Participant thumbnails enable instructors to view each participant’s environment in real-time within the Instructor Console. Each thumbnail represents a single participant, displaying what that participant is viewing and interacting with in real-time. This enables instructors to observe activity as it happens, track progress, and quickly assess engagement. Additionally, thumbnails include status indicators, progress details, and collaboration options. At the upper right corner of each thumbnail, a three-dot menu provides a variety of options.
The following describes a single thumbnail. Each of its elements is described in more detail below.
Organizing the Thumbnail Display
The following describes how to determine how many participant thumbnails fit on a single page in the Instructor’s Console.
Clicking displays a dropdown menu for selecting the size of the participant thumbnails displayed on the screen, which determines how many can fit on a single page.
The smaller the thumbnail size selected, the more thumbnails appear on the page at once. If the number of participants exceeds the available space, the Instructor Console automatically organizes thumbnails across multiple pages and provides navigation controls to move between pages.
Thumbnail Header
The header of each participant thumbnail identifies the participant and the current VM or content being viewed by the participant, and provides quick access to collaboration, information, and environment management options.
The following describes the options across the top of each participant thumbnail:
Participant Presence Indicator
A green dot indicates that the participant is active in the experience (or Resuming).
An orange dot indicates that the experience is Preparing (spinning up the VMs).
A red dot indicates that the participant is logged out, disconnected, or their environment has been suspended.
Participant Name and VM/Content Being Viewed
The participant’s full name appears at the top, left of the thumbnail. The name of the current VM or content being viewed by the participant appears underneath.
Connectivity Icon
The color of the Connectivity icon represents the status of the participant’s environment connection: connected (white icon) or a connectivity test was performed (green). Clicking on the icon displays more details about the connection state.
See Running a Connectivity Test for more information.
Collaboration Icons
Chat
The Chat icon opens a private chat pane with the participant in a side panel (drawer). Only the selected participant and the instructor see the messages. If there are unread messages, a notification badge (a number
) appears on this icon.
Assist Me Icon
A raised-hand icon appears when the participant has requested help. It remains visible until the instructor provides assistance. The instructor can click on this icon to provide assistance.
The Three-Dot Menu provides a Mark as Done option, enabling an instructor to indicate that they have already assisted a participant, which causes the raised-hand icon to disappear.
Thumbnail Participant’s View
Depending on the session state, the thumbnail may show an image of what the participant is currently viewing in their environment or a Ready, Suspended or Resuming status.
Thumbnails are updated dynamically to reflect the current state of the participant’s environment.
Three-Dot Menu
The three-dot menu at the top, right of each participant thumbnail provides access to additional participant-specific actions. The available options depend on the current state of the participant’s environment.
The following describes each of these options.
Participant Information
Opens the participant’s profile details, including credentials and environment-specific data. Instructors can view and, if permitted, edit this information.
Participant Chat
Opens a private chat side panel (drawer) with the selected participant, which enables direct messaging between the instructor and participant.
Analytics
Displays participant-specific analytics in a side panel, including participation, collaboration activity, and performance metrics.
See Analytics for more information.
Live Thumbnail / Stop Live View Thumbnail
Enables or disables the live thumbnail view.
The Live Thumbnail option enables an instructor to watch the participant’s activity in the experience, including the participant’s mouse and everything displayed in their browser.
This thumbnail shows a live view of what that participant is currently seeing in the Participants Viewer. The word appears on the thumbnail view.
The Live Thumbnail menu option is grayed out when the maximum number of live thumbnails has been reached. Stopping a participant frees up the option to open a live view for another one.
Zoom In
Opens the participant’s environment in a larger view enabling a detailed look at what the participant is doing and provides a variety of additional options for interacting with the participant and handling the environment. An Actions button appears in the top right corner of the screen providing access to a menu of options. See Zoom In View for more information.
Open Environment
Launches a full connection to the participant’s environment and provides a variety of options for viewing its details and working in it, such as viewing the VM in the Participants Viewer (by selecting the View VM button, shown below) or extending the policy (availability) of the VM by selecting the Change Policy button.
Suspend Environment
Pauses the participant’s environment. The participant is disconnected, but their progress and state are preserved until resumed.
Extend Environment
Enables the extension of the participant’s environment.
By default, the Storage Lease and Runtime Lease options are pre-populated with the selected policy’s Runtime and Storage Lease values. The runtime cannot be longer than the storage time.
- Enter the requested lease times.
- Click Extend Environment to make the environment available for more time. Use this option when the environment is not already available for the entire extent of the experience.
- Click Extend Experience Session and Environment to extend the experience session and the environment in it.
This action can be repeated as many times as needed.
See Extending an Environment for more information.
Revert Environment
Resets the participant’s environment to its original state at the beginning of the session. All unsaved changes and progress are lost.
Delete Environment
Permanently removes the participant’s environment from the experience. Only limited information (such as chat history and analytics) remains available.
Note: Deleting a user’s environment is like deleting a user from this experience.
Refresh Networking
Resets the participant’s network configuration, helping to resolve connectivity or performance problems without restarting the full environment.
Test Connectivity
Runs diagnostic checks on the participant’s connection to detect network or WebSocket issues and confirm performance. See Running a Connectivity Test for more information.
Mark Assist Me as Done
This menu option only appears when a participant has requested help, meaning that a raised-hand icon appears on the top of the thumbnail. An instructor can select the Mark Assist Me as Done option to indicate that they have already provided assistance, such as over the phone. The
icon disappears.
Remaining Time
The lower right corner of the thumbnail displays a countdown timer showing the remaining time (days and hours) until the environment is suspended.
Hovering over this widget also displays the time remaining for this environment to run, and the amount of time until this environment is deleted.
Guided Journey and Multi-step Progress Indicators
Completion Bar
Displays overall Guided Journey or Multi-step progress as a percentage, along with the number of completed steps out of the total available.
Performance Indicators
Quick performance indicators are provided along the bottom of the thumbnail:
-
Green
Checkmark: Number of successfully completed steps.
-
Red
X: Number of failed steps.
-
Gray
Circle: Number of steps not yet started.
The progress bar represents the participant’s progress through the Guided Journey or Multi-step experience, showing the percentage of completion, as well as the current chapter and section, which indicates exactly where the participant is currently working (for example, Ch 01, Sec 6).
External Cloud Error
If a participant’s environment includes External Cloud resources and an error occurs, a red External Cloud Error icon appears on the participant’s thumbnail. Hovering over the icon displays a tooltip with details, such as “There is an error in the participant environment’s external resources.”
Clicking this button shows the External Resources log, which lists the errors.