Free webinar training sessions for all current PIER Users. Courses are now scheduled for January-March 2012.

We have updated our curriculum to offer shorter, modularized courses to cover the functionality of PIER. Course schedule and registration links below.

Course Schedule

Course Descriptions

Document Creation

In this 45-minute course you’ll learn the basics of creating documents in PIER. We’ll cover using templates, new blank documents, and uploaded files like .pdfs. You will learn techniques for formatting text, inserting hyperlinks and images in a document, and working with tables. Once your document is created we’ll cover sharing drafts with other PIER users and the approval and publishing process.

Document Distribution

In this 90-minute course we’ll cover how to send PIER documents. From a simple email distribution, to mass emergency messaging via phone and SMS, you’ll learn when to choose the different methods of distribution and how to most effectively communicate with each one. We’ll also review telephone and SMS costs and how you can retrieve reports following a distribution. For mass SMS notification, we’ll cover the opt-in process and planning in advance to best utilize this feature. Finally, we’ll cover an overview of PIER Gateways for email and SMS so your audiences can reply seamlessly into your inquiry management system.

Contact Management

This 45-minute course covers working with contact records and directories in PIER. Contact records are the heart of your PIER site and we’ll explore how viewing a contact record shows you the history of communication with your audiences. We’ll cover creating and editing contacts, developing mailing lists, and the properties of a contact directory. Note: Bulk uploading of contacts will be mentioned in this course, but covered in more depth in the Administrative Tasks / Advanced PIER Use session.

Inquiry Management

This 45-minute course will teach you how to utilize the power of PIER’s inquiry management system to listen effectively to your stakeholders. We will cover adding and responding to inquiries, as well as managing workflow with notification settings and forwarding inquiries manually or automatically by category. We’ll use the Inquiry Answers feature: selecting pre-approved responses to your most common or challenging inquiries. Inquiry reporting will also be covered.

Administrative Tasks / Advanced PIER Use

In this 90-minute course we will cover tasks that allow you to customize your PIER site to meet your specific needs. Topics include updating your homepage, folder and template creation, inquiry category management, and contact directory creation including developing custom fields. We’ll delve into your external site features and how to benefit from content injection via RSS feeds, make changes to your menu bars, and edit your Join Mailing List and Submit Inquiry forms. After this class you’ll be ready to add new User accounts and choose permissions and approval authority. Finally we’ll cover reporting, bulk contact uploading and email and SMS gateways in detail.

Social Media Connectors

This 45-minute special topic session will show you how to integrate your Facebook and Twitter presence with your PIER site to facilitate seamless posting and commenter interaction from one place: your PIER inquiry management center. Imagine having a single logon to create and approve your social media content, as well as view, collect, categorize and reply to follower comments!

Geotagging Features in PIER

In this 45-minute special topic session we’ll explore one of the most exciting capabilities PIER has to offer: geotagging. Learn about how PIER has partnered with Google Maps to automatically generate geotagged data for your contacts. You’ll learn how to generate mailing lists easily by geographic location through a technique called geofencing. Whether you’re looking to define a 5 mile radius around a point on the map or to specify a complex boundary, like the borders of your county, you can now get your message to the people closest to the action. You’ll also learn how PIER documents can be tagged by location so your website visitors can click through to a Google Map and see where something is happening.

For More Info Contact

Holly Hinman
PIER Systems
p. 360.255.7862