Academy

Academy (/academy) is Smileline's library of training videos and courses for dental teams. It is one community for every practice that uses Smileline, in every country: everyone sees the same videos and courses, and comments are shared across practices.

Videos and courses come from Smileline's own channel and from the channels practices run themselves (see Your practice's channel).

Open Academy

Open the menu at the bottom of the sidebar (your name) and choose Academy. Academy belongs to you rather than to a workspace, so it's there whether you work in the CRM or in the clinical workspace.

Everyone at a practice can use Academy, whatever their role. It isn't available in a partner workspace, and it isn't in the Smileline phone app.

Find something to watch

The Academy home has up to four rows, each shown once it has something in it:

• Continue watching: the videos you've started but not finished, most recently watched first;
• Smileline courses: Smileline's newest courses;
• Courses from practices: the newest courses from practices' channels;
• Latest videos: the newest videos, from every channel.

See all beside a row opens the full list, newest first: Smileline's courses on its channel page; every course, or every video, on one page.

Search finds videos and courses by their title and description. Every word you type must appear, and accents and capitals don't matter, so "implantologia" finds "Implantología". Only the first 8 words of a search are used.

Every video and course belongs to a channel. Click a channel's name to see everything it has published.

Watch a video

Click a video to open it, then press play: videos never start on their own. When a video has captions, they're on by default; you can switch them off in the player. Academy is only for people signed in to Smileline, so a link to a video opens only for colleagues who use Smileline.

The player remembers where you stopped. Open the video again, from the home or anywhere else, and it carries on from that point.

When a video counts as complete

Smileline counts the time a video actually plays. Once that reaches 90% of the video's length, the video is complete.

• Watching faster counts, up to twice normal speed.
• Skipping ahead doesn't count, and nothing counts while the video is paused.
• Watching a part again counts again.
• Once a video is complete, it stays complete.

Your progress follows you to every practice you belong to. Other members don't see it, with one exception: the owners, managers and agency staff of each practice you belong to see your whole Academy record on Team progress.

Courses

A course is a set of videos, called lessons, to watch in order. The course page lists its lessons with a tick beside each one you've completed. Continuing a course opens the first lesson you haven't completed, or the first lesson once you've completed them all.

A lesson counts in the same way as any other video (see When a video counts as complete), so a video you completed on its own is already ticked in every course that uses it.

A course has its own comments, one thread for the whole course, separate from the comments on each video.

Some courses also issue a CPD certificate once you pass their quiz (see CPD certificates), and some of Smileline's own courses are sold (see Buying courses).

Buying courses

Smileline sells some of its own courses. Everything else in Academy is free for every practice, courses from practices' channels included.

A course that's for sale shows its price, and a lock in place of its picture, until your practice buys it. Until then its lessons don't play and, on a CPD course, its quiz stays closed. Everyone can still open the course page, see its list of lessons, and read and join its comments. A link to one of its lessons opens that lesson's page with the course's price, and Buy course for those who can buy it, where the video would be; the lesson's comments and Report work as usual.

Who can buy

Your practice's owners and managers can buy courses. Agency staff can't, and neither can any other role: they see Ask your practice's owner or a manager to buy it. Compare roles on Settings → Team members shows this as Buy Smileline courses for the practice.

What a purchase covers

• Your whole team. Everyone at your practice can watch the course, including people who join later. If you work at more than one practice, the course plays while you're signed in to the practice that bought it.
• Every later edition. When Smileline publishes an updated copy of the course (see Editions), your team gets it at no extra cost, and every edition shows Bought.

Buying a course doesn't by itself give you a certificate: only a course whose page shows CPD hours issues one, once you pass its quiz (see CPD certificates).

Prices and tax

Prices are in your practice's billing currency (GBP, USD or EUR) and before tax: they read "+ VAT", or "+ tax" in the United States. The invoice adds the VAT or sales tax that applies, worked out from your practice's billing address. A course with no price in your practice's currency shows Not sold in your currency.

If Smileline changes a course's price while your purchase waits for payment, you still pay the price the purchase started with.

Buy a course

Once the payment goes through, the course page shows Bought for your team and the lessons play for everyone at your practice.

Smileline charges the card once and never tries it again by itself: if that payment doesn't go through, finish on Stripe's secure page. A double click, or two managers buying at the same time, makes one purchase and one invoice.

