Guide for Administrators
This guide is for the course administrator — the person who builds and runs the weekly guidance for one or more courses: creating timelines, writing the weekly prompts, reviewing trainer suggestions, and checking that the emails went out. If you oversee many courses at once, also read the College administrator guide. If you look after the website itself (hosting, email delivery, scheduled tasks), see the Site administrator guide.
Getting started
The access you need
Every Course Cadence admin screen requires a WordPress account that can manage the site (the Manage options capability, which the standard Administrator role has). There is no “course administrator” role and no way to give someone just one screen. If you can’t see Course Cadence in the admin sidebar, ask your site administrator for an Administrator account. See User roles and permissions.
Find your way around
Click Course Cadence in the admin sidebar. The submenu is arranged in the order you set things up, with thin dividers between three groups:
| Group | Menu items | What you do there |
|---|---|---|
| Build | Overview · Classes (only on sites without an LMS) · Timelines & Prompts | See the state of every course; manage classes and members; create timelines and write prompts |
| Operate | Email Delivery · Pending Suggestions | Send, monitor and test emails; review trainer suggestions |
| Configure | Settings | Schedule · Emails · Workflow · System (including the Audit Log) |
Two badges show waiting work from anywhere in the admin area: “N behind” on Course Cadence and Timelines & Prompts when students are missing guidance, and a number on Pending Suggestions when trainers’ suggestions are waiting. Both can lag by up to five minutes.
Which mode is your site in?
Courses, students and trainers come from your learning system: Tutor LMS, or LifterLMS, or — when neither is installed — classes you create yourself under Course Cadence → Classes. If Classes appears in the menu, you’re in standalone mode. See LMS integration and native classes.
What you see
Screens
| Screen | Use it for | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Overview → All courses | A catch-up panel when students are behind (Review & send, Send catch-up, Dismiss); cards for Courses, With Active Timeline, Pending Suggestions, Students to Catch Up, Emails Delivered, Emails Failed; Active and Upcoming Timelines; Recent Activity | Admin dashboards |
| Overview → This week | Every prompt scheduled for a dispatch week across all courses, with View, Edit in Timelines & Prompts, and a warning for any running course with no prompt that week | Admin dashboards |
| Timelines & Prompts | Timeline cards (+ Create Timeline, Edit timeline, Delete), the Weekly Prompts list (+ Add New Prompt, Insert week…, Edit, Delete), the pending catch-up banner and review panel | Timeline management, Prompt management |
| Email Delivery → Send & Status | Next scheduled run, Dispatch cooldown, Trigger weekly dispatch now, Send Manual Catch-up Email… | Admin dashboards |
| Email Delivery → Analytics | Per-week delivery figures and Per-Course Statistics; a red badge on the tab when anything has failed | Admin dashboards |
| Email Delivery → Test Emails | Test Single Course and Test All Courses Email | Admin dashboards |
| Pending Suggestions | Trainer suggestions with a word-level comparison; Approve, Reject, bulk Approve All / Reject All | Trainer edit workflow |
| Settings | Four tabs, each with its own Save Settings button; the Audit Log sits at the bottom of System | Settings reference |
Emails that reach administrators
| Who gets it | Turn it on | |
|---|---|---|
| [Course] New edit suggestion submitted | The site’s Administration Email Address (WordPress Settings → General) | Settings → Workflow → Edit Notifications (on by default) with recipients including Admin |
| Weekly digest (Weekly Trainer Guidance Digest (4 courses) — 1 held, 2 behind) | Digest Recipient Email, or the site admin email if blank | Settings → Emails → Admin digest & alerts → Send Admin Trainer Digest (off by default) |
| Pre-dispatch preview (Cadence preview for Mon 12 Oct: 3 sending, 1 without content, 0 on break, 2 behind) | Same | Same switch; Preview Days Before Dispatch (default 3, 0 turns it off) |
| Course Cadence: the weekly guidance dispatch is late | Same | Same switch |
The preview is the single most useful email for a course administrator: it arrives a few days before each dispatch and names every course that has No content authored for their week — nothing will be sent. See Admin digest and cadence alerts.
What you do once
The full first-run walkthrough is in the Quick start. In short:
Site-wide (once per site — check whether it’s already done)
- Create the front-end pages and publish them: a student guidance page with
[dcc_student], an email preferences page with[dcc_email_prefs], and a trainer page with[dcc_trainer_edit]. See Shortcode reference. - Settings → Emails → Student preferences & links: the two page URLs are auto-detected (“Auto-detected from the page …”). Click Save Settings — an auto-detected address isn’t used until you save.
- Settings → Emails → Content & template: review the Email Subject, intro lines, Email Template and Email Footer. Saving the tab once puts the pre-filled starter template into use; keep
{prompts}in it. See Settings reference. - Settings → Emails → Admin digest & alerts: tick Send Admin Trainer Digest and enter the coordinator’s address. Save.
