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Welcome [usermeta field="first_name"], to the DVA Platform

We are happy to see you here!  You can access this course at any time while your account exists on our platform.  We will only delete your account at your request.  Your account has two fundamental modes:

• Active
  Your account (technically) is always active.  Your subscriptions and access to the course materials will expire.
• Inactive (or expired)
  Inactive is what we call a soft status.  You can always log in to the platform.  We recommend that you login at least once every 30 days to keep your account up to date.  Inactive is where all of your subscriptions or group memberships have expired.

Note:  CDVP2 students are always enrolled by the Authorized Training Partner (ATP) that is delivering your course.  You cannot see the full subscription details in your own account - the subscription is owned by the ATP.  However that being said: your access to the CDVP2 materials does expire and you can see the expiration date by clicking the My Groups button.

Active mode simply means you are enrolled in at least one course or e-learning product on the platform, or you've made a purchase recently of a book, or another product we sell in our store.  Your account will go from Active to Inactive and back to Active again over time.   Even while your account is inactive or expired, you may (and are encouraged to) log in and keep your profile information up to date.

Benefits of keeping your account updated

Some of the benefits of keeping your profile up-to-date are listed below: (not in any particular order of importance)

1. Discount coupons. 
   We occasionally send out discount codes to members of our community that have (and keep) their account up-to-date on our platform.
2. Access to announcements. 
   We offer webinars and other events that are for 'members only'.  These webinars and events are open to all who have a valid account (active or inactive) on our platform.
3. Early Access to new courses. 
   We are hard at work bringing new courses to our platform.  You will be given a chance to be first in line to access new content (often at seriously discounted prices or even free).
4. Notifications. 
   At the moment notifications are paused across the site.  The paused status is set to change as we move into Q1-2022.  You'll have the opportunity to be notified of new posts in the Tips and Tricks section (for example).
5. Updates / notices about certification renewals. 
   Keeping your account profile updated will allow us to notify you of upcoming certification expiration and renewal opportunities.
6. Contact with Vendors in our VTCP Program.
   We are partnering with a number of software vendors under our VTCP program.  We will be integrating form-based access to some of the vendor platforms in the cloud.  You are required to have a valid account here in order to take advantage of these benefits going forward.
7. Access to WWDVC content.
   If you've ever attended a conference in the past, then you know the value of reviewing the videos from the conference later on.  To maintain continued access to WWDVC content, you are required to keep a valid account here.

Your Profile

Your profile can be reached by clicking My Account in the menu bar.  It's that simple, really.  We've made it super simple and easy for you to access your account / profile.  Your account and your profile are the same thing on our platform.   On your account header you'll see a series of menu buttons that grant you access to:

1. Edit Account
2. My Courses  - courses you are enrolled in OR CAN enroll in
3. Course Notes - any notes you have taken while in class are held here
4. My Downloads - store purchases such as e-books and other materials are available here
5. My Orders - see a history of every order you've made on our platform, view individual order details and order it again if you like.  Inside My Orders you can also see the individual subscriptions tied to the order (if there are subscriptions for the product you ordered)
6. My Subscriptions - view a list / history of all subscriptions both active and expired

[wpf tag="Role:Group Leader"]Group Leaders

As a group leader you have an additional feature: Groups Dashboard.  This feature allows you to manage groups and to enroll and un-enroll users in the group.  An additional lesson on managing groups appears in this course if you have the proper access rights.[/wpf]

[wpf tag="Admin:CDVP2 Upload"]CDVP2 Upload

As an ATP manager you also have access to uploading /creating and managing CDVP2 course registrations.  This feature also appears here if you have this ability.  An additional lesson on uploading CDVP2 courses appears here if you have the proper access rights.[/wpf]

Returning to "My Account" Page

There are two ways to return to My Account:

1. Click My Account in the menu bar
2. Click your own Profile Picture (Avatar) in the circle in the page-header.

Edit Account

You can edit your account, including your billing and shipping address.  By the way, both are required on purchase or update of your profile.  We require these for tax purposes.    Most fields (other than the addresses) are optional.   The only thing you cannot edit is your username.  Once your username been setup, it stays forever.  If your account is created by an ATP (as indicated above for CDVP2 students), then the username is set automatically.

Updating your Email Address

Your email address is stored in two places on your account.

1. At the top (your primary email address for use to login, identifying your user account, etc.)
2. In the BILLING ADDRESS

Please keep both email addresses up-to-date at all times.  A failure to keep your email up-to-date will result in bounced transactional emails.

