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Continuing Education Credits and Webex Events
Continuing Education Credits and Webex Events

Considerations and best practices for tracking and awarding credits

Daniel Murphey avatar
Written by Daniel Murphey
Updated over a week ago

If your event grants Continuing Education (CE) credits to attendees who participate in a Session or live stream, then gathering data on those who completed the requirements is one of your top priorities.

This article highlights considerations and best practices for tracking data related to CE credits in a Webex Events App. It also explains where to find and download the most useful data for awarding CE credits. 📊

💡 Keep in mind, if you need to virtually administer quizzes for Continuing Medical Education (CME) knowledge checks, we recommend using our Polling feature for simple questions, or use Slido or another third-party survey provider for more complex quizzes or surveys.

Award CE credits for in-person Session attendance

Tracking CE credits is easy if you plan to use Webex Events Onsite Session Check-in at your in-person venue! Before you use Session Check-in, you must configure each Session to meet your needs.

Configure Sessions for CE awards

When configuring Sessions for Session Check-in, carefully consider which Check-in option you need.

  • If you only need to know if someone checked in to the Session, select the Single check-in option.

  • If you need to know how long someone attended the Session, select Check-out required.

The Check-in options drop-down in the Session Check-in section of an Edit Session modal.

💡 Keep in mind, be careful to clearly explain how to earn CE credits to all attendees so they don't forget to check in and out of the Session.

Use Session Check-in data to award CE credits

After attendees have checked in to Sessions, the simplest way to download Session reports is to use the 'Session Specific Summaries' export on the Onsite Metrics page. This export contains individual files for each Session that has Session Check-in activated.

  1. In your Event's Onsite menu, click Metrics.

  2. On the Metrics page, click the Export Report button.

  3. Select the Session Specific Summaries option. A notification appears letting you know that the export is in progress.

    The process just described.
  4. When the export is ready, a new notification appears. Click the Click here to download link to download the file.

    1. If you missed the notification, click the notification bell icon next to the Help tab to review all your past notifications and download files.

    The 'Processing' and 'It's Done!' export notifications.

The zipped folder that downloads contains one .xlsx file for each Session in your Event that has Session Check-in activated. Each file contains a line item for each time each attendee checked in or out of a Session, and it includes a 'Duration' column to help you easily identify people who met the CE credit criteria.

  • Unique Identifier

  • First Name

  • Last Name

  • Email Address

  • Title

  • Company Name

  • Location

  • Exclusive Group

  • Groups

  • Check-in Time - Multiple check-ins by the same attendee are listed in separate rows.

  • Check-out Time

  • Duration - The total elapsed time from an attendee's last check-in time to their check-out time.

Award CE credits for virtual Session attendance

If your event is virtual or hybrid and you want attendees viewing live streams to earn CE credits, keep reading to learn how to track this with Webex Events.

Attendee tracking limitations

The Webex Events platform has robust metrics capabilities. However, there are some cases that limit our ability to track and collect virtual attendee data in the Event App.

Ad blockers and private browsers

If an attendee joining the Web App installs an ad blocker in their browser, or if they're using a private browser window, Webex Events might not capture their activity.

To help track virtual attendees for metrics, activate the Analytics Tracking Alert feature for the Web App. When Webex Events detects that an attendee is using an ad blocker, a pop-up appears. The pop-up can either show a warning or prevent access to the Event App until the attendee adds the Webex Events domain to the blocker's allowlist or deactivates the blocker.

Third-party streaming

If you're not using the Webex Events Production Studio, the Webex Events RTMP Player, or Webex Events Simulive for your live streams, we can only offer metrics for who clicks on live streams and other features. If you need to know how long attendees viewed a live stream, refer to the documentation from your live stream provider.

To learn how to access the simple click data in Webex Events, read the Download live stream clicks section later in this article.

Survey and poll considerations

Before we explore how to access click data for Live Stream features and Agenda Sessions, let's talk about using polls and surveys to collect CE data.

Using surveys

In some cases, you may need to include a survey as secondary verification that attendees virtually viewed a Session. Third-party surveys embed beautifully in the Event App as long as they supply a link, and our article about surveys in the Event App has more information.

There are a few different approaches and considerations, which we've outlined below:

  • If you want each eligible Session to have its own survey, use Custom Tabs to embed the survey directly in each Session. You can also create a Web List feature with Internal Links to all of the CE credit Sessions so that attendees have a comprehensive list stored in one place. Refer to our Web List feature setup guide for more information.

  • If you'd prefer one survey that covers the entire event, use the Web Link feature to embed the survey in your Event App. Read our Web Link feature setup guide to learn more.