- Settings → Schedule: choose Day of Week and Time of Day (default Monday 09:00, in the site timezone). One schedule applies to every course. Save.
- Settings → Workflow: keep Require Admin Approval unless you trust trainers to publish changes directly. Save.
- Give trainers the trainer page address and students the guidance page address.
Per course (each new course or intake)
- (No LMS only) Classes → Add New Class, then Manage Members to add students and trainers.
- Timelines & Prompts: pick the course, + Create Timeline. Choose Fixed period (start and end dates — the cohort shares one week number) or Rolling (each student’s week 1 is their own enrolment date). Or use Copy Existing to clone a previous intake — see Timeline cloning.
- Add break periods (Fixed period) for the term calendar. During a break no emails go out and the week number freezes.
- + Add New Prompt for each week: Week number, Day offset (display order only — it doesn’t delay sending), Audience (Student, Trainer or Both), Subject, Body, and Linked lessons (LMS sites).
- Email Delivery → Test Emails: send a Test Single Course email to a test student account you can read, with a Test Date inside a week that has prompts.
- Check Overview → All courses shows the course under Active Timelines or Upcoming Timelines.
Your weekly routine
A routine for an administrator running four courses with emails at 07:30 on Mondays and the preview set to 3 days:
Friday morning — the preview arrives (15 minutes).
- Read the Cadence preview email. Fix anything under No content authored for their week.
- Open Overview → This week. It opens on Monday’s dispatch. If you see Week 5 of {course} has no prompt yet., click Add prompt in Timelines & Prompts.
- View one or two prompts to spot-check dates and links. Use Edit in Timelines & Prompts to fix them.
- If a Paused card appears, confirm with your site administrator that the course is meant to be paused.
Any day before dispatch — clear suggestions.
- Open Pending Suggestions when its badge shows a number. Check the Week column, read the comparison (expand Body changes if the body changed), then Approve or Reject. Approving the week that’s about to send means students get the new wording on Monday.
Monday after 07:30 — confirm it went out (10 minutes).
- Read the weekly digest email: how many emails were sent, which courses were held and why, and who is behind.
- Email Delivery → Analytics (opens on this week): check Failed is 0 and every running course appears in Per-Course Statistics. A few failures usually clear with the hourly retries; persistent failures are a mail-server problem for your site administrator.
- If the “N behind” badge shows, open Overview → All courses, expand the course and Send catch-up (or Dismiss someone who has withdrawn or has recognition of prior learning).
When content changes mid-term.
- Adding a prompt to a week that has already been sent doesn’t email anyone automatically — those students appear as behind, and you decide in Review & send whether to send it.
- Need an extra week before an assessment? Insert week… shifts every later prompt one week on. Extend a Fixed period end date if the series now runs past it.
Key features for administrators
Timelines
Fixed period or Rolling, with break periods. Week 1 starts on the start date; for the simplest schedule, start the timeline on your dispatch day. A dispatch on the end date itself does not send — set the end date at least a day after your last dispatch. See Timeline management.
Prompts
Audiences, linked lessons, Move to another week…, Insert week…, and placeholders such as {first_name} and {course_name}. Catch-up emails and the guidance pages only fill {student_name}, {course_name} and {week_number}, so prefer those three in any prompt students might read on the page. See Prompt management and Placeholder reference.
Weekly emails and catch-ups
One dispatch per week, up to 100 emails per run (use Trigger weekly dispatch now to send the rest — nobody is sent anything twice). Late enrolees get a catch-up about five minutes after enrolment; everyone else who is missing guidance appears in the pending catch-ups list for you to send or dismiss. See Automated weekly emails and Catch-up emails.
Trainer suggestions
Word-level comparison, single or bulk approval, notifications. Approving saves the previous wording as a version first. See Trainer edit workflow.
Version history
Every save keeps the previous version; open Edit on a prompt, expand Version history (N) and Restore. A restore is itself undoable. See Prompt version history.
Cloning
+ Create Timeline → Copy Existing copies a timeline and all its prompts into another course. Break dates are copied unchanged and lesson links are removed, so fix both afterwards. See Timeline cloning.
Audit log
Settings → System → Audit Log records who created, changed, moved, deleted, suggested, approved, rejected, dismissed or restored what. Times are in UTC. See Audit log.