After 5 consecutive bounces we are forced (due to CAN-SPAM laws) to delete your account from our platform.  We will keep your account in our CRM but will disable it (marking it undeliverable).  If you return to our platform a few months later and know your old email is dead, please use the CONTACT US form to ask us to change your email address and re-instate your account on our platform, OR simply purchase another product from our store.

You must log in to edit your own account.   We use your primary email address to communicate with you through transactional emails.

Understanding Transactional Emails

Transactional emails are automated emails sent from one sender to one recipient and usually related to account notifications or activity or a commercial transaction.   We use these transactional emails to communicate with you around some of the following items (the list below is not complete):

• Purchase confirmation
• Password Reset
• Account Deletion
• Account Creation
• Course Enrollment / Unenrollment
• Notifications
• Subscription upcoming expiration
• Login Information
• and so on.

These transactional emails are sent from: <user> @mail.learn.datavaultalliance.com - where the domain (mail.learn.datavaultalliance.com) is the important bit.  You will need to ensure this domain is white-listed in your company's email server or you will not see any transactional emails come through from us.  Please read our Knowledge Base Article: Not Receiving Emails for more information.

TRANSACTIONAL EMAILS DO NOT HAVE AN UNSUBSCRIBE LINK - THERE IS NOTHING TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM.

Understanding Marketing Emails

Marketing emails are sent from: <user> @datavaultalliance.com domain (there is a difference).  All of our Marketing Emails have an unsubscribe link at the bottom, and are generated by our CRM system.  These, you may absolutely unsubscribe from without damaging your account status.  Please note: If you unsubscribed at one point and want to re-subscribe, you will need to use the CONTACT US form to let us know.  Re-subscribing is a manual process we have to go through.  Marketing emails include:

• Discount Coupons for use in future purchases
• Newsletter content
• Announcements about webinars / events, etc...
• and more

Who Sees Your Information?

All employees, contractors, and administrators of DataVaultAlliance Holdings LLC can see your information in order to administer the website.

• Authorized Training Partners (ATPs)
  Our ATPs see some of your information, especially if: you request a contact with them, or you are enrolled by them on our platform
• Certified Instructors (CIs)
  Our CIs see some of your information when you request contact with them or they are teaching your upcoming course - and they work for the ATP that enrolled you in our platform.
• Our Vendors / VTCP Program Participants
  We share your information with vendors that participate in our VTCP program ONLY WHEN you fill in a form and request contact with them.

What happened to the forums here?

Our Forums are back, and 100% Free!  You can register separately for the forums below:

https://forums.datavaultalliance.com

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My Courses

A list of all courses you are enrolled in, were enrolled in in the past, or can self-enroll for free, are listed in My Courses.  We have enabled a resume course button that allows you to return to the course you are interested in.  Other courses display a START COURSE button.  Click the button to start the course.   The progress bar indicates how far (percentage wise) you've made it through the lesson content.  In most courses you can access the lessons in any order.  Only a few courses require you to follow the order of the course before proceeding (or unlocking the next lesson).

NOTE: Display Name Publicly - due to tightening privacy regulations we have shut off all members lists inside our platform.  Your public display name will only be seen by authorized training partners, administrators on the site, and certified instructors that you may interact with.

The WELCOME course is always listed first.  We recommend you visit this course as often as you need to as a guide to using our platform effectively.

My Groups

This page displays all the groups you are either enrolled in (via an ATP assignment to a course) OR Groups you have been added to by DVA.  If you are a Group Leader, the column You Are A Group Leader will say Yes for that group.   In this list you can see the expiration date for the groups you are enrolled in.  If there is no date listed then that means your access will not expire until or unless you are removed from that particular group.

Expiration of a Group

Groups may expire - as they are often tied to subscriptions or orders owned by the Authorized Training Partner or DVA.   IF the group you are enrolled in has an expiration date, you will see it listed in the expiration date column of the table.  If you are in two groups with the similar access to the same course or materials, then you will have access to those same materials until the last expiration date (max expiration date) passes.

You can sort, print, filter the table in the My Groups list.   For privacy reasons - we never show details of the group to anyone other than the group leaders.  Group Leaders in this case are our Authorized Training Partners (ATP's) that run DVA courses.

Course Notes

You can take notes on any lesson in any course that we offer.  Including any instructor-led lessons - this is particularly helpful if you can type faster than you can write.   These notes are stored in a central repository, and are only visible to you, the admins of the DVA site.  We may share your notes with an Authorized Training Partner or Certified Instructor if you request feedback from a particular instructor.

Hitting The SAVE button

SAVE takes 3 to 5 seconds to respond...  Please give it a few seconds before clicking the save button again.

