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Guide

Guide for College Administrators

11 min read 8 views
Version
1.0
Last Version Update
October 4, 2026
Effective From
October 4, 2026
Review Cycle
Annual
Next Review Due
October 2027

This guide is for the college administrator — the person who oversees weekly guidance across many courses, intakes and trainers: setting the standards, checking that every cohort is covered each week, keeping trainer suggestions moving, and planning each new term. Day-to-day authoring of a single course is covered in the Administrator guide; the technical platform is covered in the Site administrator guide.

Getting started

“College administrator” is a job, not a WordPress role

Course Cadence has no college administrator role, and adds no roles or permissions of its own. Every Course Cadence admin screen — Overview, Timelines & Prompts, Email Delivery, Pending Suggestions, Settings and Classes — requires a WordPress account that can manage the site (the Manage options capability, which the standard Administrator role has). To do this job you need an Administrator account, and it cannot be limited to “view only” or to particular screens or courses. See User roles and permissions.

In practice that means you, your course administrators and your site administrator all have the same powers in the plugin. Agree between you who changes what — in particular the site-wide Settings, which affect every course — and use the audit log to see who changed timelines, prompts and suggestions.

Pages to bookmark

Page Why you use it
Course Cadence → Overview (All courses tab) The cross-course dashboard: who is behind, which courses are running, upcoming intakes, recent activity
Course Cadence → Overview → This week Every prompt every course sends in a dispatch week, and the courses with gaps
Course Cadence → Email Delivery → Analytics Sent and failed figures per week and per course
Course Cadence → Pending Suggestions Trainer suggestions from every course in one queue
Course Cadence → Settings → System The Audit Log, plus record-keeping settings

What you see

Overview → All courses

From top to bottom (full detail):

  1. Pending catch-ups panel (only when someone is behind) — for example 5 students are behind on guidance emails and need catching up., with one line per course (Anatomy & Physiology — Weeks 3, 4 · 2 students) and Review & send.
  2. Year: and Course: filters with Filter. Years come from the class Year field (standalone sites) or a four-digit year in the LMS course title, such as “Cert III Individual Support 2026”. The Course list stays disabled until you pick a specific year.
  3. Cards — Courses, With Active Timeline, Pending Suggestions, Students to Catch Up, Emails Delivered, Emails Failed. Only With Active Timeline and the tables follow the filters; the other cards are always site-wide.
  4. Active Timelines (course, type, current week, end date or Ongoing) and Upcoming Timelines (courses set up but not yet started).
  5. Recent Activity — the ten latest audit entries, with View full log →. Times are in UTC.
  6. Edit Suggestions Summary — all-time totals of suggestions, pending, approved and rejected.

Overview → This week

Opens on the next dispatch. Prev, Next and Next dispatch move between weeks; Year: and a Filter by course: checklist narrow it. Cards show Prompts, Courses and (when relevant) Paused. Rows are grouped by day offset, with View to read a prompt. A running course with no prompt shows a gap message such as Week 5 of Cert III Individual Support has no prompt yet. See Admin dashboards.

Email Delivery → Analytics

A Week: filter (opens on the latest week with deliveries), cards for Recipients, Course-Weeks Sent, Total Sent, Delivered and Failed, and Per-Course Statistics. Records are counted per prompt per person, so one email with three prompts counts three. There is no export. See Admin dashboards.

The admin emails

The weekly digest, the pre-dispatch preview and the late-dispatch warning all go to one address (Settings → Emails → Admin digest & alerts → Digest Recipient Email). Decide whether that is you, a shared training-office inbox, or a course administrator. See Admin digest and cadence alerts.

What you set once (college standards)

These settings apply to every course on the site. Agree them once, record the decision, and only change them deliberately.

Decision Where Points to weigh
Email day and time Settings → Schedule One schedule for all courses (default Monday 09:00, site timezone). Start Fixed period timelines on this weekday so week boundaries line up.
One combined email or one per course Settings → Emails → Delivery → Email Consolidation Consolidated (recommended) sends students in several courses one email, Your Weekly Guidance (N courses). Choose Individual per course if courses have very different audiences.
Email wording and footer Settings → Emails → Content & template A consistent subject, footer (for example the student support number) and template across courses.
Who approves trainer changes Settings → Workflow → Trainer Edit Suggestions Require Admin Approval (default) or Auto-Approve. Site-wide — no per-course or per-trainer setting.
Who is notified about suggestions Settings → Workflow → Notification Recipients Admin notifications go to the site’s Administration Email Address, not to the digest address.
Who gets the digest, preview and late alert Settings → Emails → Admin digest & alerts Off by default. Turn it on — the preview is your early warning of empty weeks.
How long delivery and audit records are kept Settings → System → Log Retention Period Default 365 days, 30–3650 allowed. Keep it longer than your longest course; match your record-keeping obligations. Students are told this number on the preferences page.
Course naming Your LMS, or the class Year field Put a four-digit year in LMS course titles so the year filters work.

Also make sure every trainer has the trainer page address and every student has the guidance page address, and that trainers are set up as instructors of their courses in the LMS (or as Trainer in the class).

Your weekly routine

A routine for a college running twelve cohorts, emails at 07:30 Monday, preview 3 days ahead:

Friday — coverage check (15 minutes).

  1. Read the preview email: anything under No content authored for their week or Email dispatch paused needs an owner.
  2. Overview → This week, filtered to the current year. Check the Courses card matches the number of cohorts you expect to send. Forward any gap message to the course’s administrator.

