In This Article
About This Feature
Ask the Expert is a feedback mechanism. It allows learners to send questions and comments to subject specialists about the lessons they take.
Ask the Expert serves at least two important purposes:
It gives learners a trusted point of contact, someone to whom they can send questions without leaving the app. Less context switching means more attention on the training content at hand.
It effectively enlists learners as content auditors. When learners spot errors or outdated content they can quickly and easily bring such issues to an expert's attention.
Before you begin: Ensure that prospective experts own or co-own the lessons to which they're appointed. Learn more about content ownership.
Add an Expert to a Lesson
From Learning's Content page, select the lesson to which you want to appoint an expert. This will load the lesson's overview page. On the right side of the overview page, locate the Lesson Expert setting. Begin typing a user's name; Learning's autocomplete feature will attempt to identify the user you have in mind.
If a user's name fails to appear, verify that he or she owns the lesson. Also, ensure the would-be expert is either an admin or a manager/creator who can be granted ownership of content on an item-by-item basis.
Important Considerations
Only one expert can be listed for each lesson.
Experts cannot added or updated in bulk.
Experts must be manually added on a lesson-by-lesson basis.
Experts can be changed at any time.
💡 Tip: If you want multiple users to answer Ask the Expert questions, try this workaround. Create a new user account with a group email address such as training@seismmic.com, then make this user a lesson expert. Now any user with access to the group email can answer Ask the Expert questions.
Learner Point of View
When lessons have designated experts, learners see an Ask button in the upper right corner of each page.
Selecting this button opens a free-text form that learners can use to submit questions or feedback. Learners can select the Ask button at any time during a lesson.
After selecting the Ask, the user is prompted to fill in their question, and the module shows who their question is being sent to. When users submit requests to the expert, these notifications are sent via email.
Expert Point of View
Designated experts receive feedback via email, enabling them to answer learners directly. The email subject line reads "Question for" followed by the title of the lesson in question.
Ask the Expert feedback cannot be addressed inside the Learning app. Experts always receive such feedback externally.
💡 Tip: If Ask the Expert emails are running afoul of spam filters, try some of the troubleshooting techniques in this article on ensuring email deliverability.
Send Micro-Feedback
Micro-feedback complements Learning's Ask the Expert feature. It allows learners to highlight text in a lesson, couple that text with a question or comment, and send the feedback to a designated subject matter expert. Note that an expert must be designated on the lesson overview page for this feature to work.
Experts receive micro-feedback via email, allowing them to answer questioners directly.
📝 Note: Micro-feedback does not work on mobile devices.
Add or Archive Account Experts
Whereas lesson-level experts possess specialized knowledge of a given set of subjects or practices, account experts are generalists with expertise that spans the contents of an entire Learning tenant. You can improve the effectiveness of your content by appointing such a person, someone to whom learners can send any and all suggestions or questions, unbounded by subject.
To appoint an account expert, navigate to the Settings page, located in the gear icon menu. Select the Learning Content Settings tab, then locate the Account Expert setting at the bottom of the page. Enter the name of the expert you wish to appoint; Learning's typeahead functionality will suggest user names as you type.
📝 Note: Setting an account expert does not override or replace people previously designated as lesson experts.
The account expert feature can be located by all users on the Learn tab under the search bar.
After selecting Send us a message, a dialog prompts you to enter your question or feedback. The Send button shows the name of the feedback recipient.
Once the account expert receives a user's question, all further communication must be handled externally.
Archiving Account Experts
When account experts are archived, their expert status is not automatically disabled. Instead, you must return to the Learning Content Settings menu and remove the account expert.
For example, suppose you make Nathan an account expert, but then Nathan leaves your company and his account is archived. Unless you remove Nathan as the account expert, his name will continue to appear in the Send us a message module on the Learn page. It will even appear as though Nathan can still receive feedback when, in fact, he can't.
Ask the Expert Reporting
Want to know how many Ask the Expert interactions were recorded during the previous calendar month? Download the All Activities Report, located on the Insights tab under More Reports > Email Download Link.
After selecting this link, the following notification appears: "Your report is being prepared. We'll email you a download link in a few minutes." Select the link in that email to download a CSV copy of the All Activities Report.
Questions? Contact the Support team at support@lessonly.com