NOVEMBER 2021 ISSUE:

We are currently experiencing a technical issue with Course Notes.  IF the "edit box" appears blank, then you've hit the bug.  To "fix" - refresh the page, click Take Notes again.  If the "edit box" for text comes up with either your existing note OR the word "Notes:"  (default text), then you are good to go.   We are working on resolving this issue as quickly as possible.

Do Notes Get Deleted?

These notes have a limited life - and are automatically deleted for a single course when your access to the course materials expires.  You may (at any time) view ALL your notes, download your notes via Word, PDF, or CSV and save them off.  You may even delete your notes when you are done with them. These notes will be invaluable going forward for studying for the exams and for the quizzes.

At the moment: if you want a note shared with an instructor, you need to either contact us at DVA - and tell us which note to share - or, contact the instructor directly using the contact-an-instructor form.  We do not and will never share your notes without your permission or request.

We tie nearly all our courses to subscription-based access.  That means any course you are enrolled in (whether you purchase the course through our store or enrolled through an Authorized Training Partner (ATP)); you will have access through the ATP's subscription.  All subscriptions have expiration dates.  Most expiration dates are 90 days from point of sale.   This means you have up to 90 days to access the materials in the course, take notes / export the notes, leverage the course materials.

This expiration does not affect your account or your ability to log in.   Once you have an account on our platform, it will stay there until you ask us to delete it for you OR until your email begins to bounce too many times.   Please note: as of 28 October 2021 we are working on a way to show you "course access expiration" in your account dashboard.   We hope to release the course access expiration before the end of this year.

Communicating with the Instructor of your Course

Most e-learning courses you purchase through our store are created by DVA - either Dan Linstedt, Cindi Meyersohn, or Sanjay Pande.  You can always use the CONTACT-AN-INSTRUCTOR form to contact any instructor you wish.  All certified instructors (CIs) around the world have access to all the courses on our platform and can answer most any question you might come up with.   That said, you may take notes on every lesson (including this one! while you have access to the course itself).   You may choose to share the note with an instructor by pasting it in to our "Contact an Instructor" form.

Taking Notes During the Course / Asking Questions

Taking notes is easy - once you've started a course and entered a lesson, the "take notes" pop-over appears to the very right side of the browser window.  Click the TAKE NOTES blue button on the right side, and out pops a notes window.  You can take notes on any lesson from the course and record them and review all notes at a later date.  You can always click "View All Notes" in the bottom of the panel to see ALL the notes you have taken on all lessons for any course.  You can also PRINT the notes, export them to CSV, or word document - or if you prefer - delete the notes in the View All Notes page.

All your notes appear in the Course Notes section on the My Account page.

Filling in Quizzes (where available)

Some lessons have quizzes attached at the bottom of the lesson.  When a Quiz is there, most likely you will be required to complete the quiz before the lesson itself will be marked as complete.   Good news however: the quizzes do not store any statistics.  The quizzes are there solely for you to practice.  At the end of the quiz your results are tallied so you can easily see what you got right and got wrong along with explanations of why.

Important!!  The "Start Quiz" button will not appear until you have watched the entire video (when a video is part of the lesson)

We've attached a simple quiz at the bottom of this lesson - Give it a TRY!!

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My Orders

This page houses a list of your orders - all of the orders you have made on our platform.  NOTE: If at some point you request your account to be physically deleted from our platform (which you may do in accordance with right to be forgotten) all of your orders, downloads, subscriptions will all be deleted since they tie to your personal data.   If you return to the platform at a later date and build a new profile - it will start fresh.

You may view the contents of individual orders by clicking the VIEW button at the end of the row of the order.  This will drill in to the order details.  The order details will show you what you paid, when the order was made, the quantity of each item, and any related subscription (if there is one attached).  It will also allow you to drill in further in to the subscription itself (again, if one is attached), OR you may order again by pressing the Order Again button.

The BILLING AND SHIPPING Address at the bottom of the individual order is transactional data - and will not change even if you update your own profile.  This data is set as the data was at the time of the order.

My Subscriptions

The subscriptions list will show you all the subscriptions (both active and expired) that you are either currently enrolled in, or were enrolled in at one time.  IF there is a recurring payment, the Next Payment will display a date for when the next charge will occur.  Remember: ALL charges and credit card information is housed on Stripe.com  - we do not ever hold any credit card information on our site. 

NOTE: If an Authorized Training Partner (ATP) enrolls you in a group - you cannot / will not see the subscription on this page, as the ATP owns the subscription for the entire group.  To see the group name and the access-to-the-materials expiration date click on the My Groups button.

You may drill into the subscription details by clicking the VIEW button.  It will show you a number of related details for your subscription.  Again, the BILLING AND SHIPPING information at the bottom of the subscription is transactional data and will not change even if you update your own profile.  This data is set at the time of the subscription.

