The CoachAccountable Blog

One of the most powerful things about CoachAccountable Groups is they allow you to foster a real sense of community among your group members.  Among other ways, this happens via messages and comments posted by members of the group.

If you’ve got an active community wherein the conversation is lively among participants, it’s great to keep the conversation going by way of notifications: group members can opt to get emailed anytime there’s a new message posted.  This allows them not only to stay aware like in a group chat, but also the convenience of replying right from their email to comment back (and have that comment, in turn, go out to other group members).

But sometimes, sometimes, the group is too big and the conversation gets a little too lively.  You don’t want to overwhelm anyone’s email inbox, yet members outright unsubscribing from those notifications poses its own problems to participation.

Happily, there’s now a middle road that nicely accommodates this situation: Group Activity Digests.

As manager of a group, under Settings >> Participation for a given group you’ll now find the ability to enable Group Activity Digests for your group.

Group managers can also set a template for the digest emails: a suitable subject and a preamble message that will precede whatever summary content will be sent.

Here you can see what we’ve got for our own community group.

Beyond mere enabling, you can set a “Suggested Activity Digest”, which serves as the default schedule for members to receive digests:

Weekly on Fridays at 10am, sounds reasonable! Like elsewhere, these times will be relative to the recipient’s time zone, i.e. in this example, everyone will get it at 10am in THEIR time zone.

When a suggested schedule is set in this manner, group members can individually opt out OR customize the schedule further to their own tastes.  When one is set, group members can still opt for some alternate schedule they set for themselves.

Group members can themselves see and set their group membership preferences by clicking the “Membership Preferences…” button found at the bottom of the left column menu of the Group Page.  Coaches can themselves see and update the membership preferences of client members (from the Membership >> Client Members tab, clicking the gear icon reveals the option to do so).

Here’s what it looks like for coach to set the preferences of one of their client group members:

If one of your clients can’t be bothered to set this for themselves, no worries: you’ve got the power.

And that’s all there is to setting it up!  Once set in motion, group members who have opted for it (either by being set to follow the group suggestion, when applicable, or by their own schedule) will receive digest emails of group activity at the appointed times.

Group digest emails will consist of comments and messages posted to the group since the last time the recipient got a digest.  Note that they WON’T contain other activity like Worksheets or Actions, because those generally go out to group members with their own timely notifications.

Here’s an example of what one looks like:

Same one-click access to view and respond as individual item notifications!

Faded comments are ones that AREN’T new since the date range covered by the digest, they’re just there for context.  (At most only 2 or 3 earlier comments are included; for longer threads the number of earlier comments is indicated by that grey button, which is clickable to visit the whole thread in-app.)

Just like notification emails of individual comments and messages, the digest emails make it very easy to either to view an item in-app, or post a comment on a given thread right from the comfort of your own email inbox.

And that about covers it!  If you’ve got a lively group and folks are feeling overwhelm in their inbox, setting a routine digest of group activity offers the perfect balance to keep members informed and engaged.

Enjoy!

CoachAccountable offers various ways to message your clients with ease.

Courses allow you to automate a sequence of messages.

Future scheduled messages can also be helpful.

And now, for those messages that you tend to send to clients often, you can create and save Custom Message Templates.

Creating Custom Message Templates

Go to Settings >> System >> Message Templates >> Custom Message Templates to get started. Click +Message Template.

You’ll see the familiar WYSIWYG toolbar, where you can add links, formatting, etc.

Using Custom Message Templates

When composing an email to a client or Group, you’ll see the “template” option in the upper right of the composing window.

Note: you will not see this option if you have no Custom Message Templates, so create your templates first.

 

Click template… and the resulting pop-up allows you to choose from your existing templates or create a new one.

Clicking Load queues up the chosen template for any further customization before sending.

Install Pre-Made Custom Templates

In typical CoachAccountable fashion, we’ve created a couple for you to use and/or edit as you see fit; they’re called “Checking In”, and “Our Next Steps”.

