Conferences — Running an Online Conference in TraCorp LMS

TraCorp LMS Quick Reference Guide (QRG)

Audience: Main Admin, Sub Admin

Overview

Hosting a conference in TraCorp LMS means running an event, not just delivering training: attendees, speakers, sponsors, sessions to schedule, and an experience to track from registration through follow-up. This QRG walks through the core setup: User Groups, Registration Fields, key General Settings, self-registration, Webinar Training, dashboards, custom menus, and gamification.

This is the first version of this guide, built around what a conference host typically needs first. It will expand as more is learned about how a given event runs and based on feedback from admins using it.

Set Up User Groups

Before anyone registers, decide how the audience should be segmented. User Groups are how TraCorp LMS keeps attendees, speakers, and sponsors organized, and they control more than labeling: what content each group sees, what permissions any admins in that group have, and how reporting breaks down later.

Three system User Groups (All Students, All Students & Instructors, and All Instructors) already exist for reaching everyone at once. For a conference, additional groups are usually needed on top of those, for example:

• General Attendees
• Speakers
• Sponsors
• VIP

Each group can have its own content, its own permissions, and its own reporting.

When sponsors are involved, this is also where that relationship is typically managed: a User Group for each sponsor, custom Registration Fields to capture what is needed, and email sequences (covered under Communications below) built around that group. There is no dedicated sponsor module, but the pieces to run one are all here.

For step-by-step instructions on creating and managing User Groups, see Knowledgebase article: User Groups — Manage User Groups.

Build Registration Fields

Registration Fields are the data layer underneath almost everything else in this guide, so setting them up before registration opens is easier than patching them in later. Beyond the built-in fields (username, email, name), sixty-four custom fields are available, each independently configurable as Text, Number, Date, Dropdown, or a cascading Sub-Dropdown (useful for something like Country to City).

For a conference, think about what information is desirable to have for attendees and what would be helpful to automate later. Common fields include Company, Job Title, Track Interest, and Sponsor Tier. For each field, an admin sets:

• Whether it is required and searchable
• Whether it shows on the self-registration page
• Who can edit it: the attendee, a User Group Admin, or a Sub Admin
• Whether it shows on the transcript or activity report

Access Code Pre-Fill

An admin can attach Registration Field values directly to an Access Code, so a Sponsor code does not just place someone in the Sponsors group, it also fills in the Sponsor Tier field automatically.

Questionnaire Write-Back

To route attendees to specific tracks or sessions based on their interests, build a short Questionnaire that writes its answer directly into a Registration Field. That field value can then trigger autoassignment into the right User Group and content, automatically, with no admin involvement required.

For step-by-step instructions on configuring Registration Fields, see Knowledgebase article: Registration Fields Tab.

For instructions on writing Questionnaire answers into a Registration Field, see Knowledgebase article: Content — Use Test/Questionnaire for Registration Fields.

A Few General Settings Worth Setting Now

Most of TraCorp LMS is configurable per User Group or per piece of content, but a handful of account-wide settings are worth deciding on before registration opens:

• Allow users to register themselves (Login settings) puts a Create Account button on the login page and is the switch behind the self-registration flow described in Step 4. Pair it with a disclaimer or terms-of-use message on the self-registration page if the event needs one.
• Force required user fields blocks login until required profile fields are filled in, worth turning on if required fields were added in Step 2.
• Session visibility (Student Interface settings) hides classroom and webinar content from a student’s view entirely when no sessions are currently available, so early registrants do not land on an empty session list before the schedule is published.
• Print own certificates and view class rosters (Students tab) are both worth turning on for a conference: attendees can get their own session certificates without asking an admin, and can see who else is in a session with them.
• Notifications (a separate, real-time in-app system from Communications) are worth turning on selectively for a live event. Session Starts Today, Moved from Waitlist to Roster, and Badge Earned all give attendees a helpful nudge in the moment rather than only an email that might get buried.

None of this is one-way; every setting here can be revisited as the event gets closer.

For step-by-step instructions on the Login tab, see Knowledgebase article: General Settings — Login Tab.

For the Student Interface tab, see Knowledgebase article: General Settings — Student Interface Tab.

For the Students tab, see Knowledgebase article: General Settings — Students Tab.

For step-by-step instructions on Notifications, see Knowledgebase article: General Settings — Student Notifications Tab.

Open Registration

With groups and fields in place, decide how people get in.

Self-registration can be turned on per piece of content, so exactly what is open to sign up for is controlled directly. Paired with Access Codes, registration gets a lot smarter: a code can auto-place a self-registering attendee into the right User Group the moment they register, so a Sponsor code drops someone straight into the Sponsors group with no manual sorting required.

Access Codes go further than a simple invite string:

• Generate them in bulk, with a prefix for a given campaign or sponsor tier
• Set an effective and expiration date on each one, independent of anything else
• Cap how many people can use a single code
• Pre-set Registration Field values so anyone who registers using it gets those fields filled in automatically

If charging for entry, checkout runs through Stripe or PayPal, with a shopping-cart-style flow on top of the course catalog.

For Access Code setup, see Knowledgebase article: General Settings — User Group Administration Tab.

