A course offering is one scheduled run of a course, whether it happens in person, virtually, or on demand. People buy seats in the offering, and the offering controls that run’s dates, price, and Portal availability.
When to Use This
Use this when you need to add a new session of an existing course to the calendar, or when you need to find, correct, reschedule, or remove an existing session. The course record holds the course name, description, exams, and available fees, while the offering schedules one specific instance of that course.
Prerequisites
- Permission to create course offerings, when you need to schedule a new one.
- Permission to edit or delete course offerings, when you need to update or remove them.
- The course must already exist, and it must have at least one active fee.
- A training provider must exist, and in-person offerings also need one of that provider’s locations.
Schedule a New Offering
- Go to Courses › Offerings and select Create Course Offering.
- Choose the course in Select the Course:, then select Create Offering.
- Fill in Name:, or leave it blank so Rhythm can build the name from the course, location, and date. Then choose Type: (In Person, Virtual, or On-Demand), Training Provider:, and, for an in-person offering, Training Location:.
- Choose an Instructor:, and if more than one person teaches the offering, add the others under Additional Instruction:.
- Set Start Date & Time: and End Date & Time:, then choose how times should display to Portal visitors.
- If seats are limited, turn on This course offering has a capacity and set Capacity:.
- Choose the Registration Fee: that prices a seat.
- Fill in any optional sections that apply, including Portal publishing, an associated event, exam sittings, credit overrides, video conferencing, and eligibility rules. These options are described below. Use the offering's Information field for details that apply only to this run of the course. That information appears beside the course details in the Portal, so keep general course information on the course record instead.
- Select Save Changes.
The fields on this form change based on the Type: you choose. In Person offerings are instructor-led at a physical location, so they require a training location. Virtual offerings are also instructor-led, but they meet by web conference instead of at a training location. On-Demand offerings do not have a live class session; their start and end dates define when the course is available.
Result
Rhythm creates the offering, fills in the name if you left it blank, and copies the course’s programs and type onto the offering. For an in-person offering, Rhythm also copies the location’s address. If you left any exam cards switched on, Rhythm schedules the linked exam sittings right away.
Tip
An offering can have more than one instructor. Instructor: identifies the lead instructor, and Additional Instruction: identifies anyone else teaching with them. Both appear wherever the offering’s instructors are shown, including in the Portal, and you can search or report on offerings by instructor.
Warning
On-demand offerings use their start and end dates as the window when the course is available, not as a single class time. To make an on-demand offering available indefinitely, set the end date far into the future. For a free offering, create a $0 fee instead of leaving the fee blank, because every offering requires a fee. An on-demand offering does not appear in the Portal until its start date is today or in the past. With a future start date, the Portal shows no upcoming dates for it until that date arrives, and the same rule applies to registration. The Upcoming Course Offerings KPI also filters by start date relative to today, so an on-demand offering with a past start date is excluded from that KPI even while registration is still available.
Warning
Changing the training provider does not clear a training location or instructor you already selected, even if they belonged to the old provider. After you switch providers, recheck Training Location:, Instructor:, and Additional Instruction: yourself.
Tip
If Select the Course: does not load any options, refresh the page first. If it still does not load, check whether another user sees the same thing on their own screen. When you report it, include the time, the record you were working on, and a screenshot if you can. That helps separate a browser or network issue from a broader problem.
Warning
Training Location: is an address field, and it is available only on In Person offerings, not Virtual offerings. If the offering is pulled into an Events schedule, that address is what appears there; there is no way to show a room label instead. Some administrators have worked around the missing location field on virtual offerings by creating a location named for virtual attendance and switching the offering type to In Person so they can select it. Use that workaround cautiously, if at all, because it makes the Portal present the class as in person and can mislead registrants.
If the course already has an offering in one city and you need to offer it in another, create a new course offering for that location instead of reusing the existing one.
Course offerings do not support waitlists the way events and sessions do; only capacity is available. Rhythm checks capacity when the offering form loads, not again when an order is placed. Because of that, if two people start registering before the last seat is taken, both can occasionally complete checkout and push the course slightly over its configured capacity. There is currently no configuration or workflow to prevent that. You can turn capacity on or off, or change its value, later from Edit Course Offering using the same setting.
Publish to the Portal Within a Sale Window
Turn on Publish this course to the portal to set Sell From: and Sell Until:. Outside that sale window, the offering does not appear for sale in the Portal’s public directory.
Warning
Portal visibility depends on two separate publish settings: one on the course record and one on the course offering record. Turning on Publish this course to the portal here is not enough by itself. Check that the course itself is also published, or the offering still will not appear.
