Currently session reminders only go out until the start of the first session within a course. The way my organization offers some training is by creating a course and then then providing ~50 dates (sessions) where learners can attend. The current setup doesn't allow us to automate reminder messages beyond the first session, causing an administrative task of manually sending out emails through Outlook prior to every session. It has been suggested that we instead create 50 courses with one session each to accommodate each training date. There are many issues with this approach, but the main one is that it doesn't work when the training is part of a curriculum. If we put all 50 courses in a section of the curriculum and then set it to minimum of 1 that would technically work, but it would be a nightmare experience for the learner. Especially when this is applied to more than one training. Please consider allowing an option for applying the reminder message to each session within a course.
Hey Matt, We've just started using reminder e-mails this year and the language on the Course Edit screen was definitely a factor keeping us away!
The phrase "Before the start of the first class, remind every..." certainly implies what you describe above, where a reminder is only sent for the first of 50 sessions. I think what it actually means is that if you set up recurring sessions (ex. a Learner must attend a session every Tuesday at 3pm for 3 weeks), in that case a reminder is only sent for the first class (which is also not ideal...).
If your learner is only intended to attend 1 of the 50 sessions, the reminder e-mails can certainly work! I've just finished a 30 session training rollout where we obsessively tracked attendance rates, and we had Absorb send a reminder e-mail 1 hour before every session which was amazing to drive attendance!
Cheers,
Chris