Trainer Invitations — Staff Guide

A practical guide to running the trainer-invitation process: configuring the approved-trainer list, checking who has accepted / who is pending, and handling classes where nobody has accepted (or where the start date is approaching with no trainer yet).

1. How the system works (in one minute)

Each course has an ordered Approved Trainers list. When a course run (a scheduled class) needs a trainer, the system invites trainers one at a time, in list order:

Trainer #1 gets an email invitation (Accept / Decline buttons).
If they Accept → they’re assigned, calendar invite goes out, and the cascade stops.
If they Decline → the system automatically invites trainer #2, then #3, and so on.
If it reaches the end of the list with no acceptance → the run is exhausted (needs manual attention).

Invitations are sent automatically by a twice-weekly job (Mon & Thu, 10:00 AM SGT) and can also be sent/resent manually.

Two representations to know:

The approved list lives on the course (shared by all its runs).
Each invitation’s state (pending / accepted / declined) is tracked per run, per trainer.

Invitations never expire (important — this shapes the alerts). An invite stays pending indefinitely until the trainer clicks Accept or Decline; there is no timeout and no auto-expiry.

The cascade advances to the next trainer only on Decline. If a trainer simply ignores the email, nothing moves automatically.
The twice-weekly sweep still invites the next un-invited trainer on each run (skipping those already pending), so a run can have several trainers pending at once — none of which expire.
A run only becomes “List exhausted” if trainers actively decline the whole list. The common “nobody responded” case never becomes exhausted — which is exactly why the time-based “Not in LMS + approaching start (≤7 days)” alert is the real safety net.
(Admin actions can still close a pending invite: resending supersedes the old one; unconfirming/resetting a class marks its pending invites superseded.)

2. Configuring the invite list (and its order)

Where: Admin View → Course Management → View Course → Edit Course → Approved Trainers tab (Admin / Developer only).

The chips at the bottom (“N assigned trainers”) are the list.
Order = cascade order. Left-to-right / top-to-bottom is exactly the order invitations go out.
Add a trainer (search box) → appended to the end of the list.
Drag a chip → reorder the cascade.
× on a chip → remove that trainer.

The list is per course, so changing it affects every run of that course. A name only receives invites if it maps to an active trainer account with an email — names with no account are silently skipped by the cascade (and flagged with ⚠ where shown).

3. Checking invite status

There are two views — one for a single class (deep detail), one for triage across all classes.

A. One class — Edit → Trainer Management

Where: Admin View → Class Management → Upcoming Classes (or any class list) → click Edit on the class row → scroll to the Trainer Management section.

This shows the full approved list in cascade order, and for each trainer:

a status badge — Accepted / Pending / Declined / Resent / Not Sent / Manually Added
Assigned (Local) and Next Available markers
(detailed view) the full invitation history with sent/responded timestamps
Send / Resend invitation button
Pause invitations and Block replies toggles

Use this when you’re working on one specific class.

B. All classes — Upcoming Classes panel

Where: Admin View → Class Management → Upcoming Classes.

The Upcoming Classes table shows one row per run with an invite outcome badge for quick scanning:

Badge	Meaning	Question it answers
🟢 Accepted	A trainer is assigned / accepted	Which classes are covered
🟡 Pending: {name} · {N}d	Waiting on this trainer, invited N days ago	Which are pending, and at whom
🔴 All declined (N) — needs action	Every approved trainer with an account declined	Which went through the whole list and failed
⚪ Not yet invited	Has approved trainers, none invited yet	Which still have runway
⚪ No approved trainers	The course has no approved list configured	Which need a list set up first

Use this for triage across everything. For per-trainer detail, click Edit on that row.

4. Handling the problem cases

A red banner appears above the Upcoming Classes table whenever any run needs attention. It shows the total plus three clickable chips — click a chip to filter the table to just that issue type:

Chip / row tag	Means	Why it’s a problem
Not in LMS	No LMS trainer assigned, starting within the window (default 7 days)	Class shows Pending and the trainer can’t access the run — even if TPG already has a name pencilled in
Not in TPG	Assigned/accepted in the LMS but never pushed to TPG/SSG	The official SSG record has no trainer
List exhausted	The whole approved list was invited and everyone declined	Cascade has no one left — needs manual intervention

Flagged rows also carry a small tag (⚠ Not in LMS / ⚠ Not in TPG) next to their status badge. The window is adjustable in the advanced filter (“Approaching start within N days”). The ⚠ Needs attention filter-bar button toggles all types at once.

Why “Not in LMS” matters most: because invites never expire (Section 1), the common “trainer ignored the email” case never shows as “List exhausted” — it just sits Pending. The time-based Not in LMS alert is what catches those before the class starts.