Click here to install those in your account.

Last week we got an earnest inquiry Andrew Hinkelman of Priority 1 Group that was very simple:

Do you offer multifactor authentication (MFA) for client credentials/login? If so, I assume one factor could be a code sent via text message?

When Morgan replied the truth of the matter, no we do not, we got back:

Is multifactor authentication on your roadmap? If so, roughly when?

Well, at the time it really wasn’t.  Morgan let him know the full scoop, and got back the following:

I’m an executive coach working with leaders in tech. I’m also a recent CTO and managed a team responsible for information security. So… I think not having an additional authentication factor is a deal-breaker for me. I simply cannot direct my corporate clients to use a SaaS service that is not hitting baseline security measures and expect them to use the platform for sharing/storing our 1:1 coaching work.

I really loved everything else I saw about coach accountable so I’m bummed to have to restart my search…

“Not hitting baseline security measures?!?”  Well now, that’s really throwing down the gauntlet, isn’t it? :)

And far be it for me to make Andrew have to restart his search!

In truth, adding 2-factor authentication isn’t terribly hard, ESPECIALLY if we skip over authenticator apps and just start with SMS-based.  CoachAccountable is already set up to transact via SMS in countries that represent over 90% of our users.

I’ve had MFA come up as a request a few times over the last several years (expressed interest has been really quite rare, actually).  I didn’t jump on cooking up SMS-based 2FA on account of cutting edge security researcher reports that SMS was technically not a fully secure channel, owning to the possibility of various SIM card attacks and other niche weaknesses.

But really that was an instance of me letting perfect be the enemy of good.

The fact remains that even humble SMS-based second-factor authentication is a practical step up: in a world where defense-in-depth matters (and indeed it does, for we don’t ALL live in a spy movie being targeted by nation state actors), even mostly secure measures make a meaningful difference!

So I’m happy to report CoachAccountable now supports 2-Factor Authentication over SMS, i.e. for all our users in the US, Canada, UK and Australia¹.  Let’s see how it works!

Enabling 2-Factor Authentication

Anyone with a CoachAccountable account able to receive SMS messages from CA can easily and quickly enable 2-Factor Authentication.  A quick visit to the My Account >> User Profile is all it takes:

This checkbox will appear when (1) you’ve got a cell number entered and (2) you’ve chosen one of the countries that CA supports SMS in.

If you’ve got a cell number entered, and are in one of the SMS-enabled countries, that “Enable 2-Factor Authentication (via SMS)” checkbox will appear.  Check it, click Save, and it is done!

Using 2-Factor Authentication

When 2FA is enabled, upon successfully logging in you’ll be greeted with pretty much exactly what you’d expect:

Meanwhile your phone will have received a text from CoachAccountable, containing the security code called for in-app.  Type it in correctly and you’ll be on your way.

Even with 2FA enabled, you’ll still have the usual “Keep me logged in” checkbox when logging in.  If you check that, you’ll only need to enter your security code once on that device (until you manually log yourself out again, of course).

2FA and Magic Links

CoachAccountable will still send magic links in emails to you (and your clients) that have the effect of automatically logging you in.  This auto-login behavior sidesteps the need for an SMS authentication entirely: access to your email effectively becomes the second factor of authenticating yourself.

Accordingly, using the Login Helper/password reset system will allow you to get around any problems you may have in receiving that SMS code to your mobile number on file, allowing you to change things as needed.

Summing Up and Looking Ahead

For over 90% of our users, Multi-Factor Authentication is now a thing in CoachAccountable.  It is completely optional, but easy to activate for anyone who would like that added peace of mind brought by the extra security.

Eventually I’m sure I’ll add authenticator app support, so that all users will have the option to secure their accounts by MFA.  But for now I’m happy to release a win for most.

Finally, my express thanks to Andrew, whose thoughtful comments brought about this enhancement much sooner than later.  Here’s to the journey of continuous progress!

