PORTAL User's Guide
Linked Table of Contents
Introduction
The Peace Education Program Portal has been designed to keep track of licenses, facilities and courses around the world, and the use of it begins when you apply for a license. Your Peace Education Program License permits you to offer any number of Courses in any number of Facilities. TPRF requires information about each Facility where you offer these educational courses, and asks for a report of each course you conduct. (Please note: a "course" is any offering of the10 sessions within any of the four available courses - PEP 1,2,3 or CL).
Setting up each Facility is a brief, one-time effort. Each course involves two reports: one to set up the course when it begins, and another to provide the attendance information when it ends. Each course report takes just a few minutes. If you wish, you can assign the reporting tasks to others on a Facility-by-Facility basis.
The Portal is designed for ease of use. If you have used other browser-based systems that involve filling out forms, you will find this system intuitive and self-explanatory. This Guide includes step-by-step instructions to walk you through each system function.
Key Concepts
Licenses, Facilities, and Courses
A Facility is a location where Courses are conducted or offered. Your License supports any number of Facilities. Your initial Facility was set up in your original License Application. If you are using other Facilities, you will set them up in the portal under your license. This guide will show you how. Once a Facility is set up, you will report any number of Courses in it. As of April 2020 we have updated the system to allow for the addition of a "virtual facility". This is where the course is facilitated virtually using an internet platform such as Zoom or equivalent.
When your license is approved, you will be given the link to the login page, a User ID and password to access your license portal within the system. It is important to remember that simply having a license is incomplete without adding all courses and facilities under your license.
When you report the beginning of a Course, you select the Facility (virtual or physical location) where the course will be held from the list of facilities in your License. If your current facility is not listed as a choice for you, it means that you have not added the new facility yet. When you report the end of a Course, you simply update the Course record you created when you reported the beginning. This guide will show you how to do your beginning and ending course reports.
Users, Contacts, and Contact Roles
Each License has a Primary Contact who has the main responsibility for the License. The Primary Contact automatically receives a User ID and Password for the portal. Often, this is the only User ID needed for a License. However, the Primary Contact may set up additional Contacts who can share the reporting tasks related to the License. Each Contact gets his or her own User ID and Password. This guide will show you how to set up additional contacts and will explain the three Contact Roles you can create: Course Reporter, Materials Access Associate and License Administrator.
It is not required to report all people who are involved in course-related activities under the License. Your License empowers you to form a team without reporting its members to TPRF. Only those who need to use the portal as Course Reporters or License Administrators need to be reported.
Summary
When you understand these key concepts, you are ready to begin using the portal. The remainder of this guide explains the exact steps of each operation. Many license holders will not need this step-by-step explanation, but it is here for reference. Also, this is a diagram that shows how the portal has been designed:
Login and main menu
The Login screen looks like this:
Your Username is the email address in your contact record. Your initial password is assigned by the system and sent to you in an email message. You can change your password at any time. If you forget your password, use the forgot password button, and the system will send you a new password by email.
After you login, you will see the main menu:
Note: As of August, 2020, the portal landing page has been revised. You will notice several new links on the above page. One of these is a new way to access the materials resources website. All licensees and contacts will access the materials site through the "Course Materials" section and the "Download Materials" link.
==================================================================================================================
Note the menu choices below. The Portal is available in five languages: English, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese. All menus, screens, instructions, and help messages appear in the selected language. The selections drop down when you click the down-arrow next to the globe.
Report courses and manage facilities
The first item on the Main Menu is by far the most used one. As you will see, both Courses and Facilities have two reporting modes: creating a new one, and updating one that was created before. When you select this item, you will see the main page for these two functions. The top of the page shows the basic information about the License and includes two action buttons for creating new Courses and managing Facilities. It looks like this:
Below the heading, you will see a list of the Courses you have already created organized into three color-coded categories:
Under each category, the Courses you have already created are listed by Facility in this format:
To report the end of a Course or to change its details at any time, click the pencil icon to the left of the Course you want to change.