While a purchase waits for payment, the course page shows Waiting for payment and the amount due, with three buttons:

• Finish payment carries on with the purchase, at the price it started with, and shows Pay on Stripe's secure page again while it still needs paying.
• Check payment asks Stripe now, for example just after you've paid on Stripe's page. Smileline also checks by itself while your team uses Academy: every minute during the purchase's first hour, then every hour.
• Cancel purchase cancels the unpaid invoice. You can buy the course again later.

"Smileline is still confirming this payment with Stripe" means an earlier step is still being confirmed: wait a minute, then try again.

If your practice hasn't set up billing with Smileline yet, the course page says so: an owner sets it up on Settings → Billing first. If tax needs your practice's billing address, an owner adds it from Settings → Billing with Manage billing; then try again.

Each purchase is an invoice of its own, separate from your subscription. Owners find it with your practice's other Smileline invoices, through Manage billing on Settings → Billing.

Refunds and disputes

To ask for a refund, click Support at the bottom of the sidebar and tell us which course.

• A full refund ends your team's access to the course: its lessons stop playing and its quiz closes. A partial refund leaves access as it is.
• A dispute (a chargeback: your practice disputes the payment with its bank or card issuer) ends access as soon as Smileline sees it, whatever the dispute's outcome. If it was a mistake, contact Support.

Either way, what your team earned stays: their progress, the lessons they completed, their quiz passes and their certificates. A certificate already issued stays valid and keeps checking. Anyone who passed the quiz before access ended can still get their certificate, or correct it, from Your certificates; anyone who hadn't passed needs the course bought again to take the quiz. A lesson someone already has open can keep playing for up to an hour.

After a refund or a cancellation, your practice can buy the course again.

CPD certificates

Some courses issue a certificate for your continuing professional development (CPD). Their course page shows the CPD hours, the course's CPD provider and its edition, and its details say what the course covers and who quality assured it.

The provider made the course and is responsible for it: Smileline for its own courses, or the practice whose channel publishes it. Smileline's own courses are quality assured by a dentist on the General Dental Council's register, named with their GDC number. A practice names who quality assured its course; Smileline doesn't review practice courses.

Earn a certificate

The quiz opens once you've completed every lesson. On a course Smileline sells, it also needs your practice to have bought the course (see Buying courses). It has at least 5 questions, and the pass mark is 70% on every course. You can try as often as you like: each attempt shows your score but never which answers were wrong, and only a pass is recorded. Your first pass stands.

If a lesson you haven't completed is no longer available, because its channel deleted it or Smileline took it down, the course page says so and you can't take that edition's quiz.

What your certificate says

Certificates are always printed in English. Their wording follows the country of the practice you're signed in to when the certificate is issued:

Your registration number is printed only if you give it, and no certificate says a course is accredited. A certificate for a practice's course also says that the practice created the course and is responsible for its content and its quality assurance, and that Smileline hosts the course and records your completion.

If you work at practices in more than one country, switch to the practice whose wording you need before you click Get your certificate. Dates are printed in UTC, so a quiz passed late in the evening in the United States can show the next day's date.

Correct your name or number

Open the certificate and click Correct name or number. Smileline issues a new certificate in place of the old one, worded for the practice you're signed in to at the time. You only ever have one current certificate for each edition of a course: checking the old one shows that it was replaced.

Your certificates

Your certificates, on the Academy home, lists every course you've passed, newest first, with its certificate. A pass keeps its certificate even if the course is later unpublished, taken down or deleted, or your practice's purchase of it is refunded: get, view or correct the certificate from here.

Editions

A CPD course can't change once its provider declares it. To update it, the provider publishes an updated copy: the next edition, with its own quiz and certificate. Your pass and your certificate belong to the edition you took, and the lessons you've completed count in every edition that uses them.

Check a certificate

Anyone can check a certificate without a Smileline account: an employer, an inspector or a regulator. Scanning its QR code opens Smileline's check page, which shows what the certificate says and whether it's current or was replaced by a correction. Without the QR code, open the address printed beside it, such as eu.smileline.io/c, and type the certificate's 24-character code. The EU and US addresses both check every certificate.

Anyone you give the code to, or a copy of your certificate, can see what's printed on it.

How long certificates are kept

Smileline keeps each certificate for 10 years from the day it's issued.

Comments and replies

You can comment under any video or course. Your comment appears straight away, with your name and your practice's name, and every Smileline user in every country can read it. Write as you would in a professional forum, and never include anything that could identify a patient.