CoachAccountable calendar sync now has a big leg up for those clients who just can’t be bothered to actually set any of it up.

For a long time now, it’s been the case that both coaches and their clients can sync their calendar of choice (be it Google, Outlook, or Apple) with CoachAccountable.  This enables CA to automatically add whatever appointments get scheduled to the calendar of choice and, in the case of coaches, read their availability for the sake of avoiding double booking.

This is great for both parties, and, on account of the whole double-booking-avoidance thing, is especially a win for coaches.

But sometimes clients can’t be bothered.  For some it’s an extra step that they just don’t (or won’t) get around to.  For others it might be concerns over security, sometimes based on corporate IT policy or the like, that make full-on calendar sync a non-starter.

As an alternative to full-on calendar sync, CA has long supported the ability to subscribe to ICS calendar feeds.  But that too puts the impetus on clients to actually set it up.

Enter calendar invites via email

As a solution to the hurdle of clients needing to actually do something for your coaching appointments to appear in their calendar, CA now provides for a robust (yet totally passive) approach.  Clients can now receive calendar invites by email for all appointments you schedule with them, meaning those appointments will be automatically added to their calendar as those email notifications are received.

Likewise, calendar invites can also describe (and affect) changes to previously scheduled appointments, namely rescheduling and canceling.

Calendar Sync Options for Clients

The addition of email invite-based calendar sync means your clients now have three options to choose from.  Your clients will find these when logged in under My Account >> Calendar Sync:

By default, this is about what they’ll see: email notifications turned on, and 2 other approaches they can opt for as well.

Let’s consider closely the new settings clients have about the email notifications they receive:

Include calendar invites in appointment notification emails allows clients to opt into getting those calendar invite attachment files at all, receipt of which generally has the effect of automatically adding appointments to a related calendar.

In addition to notifications about newly scheduled appointments, these invites will be attached to notifications of rescheduling and canceling, meaning those calendar entries will be updated (and removed) as needed, too.

Email me a confirmation about appointments I schedule allows clients to opt into getting emails about things that they themselves just did.  If not for the calendar-syncing aspect, these emails are largely redundant: client schedules an appointment, they can see from the app UI that they did so, and then an email announces essentially “hey, you did the thing you just did”.

BUT this becomes really handy when that email contains an attachment that automatically adds the newly-scheduled appointment to their calendar.  In that case, it serves as far more than a recap of what just happened.

These confirmations of client activity extend also to rescheduling and canceling: each action will trigger a corresponding email confirmation, and if including calendar invites are opted for (that first check box), then the attached invites will also have the effect of updating (and removing) appointments from their calendar.

Note that these email notifications for calendar sync are enabled by default for all new clients.

What about your clients that have been around prior to this addition?  If they’ve setup for themselves a direct sync, these will be turned off (so it’s business usual for them).  For those who haven’t synced their calendar, this email notification-based sync has been enabled.

You as coach can see and set the Email Notification settings for your clients.  Find these in the Client Manager, under Settings >> Appointments:

The note about your client’s direct sync status is a handy hint.

From here you can see whether or not your client has already setup their calendar for a direct sync.  If they haven’t, it’s probably a good idea to have both of those check boxes checked.

When Notifications are Sent

If receiving calendar invites via email is the main mechanism for your client to keep their calendar in sync, it’s suddenly very important that they get an email notification for every appointment that gets scheduled (plus any and all rescheduling or canceling thereof).

Again, when client opts for the “Email me a confirmation about appointments I schedule” option, they’ll get suitable emails whenever they do the scheduling, rescheduling or canceling.  But what about when you as coach do those things?

When you schedule, you also has the option to send a notification to your client, like so:

The default, do send a notification and do so by email, is usually the right choice.

With notification emails now serving as a common way to get your appointments into your clients’ calendars, you’ll generally want to send the notification, and do so via email.  You retain the ability to deviate from that, just be aware that doing so can undermine that calendar syncing behavior.

