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 Reminder Management screen tells you whether a course is up to date.

• 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.