Blog
September 4, 2025
Attain Partners Helps Higher Education Institutions Customize Salesforce’s Education Cloud to Serve Non-traditional Education Programs
These days, most universities offer some form of non-traditional education programs, also referred to as non-credit learning, which includes continuing education, executive education, professional development, and certificates. Whether it be online, in person, or a combination of the two, Attain Partners has seen a wide variety of these programs, and each institution manages its continuing education programs a little differently.
We have had the privilege of partnering with a wide range of higher education institutions to implement Salesforce’s Education Cloud as the foundation and extend its capabilities to ensure it aligns with the goals, objectives, and needs of each institution’s individual programs.
Interested in hearing how the University of Wisconsin-Madison is transforming the continuing education experience through Salesforce Education Cloud?
Join us for a live session on Wednesday, September 24, 2025
Customized Use Cases for Unique Programs
Enrollment and Course Structures
Some universities have a student enroll in the entire continuing education program at once, with a variety of sessions required in order to complete the program, potentially earning a certificate or some continuing education units. Other universities track each session as a separate course, where a variety of courses make up the completion of the program. From asynchronous courses where a student enrolls and then gains online access to the materials for a certain period of time, to courses and programs with application and review processes, we’ve been able to accommodate every use case so far. Some use-case examples can be found in the diagram below.
Managing Applications and Registrations
There are a handful of different ways to solve each client’s unique needs within the Education Cloud architecture. Add in a third-party app and/or an Experience Cloud site to help manage the registration process, and you’ve got yourself a full-service continuing education platform. Programs that require an application process can take advantage of the Application objects within Education Cloud, such as Individual Application, Application Review, and Application Decision, to name a few.
Tracking Courses, Offerings, and Schedules
The “Learning Course – Course Offering – Course Offering Schedule” model helps us keep track of the repeating courses and programs. This follows the Education Cloud model, where the Learning Course serves as the Catalog entry of a course. The Course Offerings help distinguish between the different offerings or sections of a course or program, sometimes acting as the program itself when a single registration is needed to track enrollment within a program. The Course Offering Schedule object helps distinguish between the sessions required within the Course Offering, and leaves flexibility to add multiple days, times, and speakers/instructors (with a custom field) to each Course Offering.
Managing Outcomes and Progress
Using objects like Course Offering Participant, Course Offering Participant Result, and Academic Credential helps clients track the outcomes for the various learners, depending on the need of the client. To go a step further and utilize the out-of-the-box degree planning tools that come with Education Cloud, clients will utilize the Learning Program, Learning Program Plan, Learner Program, and Learner Program Plan objects to track requirements and progress.
Attain Partners – Supporting Continuing Education at Your Institution
The possibilities are endless when it comes to working with our Continuing Education clients. We aim to create scalable solutions, so other departments and continuing education programs within the university can be onboarded fairly easily. Have you been thinking about moving to Salesforce for your Continuing Education programs or looking to improve your current systems? Contact us to see how we can help.
Interested in utilizing AI to help monitor and market your non-credit learning programs? Check out these other resources for ideas on how to get started.
For additional Education Cloud data models, click here.
About the Author
Michelle Schafer is a Principal Consultant at Attain Partners focused on Salesforce implementations for higher education clients. Michelle has been in higher ed for over ten years and brings expertise from both the user/client perspective and the technical side with prior experience in Registrar, Provost, and IT offices. She has a passion for helping clients produce creative solutions using Salesforce and supporting tools.