Creating a New Course
When you click the blue Create New Course button, the following form appears:
Begin by selecting a Facility from the dropdown list of Facilities. The first two fields, Facility Type and Audience Type will be auto-filled based on information about the selected Facility, but you can change them here. Fill out the rest of the form with your best estimate of the dates and New Participant count, then press the blue Create course button. If you decide not to create the Course, the Close without saving button cancels the operation.
The form contains two optional, free-form fields: Course name and Notes. Course Name is useful for identifying a specific Course when multiple Courses are running in parallel. Notes is for anything you want to add. ** Notice the little question mark buttons next to some of the fields. These provide pop-up help messages explaining the field. After you press the Create Course button, the screen returns to the list of Courses, and the new Course will now appear in the list.
Reporting the End of (or updating) a Course
When you click on the pencil icon next to a listed Course, the same screen appears, but with the current data already filled in. The form is "smart," because if the End Date is on or before today, the form automatically changes to show the four attendance fields required in an end Course report. The form now looks like this:
Manage Facilities
As with Courses, the Facility management function has two modes: review and change existing Facilities, and create new Facilities. When you click the Manage Facilities button at the top of the page, you will see a list of existing Facilities for this License:
To create a new Facility (Virtual or Physical Location), press the blue button at the bottom right of the Facility list and fill out this form. When you click the button for a virtual facility (using an internet platform), the address field disappears. All the other fields remain:
The Facility Name is very important. It should include the name of the organization that is hosting the course by agreement with the volunteers. The Facility form includes many drop-down fields that are controlled by other fields. For example, the Usual audience field changes according to the Type of facility, and the Nearest metropolitan area changes according to the Country. The last field on the Course provides continuity with an earlier reporting system that assigned "Program Numbers" that are no longer used. If you answer No, the form is complete. If you answer Yes, the form asks for the old Program Number of this Facility, like this:
If you don't know the Legacy Program Number, you cannot complete the Facility. If you need to report a Course for this Facility immediately, just change your answer to No and send a message to the Help Desk at pep@tprf.org. Ask them to look up the old number and update the Facility record.
When you want to change a Facility, click the pencil icon next to that Facility in the list. You will see a similar form with all of the details filled in:
You can change anything except the address. By definition, a new address means a new Facility. Notice that bringing up this screen for an existing Facility is also a path to creating a new Course with that Facility selected. See the Create New Course button, lower right.
Manage contacts
Contact management is much less used than Course Reporting and Facility Management. However, it may be important for very active licenses, especially those with multiple facilities. This function allows the creation of additional Users (Associates) who can share Course reporting and other administrative tasks. Begin from the Main Menu. If you have been doing another function, you return to the main menu by clicking Exit to menu in the upper right corner of the screen.
When you select Manage Contacts from the Main Menu, you will notice the now-familiar pattern: you see a list of existing Contacts, and you have a button to create a new Contact.
Pressing the blue Create New Contact button brings up this blank contact form:
The form is self-explanatory except for Preferred Language and Contact Type. The Preferred Language field sets the language that will be automatically presented when this User logs in to the system.
Every License has a Primary Contact. This is the highest level of License access, and it should not be changed without contacting TPRF. There are three Contact Types available each new Contact: Course Reporter, Materials Access Associate and License Administrator. A License Administrator can do any function that the Primary Contact can do, including Course Reports, Facility Management, and Contact Management.
As the name implies, a Course Reporter is limited to reporting on Courses that take place in existing Facilities. A Course Reporter cannot create new Facilities or Contacts. When a Course Reporter is set up and the License has multiple Facilities, the Facilities he or she may report on is specified. The checkbox list of Facilities is displayed after the Course Reporter Type is selected:
After a new Contact is created, the system automatically sends an email message to the Contact providing the Username and initial Password, and inviting the Contact to the Start Page for system orientation and system use.
To change information about a Contact, click the pencil icon next to the one you want to change. Notice that the Primary Contact can use this function to change his or her own contact details.
Other functions
The only other functions on the Main Menu are very simple and completely self-explanatory.
Getting more help
The User Start page includes links to other helpful resources, including a page with training videos, a FAQ page, and a page about License organization and structure. There is a TPRF Helpdesk team dedicated to supporting the use of the Portal. You can always reach them at pep@tprf.org .