Course Flow: a visual map of your whole course
Course Flow is a visual, zoomable, end-to-end map of your entire course — every screen, category, topic, slide and branch on a single canvas. It makes it much easier to orient yourself in large or branched courses and to sanity-check sequencing before you build or publish.
Opening it
Course Flow sits at the far right of the editor's top menu bar, on the same row as Home, Configuration, Translations, Versioning, Build and Download. It is available from any editor screen.
To open it: open a course and click Course Flow, at the far right of the top menu bar.
The canvas
Course Flow draws the whole course as a top-to-bottom tree of cards on a dotted grid.
The spine runs Introduction → Assessment → Categories → Conclusion, matching the left-hand page tree in the editor. Categories fan out sideways into parallel columns; topics fan out under a category; activities fan out under a topic. Everything else is a single vertical column.
Reading the map
The map runs top to bottom in learner order: Introduction → Assessment → Categories → Conclusion.
Categories fan out sideways into columns, with their topics and activities beneath them.
EG
Each card is one item in your course — a slide, a category, a topic, an activity, or one of the structural screens such as the Title Screen or Thank You screen. Cards show the item's type, its position in the course, and its title.
Dashed cards are empty slots. A dashed card labelled Before Categories or Course End means that position exists but has no content yet. Click Add first slide on the card to fill it.
The card at the very top summarises the course — its stage, type, languages, folder and origin, plus a count of categories, topics and activities.
Connecting lines show structure and running order only. They do not carry conditions, so a category fanning out into columns is just Poet drawing your categories side by side, not a branch.
Getting around
| To do this | Use |
|---|---|
| Move around the canvas | Drag any empty space |
| Zoom | Ctrl / ⌘ + scroll, or the buttons at the bottom right |
| Return to 100% | The circular-arrow button at the bottom right |
| Group or ungroup categories | The grid button in the right-hand rail |
| See the built-in tips again | The ⓘ button beside the course card |
Working from the canvas
Hover any card and a strip of buttons appears down its right edge.
| Pencil — opens that page in the editor | |
| Eye — shows you that single slide exactly as a learner sees it, in the real course player | |
| Copy — copies the slide, then turns every valid position on the canvas into a Paste before or Paste after target | |
| Trash — removes the slide | |
| Chevron (on categories) — folds the category's contents away |
To add a slide, hover the card you want to add next to and click the small + above or below it. The Add Page dialog opens with a banner confirming exactly where the new page will land.
To add a category, topic or activity, use the Add category, Add topic or Add activity buttons on the relevant card.
These add immediately, without asking. One click on Add category adds the category and a first topic straight away. If you click one by accident, reload the page before saving to discard it.
Upgrade to Flex Slide
If you are updating an old course with legacy slide types, you may see the option to upgrade to flex slide within a course review tile.
Saving your changes
This is the part worth remembering.
Structural changes are held in your browser until you save them. Adding or deleting a category, topic, activity or slide, and pasting a copied slide, are all staged — a Save button appears at the top of the right-hand rail when you have anything pending.
If you navigate away or reload without saving, those changes are discarded, and you will not be warned. Save before you leave.
Two things behave differently:
- Comments save immediately, as soon as you click away from the note.
Variable assignments are never saved. They are a temporary view, cleared when you reload.
Edit mode and preview mode
The button in the top-right corner switches between the two.
The label tells you which mode you are in. When it reads EDIT you are editing; click it to switch to preview. When it reads PREVIEW you are previewing; click it to go back.
Preview mode is a read-only view of the map. The cards, the layout, your zoom and your position all stay exactly as they were — what disappears is everything that could change the course:
| Edit mode | Preview mode | |
|---|---|---|
| Pan, zoom, group categories | Yes | Yes |
| Fullscreen | — | Yes, only here |
| Edit, preview, copy and delete on cards | Yes | — |
| + insert points, Add category / topic / activity | Yes | — |
| Add a comment | Yes | — |
| Existing comments | Visible and editable | Visible, read-only |
| Variable assignments | Yes | Yes |
Switching modes neither saves nor discards anything. Anything you have staged is still there when you switch back.
Use preview mode when you want to read the map without the risk of nudging something, or when you want the extra screen space that fullscreen gives you.
"Preview" means three different things in Poet
Worth knowing, because they are easy to confuse:
| What you clicked | What you get |
|---|---|
The toggle at the top right of Course Flow | A read-only view of the map. No course content, no player. Edit Preview |
The eye on a card | That one slide, rendered as a learner sees it, in the real player. Edit mode only. |
Preview Course in the editor header | The Course Build dialog, where you generate preview links to share. |
Comments
Right-click any empty space on the canvas and choose Insert comment to leave a note. Give it a colour, drag it where you want it, and it saves as soon as you click away.
Course Flow comments are structural notes for you and your colleagues — a good place for "this category needs re-sequencing before sign-off". They sit loose on the canvas rather than being attached to a particular page.
They are separate from the Course Review Tool. Review comments are per-page, can be replied to and resolved, and form part of the review record; Course Flow comments do none of that. If you need reviewer feedback with a status and an audit trail, use Build → Start Review instead.
Seeing your branching
If your course uses branching, Course Flow can show you which path a learner takes.
Open Variable assignments from the right-hand rail — the sliders button — and set values for your course variables. The map then shows the path a learner with those answers would follow, and content that is excluded by your settings is greyed out rather than removed, so you can still see it in context.
If the course has no variables yet, the panel will tell you so and point you to Configuration → Variables.
Branching conditions are shown on the cards themselves, never on the connecting lines. To see exactly why a page is branched, open it and check its Page Settings.
EG No variable added to course
With variables
Each different variable will show the slides in the course flow view for to each user that fits the variable criteria (any slides in the course that the user doesn't see be greyed out)
NOTE Course Flow is still in development and may not be switched on in your environment. If you cannot see it in the menu bar, contact your Confirm representative.
NB at any point whilst in the Course Flow Feature you can start the Tour feature by clicking the '?' at the top right of the scenn to give a brief run-through of the features' functions which gives you a run-through of the feature