The same applies for when you as coach reschedule or cancel an appointment with your client: you’ll have the option to notify your client of the change up via email, and for the same reasons doing so is highly recommended.

Appointments for Offerings

The same “auto add to calendar by email”-behavior applies now to any appointments scheduled by way of signing up for an Offering.

As always, with Offerings you can opt to have a Confirmation Email sent when someone successfully signs up for it:

Generally a fine idea.

If you opt for this email to be sent, AND the Offering entails scheduling an Appointment, that email will automatically have a suitable calendar invite attached (thus automatically adding it to your new client’s calendar).

And if you DON’T have a Confirmation email set?  In this case, CA goes a little off script and sends a standard Appointment Notification email (with the calendar invite) instead.  The verbiage for this email is taken from your Appointment Notification email template, so it’ll still be on brand.

Also note that with the addition of email invites for Offerings, including the [appointmentAddToCalendarButtons] magic tag in the Confirmation Email is now far less important.

Many scheduling apps still have such buttons in emails that also have the calendar invite attachment, no doubt a sort of “make sure it gets in their calendar at all costs”-sort of shotgun approach.  So you too can include or exclude those add to calendar buttons consistent with your taste, sensibilities around clutter, and how much you do or don’t trust your clients to show up like responsible adults (in some contexts I appreciate full well that this can’t always be taken for granted!).

Email Invites for Group Appointments

Just like with one-on-one appointments, when you as coach schedule (or reschedule, or cancel) your Group Appointments, the notification emails that you can (and probably should!) opt to send will similarly comes with suitable calendar invite attachments, allowing all client members (who are included in that Group Appointment) to have that appointment automatically added to their calendars.

One caveat to this: the system will NOT email newly added group members that happen to be auto-added to future Group Appointments.  That could be a surprising gotcha, and generally speaking CA avoids sending emails to clients on your behalf without some form of your express intent to do so.

Email Invites for Appointment Series

As always, you as coach can schedule a series of Appointments with your clients or groups:

When you do so, the notification email body (that your clients will read) will contain details only about the first one.  BUT the email invite attachment will include information about the whole series, meaning each appointment in the series will get added to your client’s calendar.

Getting Caught Up or Re-syncing

Perhaps your client wants all their future appointments with you added to their calendar now.  At anytime they can visit their My Account >> Calendar Sync page, and if they have future appointments they’ll see an “Email me an invite…” button like this:

Just a click and CA will send it all.

Clicking that will cause CA to email them an attachment with a calendar invite file containing data for all of their future appointments, allowing them to quickly get those appointments into their calendar by this calendar invite mechanism.

You too, as coach, can have this email sent to your client.  For a client that has one or more future appointments, you’ll find the button to do so among their calendar sync settings (again, you’ll find this in the Client Manager, under Settings >> Appointments).

One gotcha to this: it can be fun to try deleting an appointment from your calendar and then sending this email to enjoy seeing it magically re-appear.  The problem with that is many email calendar systems will keep note of the fact that you specifically removed an appointment already, prompting it to NOT re-add it when it arrives again via email.  So delete appointments added in this fashion at your own risk: the calendar invite approach may not be able to restore it!

In Summary

The addition of these calendar invites via email is kinda a basic feature: it doesn’t make possible anything that wasn’t already, BUT from the “remove all the friction from your clients experience” angle it’s a wonderful boon to how things get done, especially at the get go.

Yes, the direct sync is more elegant and robust, allowing your client to skip the clutter of extra emails that might be largely redundant.  But this way your clients can have those appointments with you appearing in their calendar from day 1, with no effort on their part required.  And for those who want the elegance of direct sync later, they can do that as a separate step whenever they feel so inclined.

Overall it is my hope that the addition of these invites will make things run more smoothly at that most critical juncture: when you’re just getting started with a new client.  Enjoy!

The impetus for this instance of delightful collaboration came as a simple question.

