Checking a schedule before anybody sees it

You cannot check a release schedule by looking at the course. Staff see every lesson, always — you could not build a course you were locked out of — so browsing shows you a course with nothing hidden, whatever the schedule says.

That is the right behaviour and a real problem, because a drip you have never seen is a drip you are guessing at.

The preview

In the course settings, under Release, below the schedule table. Pick a day and it shows which modules are open to somebody on that day.

• On a paced course the slider is the learner’s own day — day 0 is the day they enrol.
• On a fixed-date course it is days from today, and reads out as a date.

It applies exactly the rules the live site does, including the one that catches people out: a module with no timing set is open. If the preview shows something available on day 0 that you expected to be held back, the rule is missing rather than wrong.

What to check

Three things, in a minute each:

1. Day 0. Is the right amount open to somebody who just joined? Usually exactly one module. If everything is open, your schedule is empty.
2. The day before each module opens. Is the thing you expect still closed?
3. The last day. Does everything eventually open? A module with no rule in fixed-date mode never got a date.

The other column worth reading

In the table itself, the right-hand column turns “14 days in” into Tue, 27 October for somebody enrolling today. Checking a drip against a real calendar is how you notice it runs through Christmas, or that two modules land on the same morning.

In fixed-date mode that column becomes a status, and says so when a date is out of order or missing altogether.

After you reorder

Reordering modules moves the schedule with them, because the schedule is a list in outline order. Open the Release settings and look at the preview again after any reordering — this is the easiest way to end up with module 3 opening before module 2.