Each run shows under exactly one chip / tag. The three issue types are mutually exclusive — a run is counted once and tagged once. A run with no LMS and no TPG trainer shows only as Not in LMS (the blocking gap); “Not in TPG” only applies once a trainer is assigned in the LMS (you can’t be missing the TPG push until there’s an LMS trainer to push).

Case 1 — “Not in LMS” (no LMS trainer, approaching start)

The class can’t run as-is — even a TPG-pencilled trainer can’t access it.

⚠ Common pitfall — assigned in TPG but not the LMS. If a trainer is assigned directly in TPGateway (or only the TPG field gets set) without also being assigned in the LMS, the class looks staffed on TPG but in the LMS it still shows Pending, and the trainer cannot access the trainer page for the run — LMS access comes from the LMS assignment, not the TPG field. These surface as ⚠ Not in LMS · TPG set. Rule of thumb: always mirror a manual TPG assignment in the LMS (open the class → Edit → Trainer Management → assign them there to confirm the class + grant access).

Triage tip: the tag tells you the effort — ⚠ Not in LMS · TPG set is a one-step LMS assignment (the pitfall above); plain ⚠ Not in LMS means no trainer anywhere, so you start from scratch.

Steps (all from Edit → Trainer Management):

TPG set → just assign that trainer in the LMS; the class confirms and they get access.
From scratch → if Not yet invited, Send Invite to the next trainer; if Pending too long, Resend or move to the next (and chase them directly).
No approved trainers? Add a list first (Section 2), then send.

Case 2 — “Not in TPG” (assigned in LMS, missing from TPG)

The trainer is staffed locally but the SSG/TPG record is missing (a push likely failed). Steps:

Open the class → re-trigger the TPG push (re-assign / the bulk TPG assign), or
Check the TPG sync status and resolve the underlying error, then push again.

Case 3 — “List exhausted” (everyone declined)

The whole approved list declined. Options:

Add more trainers to the course’s Approved Trainers list (Section 2) — the cascade picks up new names on the next send.
Reorder to retry a stronger candidate, then Resend from Edit → Trainer Management.
Assign a trainer manually if you’ve sourced someone outside the list.
If it genuinely can’t be staffed, escalate / reschedule / cancel. (The configured Exhausted-list Alert Recipients also get an automatic email when this happens — Section 5.)

Manual assignment & the invite cascade

Manually assigning a trainer in the LMS (Edit → Trainer Management) writes the LMS assignment and stops new invitations for that run:

The Mon/Thu sweep skips any run that already has an LMS-assigned trainer.
The decline-cascade won’t send either — it stops as soon as a local trainer exists.
If an earlier invitee clicks their old Accept link afterwards, they get “Already Assigned” — they can’t override your manual assignment.

Two caveats:

Existing pending invites are not auto-withdrawn — they become no-ops (the trainer may still see a stale email; any accept is blocked). Use Resend (supersedes the old one) or Pause invitations to close them visibly.
Don’t leave a stale pending invite open for the person you just manually assigned — if they later click Decline on that old invite, the decline removes their assignment (decline cleans up by email).

5. Email & notification settings — where to configure

All trainer email/CC/notification settings live under Training Provider View → sidebar → Templates (collapsible section). Two pages hold them:

Page: “Trainer Invitation Email”

Page: “Trainer Accept/Decline Email”

How to decide what goes where:

Reply-To → the person/team who owns trainer correspondence, so replies reach them directly.
CC List → anyone who should be copied on every outgoing invitation (e.g. the assignment owner + oversight).
Exhausted-list Alert Recipients → whoever needs to act when a run’s list runs out (the people who’ll manually source/assign a trainer).
Accept / Decline CC → add the assignment owner here if they want to be notified each time a trainer responds.

The specific addresses for this deployment are tracked separately in trainer-invite-email-config-rollout.md. Note: CC / Reply-To / alert addresses are data — set them on the live (production) instance; they don’t carry over from a test/local environment.

6. Status glossary

Status	Meaning
Pending	Invitation sent, awaiting the trainer’s response
Accepted	Trainer confirmed; assigned + calendar invite sent
Declined	Trainer declined; cascade moved to the next trainer
Resent	A previous pending invite was superseded by a newer one
Not Sent	In the approved list but never invited for this run
Manually Added	Assigned directly (no email invitation flow)
No account / skipped	Approved-list name with no active trainer account — the cascade skips it

7. Quick reference — where to find each answer

You want to know…	Look here
Which courses a trainer accepted	Upcoming Classes → 🟢 Accepted badge (or Edit → Trainer Management)
Which are still pending, and at whom	Upcoming Classes → 🟡 Pending: {name} badge
The full invite list + order (and to change it)	Course → Approved Trainers tab
Which went through the list with no acceptance	Upcoming Classes → 🔴 All declined badge, or the ⚠ Needs attention filter
Which are about to start with no trainer	Upcoming Classes → ⚠ Needs attention filter