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Course Status and Visibility

TL;DR; Every course has a status — Draft, Published, Archived or Under Review — and a visibility — Private, Internal or Public. Status says whether the course is a live product; visibility says who can find it without being enrolled. Neither one hides a course from people who are already enrolled: an enrolled learner sees a Draft course on My Courses and can open it. Only a Company Administrator can change either value.

Course status is how Lupo tells "I'm still building this" apart from "this is live" and "this is retired". Visibility is a separate setting that decides who can browse a course they are not enrolled in. The two are easy to conflate, and the most common surprise is the one in the TL;DR: enrolling someone in a Draft course gives them the course now, not when you publish.

The four statuses

Draft is the starting state — every new course is a Draft. A Draft course:

  • Is not listed in the Course Catalog or on the company's Learn home for people browsing. Only Published courses are.
  • Is still open to everyone enrolled in it. A Student, Observer or Instructor you have enrolled sees it on My Courses — the tile carries no Draft marker — and can open its content and work through it. Their progress is recorded.
  • Does not issue certificates. A certificate is only issued for a completion on a Published course.
  • Can be edited freely — add sections, rename things, reorder and delete activities.
  • Appears in the Reports tab and in the department's Courses metrics dashboard like any other course; reporting has no status filter.

Published is the live state. A Published course:

  • Is listed in the Course Catalog and on the company's Learn home when its visibility is Internal or Public.
  • Issues certificates on completion.
  • Can still be edited, but edits now reach people mid-course: adding, deleting, or making optional a required activity recalculates every enrolled learner's progress.
  • Is the state most courses should be in most of the time.

Archived is the "this course is done" state. An Archived course:

  • Is read-only. Edit Course is disabled, and adding or changing sections and activities is refused until the course is restored.
  • Accepts no new enrollments. The people already on it stay on record, with their progress.
  • Disappears from My Courses for everyone enrolled, and from the department's course list unless you tick Show archived. Someone who still has the link can open it and sees a "This course is archived (read-only)" banner.
  • Is how you retire outdated content without losing the training record.

Under Review is a label for a course that is "Pending review" — awaiting approval. It changes nothing else: an Under Review course behaves exactly like a Draft — not listed, open to the people enrolled, no certificates. Use it, if you like, to mark a course a colleague is checking before it goes live.

Visibility

Visibility decides who can find a course without being enrolled. It never takes anything away from enrolled people.

  • Private — "Only accessible by invitation." The course is never listed in the Course Catalog or on the Learn home, even when Published. The only way in is to be enrolled.
  • Internal — "Accessible to all company members." Once Published, it is listed in the Course Catalog for people who belong to its own department — anyone holding a role in the company or in that department, or already enrolled in another of its courses. Anyone in the company who follows a link to it can open its Details tab: the overview, with a note that the material opens once they are enrolled — or, for an instructor-led course with self-registration on, a link to the schedule to register. The content itself still needs an enrollment.
  • Public — "Accessible to everyone." Today this behaves exactly like Internal: every Learn page requires signing in, and the catalog lists it on the same terms as Internal. Choosing Public does not put a course on the open internet.

New courses default to Internal.

Who can change status and visibility

Both values are changed by a Company Administrator (or by Lupo). Instructors cannot: on the Edit Course form the Status and Visibility fields are read-only for them, with "Contact an administrator to change the course status", and a change posted anyway is refused and reported at the top of the form.

A Company Administrator has two ways to change status:

  • On the course's Settings tab: Publish Course on a Draft, Unpublish Course on a Published course (which returns it to Draft), Archive Course on anything not yet archived, and Restore Course on an Archived course. A restored course comes back as a Draft, not as Published — publish it again when it is ready.
  • On the Edit Course form, where all four statuses and all three visibilities can be picked directly. This is the only place to set Under Review, and the only way to publish from it: the Settings tab offers an Under Review course no Publish button, only Archive.

Instructors see "Only administrators can change course status and visibility." on the Settings tab instead of the buttons. If you're an Instructor and need to publish or archive a course, ask your Company Administrator.

Before you publish, it's worth pausing on a few things:

  • Make sure every section has at least one activity.
  • Make sure the activities actually play/load. Open the Content tab and click through them.
  • Make sure the descriptions and learning objectives are filled in — they are what the Details tab shows first.

The Draft → Published workflow

The cleanest workflow is:

  1. Create the course in Draft. Add sections, activities, and all your content.
  2. Preview it yourself. Open the Content tab and go through every activity as if you were the learner.
  3. Enroll a test person (yourself or a trusted colleague on your team). They see the course on My Courses immediately, Draft or not, so this needs no status change. Enroll them as an Observer if you don't want their clicks in the reports. Ask them to walk through the course and report what's confusing.
  4. Iterate until the feedback is minor.
  5. Publish when you're confident — or ask your Company Administrator to.

Don't skip step 3. Your eyes are too close to the material. A fresh person catches things you won't.

One consequence to plan around: because enrolled people see a Draft course, you cannot pre-enroll a whole cohort and count on Draft to hold them back. For a coordinated start, enroll people when you publish, or keep the course Private and Published and add people on launch day.

Editing a Published course

You can edit a Published course. That's intentional — typos and small fixes shouldn't require un-publishing. But some edits reach learners mid-course:

  • Deleting a required activity. Every enrolled learner's progress is recalculated for the course without it, and their completion record for that activity goes with it. Avoid.
  • Adding a required activity, or switching an activity between required and optional. Same recalculation: completion percentages drop for everyone who hasn't done the new activity. Do it knowingly.
  • Renaming activities they're partway through. The new name replaces the old one everywhere, including in reports. Usually fine, but it can look confusing in a historical audit.
  • Reordering sections. Most learners won't notice, but if someone was on "Section 3" and you move things around, they may find themselves in a different spot next time they open the course.

For a major overhaul there is no "copy course" action. The safer path is to build the replacement as a new course, publish it, and archive the old one so its records stay intact.

Archiving a course

Archive a course when:

  • It covers content that's been superseded by a newer version.
  • It was a one-time course (a specific event, a specific launch) that's over.
  • A client engagement ended and the course no longer applies.

Archiving is reversible: Restore Course on the Settings tab brings it back as a Draft, and enrollments and progress survive the round trip. Permanent deletion of an archived course is a Lupo operation — contact help@lupo.ai if you need one gone for good.

Where to go next