Create and Edit Your Courses
QUICK ACCESS GUIDE
The Create / Edit section contains everything you need to create courses, modules, and individual lessons to be displayed to your paid and free users.
You can access this screen under ACTIONCOURSES in the Content Portal:
Steps to Course Creation
Every course that is created within ActionEra must be created in 5 technical steps, those steps are:
- Create a Course Category - You will need to do this under the Categories menu item, you need a minimum of one category, but you can have as many as you'd like.
- Add New Course - This is the basic outline of your course to setup core information as well as your internal course sales page, thank you page, and welcome page.
- Add Modules - Once your new course has been outlined you can add as many modules as you'd like to make up your course.
- Add Lessons - Each module of your course is made up of individual lessons that will contain your course content
- Course Access - Once you have completed your course and want to make it accessible to your users you will need to do so through awarding unlock codes for the course, tag bundles, or through integrations
Add New Course
To begin with, click "Add Course"
Add Course Options
When adding a new course, the only 3 fields that are required are the Course Title, Creator Name, and Category
The other fields seen in the course creation screen are visible in 5 distinct areas to users, they are:
- Course Category
- Course Sales/Information Page
- Confirmation Screen
- New Registration
- Registered User
Not all fields are visible to every user, nor are all fields required in order to launch your course, but some fields are used on multiple screens
There are also a few options that are used internally only, they are
- Send Email When Unlocked and Email - This toggle will allow you to be notified at an email of your choice, entered into the adjacent email field, when someone has unlocked your course via the unique unlock code that is generated when you finish the first technical step of creating your course.
- Drip System - This toggle will allow your course lessons to be dripped out on a schedule of your choosing, setup in the 4th technical step.
- Customize Confirmation Screen - When toggled this changes the confirmation screen that users will see to have custom content
NOTE: The customized confirmation screen is only visible if users use the unique course unlock code, otherwise they will see the unlock screen associated with the unlock code they have used
- Sort Order - Sort Order will allow you select in what order your course will be displayed in its associated category.
- Tags - Tags can be used to hide a course, either temporarily while in development, or permanently without special access knowledge.
- Active - This toggle will allow you to make a course actively visible or not.
Course Category Fields
Course category fields are visible to anyone that can see that a course exists within a category they have access to, if a user has access to a course they will see the text "Enter" on a button to access the course, otherwise they will see the text "About" which will direct them to the course sales/information screen.
The course category fields are:
- Category - This drop-down field is where you selected the associated Category that your course will have
- Title - This is the name of your course
- Course Thumbnail - The thumbnail image is a small representative image of your course
- Course Cost - The cost is displayed directly on the course access page for users that are not registered
- Number of Modules/Lessons - The number is displayed directly on the course access page in the format of "# Modules"
Course Sales/Information Fields
The course sales/information screen is only visible to users that are not registered to access your course. You can either write the information on this screen to be a sales page, including a call to action button, or, you can forgo the CTA and write this screen to be more informative about what is covered inside the course.
- Sales Video URL or Image URL - When setup, you can either have a custom video displayed, which is prioritized, or a course representative image that is at the very top of the sales/information screen.
NOTE: The image is also displayed on the "New Registration" screen if you do not include a welcome video in the "Welcome Video URL" field
- Description - The description text is visible only on the sales/information screen and must be setup individually for both the app and web versions on your web/app. The web version includes a WYSIWYG editor. We recommend either writing this text as information only, or to direct people to purchase/opt-in to your course
- Registration Text and URL - When filled, this will generate a button on the bottom of the screen that directs people to a URL of your choice with the CTA text of your choice, to purchase or opt-in to your course
Customized Confirmation Screen Fields
The customized confirmation screen is only visible if users use the unique course unlock code, otherwise they will see the unlock screen associated with the unlock code they have used.
To see the fields associated with the customized confirmation screen you must first toggle the customized confirmation screen on, then following fields are used:
- Headline - A title to the customized confirmation screen
- Video or Image - A custom video, or image if the video is not added, immediately visible after the course is unlocked
- Message - A custom message visible under the video or image, if one was added, to welcome your new registrant. This text must be setup independently for app and web screens, with added functionality with the WYSIWYG editor on the web screen
New Registrant Fields
The new registrant screen is only visible once, when users first enter a course.
The fields that are visible on this screen are
- Creator - We recommend this be either trainers name or the name of their company, this is effectively presented as "This course is brought to you by..."