Tip
The sale window controls only what appears in the Portal’s directory of offerings for sale. It does not control whether the offering appears on other Portal search and lookup pages, or whether seat capacity marks it sold out. Those settings work independently of publishing and the sale window. If registration or visibility fails for one offering while others work, check that offering’s own settings first, including its sale window, eligibility rules, delivery type, and start date. Adjusting the delivery type or moving the start date to today or earlier has restored visibility in cases like this.
Link to Zoom, an Event, or Exam Sittings
Turn on Video Conferencing Integration to connect the offering to a Zoom webinar or meeting. When you save, Rhythm checks that the webinar or meeting exists on the chosen account, and it refuses the save if the session does not exist or Zoom cannot be reached. Enter either a webinar ID or a meeting ID, but not both. Each offering connects to one Zoom session, so a course that runs over several sessions needs a separate offering, and therefore a separate Zoom session, for each one.
If your account uses the Events application, an Events card lets you connect the offering to an Events event so that event’s registrants can take the course.
Warning
Registering for a Zoom Webinar-linked offering through event registration has, in some cases, not created the matching registrant in Zoom, and no error appeared. If attendees report missing Zoom access after registering through an event, check the Zoom webinar directly.
Warning
Removing the course from Portal publication, or letting its Sell Until date pass, does not by itself remove it from event registration. To stop the course from being offered as an add-on during event registration, remove the course-to-event association in the Events section of the course setup.
If the course lists exams, a card appears for each exam while you create the offering. These cards appear only during creation, not when you edit the offering later, and they let Rhythm schedule an exam sitting automatically. Turn a card’s switch on, choose whether the sitting is live or remote-proctored, and enter both an exam fee and a retest fee. Both fees are required when the card is on.
Warning
Exam sittings are offered only when you create the offering, not afterward. If an exam sitting fails to schedule after the course offering is created, the Console reports the whole save as failed even though the offering exists. Open the offering and schedule the exam sitting separately from the Exams area instead of trying to save again from this form.
Restrict Who Can Register
Turn on Eligibility Requirements to limit registration to people who meet the rules you define, based on contact and membership attributes. People who do not meet the rules do not see the offering when they register. Turning the switch on should reveal the extra fields you need to define the rule. If you do not see them, toggle the switch off and back on, or reload the page.
Warning
Building an eligibility rule with Advanced Rules & Logic can fail to save, whether the rule references a custom field or one of the offering's built-in fields. If saving fails after you add an advanced rule, try simplifying it or building the same condition with the basic rule builder instead.
Warning
Saving the offering can fail if it references a certification program that no longer exists, such as in an eligibility rule. If a save fails unexpectedly, check that every certification program referenced on the offering still exists.
Find, Reschedule, or Delete an Offering
- Go to Courses › Offerings and use the search to find the offering by course, type, place, provider, instructor, fee, publishing status, or dates.
- Open the offering and select Edit Course Offering to change it, or Delete Offering to remove it.
Result
Saving changes to the dates, provider, or location updates the offering. Deleting removes the offering and any exam sittings scheduled with it.
Warning
Rescheduling an offering’s start date changes more than the offering display. Rhythm updates the class date on every existing registration for that offering, including when you change only the time, and it does not ask you to confirm that update. Occasionally, a registration’s class date does not refresh right away in query results after you reschedule. If that happens, edit and save any value on the registration to recalculate its class date from the offering.
Warning
An already-registered user’s My Courses page in the Portal can continue showing the course’s previous date for a while after you edit the offering’s date in the console, even though the offering record itself shows the new date correctly.
Tip
If a course has already started but you still need to accept registrations, some administrators temporarily move the offering’s start date forward to reopen registration. This is only a workaround because there is no separate late-registration setting. It also means the displayed start date no longer reflects when the course actually began, so you may need to move it back afterward.
Warning
Deleting an offering is refused while any registration, including a cancelled or draft one, still points to it. Move or remove those registrations first. A document file cabinet attached to the offering is not removed when the offering is deleted. There is also no single action that cancels an entire offering, notifies every registrant, and keeps an offering-level cancelled status all at once. The available approach is to remove the class from the Portal and cancel its registrations individually.
The offering's Registrations tab does not always show payment amounts or an outstanding balance right away, or consistently, for every registration. This has been most noticeable for pay-later or send-invoice registrations, where the balance due did not appear on the tab immediately.
If Support asks for the course offering's Console URL so they can inspect its configuration, open the offering here and copy the address from Course Offering 360.
Related
Course fees, credit rules, and the exams a course lists are set up on the course itself and referenced here. Documents attached to a course or an offering live in their own file cabinet, available from a Documents tab when your account uses the Documents application.