Seeking Clarification on Reach 360 Users and Pricing

Yes!  I came here to ask all of these questions. It's a bit confusing and I would prefer NOT to hear a sales pitch. #justgivemethefacts

This seems pretty clear and straightforward to me:

https://community.articulate.com/articles/new-in-articulate-360-share-and-track-courses-with-the-reach-360-starter-plan 

https://access.articulate.com/support/article/Reach-360-FAQs#active-learner 

HI Amanda - I used the online chat option to speak with Articulate support, and they confirmed the starter version of Reach 360 is already included in your subscription cost as long as you stay under the 300 learners per year. I asked about 'active learners' and they made it sound a lot simpler than what the FAQ page is listing and just said it's anyone who has started taking a course is what's counted as an 'active learner'. They also confirmed you can delete learners from your system (when employees quit), but she couldnt answer if you were still able to run reports on a deleted users completed courses. Thought I'd pass along what I found out! 

Thanks Jennifer, that really helps. Support confirmed the same to me regarding 300 learners. I was also finding the wording around what constitutes an active learner, very confusing. what they have said to you makes sense.

I still have my doubts because the wording is so confusing on the FAQ page. 

One the the things on the page of the link that Karl posted (which I'd already gone through) says. 

"Think of your active learner count as "learner credits" drawn from an annually-refreshed credit bank. For example, if your subscription includes 1,200 active learners per year and 100 employees begin courses in the first 30 days, you'll have 1,100 active learners remaining for the rest of your plan year. However, if 50 of those 100 employees didn't complete their training in the first 30 days and resumed training in the next 30-day period, that counts as 50 more active learners used, reducing your credit bank to 1,050."

The end part is very confusing to me. It says: "However, if 50 of those 100 employees didn't complete their training in the first 30 days and resumed training in the next 30-day period, that counts as 50 more active learners used, reducing your credit bank to 1,050."

If they are the same learner, why are they eating up more credits?

Some learners might take more than 30 days to complete training and what if they have been allocated 5 training modules and they continue to be allocated more training on a regular basis. When is the training classed as complete? 

It's still appears to be needlessly confusing to me. But I'm open to that just being me. 

I think I'll just get stuck in and add learners and see how my active learner amounts are altered based on the number of people I add. That will give me the facts. 

I notice there is a Pro version of Reach, but I cannot find any details anywhere on cost, how many users, extra functionality than the included version, etc. Does anyone have any information on this?

Does Reach 360 require a separate subscription?
The Reach 360 Starter plan is included in every Articulate 360 Teams subscription, with room for 300 active learners per year. If you have more than 300 active learners, you can subscribe to Reach 360 Pro.

Contact one of our learning experts at sales@articulate.com to help you find the plan that's right for you.

My company has contracted workers who are not given access to our LMS, and this tool sounds like the perfect solution to push out online training those people need. 

Some of these people  become hired employees, so I'm assuming that when I would delete them from Reach 360 (adding them to our company's LMS), that reduces my number of active users in Reach 360 - is this a correct assumption?

Hi Lucy,

Deleting a user/learner from Reach 360 would not reduce the active learner count since this count gets refreshed annually.

"Each unique learner with training activity in a 30-day period after your annual term starts counts as an active learner, with the additional days included in the final period. That means a learner becomes an active learner only when they begin the first lesson of a course or take a microlearning."

Once deleted from Reach 360, they would still have counted as an active learner if they took part in a course. This means they contributed to the total active learners allowed for your Reach 360 subscription and removing them won't give the count back. If you have any questions, feel free to open a case with our support team here and we'll be glad to address any additional Reach 360 questions you may have.

Hi Jose, 

Can you respond to Carlton's response about the example given in the FAQ?  "However, if 50 of those 100 employees didn't complete their training in the first 30 days and resumed training in the next 30-day period, that counts as 50 more active learners used, reducing your credit bank to 1,050." 

Why would those 50 employees eat up more of the credits if they are the same employees? Let's say we have 1000 employees and ideally we want them consuming learning content each month. Does that mean we need 12,000 active learners? That just seems like a lot"

Yes, if this is correct, that's borderline trickery. Anybody would understand 300 active learners to be 300 people. A year. It seems to me that what we are really talking about is 300 active experiences a year. Therefore, you might have one learner who takes 300 courses in a 12-month period or 300 learners who take one course in a 12-month period - providing they complete within the same month they start.

I reckon this would be almost impossible for people to manage. You'd find yourself being billed because somebody decided to complete a course in December that they started in January.

If I am understanding correctly, there isn't any advantage to deleting a learner with regards to the active user count. So, is there a way to disable access to an assigned course after completion without deleting the user? I would like to use this for online testing of an instructor led course for students who are outside of our organization and do not have access to our traditional LMS. But I want to disable access to the test once completed while still maintaining the reporting for documentation purposes. The 300 active user count would work in this scenario as the learner would only access Reach 360 on a one-time basis.

Those references didn't seem that clear.  If you have 25 learners who do one course per month, that equates to 300 unique learners.   In a million years, I wouldn't come up with that algorithm.  Is this bait and switch?

That's a question for Articulate to answer.

As a comparison, in our LMS, If you have 25 learners who do one course per month, that only equates to 25 unique learners. It doesn't matter how many courses each learner takes, it's the number of unique learners.

Also in our LMS, there is a distinction between unique learners and active learners, if a student is registered in the LMS and has courses assigned, if that student did not access the LMS during a specific period (forget the length of the period), they do not count as an active learner.

I don't know if Reach works in the same way.

Hi Gabriela!

Happy to jump in here!

Active learning is tracked for each 30-day billing period. Your active learner count is calculated based on the number of unique learners who start training within the 30-day billing period. It doesn’t matter if you have new learners every period or the same learners each period.

When upgrading to Reach 360 Pro, we’ll help you plan the number of active learners you’ll need for the year! You can dig into your needs with our sales specialists from this Contact Us page.

Here's my situation: 186 learners taking 323 credits so far.

Hi Charles!

Happy to share some insight on this!

If you need to disable a learner's access you can remove the learner from a course. This won't delete the user, just their course access.

Also, I suggest ensuring that library visibility is turned off for that course. This will prevent the learner from searching for it in the library and clicking on it again.

Please let me know if you have any more questions!

Hi Dan!

Thank you for sharing the example!

I noticed that you've opened a support case and connected with my teammate, Gren. You're in excellent hands working with her, and we can continue the conversation through your case to keep all information in one spot.

Another question regarding the active user count that comes to mind is that of the Manager role. Will there be a debit to the active user count when managers access a course for assigning users or generating reports? Or will their user account not affect the balance as long as they do not take any courses themselves?

Hi Charles, 

Happy to help!

Assigning learners or generating reports will not take away from the available active learner count. Managers are only counted as "active learners" if assigned as actual learners on a Reach 360 course and they register training activity.