At nCino, I was tasked with solving how to update our Certification Product Release e-learning as efficiently as possible. I created 3 complex spreadsheets that solved this problem very well, even after heavy review by senior IT, Product, and Technical Writing managers. Due to nCino’s privacy rules, I can't show the original sheets I created, but I can describe and represent them with graphics. 

The Product Enablement sector at nCino was a complex, challenging, and ever-changing area. Some halves of the year, we would maintain our 9 certification learning curricula and paid exams, other times we would work on just-in-time training for new nCino customers. Once nCino moved to a monthly software release update cycle, updating existing e-learning became even more difficult.

• Our team likely had over 200 significant updates to make to over 30 e-learning modules
• We needed SMEs for demos, images, and review
• Work had to be delegated to the correct Instructional Designer who owned the relevant e-learning
• Every module's stakeholder had to be pinged about prospective updates and update completion
• It was important to automatically share relevant modules and resources with the tasked instructional designer
• Every product e-learning module had to be cataloged and given content tags in the spreadsheets
• The Salesforce-based release notes had to be scoured for keywords with which to trip an e-learning release update ping
• I could only use existing nCino tools and software licenses to make the system, no additional costs would be accepted

After 5 months of being assigned higher priority projects, I was tasked by my director and manager to create this system in entirety.

Given the unknowns and the lack of success other employees had with solving this problem, my seniors primarily wanted me to figure out how to quickly and easily update our product e-learning. After extensive discussion, I determined these more precise measures of success:

• Representatives from all reviewing or contributing parties must consider it an effective and elegant system
• All product e-learning must have an easily-recognized need for updating and have updates made relatively easily
• Updates must be completed within 2 weeks of the monthly release notes being publicly available
• The 5 months of missed updates could be completed using this tool
• Few to no e-learning modules would have updates missed due to the spreadsheets not recognizing monthly release updates correctly

I first attempted to build this system using Microsoft Forms, LucidChart/Spark, Confluence, Jira, Microsoft Planner, and a few other programs. Nothing worked as well as I wanted. I found the most success with SmartSheet, since nCino’s license offered me incredibly useful connections and integrations between SmartSheet and our other softwares. I decided to stick with SmartSheet after that initial testing.

After around 2 weeks of testing and iterating on SmartSheet options, I wireframed a solution involving 3 interconnected SmartSheets. Each one played a unique but critical role in the total system, detailed here:

• E-learning Content Database: This first spreadsheet lists every Elucidat and Articulate Rise-based product e-learning module ever made at nCino. Each module, represented by a row, is given tags related to certification exams, certain keywords, and association with specific products and solutions, among many other things. I would scan each monthly release note document for database keywords. When each keyword is applied to this spreadsheet, it highlights each cell with a module containing that keyword. If that row is automatically highlighted, it is pasted into spreadsheet 2.
• Working Document: This second spreadsheet is fed all the highlighted cells from the first spreadsheet. I assigned each row to a specific Instructional Designer, depending on their schedule and their ownership of specific solutions or products. When an Instructional Designer is assigned a row, they are emailed all relevant resources for updating e-learning. If that Instructional Designer decides the module needs updating, they click a button to ping product stakeholders and SMEs. Otherwise, they put the row in a lower part of the sheet to not work it that month. Once the month is complete, I manually sent these rows to the third spreadsheet and prepared this doc for the next month’s updates.
• Historical Updates: This third and final spreadsheet holds every update made or declined for each monthly release cycle. It includes the reason behind an update being declined. Each sheet page represents one month of updates. One page on this sheet can be used for powerfully and precisely filtering the work among any number of modules among any variety of months.

I worked almost entirely independently during this project. I collaborated with experts only during the later major review cycles. I was still working on new product e-learning, QA, and process guide projects during this time. I estimate I spent around 8-12 hours each week on this review system.

After building and iterating over a 2-month period, and spending a few weeks reviewing it with resident experts, I presented the final system to a large group of Instructional Designers, Managers, IT specialists, and Product stakeholders. They were all impressed and pleased by the system and had no reservations about the final product.

I am really proud of this review system. I had never worked on a bespoke system of this magnitude or type, but I think it works really effectively. In its final stages, every person reviewing it, including senior individuals I consider far more intelligent and capable than me, thought it was basically perfect and saw no unnecessary flaws or ways to improve it given the constraints I had.

• E-learning Content Database: I may have spent almost half the project placing modules and metadata in this database. It was brutally mundane work, but it was really helpful to have well-organized data to reference while working. If the review system was used, those work hours would have paid themselves off after just a few update cycles, I think.
• Working Document: This second spreadsheet took quite a bit of iteration. I chose to make them disposable; Once we updated modules for a month and placed this sheet’s data in the Historical Updates sheet, they wouldn’t be used anymore. This was not intuitive to me, and only became an apparent good option towards the end of the review system build.
• Historical Updates: The filtering page in the Historical Updates spreadsheet proved one of the more useful tools in the review system. It helped us defend our work, offer detailed metrics, and remind ourselves approximately how often in a year we updated our modules, among many other benefits. I received the most praise on this part of the system from nearly everyone who reviewed the sheets. I frequently revisited and updated the filters to offer more functionality. Afterwards, I needed to update the database with more metadata and tags, which was a very substantial initial lift.

I tested this tool alongside our Principal Instructional Designer on one month’s updates and it worked exactly as intended. She was very satisfied with how much easier the module update process became. In comparison to how we used to update release modules, we felt that it almost doubled our updating speed.

Unfortunately, due to tumultuous product updates, organizational changes, and deprioritization of our product certification e-learning, I never had an opportunity to see or contribute to a real monthly release update cycle with it. It remains fully functional to this day. In lieu of using this system, our managers chose for us to update product e-learning only if directly requested by a stakeholder, customer, or SME.

No matter what, an Instructional Designer would still need to manually update our certification e-learning. Our testing proved that multiple modules had to be investigated for update opportunities based off one keyword in the release notes. Without that manual investigation, we could not safely say that we thoroughly reviewed our product e-learning based on the release updates. No matter what, updating product e-learning is simply an enormous lift.