Courses allow your clients to access online content that you put together. They can be used to provide supplementary information to clients that book in-person services with you or allow you to expand your reach to provide online content to customers that aren't able to work with you in person.

In this guide we will explore the process involved in building and editing your courses.

For more details on courses, check out our help guides on Online Course Basics and Creating & Editing Lessons.

To start, let's explore how new courses are created. Start by selecting the "Actions" button at the top of your Courses Dashboard page, then choosing "Create Course" from the drop-down menu.

That will open the New Course page.

The top of this page will have fields for the title and description of your course. Any included description will display beneath the title and before the units list when clients view the course in the Client Portal. Use this section to provide general details about the course and explain what kinds of topics will be covered. Note that, though a title is required, you do not need to include a description for your course.

Just below the description field you will find the "Comments" toggle. When the toggle is ON (purple) clients with access to the course will be able to send you and your team messages from any of the included lessons. For more information about customer comments, check out the Customer Messages section of our guide on Viewing and Interacting With Your Courses.

Further down the page you will see the Units section. This is where you will begin building your course. Each unit in your course has its own card. Use the "Add New Unit" button to add as many units as you need. Select the trash can icon in the top-right corner of any unit card to remove it. Add a title and description to each of your units. As for the course description, the unit description will display just beneath the title and is intended to provide a quick overview of the topics that are covered in the unit. Depending on your preference, you may choose not to include a unit description.

With your units set up, you can begin adding your lessons. All of your lessons can be found on the right-hand side of the page, under "Lessons". Any lessons you have already created but are currently unassigned will be listed in the "Available Lessons" section. You can also quickly create new lessons by selecting the green "New Lesson Title" field and typing in a title. Use the "Create New Lesson" button to add as many new lesson fields as needed.

For more information on lessons, check out our Creating & Editing Lessons help guide.

To move a lesson to a unit, click the two bars at the left end of the lesson's card then drag it to the "Lessons" section of the desired unit. You can also use this click-and-drag method to reorder the lessons or units already built into your course.

Click the trash can icon to remove any lesson or unit from your course. Note that deleting a lesson from this course view will not completely remove the lesson or its content from your account. Only those lessons listed in green (i.e. those just added using the "New Lesson Title" field) will be deleted when removed from a course/unit since they have not yet been saved. Any lesson that is listed in pink has already been created and will not be deleted by removing it from the course/unit. Once you have saved the changes to your course, those lessons will instead be moved back to your unassigned lesson list and will once again be available to add to your courses.

When you are ready to save your course, select the "Create Course" button at the bottom of the page. Doing so will add the new course to your courses list.

New courses always default to unpublished status. This means that you can easily create courses at your own pace without worrying about your customers gaining access to them before they are finished. All unpublished courses will display with a yellow banner warning that customers do not have access to them in their current state.

There are a myriad of reasons you may need to go back to edit your existing courses. It may be that you prefer to create your course in small pieces, or perhaps you are going back to make corrections or additions to a completed course. Whatever the reason, you can edit any course by first selecting its name where it is listed under the "Courses" tab on your main Courses Dashboard.

That will take you to the course's information page. This page shows both the general content of the course and some basic information about who has access to it.

Course titles, along with each unit and lesson contained therein, are listed with a small icon indicating their publishing status. For more information, see the section below on Published Status.

A course's information page will also contain the course description (if any) along with all of its units and their respective descriptions. Each unit will be listed with the names of all the lessons it contains. Select the name of any lesson to edit its contents. To make changes to the course configuration or the course/unit descriptions, select "Edit" in the "Actions" button drop-down at the top of the page.

That will open the Edit Course page, with all the same fields and options as the New Course page.

Add new lessons, adjust the order of those already assigned, add new units, change the name, order, or description of the existing ones, change the course title or description, or adjust the customer comments setting, then click the "Save Changes" button at the bottom of the form to save your edits and return to the course's information page.

To delete your course, select "Delete" in the "Actions" button drop-down at the top of its information page.

In the resulting pop-up, select "Continue" to confirm your choice or "Cancel" to go back. Note that the action of deleting your course is final and cannot be undone.

There are two important things to note before moving on:

Just as lessons can be published or unpublished, your courses and units may be published or unpublished as well. Note that unpublished content will not be visible to your clients, even if they have an active membership subscription that gives them access to the course.

A green dot indicates a published component while a grey dot indicates one that is unpublished. Keep in mind that a published course may contain units or lessons that are unpublished and therefore not visible to clients that have access to the rest of the course.

Use the "Actions" button options at the top of the page to quickly change the publishing status of the entire course. Published courses will have an "Unpublish" option.

While Unpublished courses will have a "Publish" option.

All of the separate units within the course can also have their publishing status edited independently. Select the "Publish" or "Unpublish" icon across from any unit's title to change its status.

The published status of a lesson can be easily adjusted from its information page. For more details on that process, see our help guide on Creating & Editing Lessons.

It is important to note that editing the status of any unit or course will apply that same status to any of the smaller components contained therein. For example, publishing a course will likewise change all of the units and lessons within that course to published status. If a unit is unpublished, all of the lessons assigned to it will be unpublished as well, though the course's status will remain unchanged. Also note that if the larger component is unpublished, clients will not be able to access any of the smaller elements it contains, regardless of their status.

Looking for more information on using courses to provide online content for your clients? Check out our other available help articles on this topic: