11. Launch Pairing & Invite Users to Pair - Cohort

Launching Pairing:

Now it is time to officially turn on Pairing. To do so from the Launch Pairing tab, check each of the boxes in the Pairing Launch Checklist, and click Turn on Pairing:

Pairing has now been turned on and mentees/mentors are now able to begin pairing. If you need to turn off/pause pairing, you can do so from the Pairing page that you are on now by clicking the Pause Pairing button:

1. Mentee-Led Pairing:

If you're running a Mentee-led program, the final step is to send out your Submit Your Mentor Preferences email to your mentees. To do so, click on the Unpaired Mentees button on the right-hand side of the Pairing page:

To invite all of the uninvited mentees, head over to the Not Invited by Admin tab, and click the blue Invite all Mentees button:

If you choose to Invite All Mentees, you will see a prompt displaying how many email invitations will be sent out. To finalize these invites, click the Send Emails button. You can also click on the email to preview it. If changes need to be made, go to your Email templates to do so.

Alternatively, you can individually invite users if you would out invites in a staggered fashion. To do so, from the Not Invited by Admin tab, click on the Invite to Pair button beside the mentee you would like to invite. You may also select multiple users, click the Perform Bulk Action on Selected button, and invite them to pair that was as well:

By sending the email, mentees will receive the Submit Your Mentor Preferences email to prompt them to request a mentor. Once they have submitted their request, the system will send an email to the mentor they have chosen asking them to review the request and either a) approve all sessions, b) approve an introductory session only, or c) decline the request and provide a response if desired.

Here is what the request email template looks like from the mentor's perspective (only applicable to Mentor Approval Pairing Process):

Mentors will be able to click on one of the three response options. If they choose to decline the request, they will be able to enter a response that will be sent back to the mentee along with the email notifying them that the request has been declined.

If the mentor does not decide within 3 business days, the request will expire and the mentee will be sent another email asking them to request a new mentor instead. Once one of the mentor requests is approved, the flow ends there and the Mentorship Assignments email is sent out to the mentee and mentor who are now paired.

Note: If an admin decides to auto-pair all mentees and mentors, no emails will be sent out for mentees and mentors to make decisions.

2. Admin-Led Pairing:

If you're running an Admin-Led program, you can begin pairing your users right away! To do so, click on the Pair Users button on the Pairing Page:

First, you will be taken to the All Participants section of your Pairing Table. Here you can see a list of all of your registered users along with some other important information such as who their mentors or mentees are, what their role is, and when they registered:

To begin pairing your users, you can click on either the Unpaired Mentees, Available Mentees, or Available Mentors sections to select users you would like to pair. For demonstration, I'm going to select the Unpaired Mentees section.

Here you can select the mentee you would like to pair. For example, I'm going to pair Joey with a mentor. To do so, click the Pair with Mentor button beside the mentees' name:

Once you click the button, a page will pop up with a list of potential mentors that you could pair the mentee with. Once you find the right mentor, click on their profile. From here, you can either Assign the pairing to Staged Pairings or to Active Pairings. 

• Staged Pairings: these are pairings that you have created between a mentor and mentee, but haven't sent to be live/active yet. When you assign a staged pairing here, no emails are sent yet, you will still need to send this pairing to Active after Staging it.
• Active Pairings: these are pairings that you have created and are now live. Once you do this, both the mentee and mentor will be notified via email that you have paired them together. 

To demonstrate, I will set this pairing to Staged first, then to Active after. First, I click the Assign to Staged Pairings button. Now, under the Staged by Admin tab, you will see this new pairing:

Here you can either Approve or Discard the pairing. If you have staged multiple pairings, you can quickly click the Discard All or Approve All button at the top of the table to apply the same action to all staged pairings. If you would like to approve or discard individually staged pairings, click the checkmark or X to approve or discard the pairing respectively:

Once you click Approve, you will see a pop-up to confirm this action before the pairing notification is sent to the mentee and mentor:

Once I approve this pairing, you will see it listed under the Active Pairings tab here:

For administrators who would like our algorithm to create pairings automatically, we suggest you take advantage of our Auto-Pairing feature. To use Auto-Pairing, click on the Run Auto Pairing button under either Unpaired Mentees or Available Mentees tab(s):

Once you click this button, you will see a prompt informing you that the system will Stage optimal pairings based on the pairing algorithm you created.

Important: Note that none of these pairings will be live once you run Auto-Pairing, you will have to go into the Active Pairings tab and approve these pairings before any of the pairings go live, similar to how you would if you manually staged pairings yourself:

Pro Tip: Click the Export button to download the pairings. You can share this with others in your organization to get approval or feedback before you activate pairings.

3. Program Maintenance:

The last step in the process of launching a successful Cohort Program is to continuously monitor how pairing is going. To do so, you can check in on the Active Pairings section:

You may also end pairings at any time by clicking on the 3 dots beside the pairing, and clicking End Pairing. If you ever need to view the data in this table in another program, try leveraging our Export feature where you can download a full list of your active pairings. 

Lastly, I would also highly recommend you check out our Monitor Health section once you have launched pairing. Here you will be able to see a number of important things, such as the number of sessions completed, active pairings, and what pairings might need a check-in among others:

Congratulations! You have officially finished building and launching your Cohort program.

Now it's time to let your program run! If you have any questions throughout this process or during your program please do not hesitate to reach out to your CSM or submit a request to us here!