In wanting the experience of doing her Courses to be a smooth as possible for her clients, Katharina Hille asked:

When I set up a new action for a client, the clients gets an email with a link (“View this online”) that brings him/her directly to the corresponding action.

But when I design a course I can only add a general login-link. Therefore I have to explain to new clients, that they have to got to “Actions” etc…

Is it possible to add this “View this online”-link in courses also?

I sat with this question for a little while, realizing how perfectly reasonable and natural the request was.  After all, one of our express aims in the design of CoachAccountable is to remove every last bit of friction from the client experience that we possibly can, making it as easy and seamless for them to show up for the life-changing work they’re engaged in.

So put in those terms, Katharina was absolutely right: if she (or anyone else!) needs to explain to clients how to find a given item in their system (when they could’ve been simply taken right to it), that’s a problem, or at best, a real missed opportunity on CA’s part.

With Course Pages, a login link in the notification email for a new section of the course has the spiffy behavior of taking clients directly to that section of that course.  “Brilliant!”, I thought, “I’ll just extend that ‘go-right-to-the-item-in-that-course-page’ behavior to items of all types [for page-enabled Courses]!”

So I did!

And it was good.

And then I realized Katharina wasn’t using Course Pages at all in her Courses.  Therefore that spiffy enhancement, though a step forward, would be meaningless to her use of the system.

Now since the beginning of CoachAccountable Courses, the login link for notification emails about Course Worksheets took clients right to that Worksheet, so a client was always just one click away from being able to work on it.  Course Files have also always been similarly accessible from the notification email.

So really what Katharina was asking for was to extend this spiffy behavior to the other types of Course Items, namely Actions, Metrics and Whiteboards.

And this is now done: [loginLink] magic tags in notification emails for Course Actions, Metrics and Whiteboards now just work better for everyone, no changes to the design of any Course required.  A nice win for all!

Thank Katharina for asking the question in the first place, coming from an understanding that those links could (and should) be better.  Sharing that little bit of perspective–the slog that is having to explain more to new clients–was a real gift, one that made clear the right thing to do to make CA better for all.

I wish I’d done this a long time ago.

With the release of Version 4 about 14 months ago I gave the aesthetics of CoachAccountable a spiffy refresh.  It looked pretty good to me and others, and I think it was no doubt a bright, fresh improvement on the look and feel of gray-heavy Version 3.

AND YET, even shortly after that release, we heard feedback to the tune of “Hey, the UI looks a bit dated… any plans to…”

Not often.  I don’t think that was expressed to us even so frequently as once a month.  Yet undeniably the sentiment was out there.

But I resisted it.  We’d just done a remix of the UI, and were well on our way updating screenshots and reshooting videos to match.  How daunting and disappointing, I thought, to restart that process once again.  It was a minority, fickle opinion, I told myself.  When we asked folks to clarify, or name specific elements, or point to examples of what they thought would be a better style guide, we invariably got back little to nothing by which to go on.

So I let the V4 design be while continuing work on myriad other fronts of bettering CA.

And then it was about a month ago that I read this article, titled Stay Calm and Learn This.  It’s a bit of a meandering essay on the qualities that software should engender in order to make the inevitable process of having to learn it more palatable to new users, and in it there were two assertions that really opened up my eyes to the opportunity of hitting the design drawing board once again.  The first was:

If a product is attractive to a particular audience, it further increases identification and willingness to learn.

Certainly anything that increases the willingness to learn on the part of new users is a huge boon. CoachAccountable does SO. DARN. MUCH.  Folks very much enjoy the power it offers, but only if they can be bothered to get over any initial overwhelm.  We do our best to provide resources and one-on-one time to help with this, and we do a pretty good job!  But getting a leg up on this front by merely having a prettier CA?  That’s like an amazing free lunch that keeps on giving.

The second assertion that hit me was:

Software is not free of fashion and group dynamics. We also want what others like, and gladly accept learning effort and setbacks.

