Feature Spotlight
New Feature
New Feature: Waiting List Private Invites
Today, we’re pleased to announce the result of some fantastic work done by our CourseStorm summer interns (who we affectionately refer to as ⚡Team Lightning⚡)!
These college students have been working directly with our customers to make CourseStorm’s waiting list features even better for all of you. They’ve used this time to deliver on an update that addresses one of the top opportunities we uncovered: improving the experience of enrolling students on the waiting list when a new seat opens up.
The Problem
As you may know, CourseStorm has always made signing up for and managing a waiting list really easy. As soon as a class fills up, the waiting list button turns on automatically so that you can solicit interest from other students. Those students, in turn, can sign up for the waiting list right on your site to be notified if a new seat or session opens up.
Unfortunately, the administrator experience for contacting wait listers and signing them up has left something to be desired. Although administrators can easily convert waiting list entries to full registrations for a class, it can often be a challenge to get the students on the phone to collect the necessary information for registration.
So, rather than use a slow, phone-based process, we decided to make things simpler and let administrators send private, expiring invites to select waiting list students and parents so that they can place the registrations themselves at their own convenience.
How does it work?
The process couldn’t be simpler. All you have to do is find the waiting list student you’d like to offer the seat to and click “Send Invite…”. From there, you confirm the amount of time that the invite is valid and click the Send button.
Your student or parent on the other side receives an email with a private link just for them that they can use to register right on your CourseStorm site. Or, if they no longer wish to take the spot, they can easily decline the invitation as well.
Once they’ve made their choice, you receive an automatic notification. If they’ve registered for class, you and the instructor will receive a receipt just like normal for the new registration. If they’ve chosen to decline, you’ll receive a different notification letting you know that you can now move onto the next person on the waiting list.
🚀 Launching Soon
We will make this new update available to all CourseStorm customers in the next two weeks!
Thank you!
We want to give a huge thank you to Team Lightning for their fantastic work this Summer. They’re setting a high bar for all future internship teams!
So thank you to Team Lightning Members: Mathew Mesfin, Kat Canavan, and Jack Hohl!
In addition, we want to give a shout out to all of the great customers we worked with on this project. Your experience and feedback were invaluable to help our team uncover this excellent feature opportunity!
Special thank you’s to:
- Lynn and Whit from MaineHealth
- Robin from DM Playhouse
- Rose from Old Orchard Beach/Saco Adult and Community Education
and all other customers who submitted Ballot Box requests related to this feature!
Matt James
Matt has over 20 years of experience in the software industry. As the founder or co-founder of four software companies, he comprehensively understands technology, design, operations, finance, sales, marketing, and customer service. Matt co-founded CourseStorm to connect learners to classes where they can gain education a la carte to enrich their lives through art classes, prepare for a new job, or level up their existing skills.