This article takes you through the steps involved in creating a custom hands-on lab using Lab Maker in Content Engine. Content Engine is available in enterprise accounts. Any user in an enterprise account can create a custom hands-on lab, but only administrators can complete the final step of publishing the lab.

This article contains the following sections:

• What Is a Custom Hands-on Lab
• How to Create a Custom Hands-on Lab
• How to Find Where a Custom Hands-on Lab Is Used

What Is a Custom Hands-on Lab

Like delivered hands-on labs, custom hands-on labs are an interactive learning tool that offers your team members a practice, hands-on way to learn cloud skills. When your team member is ready to start a custom hands-on lab, the platform provisions temporary account credentials for the software the lab requires and gives the member instructions for completing tasks. When the member is done with the lab, the platform removes the temporary account.

Unlike delivered hands-on labs, custom hands-on labs let you specify the provisioning of temporary accounts so they mirror your own technology stack and write your own task instructions. Hands-on labs are the perfect tool to train your own company's employees on the specifics of your technology stack and procedures.

You can create custom hands-on labs for the following cloud vendors:

• Amazon Web Service
• Microsoft Azure
• Google Cloud Platform

No other cloud vendors are supported at this time. The vendor you choose affects where the platform creates the temporary account credentials and also the standards you use to write the provisioning templates. See Provisioning Templates for Custom Hands-on Labs for more information.

In addition to the provisioning, you also set the title, description, duration, and level of difficulty for the lab. You can create your own lab steps or copy and modify existing steps. 

Note: Custom hands-on labs do not currently support custom security policies. Every custom lab includes a default security policy.

You can start from scratch or start with a copy of an existing hands-on lab and adjust it to apply to your own company's technology stack. 

Note: Many hands-on labs your team members find in the training library include validation checks to ensure the member completed the steps correctly. Custom hands-on labs do not support validation checks. Even if you start with a copy of a hands-on lab that includes them, the validation checks will not be included in your copy.

When you start your custom lab by making a copy of another lab, there is no connection between the lab and the copy. Changes you make later to either the original or the copy do not affect the other.

After you create and publish your hands-on lab, you can include it in a custom training plan. You can update a custom hands-on lab after it is published.

How to Create a Custom Hands-on Lab

You create your custom hands-on lab in Content Engine. Use the following steps to create a custom hands-on lab:

1. From the home page, click the building icon to open the management dashboard.
   
2. Click Content Engine from the menu on the left, and then click Hands-on Labs. The Hands-on Labs screen appears.
3. Hover over the Create button in the upper right corner. Click the option you want from the menu that appears.
   
   A form appears where you enter the information about your new hands-on lab. The Content tab appears first.
   
4. Select whether you want to start the hands-on lab from scratch or clone an existing lab and modify it.
5. If you choose to clone an existing lab, you choose the lab you want to use as your starting point. The platform fills in the form fields with the information from the original lab.
6. Complete or modify the Title, Short Description, and Description fields.
7. In the Steps section, you can create steps by clicking Create step, edit steps by clicking the pencil icon, or rearrange them by dragging and dropping.
8. If you create or edit a step, a panel appears where you enter a title for the step and the text of the instructions you want the team member to complete in this step. You can delete the step from here as well. When you're done, click Save and then click Close to close the panel.
9. Create, edit, or remove steps until your lab instructions are complete, then click Next.
   The Info tab becomes active.
   
10. Complete the Difficulty, Library placement, and Content time limit fields. Then click the Provisioning tab.
    The Provisioning tab becomes active.
    
11. Select a provisioning template from the drop-down or enter your own in the field.  See Provisioning Templates for Custom Hands-on Labs for more details. The following templates are supported, per provider:
    • AWS: CloudFormation templates
    • Azure: ARM templates
    • GCP: Deployment Manager templates
    Note: Terraform and other solutions are not directly supported but can be deployed as part of a provider template. For example, you could create a CloudFormation template that deploys an EC2 instance and runs Terraform.

If you are an administrator, you can publish the hands-on lab at this point. Otherwise, you can only save it and an administrator must publish it. The lab must be published before it is available to use in courses and programs.

How to Find Where a Custom Hands-on Lab Is Used

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