Tray Academy is where you’ll begin your self-paced learning journey to becoming a proficient workflow builder and automation extraordinaire on the Tray Platform. Addressing both Tray Platform and Tray Embedded, our in-depth courses cover a number of disciplines to give you, and your organizations, the confidence to build powerful integrations.

We spoke with the Tray Academy instructional designers Jonathon Addington and Christine Kapak about the relaunch of Tray Academy and plans for the future.

What is Tray Academy and who is it for?

Jonathon: Tray.io is an automation platform designed and built by builders, for builders. As a builder coming into Tray Academy, our goal is to help you see the power and scope of the Tray Platform and how you can leverage workflow automation to transform your daily routines to be faster and more efficient. How do we do this? We focus on helping learners ramp up quickly and get them building on their first day. And while Tray Academy is the starting point for any new builder’s journey, it’s also where experienced builders can return for more advanced topics, as well as overviews of the latest releases.

Christine: Whether you’re a low-code developer, product manager, product designer, or anyone interested in automation, the goal is to instill best practices when you start building, planning, and troubleshooting your integrations in the Tray Platform. It’s an incredibly flexible and powerful tool so we want everyone to get curious and enjoy using it straight away.

What can I find on Tray Academy?

Jonathan: Tray Academy has something for builders of all skill levels. Whether you’re brand new to workflow automation or a seasoned pro, the topics and learning paths will guide you through the “Tray-way” of creating dynamic, powerful workflows. With our “First Day at Tray” paths for both Tray Platform and Tray Embedded, new learners are introduced to core topics, concepts, and processes. For the latest product releases, we offer short topic introductions with easy-to-follow demos. And for more advanced learning, we have a continuing education path as well.

How did you develop the content for Tray Academy?

Christine: When building out the content for Tray Academy, we had one core objective: to get someone new to Tray confidently building a workflow as quickly as possible. So we created a video called “How to build a workflow in 10 minutes” which covered the essentials of authentication, JSON paths, and other key concepts. From there, we partnered with Tray engineers and architects to better understand our customers’ needs and what they’d likely want from a learning center. We created a list of common topics centered around planning, building, and troubleshooting which ultimately drove the type of content created for Tray Academy.

What are the future plans for Tray Academy?

Christine: We plan on growing the number of categories so that it covers more aspects of integration development like scope, deployment, and maintenance. We’ll also have a great new section with shorter “bite-sized” videos focusing on more advanced features within the Tray Platform. For example, what’s the difference between the HTTP Client Connect and the Connector Builder? When do you use one over the other? So there’s a lot to look forward to.

Jonathan: As Tray evolves, so will Tray Academy. Today, we have learning paths for new builders but over the next few quarters, we’ll launch several new and more advanced paths including hands-on labs, live events, and a Tray certification program. Exciting times are ahead so keep an eye out for upcoming releases!

What else should we know about Tray Academy?

Christine: I’d like to give a shout-out to our growing community of Tray builders! Once you join the Tray Community, you automatically receive access to a supportive network of Tray builders who love to share their knowledge on all things integration and automation.

Jonathon: We learn from our learners. What you see today on Tray Academy is in large part due to our learners' feedback and requests and we are eager to hear from them. If anyone has questions or input please email our team at education@tray.io.