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[Beta] Creating Training Experiences

Using CloudShare's training and sales experiences, you can deliver learning or sales enablement environments to multiple participants, either simultaneously or ad hoc. Using a previously created blueprint containing the initial environment state, you can schedule the experience, invite participants, and deliver the environments automatically. 

In this section, we will cover:

  • Training Experiences. Learn how to create, edit, and manage training experiences.
  • Sales Experiences. Learn how to create, edit, and manage sales experiences.

To create a training experience, click Training in the home screen left-side menu, and then click the + Create New button at the top right of the screen. Alternatively, hover over Training in the left-side menu and click the + icon.

Building your training experience can be accomplished in three steps.

Step 1: General

  • Name: Enter a unique name for your experience.
  • Type: Choose between instructor-led or self-paced training.
  • Project: Select the project your experience is in.
  • Blueprints: Select one or more blueprints for your experience, determining the environments your instructors and participants will use.
  • Regions: Choose one or more regions where the cloud resources will be located. Your blueprint’s snapshot must be copied to more than one region to select multiple regions. Go to the infrastructure area to copy your snapshot to additional regions. 
  • Shared Blueprint (optional): Choose one of the shared Blueprints to enable the session participants and instructors to have access to a Shared Environment in addition to their own personal environment. See Shared Environments for a description of what a Shared Environment is.
    • Note: This field only appears if the blueprint selected in the Blueprints field (described above) was defined with one or more shared blueprints attached to it by selecting them in the Allow Shared Blueprints field as described in the Creating a Shared Blueprint section. Only the blueprints that were associated with the blueprint specified in the Blueprints fields (described above) are offered for selection in the dropdown menu.
  • Shared Environments with View Access: 
    • Toggle this option ON (the default) to specify that participants and instructors have CloudShare Participant Viewer and Instructor Console functionality and can view and collaborate in the same environment at the same time. See for Shared Environments with View Access for a full description of this option.
    •  Toggle this option OFF to specify that participants and instructors only have network access to the VMs of this Shared Environment, such as using CLI commands and RDP sessions. Only a single participant or instructor can access a VM in a Shared Environment when this option is toggled OFF. This means that multiple users can each work on this VM in their own environment, but not at the same time. See for Shared Environments with Network Access Only for a full description of this option.
  • Main Instructor: Assign the main instructor for the experience.
  • Additional Instructors (Optional): Add any additional instructors.

Click Show Advanced Fields to add:

  • Description (optional): Add a description that will only be visible to instructors and admins with access to the experience.
  • Labels (Optional): Add labels to your experience for easy identification and categorization. 
  • External ID (optional): Add an external ID to easily match your experience with external tools (i.e., CRM, marketing tools, etc.).
  • Allow more than one environment activation per student: This option allows participants to access more than one environment sequentially (i.e., with this option enabled, when a participant's current environment expires due to the policy, when they log in again, they receive a new environment. If the option is disabled, they will be denied access to the experience.
Note: Creating an Instructor-Led training experience within five hours of its scheduled start time could affect the instant availability of environments to all participants at the beginning of the session. 

Step 2: Time

Enter the start date and time, time zone, and end date and time (optional). Select the appropriate time zone. This ensures accurate scheduling and a smooth learning experience for all participants.

The option of not specifying an end time for experiences creates always-available learning opportunities, eliminating the need for frequent end-date updates (often used for long-running self-paced classes). This ensures a seamless and continuous learning environment.

Step 3: Access

  • Policy: Select the environment policy for the experience. A policy is a set of rules defining various parameters and behaviors for virtual environments. It allows you to manage costs such as limiting how long environments live or an inactivity timeout before they automatically suspend.
  • Maximum Number of Students: Enter the maximum number of students who can join your experience. In a self-paced experience, the default number of students is set to Unlimited, and you can optionally set the Maximum number of concurrent students. 
  • Registration Type: Choose the registration type: Any Students or Registered Students Only. Registered Students Only means that only students added to the list by an admin or instructor can access the experience. Any Students means that non-registered students (who were not added to the user's list by the admin or instructor and accessed the experience via another channel) are also allowed access to the experience. These students will be considered “self-registered” when they log in and automatically appear on the user list. 
  • Access Type: Set the access type as either Passphrase or Single-Sign-On (SSO). SSO is only available for subscriptions that have an SSO connection enabled. 
  • Access Time: Configure access time and early access settings. This can be set to either:
    • Allow access before training starts only to instructors
    • Allow access before training starts to all participants
    • Do not allow access before training starts
      If you allow access before training begins, you can select when early access should begin; e.g., 30 minutes before the start time (the default). Note that if the instructor is allowed early access, they are not considered by the Early Access Time selection (this selection only applies to end users). The instructor's environment can be archived and/or deleted prior to - or during - the actual class, given that the class policy is assigned to the instructor's environment at creation time, and thus the runtime and storage lease allocations will likely be exhausted earlier than those of the end users. Instructors should change the policy assigned to their instructor environment accordingly. Instructors can also manually delete their instructor environment at any time, and create subsequent instructor environments when a prior environment has been deleted. 
  • Invitation Email: Select whether to customize invitation emails for students and instructors or send the default invitation. You can customize your invitation after creating the experience via the Details → Access tab of the experience page. 

Click Show Advanced Fields to access additional options:

  • Don't send invitations to students
  • Don't send invitations to instructors
  • Block students using free email domains
  • Block specific email domains
  • Instructions for setting up an LTI integration are also included. LTI allows data to be exchanged between your CloudShare experience and your course within an LMS. Once the experience has been created, LTI must be configured in the Details → Access tab of the experience page.  

Click Create to add your new experience. A pop-up will then inform you that your experience has successfully been created, and you will be taken to the experience’s page. 

Note: Creating an experience within five hours before the scheduled start time may impact the immediate availability of the experience for all students at the start time.

LMS Integration

CloudShare's Learning Management System (LMS) integration provides a seamless user experience for participants, allowing them to access CloudShare's hands-on training environments directly from your LMS courses. 

For additional information, see Integrating CloudShare with LMS.



 

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