I’m a Sponsor Admin and I’m new to Craft's OJL Tracker - how do I get started?

    Overview

    Setting up your Craft instance for the first time involves a series of foundational steps that ensure your learners, evaluators, and partner organizations are structured correctly from the start. These steps must be completed in order so the right people see the right content and so your program runs smoothly once you launch. This guide walks you through each stage, from creating organizations to onboarding users, and explains why each step matters in the bigger picture of your program’s success.

    What is a Sponsor Admin?

    A Sponsor Admin is responsible for ensuring the RAP (Registered Apprentice Program) is distributed to the appropriate learners and evaluators, typically across multiple employers and education providers.

    What can a Sponsor Admin do?

    A Sponsor Admin can: Create Organizations, create users in those organizations, create RAPs and programs (competencies) to track and view progress across the users in your program.

    What will this guide cover?

    This guide is meant to be used after the initial program setup. Therefore, the following topics will be covered:

    • How to set up your RAP and competencies
    • How to create your program
    • How to assign learners and evaluators to a RAP
    • How to assign learners and evaluators to your program
    • How to utilize tags
    • How to edit a program or RAP
    • How to manage your users
    • How to view learner progress
    • Craft Education Support Information

    Setting Up a Registered Apprenticeship Program

    1. Create Organizations

    The first step in setting up your Craft instance is creating the partner organizations that sit under your Sponsor Organization. Sponsor Admins are responsible for creating Education Providers (EPs) and Employers.

    Why it matters: Organizations determine which “buckets” your learners and evaluators belong to, which is why this step must be completed first. Learners are assigned to both an Education Provider and an Employer, while Evaluators are usually assigned only to an Employer. Without these organizations in place, you will be unable to properly match evaluators to learners during the Program setup.

    Example: If Laura Learner attends Little University and completes her OJL at New Jobsite, Laura must be added to both organizations. Her evaluator, Emily Evaluator, must also be assigned to New Jobsite in order to evaluate Laura. Little University and New Jobsite must be created before Laura Learner and Emily Evaluator are created, as Organization assignments occur at user creation. Learner and Evaluator assignments happen at a later step.

    How to create an organization:

    • Click Organizations.
    • Select Sponsor an Organization.
    • Enter the organization name and select whether it is an Education Provider or Employer.
    • (Optional) Add an organization admin now, or assign one later.

    Relevant Help Center Articles:

    2. Create Users

    After organizations are created, your next step is adding users.

    Why it matters: Creating your users ensures that everyone in your program has the correct role, permissions, and organizational placement from the start. This step must be completed after organizations are created, as you will assign users to organizations when you create a user.

    Within your Sponsor Organization, you may create:

    • Administrators — Can create program content, add users, manage rubrics, and view reports.
    • Facilitators — Oversee groups of learners but cannot evaluate or create content.

    Within your partner organizations (EPs and Employers), you may add:

    • Learners
    • Evaluators
    • Instructors
    • Additional Admins or Facilitators who belong to that specific organization

    Learners are typically assigned to both an Education Provider (for RTI) and an Employer (for OJL). Evaluators are assigned only to Employers.

    Users must currently be added one at a time. If you need to add a large number of learners, contact your CSM for upload support.

    We strongly recommend waiting to invite users until all program creation steps are complete.

    Relevant Help Center Articles:

    3. Creating Your Program

    The next step is to create your program. Your program houses the content, activities, and structure your learners will complete. Depending on your program, additional features such as Time Tracking, Skills Observation Tracking, or Absence Tracking may need to be enabled. Programs are typically created in the Sponsor Organization. However, depending on your design, it may be appropriate to house them in one or multiple EP Orgs. Ask your CSM for the best practice for your specific program or RAP.

    Why it matters: Your program is the foundation of everything learners will do in Craft, so it must be set up before you begin assigning users or configuring activities. Completing this step early ensures all future assignments have a clear home and prevents confusion once learners enter the platform.

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    4. Set Activity Requirements and Rubrics

    Activity Requirements are optional but common depending on program needs.

    Learner requirements may include:

    • Reporting time
    • Adding attachments or links
    • Commenting

    Evaluator requirements may include:

    • Scoring
    • Adding attachments or links
    • Commenting
    • Entering an observed date

    Rubrics can also be configured to align with your program assessment model-simple pass/fail, multi-level scoring, competency-based scoring, etc.

    Why it Matters: Activity Requirements make sure learners and evaluators provide the right details, like hours, attachments, or scores, each time they complete an activity. This prevents missing information and keeps your program data reliable.