• Comments are listed newest first.
• Reply to a comment to answer it. Replies sit under the comment, oldest first, and go one level deep: you reply to a comment, not to a reply.
• A comment can be up to 4,000 characters.
• If posting fails, for example because you lost your connection, your text stays in the box, and so does anything you type while a comment is posting. Try again: sent unchanged, the comment is posted once, never twice; if you edit it first, it's posted as a new comment.

So that nobody can flood Academy, one person can post up to 30 comments and reports a minute. Getting or correcting a certificate, and saving or copying a course's CPD declaration, count towards the same 30.

Delete your comment

You can delete your own comments, but never anyone else's. A deleted comment that has replies stays as a short note saying it was deleted, so the replies under it still make sense. A deleted comment with no replies disappears.

A practice's owners and managers can also hide comments under their own channel's videos and courses (see Hide comments on your content). A hidden comment follows the same rule, showing Hidden by the channel. while it has replies.

If your Smileline account is deleted, your comments are cleared in the same way, without your name, and your progress, quiz passes and certificates are deleted (see How long certificates are kept).

Report something

You can report any video, course, comment or channel that breaks the rules, Smileline's own included: click Report beside it. Choose the reason that fits best and, if you like, add a note of up to 1,000 characters saying what's wrong.

Your report goes only to Smileline's moderators, and you see a confirmation once it's sent. Reporting the same thing again while your first report is still open changes nothing; once Smileline has dealt with it, you can report it again.

How Smileline moderates

Comments go live without being checked first. Smileline reviews everything that's reported, starting with illegal content and patient privacy.

• Smileline approves each practice's channel before it can publish anything (see Apply for a channel).
• Smileline can take down any video, course or comment. It disappears for everyone, and the comments under a video or course disappear with it.
• A take-down can be undone if it turns out to be a mistake.
• When Smileline takes down a comment, its text is kept, visible only to Smileline's moderators, in case of an appeal or a legal dispute.
• Smileline can suspend a practice's channel. Everything on it disappears for everyone and stops playing until Smileline reinstates it (see If Smileline suspends your channel).

To question a decision, click Support at the bottom of the sidebar and tell us which video, course, comment or channel it was.

No identifiable patients

Patients must never be identifiable in Academy. A video must not show anything that could identify a patient, on its own or together with something else: a face, a name, a date, a record or radiograph label, a voice, a tattoo or any other detail. Footage inside the mouth is fine when nothing else in the video identifies the patient. Everyone who uploads a video, Smileline included, confirms this for every upload.

The same rule applies to comments: never write a patient's name or details. If you spot a patient who could be identified, report it with A patient can be identified. Smileline looks at those reports first.

Your practice's channel

Your practice can run its own Academy channel and publish videos and courses for every Smileline practice to watch. Smileline approves each practice's channel once; after that, what you publish goes live straight away, without being checked first.

Who runs it

Only your practice's owners and managers run its channel: they apply for it, upload, publish, declare courses for CPD, delete and hide comments. Agency staff can't, although they otherwise have a manager's access, and neither can any other role. Compare roles on Settings → Team members shows this as Run the practice's Academy channel.

Owners and managers open the channel's studio from Your channel on the Academy home. The studio lists everything on your channel, drafts included.

Apply for a channel

Your channel then waits for Smileline's approval. Meanwhile you can change its name and description and prepare courses as drafts, but you can't upload videos, publish anything, or save or declare a course's CPD.

If Smileline turns the application down, your studio shows the reason. Deal with what it mentions and click Apply again: you accept the terms once more, and the channel waits for approval again.

Once approved, your channel never needs approving again. You can rename it or change its description at any time.

Upload and publish

Uploads open once your channel is approved.

The video arrives as a draft. Once it has finished processing, click Publish: every practice can watch it straight away. Unpublish turns it back into a draft. When captions can't be written automatically, for example because the video has no audio or is too long, Upload captions (.vtt) adds a WebVTT file of up to 10 MB. It waits while captions are being written automatically, for example after a change of the video's language. Until Stream confirms a caption file, another caption upload, a change of the video's language and Check again wait for it. Both settle by themselves, so try again in a few minutes.

To build a course, click New course, give it a title, add its lessons (videos from your channel) in the order to watch them, and click Publish. A video that's a lesson of a published course plays inside that course even while the video itself is a draft; it just isn't listed on its own.

Declare CPD for a course

Your practice can issue CPD certificates for its own courses (see CPD certificates). Declaring a course makes your practice its CPD provider, responsible for its content and its quality assurance. Smileline doesn't review practice courses, and every certificate names your practice as the provider.

