What are Catalogs?

Create custom course Catalogs on unique landing pages that allow your learners to browse and self-enroll into the courses they choose.

Bridie avatar
Written by Bridie
Updated over a week ago

Catalogs is currently in Beta. We want your help to make Catalogs the best it can be, so please try it and provide your feedback in the application.

What are Course Catalogs?

A Catalog in Coassemble is a unique page and URL inside your workspace that can display one or many courses. Once you share this URL with your users, they can browse and choose to enroll in any course in the Catalog.

A Catalog page is completely customizable, allowing you to change the look and feel, and the order that courses appear in. Each catalog can be set as either a private URL, only accessible by your workspace members, or as a public link, accessible by anyone on the web.

Why Use Course Catalogs?

There are number of reasons why Coassemble users would create and share catalogs.

I want learners to choose the courses they enroll in

One of the key motivations for creating catalogs in Coassemble was the desire for our users to have their learners self-enroll in courses. In many cases, organizations have just a few courses that are compulsory, and a library of additional courses that are provided for self-paced opt-in learning.

I want to display courses in a specific order

Course catalogs allows users reorder courses so they display in a specific order. By doing this, you can suggest a specific learning pathway for your learners.

I want to share a library of courses

Because each catalog is hosted on a unique URL you can link a number of catalogs together to create a micro-site or library of catalogs. For example, Acme Inc. wants to create a library of courses for their organization but want it organised by team. To do this, they create a seperate catalog for each team — Sales, Marketing, Engineering, and Support. Team members in each team might gravitate to team specific catalogs, however, can easily browse other catalogs to learn more about processes in other departments.

I want to create an academy to train my customers

It is commonplace now for online business / platforms to develop an Academy to teach their users how to use their products. Because Catalogs are highly customizable, you can configure them to mimic your website, providing a seamless experience for your users.

I want to sell my courses

Although Coassemble doesn't provide ecommerce out-of-the-box, you can still technically share catalogs behind a paywall.

How to use Catalogs

Access & Enrollments

Course catalogs use Coassembles’ enrollment link framework to allow anyone with access to enroll themselves into courses in the catalog.

Currently, Catalogs can be set to either public or private. A private catalog can only be accessed by existing workspace members who have been provided the link. A public catalog is a catalog that anyone with the link can access.

Learner experience

It is important to note that if a learner has entered a course via a course catalog, when they exit the course, they’ll be redirected back to the course catalog. Because of this, you can choose to use course catalogs independently of the learner dashboard, however, any learner who accesses your Coassemble workspace via the standard login page will be directed to the standard learner dashboard where they will only see the courses they are enrolled in.

Customization

Coassemble's catalogs behave much like a website page builder, with a number of great options that allow you to make a unique page for each catalog.

Catalog pages are made up of 3 distinct page sections:

  1. Header

  2. Banner

  3. Body

Both the Header and the Banner can be switched completely switched off using the catalog visibility settings.

Header

The catalog header, like a typical website, is primarily used to display a company logo and navigation.

By default, a catalog will use your default logo, however you can add different logo for every catalog. This is particularly useful if you use Coassemble to share courses with multiple external businesses.

You can add navigation buttons or links to both the left and right-hand sides of the header. Use this feature to link other catalogs, external resources, or to mimic your website.

Other options include the ability to change the header background colour and header height. If you don’t want to display a header at all, you have the option to switch this off completely.

Navigation links come in two distinct button styles; Link and Button. Links are plain text links that allow you to change the text color. Buttons are links that are appear as buttons, and allow you to change the button background color and border radius. The Text color of buttons is determined to provide the best contrast for readability.

Banner

Clearly state the purpose of your catalog with a page banner that displays a customizable page header and description.

Additional options include the ability to change the text alignment, the banner height, and background color. You can also add a background image for decoration.

When you add a background image, Coassemble automatically adds a transparent overlay to make the title and description more readable. Adjust this to suit your configuration.

There are two options for displaying your background image; Fill and Fit. Choose the Fill option if you are using the image mainly for decoration and don’t mind if the image is gets clipped. If it is critical that that the entire image is always visible to your users, then choose the Fit option.

Body (Courses section)

The Body section is where courses appear.

From this section you can:

  • Add and remove courses

  • Change the background color

  • Change the page alignment (left / center)

  • Show / hide search controls

  • Reorder courses

  • Adjust button labels on courses for each state

    • To do

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