Publishing a capsule

Publishing a capsule moves it from draft to online. The back-office refuses that switch while nobody can reach the capsule: it needs at least one track, a listing set with To be displayed on the catalogue of, or a custom diffusion rule carrying groups. That constraint holds this whole section together, and it is the first thing to check when the button stays inactive.

Publishing still is not distributing: a capsule that is online but attached to a track no group receives reaches nobody. The distribution model is chosen before that, in Understanding distribution.

Four decisions follow, in this order: make the capsule reachable, decide who sees it and when, check it before opening it to everyone, then choose the room it takes on the home page learners land on.

Make the capsule reachable

• Publishing and unpublishing a capsule: the statuses, what the button actually does depending on your profile, and how to pull a capsule back out of circulation.
• Linking a capsule to tracks: the link that opens access, what the screen shows you about the groups concerned before you confirm, and what removing a link does.

Decide who sees it, and when

• Capsule visibility and activation conditions: read this to build a progression or reserve content for one situation, rather than opening everything to everyone at once.
• Scheduling publication and unpublication: read this for an opening on a fixed date, and above all to schedule right now the removal of content that will go stale.

Check it before opening it to everyone

• Testing a capsule before publishing it to everyone: what the author cannot see from the editor, and the setup that puts the capsule in front of a few people first.

Choose its room on the home page

Three separate settings act on what the learner meets on arrival. They compete for the same attention, and when the result surprises you, it is almost always one of them hiding another.

• Featuring a capsule: the quiet lever, which lifts the capsule into a home-page widget for a period you set.
• Prioritising a capsule: the pop-up on opening: the lever nobody misses, with its reminder frequency and its rules for competing capsules.
• Setting the order of tracks on the home page: this one is set on the track, not on the capsule, and decides what occupies the top of the page.

When everything looks set but the learner still sees nothing: Common problems: distribution.