If you manage a remote team and dread chasing people to finish their training, you’re not alone. Manual reminders, spreadsheet checklists, and endless emails get old fast. The good news: if your company uses Wonderway, you can automate most of this stuff and save yourself a lot of headaches.
This isn’t a sales pitch. Automation in Wonderway works, but only if you know what to ignore and where the landmines are. This guide is for managers, team leads, or anyone who’s tired of babysitting training assignments.
Why automate training assignments in the first place?
Let’s get something out of the way: remote teams are great, but keeping everyone on the same page is a pain. People are in different time zones, distractions are everywhere, and “I missed that email” is a common excuse.
Automated training assignments mean:
- New hires get what they need, when they need it.
- Nobody (including you) has to remember who’s done what.
- You spend less time herding cats and more time actually leading.
But don’t expect magic. Automation helps, but you’ll still need to keep an eye on things.
Step 1: Get your ducks in a row (before you automate)
Before you touch any settings in Wonderway, do a quick check:
- Is your training content up to date? Automating outdated or incomplete courses just creates more problems.
- Do you know which teams or roles need what training? Map this out first. If you’re not clear, your automations will be a mess.
- Who’s responsible for tracking compliance or completion? If it’s you, great. If not, make sure that person is looped in.
Pro tip: If you’re not sure what content should be mandatory, start small. You can always add more later.
Step 2: Get familiar with Wonderway’s automation tools
Wonderway offers a few ways to automate assignments. Here’s a plain-English rundown:
- Onboarding workflows: Automatically assign courses to new hires based on their role or department.
- Recurring assignments: Push out refreshers or compliance training on a schedule (monthly, yearly, etc.).
- Rules-based assignment: Set up rules like “everyone in Sales gets this course” or “all managers need this training.”
- Reminders and nudges: Automated emails or Slack messages to folks who haven’t finished yet.
You’ll find these in the “Automations” or “Assignments” section inside Wonderway. The interface is pretty straightforward, but don’t expect miracles—the setup can get fiddly if your org chart is complicated.
Step 3: Build smart assignment rules
This is where most people get tripped up. Resist the urge to overcomplicate things. Start with broad rules, then get granular only if you have to.
How to set up a basic assignment rule:
- Log in to Wonderway and head to the “Assignments” or “Automations” area.
- Choose your trigger. This could be:
- When someone joins a specific team or role
- After a set time period (e.g., 90 days since hire)
- When a manager requests training for their report
- Select the training(s) to assign.
- Pick your audience. You can filter by department, location, role, etc.
- Set the schedule. Immediate, delayed, or recurring.
- Decide on reminders. Who gets pinged, how often, and through what channel (email, Slack, etc.).
Pro tip: Use groups or tags in Wonderway to keep things organized. If you’re assigning the same training to different teams, group those teams together so you’re not duplicating work.
Step 4: Automate onboarding for new hires
Onboarding is where automation really shines. No more “Oops, we forgot to add Jane to the security course.”
To automate onboarding assignments:
- Create a New Hire workflow: Look for something like “Onboarding Templates” or “New Employee Automation.”
- Define the triggers: Usually, this is “when user is added to the platform” or “when user is added to X group.”
- Assign required courses: Pick the must-have trainings—company policies, compliance, whatever.
- Set deadlines: Give reasonable timeframes. Too short, and people will ignore them; too long, and they’ll forget.
- Enable automated reminders: Set up at least two: one before the deadline, one after if they miss it.
What works: Automating this cuts down on misses. You’ll also have a record of who got what, when.
What doesn’t: Don’t expect this to fix a broken onboarding process. If your content is a mess, automation just spreads the mess faster.
Step 5: Schedule recurring and compliance training
Some stuff isn’t one-and-done—think security refreshers, annual compliance, or product updates. Wonderway can handle this, but don’t go overboard.
How to set up recurring assignments:
- Pick the course(s) that need repeats. Make sure the content is current—nobody wants to redo last year’s stale videos.
- Set the frequency. Annual, quarterly, monthly, whatever fits.
- Choose your target group. Again, use tags or groups to avoid confusion.
- Set up reminders for stragglers. Make sure these don’t turn into spam, or people will tune them out.
Pro tip: Ask yourself if a course really needs to be repeated. Overly aggressive reminders are a great way to get people to ignore all your messages.
Step 6: Monitor progress and tweak as you go
Automation isn’t “set and forget.” Check the dashboards and reports in Wonderway regularly.
- Look for patterns. Are people getting stuck on a certain course? Maybe it’s too long or confusing.
- Watch for missed deadlines. If lots of folks are missing, your reminders may not be working—or the course might not be relevant.
- Solicit feedback. A quick survey after a big training push can tell you what’s actually useful.
What works: Dashboards in Wonderway are decent, and you can export data if you want to crunch numbers elsewhere.
What doesn’t: Don’t rely solely on completion rates. Someone clicking through doesn’t mean they actually learned anything.
Step 7: Avoid common automation pitfalls
A few hard-earned lessons:
- Don’t assign everything to everyone. Targeted training beats blanket assignments every time.
- Test before rolling out. Use a small group to make sure the automations work as expected.
- Keep communication human. Automated reminders are fine, but if someone’s really behind, a personal check-in works better.
- Document your rules. If you leave, someone else should be able to figure out what’s going on.
Step 8: When to not automate
Not everything should be automated:
- High-stakes or custom training: Sometimes it’s better to assign these manually so you can tailor the message.
- One-off projects or crisis response: Automation is overkill here.
- If your content changes every month: You’ll spend more time fixing automations than just assigning things as needed.
If you’re not sure, err on the side of simplicity.
Wrapping up: Keep it simple and iterate
Automating training in Wonderway can save you hours and make your remote team’s life easier, but don’t let the tool run you. Start with the basics, keep your rules tidy, and check in regularly. If something’s not working, change it. It’s better to have a few well-oiled automations than a sprawling mess nobody understands.
Remember: the goal is to spend less time on admin and more time helping your team grow. Start small, tweak often, and don’t be afraid to ignore the parts that don’t fit your workflow.