Reminders, templates and courses

Templates, sessions and courses

What a template is

A template is your master plan for a programme. It lists the sessions in the programme, the activities that belong to each session, and the order they run in. What it does not hold is real dates or real clock times. That is deliberate. Because a template stays free of any particular calendar, you can reuse the same plan for one cohort after another. If you have read the Teacher Guide, this is the same idea as a lesson plan: it describes what happens and in what order, not when a specific class meets.

Sessions are milestones, not dates

In a template, a session is simply a labelled point in the programme. It might be Session 1, Week 2, or a mid-point check-in. A session carries a name and a place in the running order, and nothing more. It has no date and no time of its own. The real date for each session is set later, when you create a course.

Activities live in the template

Every piece of content in your programme is an activity. A text card, an audio practice, a video, the live class, a reminder: they are all activities, and they are all placed in the template in the same way. Each activity sits within a session, and you can choose when it becomes visible to participants, so that content is released at the right point in the programme rather than all at once.

Reminders are the first kind of activity the in-app assistant can write for you automatically, but the way activities are arranged applies to every kind, not only reminders.

Where the class time lives

Each session can have a class time, for example 12:00. As with everything else in a template, this is a default rather than a fixed appointment. The real class times for a particular cohort are confirmed when you create the course.

A course brings the plan to life

Creating a course from a template fills in the reality the template leaves out: the real date for each session, the course timezone, and the real class times. If the template is the lesson plan, a course is a single class that follows it. The same template can run as a January cohort and a September cohort, each as its own course, each with its own dates.

The short version: templates hold defaults, courses hold the real thing. Any time your participants see comes from the course, not the template.

To see how this plays out for one kind of activity, read How reminders work.

How reminders go live

Editing a course updates its reminders for you

When you edit a course, that course's reminders are brought up to date automatically. In the normal run of things you do not need to do anything extra for the change to reach your participants. For the building blocks behind reminders, see Templates, sessions and courses.

When you edit the template instead

Editing a template does not, on its own, change a course that is already running. This is the case to watch when you use the Organisation Assistant, because its changes apply to your template. After a template change, the courses built from that template need a re-sync to pick it up.

Checking and fixing sync

The Scheduled Reminders screen tells you whether a course is up to date. You will find it under This Course on the Teacher tab.

• A green All reminders in sync message means there is nothing to do.
• An amber message shows a count, such as 3 reminders out of sync, with the note Press the refresh button above to re-sync.

Amber is your cue. Tap the refresh icon to bring that course's reminders up to date. Most edits sync on their own, so you only need this when the banner is amber, or after a template change that did not touch the course directly, such as one made through the Organisation Assistant.

It is safe to use the refresh as often as you like. It only ever affects reminders that have not yet been sent.

For the times themselves, and the choices you make when a course begins, see Customising reminder times at course creation.

Practice reminders

A setting on a practice, not an activity

A practice reminder sends participants a daily push notification to do a practice between sessions. It works differently from the reminders described in the sections above. Those are reminder activities: each one is placed in the template and sends once, at a fixed time. A practice reminder is a setting on a practice you have already placed on a session, and it sends every day across a range of days, at a time each participant can change.

Which activities can have one

The Practice reminder section appears when one of these activities is placed on a session:

• audio and video activities with the Practice Activity switch turned on
• guided journals
• breathing, cold plunge and mindful timer practices

A practice that sits only in the practice pool, without a session, cannot have a reminder.

Setting one up in the template

Open the template from Course Templates and tap the activity on its session. In the Practice reminder section, turn on Remind participants daily, then choose:

• Until session: the session at which the reminders stop, or Course end.
• Suggested time: in 5-minute steps. It starts at 07:30 for practices and 20:00 for guided journals. The time a participant chooses on the Today screen applies to practice reminders. A guided journal reminder keeps your suggested time until the participant changes that reminder in My reminders.
• Message (optional): up to 60 characters, shown in the notification after the practice name, for example “Twenty minutes for today’s body scan.”

A summary line under the controls reads, for example, Daily after Session 1 until Session 3, suggested 07:30. Participants choose their own time.

Which days it sends

Reminders start the day after the activity’s session and send every day up to and including the day of the Until session. They still go out on the Until session’s own day, and stop before the rest of that session’s week. An audio on Session 1 with Until session set to Session 2 sends every day from the day after Session 1 to the day of Session 2.

Course end means up to and including the seventh day after the last session, or until the participant’s course access ends, if that is sooner. The days come from the session dates on the course, so the activity’s session needs a date in the course for its reminders to send.

Carrying a practice on from week to week

You can place the same audio on each session and give each placement its own reminder: after Session 1 until Session 2, then after Session 2 until Session 3. These ranges follow on from each other without overlapping, so participants get one reminder a day.

When you add an activity to a session and the same activity already has a reminder that ends at or before that session, the dialog offers Extend the existing reminder to cover this week. Ticking it moves the existing reminder’s Until session to the session after the one you are adding to (or to Course end, if that is the last session), and the new placement gets no reminder of its own. If the existing reminder already covers that week, the dialog says Already reminded until, followed by the session.

Changing a reminder for one course

Open Customise This Course under This Course on the Teacher tab and tap the activity. The same Practice reminder section appears, and anything you change there applies to that course only: switch a template reminder off, change its Until session or suggested time, or add one the template does not have. If the activity’s session has no date in that course, a notice takes the place of the section to say that no reminders are sent. Give the session a date to set them up.

When participants start receiving them

Nothing is sent until a participant chooses a time. On a course with practice reminders, the Today screen asks each participant to choose one, with your suggested time already selected. Participants can change the time, pause reminders or switch them off in the app at any point. Reminders are push notifications, so a participant who has turned notifications off for the app receives none.

Getting a template change to running courses

A change you make for one course reaches its participants on its own. A change you make in the template reaches anyone who enrols from then on, but a course that is already running needs a re-sync to pick it up.

Deleting sessions and checking your setup

You cannot delete a session while a practice reminder ends at it. The app lists the reminders that end there; change their Until session first, then delete the session.

Content Review checks practice reminders under Reminders. It flags a reminder whose Until session comes at or before the activity’s own session, one that ends at a session that no longer exists or has no date in the course, one that starts after a session with no date in the course, and two reminders for the same activity whose days overlap. In the first three cases the reminder is never sent, and an overlap sends participants two reminders a day.

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