Coverage for Telephones, Meetings and Appointments

• Please have a volunteer, or someone who will not be involved in the training sessions, cover answering telephones and taking box office ticket sales on paper. This assists in eliminating interruptions during training.
• Wherever possible, reschedule meetings and appointments to dedicate time to the training sessions exclusively. Another option is to see if another staff member could attend the meeting/appointment on the trainee's behalf.

Training Environment

• For optimum training, you need to set aside a dedicated training area (large board room, classroom) where everyone will comfortably fit for the day long training sessions.
• Prepare to have at least 1 computer for every 2 people. We have found training is best when each person has his or her own computer to work with. Our training is ‘hands-on’ learning, this maximizes the learning opportunities by ‘doing’ and not ‘watching’. Each training computer will require access to the network to communicate with the database. Access to the Internet is not mandatory, but is helpful when we are reviewing web sales and email blasts.
• Please ensure there are enough available power plugs and power supply for all the additional workstations/laptops/projectors in the training room. The Trainer will require a minimum of 1 and up to a possible 3 outlets (depending on additional hardware you may have purchased) made available to them.
• The work and data that is required to be entered into Theatre Manager will be done by your organization's staff members (the trainee's). The training sessions are geared towards hands on experience by the end user, rather then a sit back and watch style of training.

  The trainer is not responsible for adding new data to the system. It will be up to your organization's staff members to add/create the required data into the system on a timely fashion to keep the progress of the training sessions moving forward.

• If wireless network access is not available, an extra Ethernet port, within the training area for our trainer's laptop is helpful. This allows us access to the database as we perform the training functions.
• Easy access to bottled water, coffee, tea, etc. would be gratefully appreciated. In most cases, the Trainer is constantly talking and the refreshment(s) replenish a dry mouth. This will enable the Trainer to keep "going strong" throughout your training sessions.

Training Times

• To maximize your learning time while the Arts Management Trainer is onsite, training encompasses the full day for each of the training days.
• The starting time is open to discussion and can be slightly adjusted. This discussion will need a confirmation from the Arts Management Trainer and depending on the requested starting time, may require some special considerations
• A typical training day is as follows:
  • 9:00am - 10:25am - Training Session
  • 10:25am - 10:35am - Short Break
  • 10:35am - 12:00pm - Training Session
  • 12:00pm -1:00pm - Lunch Break
  • 1:00pm - 2:25pm - Training Session
  • 2:25pm - 2:35pm - Short Break
  • 2:35pm - 5:00pm - Training Session
• We request the trainees show up a few minutes prior to the training session. This ensures that not only can the Trainer keep on schedule, but it allows you to maximize the Trainer's time and knowledge transfer.

Cross training staff members who miss a training session

• Although not a requirement, it is recommended that a team lead or representative from each department that will be utilizing Theatre Manager, be present for the entire training process. Most certainly box office, and including but not limited to development/fundraising, marketing and accounting. Understanding the setup and creation of another departments data is important to know how your department may use that data or may assist in understanding the impact of that data within your own department.
• It is the responsibility of your organization to bring other staff members up to speed on topics previously covered. Due to the short time span for your conversion process and training, re-training on topics covered in a previous session impacts the training of other topics. It is important for staff members to be prepared and available for the appropriate sessions.
• With so many different topics that need to be covered throughout the various sessions, repeating a session will impact the training schedule and may cause other sessions to be dropped from the training curriculum.

Employees with Special Requirements or Requests

• Let the Trainer know if someone on your staff requires any special handling during the training process. For example, if a staff member is dyslectic, or requires additional smoking breaks, or is required to leave the room every 60 minutes to check on something.
• When we know ahead of time of any special requests, we are in a better position to adjust either the training curriculum or "training style" to make the training process move more smoothly for all individual(s).

For a downloadable 'binder' of the Checklists

• 2 weeks prior to training
• 1 week prior to training
• Remote Install
• Days 1-8

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