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Trainer Edit Workflow

The trainer edit workflow lets the trainers who deliver a course propose improvements to its guidance prompts — a clearer instruction, a corrected date, a better resource link — without giving them access to the WordPress admin area. Administrators decide whether those suggestions go live immediately or wait for review, and every step is recorded in the Audit Log.

Who it’s for

Trainers submit suggestions from the front-end trainer page (the [dcc_trainer_edit] shortcode).
Administrators (WordPress users who can manage site options) choose the approval mode and review suggestions at Course Cadence → Pending Suggestions.

Trainers never edit prompts directly from any screen the plugin provides. Their only way to change guidance is to submit a suggestion.

Who counts as a trainer

A trainer is any logged-in user whom your LMS names as an instructor of the course. Trainer status is decided per course, not by WordPress role — a trainer can be an ordinary Subscriber account.

LMS mode	How a user becomes a trainer for a course
Tutor LMS	The course author, any additional instructor added to the course (Tutor’s multi-instructor feature), or any user Tutor LMS records as an instructor of that course.
LifterLMS	Any instructor listed on the course in LifterLMS. If no instructors are listed, the course author.
Native classes (no LMS)	Any user added to the class in the Trainers list on Course Cadence → Classes → Manage Members.

Being an instructor of one course gives no access to any other course. WordPress administrators can open the trainer view for any course (see On-page guidance and progress tracker), but see the note on Auto-Approve under Troubleshooting.

See LMS integration and native classes for how to set up instructors in each mode.

Setting up the workflow (administrators)

Create a page for trainers (for example “Trainer Hub”) and add the [dcc_trainer_edit] shortcode. See the Shortcode reference.
Make sure each trainer is set up as an instructor of their course in your LMS (or in the class’s Trainers list in Native mode).
Go to Course Cadence → Settings → Workflow and choose the approval mode (below).
On the same tab, decide whether to send notification emails and who gets them (see Notifications).
Share the trainer page URL with your trainers.

Approval modes

Set at Course Cadence → Settings → Workflow, under the section Edit Approval Workflow, in the setting Trainer Edit Suggestions:

Option	What happens when a trainer submits	Default
Require Admin Approval	“Trainer edit suggestions must be reviewed and approved by an administrator before taking effect.” The suggestion is saved as pending and the prompt is unchanged until an administrator approves it.	Yes
Auto-Approve	“Trainer edit suggestions are automatically applied. All changes are still logged for audit purposes.” The prompt is updated the moment the trainer submits.	—

The mode is site-wide. It cannot be set per course or per trainer.
Changing the mode affects new submissions only. Suggestions already pending stay in the queue until someone approves or rejects them.
Even with Auto-Approve, each submission is still logged, the previous wording is saved to version history and the trainer’s suggestion is stored with the status Approved.

Submitting a suggestion

Trainers submit suggestions from the trainer page.

Log in and open the trainer page your administrator shared (for example “Trainer Hub”).
If you deliver more than one course, choose your course and select View Guidance.
Go to the week that contains the prompt. Use Next Week / Previous Week, or switch to All Upcoming to see several weeks at once (see View modes).
On the prompt card, select Suggest Edit. The Suggest Edit to Guidance window opens with the prompt’s current Subject: and Body: filled in.
Change the subject, the body or both.
In Reason for change: (required), explain why — for example “Assessment due date moved to Friday 14 March per the revised college calendar.”
Select Submit Suggestion. The button shows “Submitting…” and then “Submitted ✓”.

What you see next depends on the approval mode:

Mode	Message	What happens on the page
Require Admin Approval	“Your edit suggestion has been submitted for review.”	An Edit Pending badge and a “Suggestion pending review” note appear on the prompt. The window closes after about two seconds.
Auto-Approve	“Your edit has been applied successfully!”	The page reloads after about a second and a half, showing the updated prompt.

To close the window without submitting, use the × button in the top corner, press Escape, or click outside the window.

Things to know before you edit

The Body field shows the prompt’s stored text, which can include placeholders such as {student_name}, {course_name} or {week_number}. Keep these exactly as they are — they are replaced with each student’s details when the guidance is sent or shown. (On the trainer page, the prompt card shows {student_name} as “Sample Student”.)
All three fields are required. The form shows “Subject is required.”, “Body is required.” or “Please provide a reason for this change.” if one is empty.
A suggestion replaces the whole subject and body. There is no partial approval — an administrator approves or rejects the suggestion as submitted.
You cannot withdraw a suggestion. Ask an administrator to reject it if it is no longer wanted.
You can submit again for the same prompt (for example after a rejection) as long as the week is still open.

