This article discusses the steps involved in creating a custom course using Content Engine. Custom courses are available in enterprise accounts. Any user in an enterprise account can create custom courses, but only administrators can complete the final step of publishing them.

This article contains the following sections:

• What Is a Custom course
• How to Create a Custom course
• How to Edit a Custom course
• How to Find Where a course Is Used

What Is a Custom course

A custom course is a collection of lessons, exams, hands-on labs, and resources that you use to train your own company's employees.

When you create a custom course, you can start from scratch or start with a copy of an existing course as a template. You can include QA content, custom content, or a combination of both.

After you create and publish your custom course, you can assign it using a custom Training Plan. You can update a course after it is published. See the procedure later in this document for more information.

How to Create a Custom course

You create your custom courses in Content Engine. Use the following steps to create a custom course:

1. From the dashboard, click the building icon to open the management dashboard.
   
2. Click Content Engine from the menu on the left, and then click course from the menu that appears.
   The courses screen appears.
3. Click the Create button in the upper right-hand corner.
   
   A form appears where you enter the information about your new course. The Info tab appears first.
   
4. Select whether you want to start the course from scratch or clone an existing course and edit it. Fill out the remaining fields in the form and click Next.
   Tip: You can include links to other pieces of training content in your library in the Landing Page Description field. The target of the link, however, must be a relative URL (i.e. excludes http:// and the domain). 
   
   The Content selection tab becomes active.
5. From the Content section tab, you can:
   • Click Add Steps to choose an existing hands-on lab, exam, lesson, or resource, including custom materials you have already uploaded to be a step in the course.
     Tip: Make sure the custom items you add have been published. You won't be able to publish your course until all the items it contains are also published.
   • Click Import steps from an existing course to clone a course that already exists. You'll be able to modify the steps to suit your needs. 
6. When you have chosen your content, click Save. The Skill Objectives tab becomes active.
   
   The skills associated with the content items you added to the course appear on the left, and the skills you choose to be associated with this course appear on the right. Click the + on a skill on the left to move it to the right. Remove skills from the right by clicking the trash can icon.
7. When you are done, click Save. The Save button changes to a Publish button and an Actions button appears next to it.
   
   Tip: If the Save button doesn't appear, check that all the custom items in the course have been published.
8. Click Publish. Your custom course is now available for the learners with permission to find in the training library. You can also include it in custom Training Plans.

How to Edit a Custom course

Use the following steps to edit a custom course that already exists in your account:

1. From the dashboard, click the building icon to open the management dashboard.
   
2. Click Content Engine from the menu on the left, and then click course from the menu that appears.
   The course screen appears with a list of the courses you have access to.
   
3. Click the name of the course that you want to edit. An overlay appears with information about the course.
   
4. Click Edit. The course appears.
   
   From this screen, you can edit the Info, Content selection, and Skill Objectives of the course. When you click the Content selection tab, a warning appears. You must click the Proceed? link to make changes on this tab.
   
5. When you are happy with your changes, click Save.
   Tip: You can click Discard changes to abandon your changes to the course.
   

If anyone is currently using the course, then a window appears where you can choose whether to notify those users of the change.

After you click Save, the changes immediately go into effect. If you change the contents of the course, users currently working on that course will see the changes the next time they log in to their QA account.

How to Find Where a course Is Used

When you have a course open in Content Engine, you can use the List parents option on the Actions menu to see where the course has been used.

A window appears showing the Training Plans that include the course. It also shows all instances of the course being assigned to a team or member.