Your training catalog is made of courses, and each course belongs to a course type. Registrants sign up for courses. Course types organize the catalog by category, such as level or subject, so Portal visitors can filter what they see.
What It Controls
A course includes:
- Its type, name, and permanent identifier.
- Whether it automatically assigns certification credits when a registrant has a paid registration, and how many credits to grant for each credit type.
- Short and full descriptions. The short description appears as summary text for each course offering in the course offering directory, while the full description appears on the offering's own page.
- Whether it is published to the Portal and active.
- The certification programs the course counts toward, and the exams taken after it.
- An image for the online store.
Credits attached to a course are granted when a registration is paid, not when the registrant attends or completes the course.
A course type includes only a name, a permanent identifier, active status, and an optional Portal-facing name to show instead of the staff-facing name.
Where to Find It
Go to Setup › Training › Courses to manage courses, or Setup › Training › Course Types to manage course types.
- Create Course or Create Course Type opens a blank form.
- A row's Edit icon opens that record, and Clone starts a new record copied from it.
- Selecting a course name from the list opens that course's page, where you manage offerings and fees.
Prerequisites
- You need the permission your administrator grants for courses and course types.
- Create at least one course type before you create a course, because every course requires a type.
- If you plan to award credits automatically, set up the credit types you want to use first.
The Settings
| Setting | Options | Default | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Any active course type | None (required) | Groups the course so visitors can filter by it in the Portal |
| Automatically Assign Students Certification Credits | On, off, with a credit table | Off | When this is on, a paid registration grants the listed credit types and quantities |
| Verify Automatically? (per credit row) | On, off | On | Records the automatically granted credit as verified right away instead of placing it under review |
| Publish this course to the portal | On, off | On | Controls whether the course appears in the Portal catalog. A scheduled offering also has its own Publish to Portal setting on the offering itself (Courses › Offerings), and both the course and the offering must be published before the offering appears in the Portal |
| Associated Certification Programs | Zero or more active programs | None | Programs this course counts toward |
| Associated Exams | Zero or more active exams | None | Exams taken after this course; these control which exam sittings appear on registration forms for the course |
| Image | An image file | None | Picture shown for the course in the online store |
| Status | Active, inactive | Active | Only active, published courses appear to visitors who have not signed in |
| Display in Portal As (course type) | Text | Blank | Visitor-facing name for the course type, shown instead of its staff-facing name where the Portal uses it |
Dependencies and Precedence
- You cannot save a course until you choose a course type, so create course types first.
- Credit types must already exist and be active before you add them to a course's credit table. Deactivated credit types stay selected when they are already saved on a course, but you cannot choose them for new rows.
- You cannot list the same credit type twice on a course; Rhythm refuses the save if you do.
- Rhythm removes leading spaces from a course name when you save it, so you cannot use leading whitespace to change where a course sorts in an alphabetical list. If you need a course to sort earlier, add a letter prefix, such as "A", to the start of its name instead.
- Any visitor, signed in or not, can see an active and published course by browsing your catalog. A visitor who knows a course's identifier can open its details directly even when the course is inactive or unpublished, including any custom field values on it.
Change Impact and How to Revert
Warning
You cannot delete a course while any offering, registration, registration process, or instructor approval still names it. You also cannot delete a course type while a course or offering still names it. Remove or reassign those references first, or leave the record inactive instead of deleting it.
- Deactivating a course or course type does not lock existing offerings, registrations, or credits that were already granted. Those continue to work, but the course or type is no longer offered for new registrations.
- Unpublishing a course from the Portal removes it from the catalog visitors browse, but it does not affect an offering already scheduled or a registration already made.
- Changing the programs or exams associated with a course affects only future registrations and offerings; it does not relabel past ones.
Permissions
You need the permission your administrator grants for courses and course types to view, create, edit, or delete them.
Validation and Errors
- A course requires a name and a type.
- If Automatically Assign Students Certification Credits is on, you must add at least one credit row with a quantity, and the same credit type cannot appear on two rows.
- A course type requires a name.
- Rhythm refuses to delete a course or course type while another record still names it; remove the reference first.
Related
See "Related" in the sidebar for course registration processes, credit types and transcript templates, and how custom fields work in general. Courses + Credits guidance, including how to create a course offering, is organized within this Certifications documentation alongside the rest of the application's articles.