Workflow recipe: Interactive course

Need to create an interactive course, where the student must watch each lesson before the next lesson appears? That's possible using workflows.

In this Workflow Recipe, we'll show you exactly how to set up this style of interactive online course.

Looking for detailed reference docs for Workflows? That's here.

Goals for this workflow

Here's what we want to achieve with this workflow:

We're going to create 4-course lessons (videos) and save them as templates in our library.
When the student starts their course, they should only see the first lesson video.
The 2nd lesson video should display only after the student has pressed play on the first lesson video. The 3rd lesson should display when the student has played the 2nd video, and so on through all 4 videos.
(optional): If we want, we can build-in a delay of 1 week in between each lesson in our course. Or we can drip out each lesson immediately after the student watches each lesson.

How to set it up:

Let's walk through the setup, step-by-step:

Step 1: Create 4 lesson videos as message templates in your library

You'll want to start by creating your 4 lesson videos as 4 message templates in your library.

There are 2 ways to create a message template:

Recommended: Click "Library", then click "New message template", then record your lesson video and save the message template.
Alternatively: Create a new conversation > Record a lesson video as a message > Open this message's settings menu > click "Create a template..." to turn this message into a message template in your library.

Step 2: Create a workflow on the first lesson's message template

After you've created 4 message templates for your 4 lesson videos, now you'll want to go into each of them and add a workflow. We'll start by creating the workflow on the message template for lesson #1:

Go to your library and view your message template for lesson #1. Click "..." to open its settings menu, then click "Create workflow".

Select the trigger for this workflow to be when this message is viewed.

Since we only want this workflow to run once (to display the next lesson for this student), we can leave the "frequency" setting set to its default setting, which is "Only once".

Now you can go ahead and click "Create Workflow".

Step 3: Add a step to display the next lesson's video

Now click "Add step" to add the first (and only) step in this workflow.

This step will be the action that automatically displays the next lesson (in this case, less #2) after this workflow was triggered by a person viewing lesson #1.

Set the "step type" to "Send a reply in this conversation"

Then for "Message type", select "Use a message template". Select the message template you created for lesson #2.

If you want the next lesson to display immediately after the student has played the previous lesson, then you can skip this step, leaving the "Delay" setting set to "Immediately".

Alternatively, if you want the student to wait, say, 1 week before they can see the next lesson, click "Delay", then select "period of time" and set it to 1 week (or whatever time period you want).

Now we're finished creating the workflow for lesson 1, which will display lesson 2 after lesson 1 has been viewed.

Step 5: Create workflows on lessons 2 and 3

Next, we're going to repeat the above steps to create similar workflows on our message templates for lessons #2 and #3.

Again, on each of those message templates:

Create a workflow
Set it's trigger to "Message viewed"
Create a step in the workflow
Set the step type to "Send a reply in this conversation"
Set the message type to "Use a message template
Select the message template.

When setting up the workflow on lesson #2, you'll want to select the message template for lesson #3 (so that viewing lesson #2 causes lesson #3 to display).

When setting up the workflow on lesson #3, you'll want to select the message template for... you guessed it... lesson #4 (so that viewing lesson #3 causes lesson #4 to display).

Step 6: Create a course and share it with the student(s)

Now that your lesson templates and the workflows are all set up, you're ready to deploy them in a course and share the course with the student(s).

There are a few different ways you can go about this:

Create this course as a Program, which can be run repeatedly with multiple students.
Set up an intake page, where anyone can submit a message to "request" a copy of your course, which will generate a new conversation, which can then automatically trigger lesson 1.
Create a one-off conversation, insert lesson 1, then share it with a single student.

For simplicity, we'll cover the 3rd option here: Creating your course as a one-off conversation, inserting lesson 1, then sharing with a single student:

Create a conversation
Create the first message and select "Library", then select your message template for Lesson 1, then post that message in the conversation. It has its workflow already built in and ready to run.
Share the conversation with a student: Click "Share" > "Email" > send to your student's email address.

And there you have it! A fully interactive course that drips each lesson out in sequence as a student views each lesson.

You can build on this further and even create course "modules" by using threads, and turning entire threads (with multiple videos) into thread templates. Lots of ways you can create learning paths here...