Scheduling sessions for in-person training

Sessions are how Learnient handles training that happens at a time and a place: a classroom day, a workshop, an assessor visit. You set the dates, the platform handles booking, the waiting list, calendar invitations and reminders, and you mark who turned up.

First, the course has to be the right kind

Only an external course can hold sessions. If the Sessions tab is not there, the content is an ordinary course and no setting will add sessions to it — you need a new external course instead, from the New menu in the library.

External courses have no modules and no assessment, so most of what the course settings offer does not apply to them.

Adding a session

1. Open the course settings and choose the Sessions tab.
2. Add a session, and give it a name if you are running more than one.
3. Fill in the date, start time and end time. The duration is worked out for you and cannot be typed.
4. Give it a location. The form insists on one, even though it will accept anything you type.
5. Add a trainer, a capacity and a waitlist limit if you want them.
6. Add more days to the same session if it runs over several.

One session, several days

A session is the thing people book onto. Days sit inside it, and nobody books a single day — they book the whole session.

That matters for where the settings live. Trainer, location, capacity and waitlist limit belong to the session as a whole, not to a day, and changing one changes it for every day. Only the date and the times are set per day.

What the product will let you save

Almost anything. There is no check that the end time is after the start, that the date is in the future, or that two sessions do not overlap.

So a session running from 16:00 to 09:00, or one scheduled for last March, saves without complaint. Check the dates yourself before you save; nothing else will.

Places and the waiting list

You set	What happens
Capacity blank	Unlimited places
Capacity reached, waitlist set	The next person joins the waiting list automatically
Capacity reached, no waitlist	Booking is refused with “Session is full”
Waitlist also full	Booking is refused

Nobody chooses the waiting list. They book, and if the session is full they are on it.

A place coming free promotes the person who has waited longest, and tells them by email. Raising the capacity does the same thing, one promotion per place you added.

Enrolling somebody yourself ignores capacity entirely. You can put more people in the room than the room holds, and the only sign is the number.

When booking closes

Booking closes once the first day has passed. Cancelling stays open until after the last day, so somebody on a three-day course can still drop out on day two.

Calendar invitations

Booking sends a calendar invitation, one event per day of the session. People on the waiting list get nothing until they are promoted.

Changing the date, time, location or trainer sends everybody an updated invitation that replaces the old one in their calendar. Changing the capacity or the waiting list sends nothing, which is what you want.

A location beginning with http:// or https:// is treated as a joining link rather than an address.

Everyone booked is also reminded by email two days before.

Marking who attended

Marking somebody as having attended completes the course for them, at 100%, and records the date.

Where the course has a post-course step — an attestation, or an observed competency sign-off — attendance does not complete it on its own. The course waits under Awaiting sign-off until the step is done.

Attendance is recorded for the session as a whole rather than day by day.

Who can do this

Creating and editing sessions, cancelling them, marking attendance and enrolling other people all need the external training permission. Booking your own place needs only the ordinary course permission every learner has.