Sigh.  As much distaste as I have to being a slave to fashion, this statement is certainly true.  That fashion applies to software is for me as much a revelation as it is a sheepish “well duh, yes of course” moment.

So, very well then: fashion it is.  The great news about fashion is that one hardly need to be a fashion taste maker in order to show up fashionable: you just need to be cognizant of what’s fashionable and suitably fall in line.

Right around this time, we’d gotten this note from a coach who’d just signed up:

Dear CoachAccountable, I am considering using your Team Edition product for our coaching platform.  I believe it has many of the features we are looking for at a competitive price point but the icons and design seem quite dated.  Do you have plans to refresh the design?  If so, when?

This was the same non-specific, not-terribly-actionable report, but nevertheless seeing it expressed so plainly once again is what tipped it for me: I finally decided the time was right to take the prospect of a redesign seriously, now freshly armed with pivotal perspective that made clear both the why AND how¹.

There’s an old saw that goes “If you copy from one book, that’s plagiarism; if you copy from many books, that’s research.”

In that spirit, I say without the slightest shame that to remix the aesthetics of CoachAccountable and bring it up to more modern tastes, I did a lot of research. :)

And goodness, was it fun!  I perused mood boards and a wealth of pithy app screenshots, and came to be bewildering conclusion Good god it’s practically all cut from the same cloth… why was I trying so hard to differentiate in any way on aesthetics?  With every little style rule I updated, with every little piece of UI I revised, in some cases to pixel-perfect renditions of other popular (i.e. familiar and comfortable) instances, CA sure enough transformed into something that JUST LOOKS RIGHT, in step with the style of the times.

Here’s a screenshot that shows a lot going on in the old style:

I mean, it’s not bad, right?

And here it is in the new:

Oh, okay… yeah–that’s way better.

The lion’s share of the work took about 7 full working days, and it was satisfying work wherein the time flew by.  And that brings me back to my wish of having done this a long time ago.  I began this project thinking the current Version 4 aesthetic looked overall just fine and I sincerely didn’t know what those occasional outspoken critics were talking about.

NOW I get it.  As I worked, toggling back and forth between the current and new versions, my eyes quickly adjusted to the new.  By that adjustment, the old indeed now appears to me as… well let’s just say far less than it could be.

Seeing quite clearly now thanks to the comparison point that the new affords me, I humbly apologize to all of the coaches and to all of their clients that I wasn’t quicker on the uptake on this front.  I truly hope this new design will be a very welcome sight for all, and for a good long time.

Dark Mode

I’m told it’s very popular.  And I can see why!  To take this all one step further I did a little extra work and cooked up a dark mode of CoachAccountable’s very own:

Ooh, pretty! I can see what all the fuss is about.

You can quickly toggle in and out of dark mode by typing Alt+Shift+D whenever your cursor is NOT in some input.  This is hard to do on a mobile device, so you can also set your preference under My Account >> User Profile:

Setting this here makes it your default across all devices, and the Shift-D trick overrides it on a given device.

The new look in feel is now in place for all accounts, including for your clients.  It’s a sweeping change but everything is still in its usual place, so you should feel right at home.

Small aside: for just a little while you yourself can appreciate the same refreshing contrast by toggling between the version back and forth between the old and the new.  Just type Shift-4 when not focused on an input.  If you’re like me, you’ll find it neat to see what got changed by recalling how it used to look.  It’s a fun way to mark being along on the journey of CoachAccountable’s evolution, and I’m glad to have you here for it.

I hope you and your clients enjoy the new look.  Here’s to a better CA for all!

One of the more powerful features of CoachAccountable is its ability to genuinely change behavior and nudge clients into good habits and regular performance.

This all happens through a very simple practice: the routine check-in.

The routine check-in allows clients to report on WHATEVER KPIs, practices, habits, etc. that they’re working on, prompts them to do so on regular basis, and has the accumulated results appear in graphs that reveal the trends and tell the story.

