Overview of what we will build - watch this first
The Cohort Home page is built around the concept of "Events" and "Resources" and especially geared towards site owners who are dong "Cohort Launches". This is where you have an intake of students joining at a certain time and then go through your program over a certain specific date period. The period of time does not matter, it could be a few days, a few weeks or even several months.
What you will be doing is:
Creating a home page for your students to view that will keep them informed and focused on the current set of activities
Adding events to your page so that the page can display the event information in all of the tabs of the Cohort Homepage
Adding resources that you may be including that are seperate from the core training
Linking this page to the student dashboard
Step 1: Create your home page
In most cases we will want the home page for your cohort to live on a "custom page". Chances are you will end up with multiple cohort launches or you may have other products/courses for sale. We will cover how to link up the Cohort Page to the student dashboard in another step.
Create a new Custom Page that will act as the home page for your cohort. Edit the page and remove the default Banner section
Add a Site Page Templates (Style 01) to you page and make sure it is the first section on the page
Add a Cohort Homepage 01 to your page (you only will be using one of these) and edit the section settings:
Open the Cohort Dates settings group and set your Start and End dates that you will be running the cohort.
Change the GMT Timezone setting to be the timezone that you will be entering all of your times in for each event. Your members will always see the time in their own timezone.
Open the Banner Section settings and change the text, image, video and button settings accordingly.
Open the In Progress Tab settings and change the text options accordingly. This will be the first tab that is shown and will automatically show all of the events that are happening in the current week.
Open the Replays Tab settings and change the text, image, video and button settings accordingly. This will be the second tab that is shown and will only appear if there are events that have occurred in the past. You can also optionally include some overview information above the replays as well
Open the Full Program Tab settings and change the text, image, video and button settings accordingly. This will be the third tab that will automatically show a list of all of your events. You can choose to group the events automatically by week or by day. You can also optionally include some overview information above the replays as well
Open the Resources Tab settings and change the text, image, video and button settings accordingly. This will be the fourth tab that is shown and will only appear if you have added resources (See the Adding Resources Step below for instructions). You can also optionally include some overview information above the resources as well.
Open the Calendar Tab settings and decide if you want to use the built in calendar or provide your own calendar (like AddEvent)
Step 2: Add some events
Now it is time we add some events by either adding a Cohort Recurring Event or Cohort Single Event section to your page.
Adding a Cohort Recurring Event section to the page
Open the Recurring Period settings group and update the Date from, Date to, Time Start, Duration and the Days of The Week. This will automatically create events with the same information between this range.
Open the Summary settings group and update the Heading, Summary, List and Event Category settings
Provide an Image or Video (Optionally but recommended)
Open the Button/Links settings and choose where you want to have one default link or if you want to have links that dynamically change based on the date and time
Open the Calendar Settings and give this event a unique id. This is used when exporting the calendar to an ICS file that can be imported into your students own calendar
Rename the section to make it more understandable to you
Repeat for other types of recurring events.
Adding a Cohort Single Event section to the page
Open the Date & Time settings group and update the Date, Time Start, Duration (mins).
Open the Summary settings group and update the Heading, Summary, List and Event Category settings
Provide an Image or Video (Optionally but recommended)
Open the Button/Links settings and choose where you want to have one default link or if you want to have links that dynamically change based on the date and time
Open the Calendar Settings and give this event a unique id. This is used when exporting the calendar to an ICS file that can be imported into your students own calendar
Rename the section to make it more understandable to you
Repeat for other one time events.
Step 3: Adding Resources
Add a Resource Block to the list of block settings at the bottom of the settings sidebar for Cohort Homepage
Each Resource has it's own settings
Type in the Category for the resource - This will be displayed on top of the image for the card
Choose the Type of Resource
Manually Entered Below
For this option you will need to provide the Image, Heading, Summary and Button information
Use Product Details
For this option you will need to select a product from your product catalogue. Depending on what was chosen, different resources will be automatically displayed
Course - The course details will be used for the image, heading, summary. The button will use the course resume link (if possible, otherwise it will use the course landing page link)
Bundle - All courses from the bundle will be displayed (in the bundle order). The corresponding course details mentioned above will be used for each course
Community - The community details will be used for the image, heading, summary. The button will use the community link (if possible, otherwise it will use the community landing page link)
Choose if you want this resource to be scheduled by clicking on Allow only after specific date & time?
Enter the Date and Time that the resource will become available as well as the Not Allowed Message that will be shown in place of the link
Step 4: Test & Simulation Mode
Now that you have all of your events added to the page, you can test what students will see by simulating the "current day and time"
Open the Cohort Home Page 01 section and then open the Test Mode settings group
Check the Turn on Simulation Mode checkbox and then choose the date and time you wish to simulate
Be sure to uncheck the Simulation Mode option before going live
Step 5: Granting access to the page for students
Now that you have your Cohort page ready to go, we need make sure only the "right people" can access it
Open the page settings and change the Who can see this page? setting to Enrolled Students and select the appropriate product. This will ensure only valid students can access this
Step 6: Linking the page to the student dashboard
Now that we secured the Cohort Home page, we want to make it easier for students to access it
You can first setup an After Purchase flow for the product that was purchased and use this custom page url as the page they would initially see after purchase
But when the student logs back in, they will initially see the student dashboard page that would normally show the "course card". So what we want to do is change this card's link so that it goes to the cohort page instead of directly into the "course"
Open your Student Dashboard page for editing and add the Dashboard Link Changer section to the page
Add a Redirect Block and update the settings
Choose a Course or Community from the list
Choose whethere you want to redirect the Overview or Resume links and then choose the page you would like that link to redirect to
Repeat for other courses or communities that you may want to redirect as well