Which weeks can be edited

A prompt can be edited only while its week is open:

Week state	Can you suggest an edit?	What you see (week-by-week view)
Current week, not yet sent	Yes	Suggest Edit button
Future week, not yet sent	Yes	Suggest Edit button
Past week	No	A greyed-out Suggest Edit button and “Past weeks can’t be edited.”
Any week whose guidance emails have already been sent	No	A greyed-out Suggest Edit button and “This week has already been sent and can’t be edited.”

In the All Upcoming view, each week heading carries a badge — Current, Past, Upcoming, or Locked – Emails Sent for a later week whose emails have already gone — and locked weeks show no Suggest Edit button.

“Current week” on the trainer page is counted from the timeline’s start date (including any scheduled breaks). For a Rolling timeline, each student’s own week depends on their enrolment date, so the trainer page’s current week may differ from what an individual student sees.

Tracking the status of your suggestions

Each prompt card shows a badge for your most recent suggestion on that prompt:

Badge	Meaning
Edit Pending	Waiting for an administrator. The prompt has not changed yet.
Edit Approved	Your suggestion was applied to the prompt (this includes suggestions applied automatically under Auto-Approve).
Edit Rejected	Your suggestion was declined. The prompt is unchanged.

Badges are visible only to you — other trainers do not see your suggestions — and only on weeks that are still open for editing. Once a week is in the past or has been sent, its prompt cards no longer show badges.

Reviewing pending suggestions

Administrators review suggestions at Course Cadence → Pending Suggestions. The menu item shows a count badge when suggestions are waiting (the count can take up to five minutes to refresh after changes made elsewhere). The Overview page also has a Pending Suggestions card that links here, plus an Edit Suggestions Summary table with total, pending, approved and rejected counts.

Reading the queue

The table lists pending suggestions, newest first, 20 per page:

Column	What it shows
Course	The course the prompt belongs to.
Week	The prompt’s week number.
Trainer	The trainer who submitted it.
Changes	The course, week and current subject of the prompt, then a word-level comparison of the Subject (added words highlighted in green and underlined, removed words in red and struck through). If the body changed, expand Body changes to see the body comparison.
Date	When it was submitted.
Actions	Approve and Reject buttons.

Very long bodies (over 2,000 words on either side) show “Content changed — view the full text below (too long for an inline diff).” instead of a word-level comparison.

The trainer’s reason is saved with the suggestion, but it is not displayed on this screen or in the Audit Log. If you need the background to a change, ask the trainer. Each submission does appear in the Audit Log (Course Cadence → Settings → System) as Suggested.

If another trainer has also suggested a change to the same prompt, a warning appears above the buttons: “1 other pending suggestion targets this prompt — approving will supersede it.” Approving one does not remove the other from the queue — if you later approve the other one too, it overwrites the first. Reject the one you do not want.

Approving or rejecting

One at a time:

Read the comparison and check the Week column.
Select Approve — the notice “Suggestion approved and applied.” appears — or Reject, confirm “Reject this suggestion?”, and the notice “Suggestion rejected.” appears.

Several at once:

Tick the rows.
Choose Approve All or Reject All from the Bulk actions menu and select Apply. The notice reads “Selected suggestions approved.” or “Selected suggestions rejected.”

When the queue is empty you see “No pending suggestions. When trainers submit edit suggestions for approval, they will appear here for review.” If the site is set to Auto-Approve, an extra note explains that edits are applied automatically and will not queue here.

What happens on approve

The prompt’s subject and/or body is replaced with the trainer’s text. Only the parts that actually differ are changed.
Before the change, the previous wording is saved as a version, so you can compare or roll back from Prompt version history.
The Audit Log records the approval and the resulting prompt update, with who did it and when.
The trainer’s badge changes to Edit Approved, and an email is sent if notifications allow it.
Students see the new wording the next time the prompt is sent or the guidance page is viewed. Already-sent emails are not changed. (On sites that use a persistent object cache, such as Redis or Memcached, the old wording can keep showing for up to an hour.)

Check the week before approving. Approval applies the change even if that week has been sent since the trainer submitted. If the week has already gone out, the change only affects the guidance page and any later catch-up emails.

You cannot edit a suggestion before approving it. If it is nearly right, reject it and edit the prompt yourself in Course Cadence → Timelines & Prompts (see Prompt management).

What happens on reject

The prompt is unchanged.
The Audit Log records the rejection.
The trainer’s badge changes to Edit Rejected, and an email is sent if notifications allow it.
The trainer can submit a new suggestion while the week is open.

The Pending Suggestions screen does not collect a reason for rejection. Tell the trainer directly if they need to know why.

