Colltrain new release – Acton Edition 

Released on July 24, 2020

London, UK

This is one major release of Colltrain.com we call “Acton Edition”. It provides plenty of goodies to facilitators and designers. The addressed areas are: custom activities, working with image files, sets design, launch-time parameters and rooms management. Our main goal with this release is to strengthen design capabilities related to the flip chart type of activities. All of these new features provide a boost in creativity and flexibility.

Many thanks to all of you who offered us feedback and suggestions.

Colltrain - Acton Edition, Release notes

Custom activities

As a designer, you can:

  • create your own activities using the existing, system-provided activities (flipchart, playing-cards and magic-letters) or any available third-party activity as a foundation. 
  • In addition to the activity content, edit other information such as title, version, language, author’s name, publisher and cover image.
  • edit distribution rights across your organization (shared/private, allow/prohibit duplication).
  • Update or delete your own custom activities at any time.

As trainer you are able to:

  • start custom activities created and published by others, directly from the main screen

Working with images

This release has greatly improved the handling image files within activities and sets by allowing designers to upload and use resource files directly to activities and sets. Simply, use the embedded file browser to upload, delete and import files.

Activity files

Within the activity context, use the new file management capabilities to

  • create multiple image elements at once directly from the file browser
  • use the uploaded image files as source for image elements in your activity
  • set the background image of any page for flipchart-based activities or the background image of the board (for playing-cards and magic-letters based activities).
  • set the activity’s cover image and logo

Set files

The new files capabilities can be used for sets to:

  • create multiple set image elements directly from the file-browser
  • use the uploaded image files as source for image elements in your set
  • select the set’s backside image

Participant instructions (PI) 

Each training activity can now have an instructions text for participants. Instructions can be added by the designer as formatted text (HTML) and can be displayed each time a participant joins a room (start-up option).

Configuration of launch-time parameters 

Launch-time parameters are simply parameters that override activity default values to some extent.
They are configured when creating a new activity and/or right before launching it. Using this feature, a designer can:

  • Alter the size (width and height) of a board or page for a given activity
  • Modify the way the elements are initially placed across the board (for playing-cards and magic-letters)
  • Restrict or grant participant access to certain features (i.e. create new pages, add or remove text lines in flipchart)
  • Make a selection of tools (library elements, sets and widgets) that will be available in a flipchart-based activity and choose who will be able to access them (either all participants or just the facilitator).
    For sets and widgets you can opt to change the items’ order (shuffle and revert) or choose to display them upside down.
  • Define how participant Instructions are handled

Viewing open rooms at a glance

Any registered user can now see the currently open rooms (either his/her own and those shared by others inside the organization) in the main screen, along with details such as room name, starting time, facilitator, duration etc. 

Using the open room list you can jump in and out of any of these rooms.

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This version is dedicated to the trainers and facilitators of the world!

With love,

Colltrain creators