My Downloads

My Downloads only lists ORDERED / Purchased products.

This particular page shows all of the downloads you have purchased through the store, like e-books, articles, zip files etc...  Some downloads will expire (and automatically disappear from your list) and some will remain for a longer period.  It all depends on the access time limitations / expiration of the product(s) you are either enrolled in or have purchased.

NOTE: if you have purchased two different products that both allow access to the same download - you will see it listed more than once.  Each product has it's own download expiration's, limitations and access policies.  Each download here is tied to an order.

Each download has an expiration date, as well as a number of times the item can be downloaded.   In order to access ANY of these downloads you must be logged in to the platform, no exceptions.

To read about course downloads - go to the lesson here called Course Access and Expiration.

Store and Purchases

We offer an ever-growing array of e-learning products that you can purchase.  These products can be found in our store.  Click the Store menu item to reach the store.   All of your information is submitted over https secure website.  DVA is secured by COMODO.COM SSL at the highest quality.  Our site is also protected by SUCURI.NET and their internal firewalls.  This ensures your purchasing process to be safe and accurate.   Your Credit Card information is NEVER stored on our site.  It is submitted on-the-fly over https secure communication with STRIPE.COM.  Your credit card information is held by Stripe.com.

Access to Your Purchases

You can access your purchases by clicking My Account in the menu bar and then clicking one of the following four buttons:

1. My Courses (for any courses you have either been enrolled in OR have purchased)
2. My Downloads (for any downloadable materials attached to the courses OR purchased by you)
3. My Orders (for all orders you've created with our store)
4. My Subscriptions (usually tied directly to an order)

If you purchased a product and cannot gain access - please CONTACT US immediately.  We will work quickly to resolve your access issues for you.

IF YOU ARE ENROLLED IN A COURSE BY AN AUTHORIZED TRAINING PARTNER - PLEASE CONTACT THEM BEFORE CONTACTING US, especially if you have an access issue.  Chances are good that they can correct it for you.

Purchasing New Courses

Some courses will only appear in the shop after you have logged in.  Some products are only available to those that have purchased a different product in the past or who have been granted special access through our marketing programs.   We encourage you to log in first and then click the Shop menu to purchase your products.  Logging into your account first will make your checkout process much easier as it pre-fills the data from your account.

Course Downloads

All course downloads will appear in the course under the downloads tab.  If there are no downloads for that course - then the tab will not be visible.   To access the downloads for a course:

1. Navigate to the course or lesson you are actively enrolled in
2. Click the DOWNLOADS tab
3. Click the link for the download you wish to access
4. Save the file when prompted

Links are encrypted, and you are required to be Logged In, and have an active enrollment in the course in order to see the download.  Once your course access expires - your access to the downloads for that course also expire.

Lesson Downloads

Some lessons have attached downloads as well.  When a lesson has a download, the downloads tab will appear / be visible at the top of the lesson content (above the video).  If there are no downloads, the downloads tab will not be visible.   The same steps apply to download the content from a lesson as indicated above.

Expiration of Access To Courses

Some (most) e-learning content expires, generally, within about 90 days from the date of purchase. Some products will have longer expiration periods, others may be shorter.  To view any expirations you may need to check two places:

1. Click on My Subscriptions in your account and drill into the details for any purchased courses.
2. OR: click on My Groups to view the group expiration - if you were enrolled by DVA or an ATP (Authorized Training Partner) in the course

As of 2 November 2021:

• You are notified of upcoming expiring orders / subscriptions.
• For enrolled group expirations: you are not notified of expiration

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Focus Mode

This lesson covers the change in the GUI to a mode called Focus Mode.  The Focus Mode clears all distractions from the screen when you are in a course.  Focus Mode also makes the video responsive to the screen size changes.

Our feeling is that commenting on blogs is actually better on a social platform.  We post our blog entries on LinkedIn and Twitter both, we would rather have public comments on either of those platforms instead of on the blog itself.  This way the broader community can respond to our posts, and we can collaborate with a wider audience.

Offering Feedback

We do take feedback in a few ways:

1. Contact-Us form - always feel free to contact us with feedback.
2. Provide feedback in the course-surveys, course reviews, and platform surveys.
3. Replies on Social Media (LinkedIn an Twitter)

Thank you!

How to Get Help

What happens if you get stuck? Have no fear, we have easy methods for you to get help.

• The Knowledge Base should be your FIRST stop.  use the search feature on any keyword you like to find out if there is a KB article there to help you.
• If you don't find what you are looking for:  use the CONTACT US form and we will get back to you right away.

Thank you, and we hope you enjoyed this short walk through of our platform.