    Examples:

    • If your program requires tracking minimum hours, you may set “Learner must report time” as a requirement.
    • If evaluators observe learners on the job, including an “observed date” may be appropriate.

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    5. Assign Users

    Once your users and organizations are set up, learners must be assigned to a program, and evaluators must be assigned to learners.

    Why it matters: Assigning users ensures that learners are enrolled in the correct program and paired with the appropriate evaluators. This step connects all the organizational and program setup work you’ve completed, enabling accurate tracking, evaluation, and support throughout the learner journey. Incorrect organization assignments (Step 1) will prevent evaluators from being matched to their learners.

    Example:

    Laura Learner must be part of Little University and New Jobsite. Emily Evaluator must be part of New Jobsite to be assigned to Laura.

    Relevant Help Center Articles:

    6. Create a RAP

    Craft's OJL Tracker can accommodate many types of job-embedded training programs including ones authorized by the Department of Labor. A Registered Apprenticeship Program (RAP) in Craft links your program structure to the compliance information required for apprenticeship tracking. Creating a RAP ensures your program meets state or federal standards and that learner progress is recorded according to the required structure.

    After you have created your RAP, you will need to create your competencies. The competencies you create will come directly from the Appendix A within your RAP Standards submitted to the Department of Labor.

    Why this step matters

    • Ensures federal/state apprenticeship compliance
    • Maps competencies to occupational standards
    • Supports accurate OJL/RTI hour tracking
    • Provides clarity for reporting and completion tracking

    Relevant Help Center Articles:

    7. Create Tags and Cohorts (Optional)

    Tags and cohorts help you organize learners, but they serve different purposes.

    Cohorts: A cohort is a group of learners overseen by a facilitator.

    Facilitators:

    • Ensure learner progress
    • Cannot evaluate
    • Cannot create program content
    • Only see learners in their assigned cohorts

    Cohorts can be grouped by facilitator, region, graduation year, etc. Admins can see all cohorts, while as facilitators can only see their own cohorts.

    Why Cohorts are Useful: Creating cohorts helps you organize learners into meaningful groups overseen by a facilitator, ensuring each facilitator can focus on the learners they are responsible for. This structure improves visibility, supports timely intervention, and creates a clearer, more manageable system for monitoring learner progress.

    Tags: Tags allow broader filtering by admins across the platform. Tags are useful for:

    • Quickly filtering learners by region, completion year, EP, etc.
    • Breaking down reports more effectively

    Why Tags are Useful: Tags provide a flexible way to categorize and filter learners across your program, making it easier to pull reports, segment groups, and quickly find the learners you need. By applying tags consistently, you can analyze trends, track specific subsets of learners, and keep your data organized as your program grows.

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    8. Invite Users

    Creating a user does not automatically invite them. Users must be both:

    • Created
    • Invited

    We strongly recommend inviting users after all setup is complete (program, assignments, RAP, requirements). Inviting users too early can cause confusion if the environment is not fully prepared.

    Relevant Help Center Articles:

    Managing Your Program

    Manage Sponsor Organization Settings

    As a Sponsor Admin, there are a few settings you can edit or enable for your organization and your sponsored organizations. This includes editing your organization name, edit support contact information and enabling email notifications. For more information, please take a look at the article below.

    Relevant Help Center Articles:

    Create and Manage Tags

    Tags are a useful tool in keeping your users organized. This video will review how to create and manage tags as a Sponsor Admin.

    How to edit users

    There may be instances when you need to edit user information, such as updating a last name. Please refer to the video below for instructions on how to make these changes.

    Relevant Help Center Articles:

    Understanding Reports

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    FAQ

    What questions should I be able to answer vs what questions should I send to Craft?

    The Craft team can assist with any technical issues users run into when using Craft's OJL Tracker.

    A few examples are:

    • I can’t log in
    • When I try to evaluate an activity, it does not work
    • I don’t know how to interpret the Dashboard

    While the Craft team is always happy to help troubleshoot, there might be some things specific to your program that we are unaware of. These are the questions the sponsor admin will need to answer. Examples include:

    • How often do I need to meet with my learner?
    • Is there a rubric I need to follow? How do I grade my learner’s work?
    • Do I need to grade each activity? Can I grade them all at the end of the semester?

    If you aren't sure how to answer a question, do not hesitate to loop us in.

    Who do I loop in if I need help?

    The sponsor admin can reach out directly to their Customer Success Manager.

    For all end user issues (learners, evaluators, instructors), please loop in support@crafteducation.com. This will allow our support team to handle and track end users issues more accurately.

    Resources

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