated with your projects, enabling learners to easily add these events to their personal email calendars.
To enable this option, open your project and follow the steps below:
Figure 1
Figure 2
- Go to the Settings tab within the project (Figure 1).
- Enable the Allow calendar invitations option (Figure 2).
- A pop-up message will appear asking you to confirm that you want to enable the option. Select Yes (Figure 2).
Once enabled, calendar invitations will be distributed for all live events in your project. These invitations include the session title, description, start and end times, and location details, such as a physical location with a map link or a virtual session URL.
Note that calendar invitations are only sent once learners have been activated/invited to the project.
Tracking & Re-sending Calendar Invitations
Figure 3
After calendar invitations have been enabled, learner responses to those invitations, such as Accepted, Declined, and Tentative, are recorded under the Events tab of the project (Figure 3). Totals for each response type are displayed, and you can select a total to view the list of applicable learners.
These responses are also recorded for each learner in the Learner Portal, where each live event displays the learner’s individual response.
| If a learner chooses not to send their calendar invitation response from their email client, Blanchard Exchange will not record the response. |
Calendar invitation responses are listed by live event. Administrators can manually update recorded responses if needed. For example, if a learner declines an invitation and later asks for their response to be changed to accepted, an administrator can make this update using the Events tab. Note that this change only affects the response recorded in the Corporate Portal and does not update the learner’s personal calendar.
To resend a calendar invitation, navigate to the appropriate live event, select the All total, locate the learner who needs the invitation resent, select the checkbox next to their name, and then select Resend Invitations.
To resend calendar invitations for a specific session to all learners in the project, select the checkbox at the top of the list to select all learners under the event, then select Resend Invitations.
| Calendar invitations do not need to be manually resent when changing the date or time of live events. Invitations are automatically resent when an administrator adjusts the date and/or time of one or more live events in a project. |
Canceling Calendar Invitations
If you need to cancel calendar invitations after they have been sent, complete the following steps in your project:
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Figure 5
- Go to the Settings tab within the project (Figure 4-1).
- Disable the Allow calendar invitations option (Figure 4-2).
- A confirmation pop-up will appear asking you to confirm the cancellation (Figure 5). Choose one of the following options:
- Turn off and don't send - Turns off calendar invitations without sending cancellation notices. This option is useful if you plan to make multiple changes to live events and want to avoid triggering multiple updates. Once changes are complete, you can re-enable invitations.
- Turn off and send - Sends cancellation notices for all calendar events.
Learner Portal Calendar Invitation Features
Figure 6
Email clients are not the only place where learners can manage their calendar invitation responses. The Learner Portal also allows learners to select their responses and provides the option to resend calendar invitations if the original invitation is lost or deleted.
When calendar invitations are enabled and no response has been recorded from a learner’s calendar, live events displayed within courses will include response options beneath each event (Figure 6).
Note that this applies only to the response recorded in Blanchard Exchange. Selecting a response here does not affect calendar invitation responses on learners’ personal calendars.