Declaring confirms, for your practice, that you're the course's CPD provider, that the person or body you named quality assured it, and that the information is full and accurate.

You can declare a course only when it has lessons and every one is ready to play, with its captions finished: written, or found impossible to write automatically. A video still processing, captions still being written or a caption file still uploading holds the declaration back: wait for it, then try again.

What can't change

Once declared, the course is fixed: its title, description and lessons; each lesson video's title, description, spoken language and captions; and the declaration and quiz. You can still publish and unpublish the course and its videos, and delete them.

A video stays fixed while it's a lesson of any declared course that hasn't been deleted. Deleting a declared course frees its videos, and the certificates it issued stay valid.

If you delete a lesson video of a declared course, or Smileline takes it down, learners who hadn't completed it can no longer take that course's quiz.

Make an updated copy

To change a declared course, click Make an updated copy. You get the next edition: a new draft course with the same title, description, lessons, declaration and quiz. Change what you need, then declare and publish it. To change a lesson video's text or captions, replace it in the copy with a new upload.

Unpublish the older edition when you're ready. Its certificates keep their edition and can still be checked, and learners who passed it can still get their certificate. Learners keep the lessons they've completed: those count in every edition that uses them.

Delete videos and courses

Delete removes a video for everyone at once and deletes its file for good, so it can't be undone. Deleting a course leaves its videos on your channel.

You can delete anything on your channel at any time, except a video Smileline has taken down: it's kept for appeals and as evidence, so only Smileline can delete it. Your studio marks what Smileline took down and shows its note. For courses declared for CPD, see What can't change.

Hide comments on your content

Your practice's owners and managers can hide a comment under your channel's own videos and courses: click Hide beside it and confirm. In its place readers see Hidden by the channel. while it has replies, so the conversation still makes sense; a hidden comment without replies disappears. Smileline keeps its text in case the author asks Smileline to review the decision.

Hide only comments that break the Academy rules. Never hide a comment just because it criticises your practice or your content: the channel terms you accepted forbid it.

If Smileline suspends your channel

Smileline can suspend a channel that breaks the rules or the channel terms, and suspends the channel of a practice that closes its Smileline account. While your channel is suspended:

• its videos and courses, and the comments under them, disappear from Academy for everyone;
• none of its videos plays any more, though one someone already has open can keep playing for up to an hour;
• your studio still lists everything, with Smileline's note but without previews. You can't upload, publish, or save, declare or copy a course's CPD, but you can still unpublish and delete.

If Smileline reinstates the channel, everything you'd published comes back. To question a suspension, click Support at the bottom of the sidebar.

Selling your courses

When selling opens, a practice whose channel Smileline has approved will be able to put a price on its own courses and sell them to other practices through Smileline:

• Smileline is the seller. It sells your courses in its own name: it invoices the buying practice, adds the tax and takes the payment, the same way as for its own courses (see Buying courses).
• Your share goes to your Stripe account. When a buyer's payment goes through, Smileline transfers 80% of the price before tax to the Stripe account your practice connected on Settings → Payments & deposits. It keeps 20% and pays Stripe's fees from it.
• Your practice's owner accepts the seller agreement for that Stripe account before the first sale. If your practice changes or disconnects the account, selling stops until the owner accepts again.
• Your team watches free. Your practice's own priced courses play for everyone at your practice without buying them.

Selling will open to practices in the United Kingdom and in the European Union countries Smileline serves, paid into a Stripe account in one of those countries. Practices in the United States won't be able to sell at first.

To be ready, connect your practice's Stripe account (see Set up booking deposits) and apply for your channel (see Apply for a channel).

Team progress

Owners, managers and agency staff can follow their team's learning: click Team progress on the Academy home. Other roles don't see it.

It lists every member of your practice, including those who haven't watched anything yet, with:

• the courses they've completed and those they're part-way through;
• how many videos they've completed;
• when they last watched anything.

Open a member to see each course they've started: whether it's in progress or completed, how many of its lessons they've completed, and when they last watched it.

Team progress shows each member's whole Academy record, not only what they watched while signed in to your practice. Progress belongs to the person, not to a practice, so someone who also works at another Smileline practice shows the same record in both.

A course counts as completed once every lesson it has now is completed, so a completed course shows as in progress again if it gains a lesson. A course that's no longer available (unpublished, taken down or on a suspended channel) isn't listed, but the videos completed in it still count towards the member's videos completed.