Available templates

Training courses template

The Training courses template turns a page into the intranet’s course catalogue. Staff can search for a course, browse by course type or tag, or pick a letter from an A to Z index, and every published course is shown as a card in alphabetical order. One course can be promoted at the top as the featured course. It is normally applied to a page called “Training”, “Learning and development” or “Course catalogue” and linked from the main menu. It needs the Training module and the courses themselves. Switching the module on and every box on the course edit screen are in Add or edit a training course.

Create the training page and choose it in Options

  1. Go to Options, then Modules, and make sure Training is switched on. Switch on A to Z as well if you want the A to Z index panel to work.
  2. Go to Pages, then Add New. Give the page a title such as “Training”, and in the Page Attributes box set Template to Training courses. Anything typed in the main editor appears under the page title when staff first open the page, so use it for a sentence or two about how training works in your organisation.
  3. Publish the page, then go back to Options, Modules, open the Training tab and choose the page as the Training page. Select Update. This is the tab’s only setting. It gives course pages their breadcrumb back to the catalogue and makes the course type and tag links in a course’s sidebar point here; until it is set, those links are not shown.
  4. Add the page to a menu. See Setup navigation menus.

The steps for the Template dropdown are in Change a page layout.

What the Training page shows on first visit

From top to bottom: the page title, the text from the page’s main editor, the featured course if one is set, three panels side by side, a count such as “Found 186 courses”, and then the courses as cards in a grid, three across, in alphabetical order of title, 24 to a page with page links at the bottom. Each card shows the course’s featured image, its title, the first 20 words of its excerpt and, with a people icon, its Target audience. Selecting anywhere on a card opens the course.

The three panels are:

  • Search courses: a search box that searches courses only, not the rest of the intranet. It looks at the title, the main content, the prerequisites, the learning objectives, the course code and the keywords. When Relevanssi is active it uses Relevanssi, so results are ranked and the search options apply.
  • Browse courses: a Training category dropdown listing every course type that has at least one published course, and a Tags dropdown listing every tag used on a published course. Either or both can be set before selecting Browse courses. A dropdown is left out while it has nothing to list, so a new catalogue shows the panel with no dropdowns until courses are typed and tagged. The tag list is refreshed every five minutes.
  • A to Z index: the 26 letters. A letter is a link when it exists in the intranet’s A to Z index; the rest are greyed out. This panel needs the A to Z module. Letters are given to a course by ticking them in the A to Z letters box on the course, so a course with no letters ticked is not found this way. See Add an item to the A to Z index.

The page has no sidebar. Widgets for training go in the Training Sidebar widget area, which appears on each course’s own page.

What the Training page shows after a search or filter

Once staff search, browse or pick a letter, the page changes to a results view. The page text and the featured course are hidden, a Back to link with the page’s title appears at the top, and only the panel that was used stays on the page, so a reader who searched sees the search box with their words still in it. The count updates, for example “Found 3 courses”, and below it each filter in use is shown as a label with a cross: the search words, the course type, the tag and the letter. Selecting a label removes that filter and keeps the others; Reset all clears them together. Filters combine, so a course type and a tag together show only the courses that have both. When nothing matches the page says “No courses match your criteria. Try broadening your search or removing a filter.”

Page 2 onwards of the full list uses the same view, without the page text or the featured course.

Link straight to a filtered view

Every filter is in the page address, so you can link to a ready-filtered catalogue from a menu, a page, a task or an email:

  • ?training_category= followed by the course type’s slug, for example /training/?training_category=health-and-safety.
  • ?course_tag= followed by a tag’s slug, for example /training/?course_tag=online.
  • ?atoz= followed by a letter, for example /training/?atoz=f.
  • ?q= followed by search words, for example /training/?q=first+aid.

The slug is shown on the course type’s or tag’s edit screen. The course type and tag links in the sidebar of every course page use the first two forms, so selecting a type on a course shows the other courses of that type.

Feature a course at the top of the page

Edit the Training page itself, not a course. The Featured course box is in the right-hand column and appears only on pages using this template. Choose one published course under Featured course, and if you wish a Background colour and a Text colour for its heading strip; left empty, the intranet’s own colours are used. Select Update. The course appears above the panels as a wide card with a Featured label, its image, title, the first 30 words of its excerpt and “Target audience:” followed by its audience. It is shown on the first, unfiltered view only. Check your own colours for contrast. To stop featuring it, clear the box and update the page.

What content the page draws on

  • Courses: everything published under Training in the admin menu. Drafts, scheduled and private courses are left out. Each card uses the course’s Title, Featured image, Excerpt (or the opening words of the content when the excerpt is empty) and the Target audience field from its Course details box.
  • Course types: the Training category dropdown comes from Training, Course types, and a course is browsable by type only when at least one type is ticked on it. See Training category.
  • Tags: the Tags dropdown comes from the tags ticked on courses. Tags are shared with the rest of the intranet, so a tag used only on news does not appear here. See Learn how tags work.
  • A to Z letters: from the letters ticked on each course, when the A to Z module is on.
  • The page itself: its title, its main editor content and its Featured course box.

Course type links

Every link to a course type, whether a filter chip on this page, a course type on a course’s own page, or a course type address such as /course-type/health-and-safety/, opens the Training page filtered to that type, for example /training/?training_category=health-and-safety. There is no separate course type page, so the filtered Training page is the place to link to from menus and other pages. The same works for tags with ?course_tag=, and the two can be combined.

Show courses elsewhere

  • Intranet search: a Training filter appears on the search results page while the module is on.
  • (Govintra) Most recent widget: can list the latest courses. See (Govintra) Most recent widget.
  • Shortcode: [shorttags type="training" tag="online" num="5"] lists courses carrying a tag, in alphabetical order, on any page. See Display a list of posts by content type and tag. The listposts shortcode does not list courses.

Related options

  • Options, Modules: the Training switch and, on the Training tab, the Training page setting; the A to Z switch for the A to Z index panel and the A to Z letters box on courses. See Module settings and options.
  • Appearance, Widgets, Training Sidebar: widgets shown on every course page, not on the catalogue page.

Related

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