By popular request, here’s step-by-step video tutorial on how to create these tracking regiments, complete with full automation that will make is easy for your clients to show up regularly.

Enjoy!

Easiest switch up from last year’s cake ever: I just changed the 8 to a 9 in a Photoshop text layer.

Goodness me, has it been another year already?  I don’t know about y’all, but this is the longest I’ve ever stayed put at a single job. :)-

As has been the case now 8 times before, I’m again delighted at all that we’ve put out in service of the coaching community during the last 365.

CoachAccountable has progressed on a number of fronts.  Perhaps most popular has been the addition of Course Pages and other course enhancements, which collectively put CoachAccountable Courses very much on the level with popular LMS platforms.

The addition of CoachAccountable Companies enables coaches and coaching organizations to effectively interface with client companies, including company invoices, company-wide engagements, and even allowing company personnel their very own way to log in and keep up to date within CA itself.

The addition of alternate appointment availabilities, schedule nudges, and a other ergonomic enhancements further closed the gap between CA’s Appointment Scheduling and other popular scheduling apps, making it possible for even more folks to drop yet another app.

We added a number of features that enable powerful new ways of interacting with clients, including Client Present Mode to make screensharing during sessions a great idea, and Worksheet Answer Comments to allow easy sharing of laser-focused feedback.

Perhaps most meaningful of all, we mapped out several dimensions of how to be a more powerful coach, including being accountable beyond baseline integrity, how to execute novel ways of wowing prospects into paying clients, and even elevating the pedestrian act of taking session notes to an art form.

These are novel dimensions that are not really taught in typical coach trainings, and we couldn’t be happier to be able to contribute to the delight that your clients’ experience of working with you, and do so in ways that go beyond the conversations themselves.

Speaking of going beyond conversations, one other big thing that got shipped during CoachAccountable’s 9th year is a completely new 8-email course that folks can sign up for when first getting an account.  It’s titled “Beyond Mere Conversations: The Magic of a Platform Supporting Your Coaching”.

It really kinda all falls under these umbrellas, doesn’t it?

This replaces the old course, “Coaching with Software: How to use Technology for Superior Results”, which I originally wrote over about 3 days in the Euro Cafe in Granada, Nicaragua back in October, 2012.  That one held up well, but in the intervening years it would be fair to say that CoachAccountable has gotten much more advanced.  So a new telling of the story of what CA brings and how to use it is very much in order.

All told, doing our thing in service of the coaching community remains very much a labor of love.  In spite of whatever chaos has been unfolding amid world events, Morgan, Jaclyn and I agree that there’s always a sort of calm respite in creating good in our little corner of the world; and we are honored to serve the vital, world-changing work that you all do.

Here’s to another year!

Here’s a neat little trick that can add an extra bit of supportive presence for your clients when you’re not around.

CoachAccountable has long allowed you to send out a quick email to your client, allowing you to keep a record of the correspondence as well as just plain being handy.

You can now send a message to your client in the exact same way BUT have it actually be sent out at whatever future date and time you like.  Compose now, schedule delivery for later.

Let’s see how it works!

Setting up Scheduled Messages for your Clients

To set up a scheduled message for your client, you start in the usual way by clicking the little email icon next to their head shot on their Client Page:

This brings up the message composing window like usual, but notice at the bottom there’s a “Send later…” button.  Clicking it reveals the controls to choose when you’d like your message to be sent:

This time defaults to an hour in the future, but you’ll probably want to set it to something a little more deliberate.

Whenever you’ve got one or more messages that are scheduled to be sent to your client, you’ll notice the email button gains a little extra button:

You’ll know at a glance when you’ve got a message scheduled to go out.

Clicking this little icon reveals whatever messages you have scheduled that are yet to go out:

You can tee up as many messages as you like, but this should generally be a pretty short list.

You can cancel out any scheduled messages here simply by clicking the trash icon, that deletes it fully.