  • Timing is everything! We recommend hiding the surveys until you're ready for attendees to fill them out. Consider making the surveys visible the morning of the event or toward the end of the event, depending on your needs. Read our article about limiting attendee content access to learn how to control access to content in your Event App.

  • Keep your attendees informed by sending announcements that contain information and instructions. Schedule strategic reminder announcements that go out to attendees at specific times. To learn how to create and send announcements in Webex Events, read our Announcements feature setup guide.

Using polls

Polling data can help you determine who was paying attention during a virtual Session. Unless poll participation is required to earn CE credits, we recommend only using polling data as a secondary verification method.

Download Webex Events Streaming metrics

When you use the Webex Events Production Studio, the Webex Events RTMP player, or Webex Events Simulive, use the Video Analytics report to find out who joined your live streams and how long they watched.

💡 Keep in mind, Webex Events Video on Demand only provides click data. The Live stream clicks (third-party streaming) section of this article describes how to find and access basic click data for live streams.

Export the Video Analytics report

  1. In your Event navigation bar under ‘Event App’, click Metrics.

  2. On the Metrics page, click the Export Report button.

  3. Select Video Analytics from the drop-down. A notification appears letting you know that the export is in progress.

    The process just described.

  4. When the export is ready, a new notification appears. Click the Click here to download link to download the file.

    1. If you missed the notification, click the notification bell icon next to the Help tab to review all your past notifications and download files.

      The exporting and export successful notifications.
  5. Open the .xlsx file in your preferred spreadsheet program. The report contains a line item for each attendee for each live stream in your Event App.

  6. For CE credits, sort the report by the Last Name column to organize each person's data for all live streams in the same place.

  7. On the Video Analytics sheet, the Total Duration (minutes) column tells you exactly how long each person watched the live stream, even if they left and rejoined multiple times.

    The Video Analytics export. The Total Duration column is highlighted.

Once you've identified which attendees qualify for CE credits, you can award them!

Download live stream clicks (third-party streaming)

As we mentioned earlier, Webex Events only offers data on who clicks on live streams and other features if you don't use the Webex Events Production Studio, or RTMP options. Here's how to find this click data:

  1. Open the Metrics page.

  2. Click Export Report.

  3. Select the Metrics option from the drop-down. A notification appears letting you know that the export is in progress.

    A notification appears letting you know that the export is in progress.
  4. When the export is ready, a new notification appears. Click the Click here to download link to download the file.

    1. If you missed the notification, click the notification bell icon next to the Help tab to review all your past notifications and download files.

      The exporting and export successful notifications.
  5. Open the Feature Details .xlsx file in your preferred spreadsheet program. The report contains labeled sheets for each feature in your Event App.

  6. Find the sheet for the feature you hosted your live stream in.

    💡 Keep in mind, the title of each sheet in the Feature Details file matches the feature names you set in the Webex Events platform. For example, if you name a Live Stream feature "Live Now", the file will have a corresponding sheet titled "Live Now".

Live Stream feature clicks

To find Live Stream feature clicks, open the corresponding Live Stream sheet. Sort the sheet by the 'Action' column, then remove any rows that don't say "Clicked".

💡 Keep in mind, if you want to use polling data in addition to clicks, keep the rows whose 'Action' column shows "Voted in a Poll". This column only shows information for the Event App's Polling feature, not Slido.

The Live Stream sheet of the Feature Details report. The Action column is hightlighted.

Attendees may have multiple click occurrences, so it's helpful to sort the sheet by the Time column to easily review clicks within the timeframe of the stream. Even if you sort by Time, there may still be multiple clicks for attendees. It's up to you to determine if the click data is adequate to award credits.

Agenda Session clicks

Similar to the Live Stream feature, open the Agenda sheet and sort by the Action column. Remove any rows that aren't "Clicked Join Live Stream".

💡 Keep in mind, if you want to use polling data in addition to clicks, keep the rows whose 'Action' column shows "Voted in a Poll". This column only shows information for the Event App's Polling feature, not Slido.

The Agenda sheet of the Feature Details report. The Action column is highlighted.

To group each Session together, sort the sheet by the Name column. Attendees may have multiple click occurrences, so it's helpful to sort the sheet by the 'Name' column and then 'Time' to easily review clicks within the timeframe of the stream. There may still be multiple clicks for attendees in the same Session. It's up to you to determine if the click data is adequate to award credits.

Now you know how to find the relevant data to award CE credits! If you need more or different data to award CE credits, we're happy to help you strategize. Reach out to your Webex Events contact or start a chat with our support team. 💬

Questions? Chat with us, email support@socio.events, or attend a Face to Face session.

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