Notifications

The plugin can email people when suggestions are submitted, approved or rejected. Configure this at Course Cadence → Settings → Workflow:

Setting	Options	Default
Edit Notifications — “Send email notifications when edit suggestions are submitted, approved, or rejected.”	Ticked / unticked	Ticked
Notification Recipients — “Choose who receives email notifications for edit suggestion events.”	Admin & Trainer, Admin Only, Trainer Only	Admin & Trainer

Which emails are sent

Event	Recipient	Subject line	Sent when Recipients is…
Trainer submits a suggestion	The site’s Administration Email Address (WordPress Settings → General)	`[Course name] New edit suggestion submitted` — includes the trainer, course, prompt subject and a link to Pending Suggestions	Admin & Trainer, or Admin Only
Trainer submits a suggestion	The trainer	`[Course name] Your edit suggestion was received` — says it is awaiting review	Admin & Trainer, or Trainer Only
Administrator approves	The trainer	`[Course name] Your edit suggestion was approved`	Admin & Trainer, or Trainer Only
Administrator rejects	The trainer	`[Course name] Your edit suggestion was not approved` — suggests contacting the site administrator with questions	Admin & Trainer, or Trainer Only

The emails are plain text and sent through your site’s normal email system (your SMTP plugin, if you have one). They are not logged in Email Delivery.
The wording is fixed and cannot be edited in Settings (it can be translated).
Only one email per event per suggestion is sent within an hour, even if the same action is triggered twice.
In Auto-Approve mode the submission emails above are still sent — including the trainer confirmation that says the suggestion is “awaiting review” — but no separate “approved” email follows. Let trainers know that under Auto-Approve their change is live straight away.

Audit trail and data

Each submission, approval and rejection is recorded in the Audit Log (Course Cadence → Settings → System). You can filter for Edit Suggestions, and each entry carries the course and week.
Approved changes also appear as prompt updates in the Audit Log. To see the previous wording, use Prompt version history.
Suggestions are stored with the proposed subject and body, the reason, the submitting trainer, the status and — once reviewed — the reviewer and date.
Privacy: WordPress’s personal-data export includes a user’s suggestions. Erasing a user’s personal data deletes the suggestions they submitted and removes their name from any suggestions they reviewed.
Uninstall: suggestions are deleted only if Remove All Data on Uninstall is ticked on Settings → System.

Troubleshooting

A trainer sees “Only assigned trainers can access this interface.” They are logged in but not an instructor of that course in the active LMS. Add them as an instructor (Tutor LMS / LifterLMS) or to the class’s Trainers list (Native). The same check stops submissions with “Only trainers assigned to this course can suggest edits.”

The Suggest Edit button is greyed out or missing. The week is in the past or its emails have already been sent; the reason is shown next to the button in week-by-week view. Locked prompts cannot be changed by trainers. An administrator can still edit them in Timelines & Prompts.

An administrator gets “You do not have permission to edit this course’s prompts.” when submitting from the trainer page. With Auto-Approve on, the plugin checks that the person submitting is an instructor of the course — administrators are not exempt. Edit the prompt in Timelines & Prompts instead, or add yourself as an instructor.

Nobody receives notification emails. Check that Edit Notifications is ticked and Notification Recipients includes the right people. Admin emails go to the address under WordPress Settings → General → Administration Email Address. If other site emails also fail, check your SMTP setup (see Troubleshooting).

The badge still says Edit Pending after approval. Reload the page. The badge shows the trainer’s most recent suggestion. If the trainer submitted again after the approved one, the newest status is shown.

Worked example

Riverside Community College runs a 20-week Certificate III in Early Childhood Education and Care cohort on Tutor LMS with Require Admin Approval and Notification Recipients set to Admin & Trainer.

In week 6, trainer Priya opens the Trainer Hub page, picks the course and switches to All Upcoming. Week 8’s prompt “Observation task due” still says the old due date.
She selects Suggest Edit, changes “due Monday 10 March” to “due Friday 14 March”, and enters the reason “Due date moved by the program coordinator after the public holiday.”
She sees “Your edit suggestion has been submitted for review.” and an Edit Pending badge. She gets the “Your edit suggestion was received” email; the college’s admin inbox gets “New edit suggestion submitted”.
Course coordinator Sam opens Course Cadence → Pending Suggestions (badge: 1), sees the week 8 row with “Monday 10” struck through and “Friday 14” inserted, and selects Approve.
The prompt is updated, the old wording is saved in version history and Priya receives “Your edit suggestion was approved”. Week 8’s email goes out on schedule with the new date.

On-page guidance and progress tracker — the trainer page layout and view modes
Shortcode reference
Prompt management
Prompt version history
Settings reference
User roles and permissions
Role guides: Trainer · Administrator

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