When you include managers in a learning journey, they get their own view of Knowly and their own stream of email notifications. It's worth knowing what that looks like before you publish — especially because the notification cadence works differently in cohort and individual journeys, which is the most common thing admins are surprised by later.
What managers see in Knowly
A manager who has at least one participant assigned in your journey gets a manager view of that journey, separate from the participant view. From there they can:
see the manager dashboard, with the participants connected to them, recent activity, and anything that needs their attention
open Employee progress to follow what each participant has done — answers, submissions, completion
complete any manager-facing activities you've scheduled
access any manager resources you've included
If a manager hasn't been assigned any participants, they don't get a manager view of the journey — there's no role to view yet. They become a manager in the journey when an admin connects them to a participant on the People page, or when a participant registers them.
For the manager's own walkthrough, see The manager dashboard: tracking your employees at a glance and How do I see my employees' progress?.
What emails managers receive
Knowly emails managers when something on the journey involves them — a manager activity is sent, an assignment is submitted, a milestone fires, a reminder lands. The cadence depends on whether the learning journey is a cohort or an individual one.
Cohort journeys: one consolidated email per scheduled activity. When you schedule a manager-facing notification in a cohort journey, Knowly sends one email per scheduled occurrence to each manager — not one per employee. A manager with four people in the journey gets a single email when that activity fires, covering all four. The email itself doesn't name the four employees unless you've added an Employees box, so by default it can read as if it's about one person rather than several. See Show managers which employee a notification is about for when to use the box and when name variables work.
Individual journeys: a parallel stream per employee. Individual journeys are anchored to each participant's own start, so the manager receives one parallel email stream per participant. A manager with four people in an individual journey gets four parallel timelines of notifications — one per employee, on each employee's own schedule. This can feel like a lot in their inbox; consider that when you decide how many manager-facing notifications a journey needs.
Assignment submissions are the exception either way. When a participant submits an assignment, Knowly emails the manager per submission, in both cohort and individual journeys. A manager with four people in the journey gets four submission emails — one per employee — even in a cohort.
For a per-activity-type breakdown of what's sent and when, see What notifications does each activity type send?.
If a manager seems to only get info about one of their employees
When a manager who has several employees in a journey reports that they're only getting information about one of them, the usual cause isn't a broken assignment — it's that the journey is a cohort and the manager-facing emails are sending one consolidated email per activity rather than one per employee. By default that email doesn't list the employees by name, so to the manager it reads as if it's about a single person, when it's actually about all of them.
To diagnose:
check the journey type. If it's a cohort, the manager gets one consolidated email per scheduled activity. If it's an individual journey, the manager gets a parallel email stream per employee.
if it's a cohort, the fix is editorial, not technical: edit the manager notifications and add an Employees box so each email names the employees it covers. See Show managers which employee a notification is about.
only if it's an individual journey, and one of the parallel streams is genuinely missing, is the manager-employee connection on that participant likely the cause. Re-check the assignment on the People page in that case.
Customize what each notification says
Manager notifications use the same editing tools as participant notifications — subject line, body, personalization. The two manager-specific tools worth knowing about:
the Employees box, which lists the relevant employees in the email body
the Employee first name and Employee full name variables, available inside Personalize for per-employee notifications, including manager notifications in individual learning journeys
See Show managers which employee a notification is about for when each one works.
What managers can't do
The manager view is read-mostly: managers can follow progress, complete manager activities, and review submissions, but they can't change the journey itself, change which participants are assigned to them, or open the admin view. If a manager-employee assignment is wrong, an admin needs to fix it — see Changing or removing a manager mid-journey.
Preview and test before launch
Preview the manager experience as a manager and send test messages before publishing the journey:
check that the right participants are assigned to each manager
send tests of manager notifications with whichever variables you've added
for employee-name variables in individual manager notifications, enter a Preview employee name in Send test so the test message uses a concrete employee example
check what's visible in Employee progress for each activity type
confirm the journey type (cohort vs individual) matches the email cadence you want managers to experience
If you've renamed the role under Settings → Nomenclature, double-check that the custom term reads naturally in your manager-facing copy.