What you can’t do in version 1.0.0 (and what to do instead)
| You might expect to… | In 1.0.0 | Do this instead |
|---|---|---|
| Pause one course’s emails from the screen | There is no pause switch on any screen; the pause can only be changed through the plugin’s REST API. A paused course shows a Paused badge on Overview → This week. | Add a break period for the weeks concerned, or move the start date later. Ask your site administrator if a course needs unpausing. See Pausing and resuming. |
| Export delivery figures or the audit log | No CSV or other export anywhere. | Read figures from Email Delivery → Analytics; use your SMTP plugin’s log for message-level records. |
| Attach a file with Attachment URL | A URL typed into the field is not kept when the prompt is saved, and attachments never appear in emails anyway. | Put the link in the prompt Body — body links appear in emails and on the guidance pages. |
| Filter the audit log by action | The Action filter doesn’t match the entries this version records, so anything other than All Actions shows an empty table. | Leave All Actions and narrow with the entity filter (Timelines, Prompts, Edit Suggestions). |
| Preview a prompt as an email | No preview button on the prompt card. | Email Delivery → Test Emails, or View on Overview → This week. |
| Undo a deleted timeline or prompt | Deletion is permanent. | Clone a timeline before major changes. Use version history for edits. |
| Edit a trainer’s suggestion before approving it | Approve or reject only. | Reject it and edit the prompt yourself. |
| Read the trainer’s reason on the review screen | The reason is stored but not shown. | Ask the trainer. |
| Set a different email day per course, or a different approval mode per course | Both are site-wide. | Use day offsets for order within a week; use separate weeks to stagger messages. |
| Send a test to yourself | Tests go to the selected student’s real address, even if they’ve opted out. | Enrol a test student account that uses an address you can read. |
| See a list of students who opted out | No opt-out report. | Opted-out students are skipped in catch-up lists, and a manual catch-up tells you {name} has opted out of emails for this course. |
Common problems and fixes
| Problem | Fix |
|---|---|
| A course didn’t send this week | Read the digest’s held back lists: break, No content authored for their week, not started, or paused. Check Overview → This week. |
| Nobody received anything | Email Delivery → Send & Status: if Next scheduled run is in the past or says Not scheduled — reactivate the plugin to re-register the cron event., ask your site administrator to fix scheduled tasks, then click Trigger weekly dispatch now. |
| Some students got the email, others didn’t | The run hit the 100-email limit. Click Trigger weekly dispatch now until it reports Dispatch ran — no emails were due right now. |
| A test fails with No active timeline for this date or No student prompts found for week N | Choose a Test Date inside the timeline and a week with prompts for that Email Type. |
| A test fails with Failed to send email. Check your WordPress mail configuration. | The site can’t send mail — a job for your site administrator (SMTP). |
{first_name} appears literally in a catch-up |
Catch-ups only fill {student_name}, {course_name} and {week_number}. Edit the prompt. |
| The last week of the course didn’t send | The dispatch fell on the end date. Extend the end date by at least a day. |
| A cloned course sends at the wrong time or misses its first week | After cloning, open Edit timeline, fix the dates and breaks, and click Update timeline. |
| Suggestions never appear in Pending Suggestions | Settings → Workflow is on Auto-Approve — trainers’ changes are applied straight away and logged. |
| You do not have permission to edit this course’s prompts. when you submit from the trainer page | With Auto-Approve on, only the course’s instructors can submit there. Edit in Timelines & Prompts instead. |
| The “N behind” badge didn’t clear after sending | The count is cached for up to five minutes. Reload. |
More: Troubleshooting and the FAQ.
Who to contact
- Email delivery failures, scheduled emails not running, Site Health warnings, pausing or unpausing a course, plugin updates: your site administrator.
- Cross-course standards, term dates and who approves content: your college administrator or program manager.
- What a prompt should say: the course’s trainers — encourage them to use Suggest Edit so every change is versioned and logged.
- Plugin problems you can’t resolve: the plugin’s WordPress.org support forum (via your site administrator).
Worked example: a term for a Certificate III cohort
A registered training organisation runs Cert III Individual Support — 2026 Intake A on Tutor LMS, a 20-week Fixed period timeline from Monday 2 February, with emails at 07:30 Mondays.
- January: the administrator clones last year’s timeline (Copy Existing), sets New Start Date to 2 February, moves the mid-semester break to 6–19 April in Edit timeline, clicks Update timeline, and re-links lessons.
- Friday 30 January: the preview says 1 sending. A Test Single Course email to the coordinator’s test student for 2 February looks right.
- Monday 2 February: the digest reports 32 emails sent. A student enrolled on Thursday of week 3 automatically gets weeks 1–3 as a catch-up.
- Week 6: a trainer suggests a corrected due date for week 8; the administrator approves it from Pending Suggestions and the week 8 email goes out with the new date.
- Week 9: the administrator adds an “Infection control refresher” prompt to week 4. The badge shows 30 behind; they Review & send it to everyone.
- April: two Monday dispatches fall in the break; the digest lists the course under Held for a scheduled break. Week 10 goes out on 20 April.
Where to go next
- Quick start — the full first-run path
- Admin dashboards — every card and table explained
- Settings reference — every setting and its default
- College administrator guide — overseeing many courses
- Trainer guide and Student guide — what your trainers and students see