For payment processing setup, see Knowledgebase article: General Settings — General Administration Tab.

Build Sessions

This is the part of TraCorp LMS worth understanding well before an event, because it changes how much work the team does during it.

A conference track or topic is created once, as a Webinar Training content item. That is the shell. Sessions live underneath it, each with its own date, time, instructor, and roster. A keynote gets created once, and if it runs at three different times to cover time zones, three Sessions are added under that single topic instead of recreating it three times.

The payoff shows up in reporting. Because completion is tracked at the topic level, not the session level, the keynote is assigned once and a single report shows who attended, regardless of which time slot they picked, with no stitching together separate reports by hand.

Each Session carries its own:

• Instructor and location
• Total seats, with automatic waitlisting once capacity is reached
• Per Seat Cost, if individual sessions are sold directly
• A registration deadline, separate from the session start time
• A public Notes field, plus an Access Instructions field that only shows up once someone is registered, useful for keeping a virtual link private until then

Webinar Training works with any conferencing platform; drop the link into the session and go. The deeper native Zoom integration, where creating a session in TraCorp LMS also creates the Zoom webinar automatically, is currently being rebuilt after Zoom’s SDK changes.

For session-level attendance verification, especially useful when running concurrent tracks, a QR code or completion link can be generated through the Task content type and dropped into a session for attendees to check in with directly.

For step-by-step instructions on attendance for webinar sessions, see Knowledgebase article: Webinar Sessions — Enrollment and Attendance for Webinar Sessions.

For step-by-step instructions on setting up a webinar and its sessions, see Knowledgebase article: Webinar Sessions — Create a Webinar Session.

Set Up Dashboards

Once groups, fields, and sessions exist, dashboards are how attendees experience the event day to day, and how the team keeps an eye on it.

Student Dashboard

A dashboard can be built per User Group, so Speakers, Sponsors, and General Attendees each land on something built for them rather than one generic view for everyone. Useful cards for a conference include Calendar (a monthly view of registered sessions), Session Content, Badges, Certificates, and a Text card for a welcome message or sponsor recognition. A Carousel layout works well when there are more relevant cards than fit in one row.

Administrator Dashboards

The internal team gets a separate, modular dashboard, configurable per admin role, with views for LMS Statistics, Users, Learning Tracks, Content, and Certifications, useful for keeping a live read on registration numbers and session attendance while the event is running.

For step-by-step instructions on the Student Dashboard tab, see Knowledgebase article: General Settings — Student Dashboard Tab.

For Administrator Dashboards, see Knowledgebase article: General Settings — Administrator Dashboards Tab.

Build Custom Menus

Navigation Menus allow sets of links to be built, either in the main navigation bar or as a Menu card on the dashboard. For a conference, this is a natural place for Sessions, Speakers, and Sponsors as top-level links.

Menu items can be restricted per User Group, so the same menu name shows different content to different people. A Sponsors link might only appear for the Sponsors group, while everyone sees Sessions and Speakers.

For step-by-step instructions on custom menus, see Knowledgebase article: General Settings — Menus Tab.

Turn On Badges and the Leaderboard

Gamification is a genuine, shipped feature set and an easy way to keep energy up across a multi-day or multi-track event.

Badges come in two categories. Event Badges are system defaults that can be turned on or off. Completion Badges are built manually, tied to any combination of sessions, Learning Tracks, or Programs, so an attendee can earn one badge for completing an entire track of sessions rather than just one. Attendees see live progress toward a badge they have not earned yet, not just a locked icon, and earning one can generate a printable badge certificate.

The Leaderboard turns on with one master setting and can be scoped to a Registration Field, so attendees rank against their own department, chapter, or company rather than the entire event. Rank by completions or by credits earned, whichever fits how the conference is structured.

For step-by-step instructions on Badges, see Knowledgebase article: Badges — Badges Tab.

For step-by-step instructions on the Leaderboard setting, see Knowledgebase article: General Settings — General Administration Tab.

Close the Loop

Once sessions are running, a few more pieces round out the experience:

• Questionnaires for post-session surveys, feedback forms, or knowledge checks tied to a specific session
• Communications for pre-event reminders, day-of nudges, and post-event follow-up, filtered by User Group, registration status, or custom rules so a sponsor sequence looks nothing like the general attendee sequence
• Reports covering session attendance, badge statistics, and distribution list performance, exportable at any time

For step-by-step instructions on Questionnaires, see Knowledgebase article: Content — Create Online Test / Questionnaire.

For News templates and distribution lists, see Knowledgebase article: Communications — News & Updates Tab.

For email templates, see Knowledgebase article: Communications — Emails Tab.

For session attendance reports, see Knowledgebase article: Reports — Sessions Reports.

For tracking reports, see Knowledgebase article: Reports — Tracking Reports.

What’s Next

This first pass covers the backbone: get groups and fields right, decide on a few key settings up front, build sessions once and reuse them, give attendees a dashboard built for them, and layer in badges and the leaderboard to keep people engaged. As this guide is tailored further, detail specific to how a given event runs will be added, whether that is sponsor management, multi-track scheduling patterns, or anything else that comes up once an admin is in here building.