Monday — delivery check (10 minutes).

  1. Read the digest: emails sent, any failures, courses held and why, students behind.
  2. Email Delivery → Analytics: every running course should appear in Per-Course Statistics, with Failed at 0 or falling. Persistent failures go to your site administrator.
  3. Overview → All courses: if students are behind, make sure each course’s administrator sends or dismisses them.

Mid-week — suggestions and changes (10 minutes).

  1. Pending Suggestions: aim to clear the queue before Friday so approved wording reaches the next dispatch. If two suggestions target the same prompt, you’ll see 1 other pending suggestion targets this prompt — approving will supersede it. — reject the one you don’t want.
  2. Settings → System → Audit Log (entity filter: Prompts or Timelines): skim the week’s changes across courses. Leave the Action filter on All Actions — in 1.0.0 the other choices show an empty table.

Planning a new term

Four to six weeks before:

  1. List the courses running next term and their start dates. Create the LMS courses (with the year in the title) or the classes.
  2. Clone each repeating course from last term: Timelines & Prompts → select the new course → + Create Timeline → Copy Existing → New Start Date → Preview Copy → copy. See Timeline cloning.
  3. After every clone: Edit timeline, move the break periods to this term (they keep last term’s dates), check the end date is at least a day after the last dispatch day, and click Update timeline. Re-link lessons, which cloning removes.
  4. Ask course administrators to review wording that mentions dates, venues, assessment due dates or trainer names.

Two weeks before:

  1. Overview → All courses: every new intake should appear under Upcoming Timelines with the right start date.
  2. Overview → This week, moved forward to the first dispatch week: each course should show at least one student prompt.
  3. Email Delivery → Test Emails: a Test All Courses Email to a test student enrolled in two courses shows the combined email students will receive.
  4. Confirm each trainer can see their course on the trainer page.

End of term:

  1. On standalone sites, set finished classes to Inactive (note their edit links first — inactive classes aren’t listed) rather than deleting them; deleting a class makes its timeline unreachable.
  2. Leave finished timelines in place: they stop sending at their end date, students can still read them, and they are next term’s clone source.

Term-start quality checklist

  • [ ] Every running course appears under Active Timelines or Upcoming Timelines with the right dates.
  • [ ] Break periods match the college calendar (cloned breaks moved).
  • [ ] Every week has at least one Student or Both prompt.
  • [ ] Prompts use {student_name}, {course_name} and {week_number} rather than other placeholders, so they read correctly on the guidance page and in catch-ups.
  • [ ] Resource links are in prompt bodies (the Attachment URL field doesn’t save in 1.0.0).
  • [ ] Lessons are re-linked after cloning (LMS sites).
  • [ ] A test email has been checked for at least one course, and a multi-course test for a student in two courses.
  • [ ] Trainers can see their courses on the trainer page.
  • [ ] The digest and preview are switched on and reach the right inbox.

Key features for college administrators

  • Cross-course Overview — see every course on one screen, filtered by year. Admin dashboards
  • Pending catch-ups — who is missing guidance, per course, with send or dismiss. Catch-up emails
  • One suggestion queue for all courses — word-level comparisons, bulk approve or reject. Trainer edit workflow
  • Timeline cloning — set up a new intake from last term in minutes. Timeline cloning
  • Audit log and version history — who changed what, and the exact earlier wording. Audit log, Prompt version history
  • Privacy and retention — delivery and audit records purged after the retention period; export and erasure through WordPress’s privacy tools. Privacy, data and uninstall

What you can’t do in version 1.0.0

  • Give someone partial access. All admin screens need Manage options; there is no read-only or per-course admin access.
  • Export reports. There is no CSV or other export from Overview, Email Delivery or the audit log.
  • Set a different schedule, consolidation mode or approval mode per course. All are site-wide.
  • Pause a course from the screen. The Paused badge can appear, but changing it needs the REST API. Use a break period for planned stops. See Pausing and resuming.
  • List students who opted out. There’s no opt-out report; opted-out students are left out of catch-up lists.
  • See settings changes in the audit log. It records timelines, prompts, suggestions, catch-up dismissals and classes — not settings.
  • Filter the audit log by person, date or action. Use the entity filter and page back through the newest-first list.

Common problems and fixes

Problem Fix
A course is missing from the Overview LMS courses must be published; classes must be Active. If it has no timeline, it shows in the course count but not under Active or Upcoming.
A year is missing from the Year filter Add a four-digit year to the LMS course title, or fill in the class Year field. Use All Years meanwhile.
A cohort shows the wrong week number Its timeline starts on a different weekday from your dispatch day, or it has a break the others don’t. Check the timeline dates.
Two cohorts of the same course both send Overlapping timelines on one course. Delete or shorten the old one.
Emails Failed keeps rising A mail-server problem — your site administrator should check the SMTP setup. Failed sends retry hourly up to three times.
A trainer says they can’t see a course They aren’t its instructor in the LMS (or a Trainer in the class). See Trainer edit workflow.
Audit log shows an empty table The Action filter is set to something other than All Actions.
Times in Recent Activity look wrong They’re in UTC, not your site timezone.

More: Troubleshooting.

Who to contact

  • Course content and individual course set-up: the course’s administrator — see the Administrator guide.
  • Email delivery, scheduled tasks, Site Health, pausing or unpausing a course, plugin updates, data removal: your site administrator.
  • Trainer access: whoever manages instructors in your LMS (or classes in Course Cadence).

Where to go next

Version History

Version 1.0.0 Major October 4, 2026
Author: DHDW