If you want to view (and perhaps modify) the contents of a message you’ve got scheduled, simply click the edit icon.  Doing so brings up the full compose window once again, wherein you can even revise decisions to CC yourself (or not) and add to the client’s Stream (or not):

Want the message to be sent immediately? Just change the sending date & time to anything that’s now or earlier.

Scheduled messages that you have set to CC yourself will arrive in your inbox at the same time your client receives it.

And that’s all there’s to it!  Scheduling message to clients allows you to very easily share with your client a thoughtful communication (be it bit of wisdom, encouragement, a reminder, or something else), and have them get it when it can be most useful and timely.

Enjoy!

When it comes to tracking who’s doing what and when, CoachAccountable is by and large concerned with the doings of the clients, and making it as easy as possible for coach to support those doings.

So when action plans are made (more often, co-created by coach and client in the course of a session), those plans are generally meant for the client to execute.

And yet, it is not uncommon for coach to undertake certain tasks in service of her clients.  Effectively, these tasks are promises made to fulfill her end of the working relationship.

To support that, CoachAccountable now allows coaches to create Action items that are designated for coach to do, rather than client.  In other words, Coach Actions enter the mix along side the more conventional Client Actions.

Let’s see how they work!

Using Coach Actions

First things first: there is to enable Coach Actions.  They are not on by default, as there’s no need to add any UI clutter for those coaches who don’t plan to use them.

To enable Coach Actions, simply visit Settings >> System >> Coach Actions.  There you will be greeted by the simplest, most sparse in-app page that CoachAccountable has to offer:

Just a few clicks and you’ll have these enabled. If you’re into ’em.

Simply flip the switch, and decide for yourself whether or not you’d like a Coach Actions section added to your home page.  Click the “Save Settings” button and you’re set.

Once enabled, you’ll find a little bit of extra UI when creating an Action from a Client Page.  To the right there’s a little note that says “This is for so-and-so to do”, along with a “change” link.  Clicking the change link toggles the Action as being for you or your client, like so:

Note the paring down when the Action is for you: no project, no comments, no notifications to client.  Keepin’ it simple.

Like more conventional Actions for your clients, Coach Actions are meant to help you keep on top of those things you need to get done for your clients, so the usual “this is now late” alerts and ability to set reminders apply.  Naturally, reminders you set for these will only be for you as coach, never your client.

When you have one or more Actions that are designated for you to do, the client’s Current Actions area contains those in a separate section plus appropriate labeling to make it clear who’s responsible for what:

Now we’re clear.

As you might expect, these Coach Actions are completely invisible to your clients, and similarly hide themselves automatically when you switch in to Client Present Mode:

Coach Actions are fully hidden from clients.

Provided you’ve opted to have them show there, you can see (and create) Coach Actions from your home page for all of your clients:

Fun fact: you can click on the avatar of a given client to jump to their Client Page.

Other Considerations

By design, completed or canceled Coach Actions do NOT live in the Past tab for clients: they are are meant to be more transient, so there’s no need clutter the record of your client’s accomplishment.  But rest assured that you can still see all of your past Coach Actions on your home page >> Actions >> Past tab.

All Coach Actions are meant to be associated with a specific client.  These are not meant as a generic to-do list, but instead as a tool crafted specifically to empower you to make good on promises that pertain to your clients.  If you want to make Coach Actions that don’t actually pertain to any of your clients, the simplest way is to simply associate them with your freebie client.

In addition to standard reminders you might set for individual Coach Action items, CoachAccountable will lovingly include a reminder about any unfinished Actions you might have for a client in the lead up to an Appointment you have with them, done as a simple addendum to any notification emails you have set, like so:

Ah, right! Egg on my face were I to leave those undone going into our next session…

And that’s it!  Coach Actions are really all about you showing up powerfully for your clients: armed with a tool that takes the guess work out of what to do, for whom, and by when, AND taking forgetting off the table, you’re able to make promises to your clients with confidence, and follow through like a seasoned professional every time.