- Creator Image URL - This image appears as an adjacent thumbnail to the "Creator" text
- Welcome Video URL or Image URL - this appears at the top of the screen and can be used to welcome new users to the course, as well as direct them on how to get started
NOTE: The image added to this page is also visible on the "Sales/Information" screen if a video is not added to that screen under the "Sales Video URL" field
- Course Instructions - Course instructions is descriptive text that is only visible to users that select the information " i " to open the instructions pop-up
- Course Instructions Video or Image - The course instructions video appears in the instructions pop-up first before text, or an image if a video has not been selected
Registered User Fields
Once a user returns to a course they've already accessed at least one time, they will be greeted by the home screen on the web or the last lesson they accessed if by the app. Visuals for those screens are set in further technical steps, but once a user has completed the course you can send them to a custom course completion screen using the "Complete Course URL"
Pro-Tip: Is your program a certification course for your clients? The Complete Course URL can direct users to complete a test or submit an application for you to get notified when you need to send out certifications and to who!
Add Modules
Once you've completed the first technical step and selected "Submit" for your course you can click "update" from the course list screen to review your work and add modules. You can find the "Add Modules" section at the bottom of your now completed new course, it should look like this:
When you add a new module you will be greeted by this screen:
From here the creation of a module is fairly quick, the fields in order are
- Name - The name of your module
- Image URL - A banner image that is displayed when someone opens that module
- Sort Order - The order in which your module is shown when included with other modules
- Tags - Tags are generally not recommended to be used here unless you are trying to implement advanced techniques of introducing people to your products and services. At least one module must NOT have a tag in order for your course to function
When it comes to process of creating modules, we recommend that you have one module per major project, for example in a Workout course you may have a different module for Diet, Cardio, Leg Exercises, Core Exercises, Back Exercises, Arm Exercises, and Full-Body Exercises, to which you can have individual lessons to cover the different types of exercises that are included in each module
Add Lessons
Once you've created your modules you can start to add individual lessons to each module and really flesh out your course content.
To start adding lessons you will need at least one module submitted, and from there you will be able to update that module to add lessons, which should show you a screen like this:
When you select "Add Lesson" you will enter the basic information screen for a lesson that looks like this:
The fields on the lesson screen work as follows
- Title - This is the title of the lesson screen
- Description - This is the sub-title of the lesson screen
- Image URL - This is the thumbnail of the lesson
- Release Date - This marks when the lesson will be visible to everyone, if set in the present/past, it will be immediately visible to anyone that has access to the lesson, otherwise if it is set in the future it will not be accessible until the release date is in the present/past
- Call to Action Text and URL - When filled in, creates a button at the bottom of the lesson screen that allows you to direct people to a custom URL
Pro-Tip: Send your students to a form software of your choice at the end of lessons to get feedback or test their knowledge of your lesson!
- Drip Sequence - Drip sequence is denoted in 1 day release times, whatever number is added to this field is x1 day from when the user gained access to the course (eg. 0 would be instant access, 2 would mean 2 days after initial gained access, 5 would be 5 days after initial access, etc.)
- Sort Order - Sort order will display the lessons in the order you wish them to be seen and navigated through
- Tags - Tags can be used in advanced methods to make lessons only accessible to clients that have certain tags (eg. Your certification program requires that a client understands the content so you use a call to action to send them to a testing software where, if they pass, an integration will add a tag to their account to give them access to the next lesson)
- Active - When toggled, this lesson is visible and accessible to anyone that should have access
Add Lesson Content
When you are ready to start adding content, at the bottom of the lesson you can select "Add Section" to open the lesson section editor, it is a drawer style menu that should slide in from the right and look like this:
There are two pieces to each section that are consistent with every section they are
- Description - The description is for your internal reference only, we suggest you describe it with the types of content you added (eg. Headline+title+video) up to a maximum of 20 characters
- Sort Order - Sort order will display the in order how your content segments will appear on the lesson screen to your user
Beyond those two fields, you can select any content pieces you want to include in your content section.
NOTE: Content is displayed in sequential order starting from top left and going right until it wraps to the 2nd row. Because of this you will benefit from using multiple content sections to craft a lesson that is in the ideal order that you want to use. Don't be afraid to use lots of lesson sections!
An example layout you might have would be a lesson headline, followed by a video, then some text, followed by a Title for an Audio File, finished with a document to download.
This would be broken up into 3 content segments given the above note. They are
- A Headline + Video (sort order 1)
- Text (sort order 2)
- Title + Audio + Doc (sort order 3)
While this may be confusing as you get started, once you have had a chance to implement a lesson yourself you will quickly get the hang of it and be able to make full content lessons quickly and easily for your web/app
Pro-Tip: Keep the number of videos on each lesson screen to as few as possible, when your lesson is loaded your user will have to load every video at once which will dramatically degrade their user experience! Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should! Create a lesson for every video in your course if you're unsure!
Access to Your Course
Once you've completed your course and are ready to release it to the public (or you want to test it yourself) you can do so by giving your unique course access to code to users by finding it next to your new course on the first "Course List" Screen, it should look something like this
Alternatively you can also use Tags or Tag Bundles to give users access to your course or create an integration to automatically give users access to your course when they trigger an external event.