A new employee joins on Monday. By Tuesday, they already have the right onboarding journey unlocked, a welcome message, and a reminder queued for Friday. Nobody typed any of that in manually. An automation did.
That is the whole point of automations: the platform takes care of repetitive work for you, based on rules you set once.
What you will be able to do after this
Explain what automations are and why they matter
Describe the three parts of an automation: event, condition, action
Recognise the two core steps for unlocking widgets and content
Identify other ways automations support a learning journey
What is an automation, really?
Think of it as one sentence: "When this happens, the system should do that."
Instead of manually assigning a course to every new starter, you set the rule once. The platform applies it every time, consistently, without you lifting a finger.
Why bother?
Automations save you time, cut down on mistakes, and keep the learner experience consistent. Common things to automate:
Assigning learning activities
Sending reminders
Unlocking content, including content that should only appear after something else is completed
Moving learners into different groups
đ§ Be careful
Automations only do what you tell them to. Set the rule clearly, or nothing happens.
The three parts of an automation
Event type: what starts the check (usually Check periodically)
Condition: the rule that must be true, for example "user is in group X"
Action: what happens if the condition is true, for example "assign activity Y"
Unlocking widgets and content, in one line
You already saw this in lesson 01: one automation unlocks the widget, a second unlocks the content inside it. The automation is what decides which learners see each of them.
đĄ Note
A widget with no enabled unlock automation is shown to every learner, so the automation is what limits a widget to an audience. If you switch off the only automation that unlocks a widget, everyone sees it. To keep a widget hidden from everyone, keep an enabled automation on it that matches nobody, or remove the widget from the stream.
The same goes for an activity without an unlock automation. With the setting that hides content without an automation switched off, every user gets it in My progress.
đ Good to know
Beyond unlocking, automations also send nudges, move learners between groups, and trigger follow-up actions the moment someone finishes a task. Same rule, more jobs.
Recap
Automations turn "when this happens" into "the system does that", automatically. Three parts make it work: event, condition, action. And every learning journey depends on two unlock steps: widget, then content.