About Finalsite
Better tools. Stronger schools.
Finalsite is a software-as-a-service company that provides communications and content management solutions to educational institutions, particularly focused on K12 schools. In addition to their flagship content management system, Composer, Finalsite offers modules to help schools manage: calendars, forms, contacts, athletics, bulk email and text messaging, files, social media feeds, news and blogging, mobile apps, and more. While sites are designed and built internally with customized templates, and some content migration services may be included, clients are expected to use Finalsite’s tools independently after site launch.
Over the course of 7 years, and a period of explosive growth for the company, I worked to build scalable onboarding and product training opportunities for clients as well as Finalsite employees. From knowledge base articles and blog posts to recorded webinars and interactive video-based courses, I designed empowering learning experiences that helped multiple types of users make the most of their Finalsite tools.
Know your audience
Finalsite’s broad user base presented unique challenges for creating educational content to address their needs. A Finalsite user may be anyone from a teacher with no technical background building a form during her free period to a district IT administrator implementing sites for dozens of elementary, middle, and high schools. Finalsite’s granular user permissions allowed even parents and students to access Composer or any of its modules. Users’ needs varied widely depending on where they were in their journey, whether launching a new site, updating an existing one, or (often) taking over a site from a previous admin who didn’t leave adequate handover instructions. As a SaaS, Finalsite also released new features regularly (on a two-week agile cycle) that required additional training for even the most seasoned admins.
To ensure we were catering to our clients’ needs, whatever their background, I created three levels of user personas: User, Admin, and Superadmin. A User was someone who was creating content or using a module for its intended purpose, such as publishing a news article, sending a message, or building a form. They would almost never need to change the configuration settings for a module, which is where the Admin role comes in. Superadmin encompasses users still in the initial design (or redesign) phase and preparing for site launch, as well as district admins whose actions may impact multiple Composer instances. These roles are fluid, and a Superadmin may function as an Admin or even User the majority of the time.
As part of the Finalsite Training and Support content strategy initiative, my team collaborated to develop a core content strategy statement.
The strategy statement encompassed the mission of the Finalsite Support and Finalsite Client Education departments in delivering content to its audiences.
I chose the annotated sentence method of creating a core strategy statement and led the team through the “mad libs” exercise (from The Content Strategy Toolkit) to draft the statement. I revised and solicited feedback from the group multiple times to hone the language and craft our mission, finally presenting it in two forms to encapsulate the nature of the format.
The strategy statement tackles the challenge of creating a unified mission for two different departments, taking into account the wide variations in the audience for the content, ultimately coming back to serving the overall business objectives of the company.
Finalsite Training and Support core strategy statement
Finalsite Training and Support* helps our company enable self-service** and foster product engagement*** by providing a variety of high-quality resources and exceptional content.**** Our goal is to make any Finalsite user***** feel empowered****** to leverage Finalsite products to build, maintain, and continually improve on******* their cutting-edge communications strategy.
* The teams behind content offered primarily through training.finalsite.com and finalsitesupport.com
** Encourage self-discovery and self-directed learning to answer questions and learn about new features without direct assistance from Support or Client Education team members
*** Expose users to helpful features and use cases that lead them to use our products more frequently and with greater satisfaction
**** Content, provided via multiple channels, that is: accurate, up to date, targeted, well organized, concise, informative, easy to read, and visually appealing
***** New and experienced users responsible for creating or configuring content on their website, whether it is live or in development
****** Comfortable, confident, and poised for success – so that they come away feeling that, not only have they learned the basics or resolved their specific issue, but they can build on that knowledge to increase their mastery of the tools at their disposal
******* Because our audience wants to find the best ways to communicate with their audience, our mission is to communicate how they can use our tools effectively and efficiently, as well as discover new and innovative ways to accomplish their goals, so that they become champions of Finalsite products and the Finalsite brand.
Lauren B. Lentini 
