We've put together a high level Glossary of Thought Industries platform terms that may be helpful in navigating around the platform and our help resources.
| Term | Definition | Where it's found |
|---|---|---|
| Academy | Our customer learning center. Here, you can learn about the platform, access the community, and more. | Help > Academy |
| Admin View (Manager View) | The administrative interface for the Thought Industries platform, where you can set up and manage your site and the learners and materials on it. | Upon admin or manager sign in |
| Article (Content Type) | A built-in template for standalone scrollable text pages on your site. You can include images, HTML, and other items as well in articles. | Courses > All Courses > Add New Content (+) |
| Authoring Steps | These are the steps that appear at the top of the Content area when you are authoring a course. | When editing or creating a course |
| Awards | Awards are points you provide to learners that help them earn badges and move up on the leaderboard (if you use one). You can create any type of award you want - points, CEUs, stars, and so on. | Settings > Gamification |
| Badges | Badges add fun visual rewards to your learning. They are granted when a learner receives a certain number of award points. You can select from our library of custom-designed badges or upload your own branded badge images. | Settings > Gamification |
| Branding | Using Global Branding settings, the Thought Industries platform allows you to quickly configure four critical components of your global branding: logo, font, color palette, and (if you choose) background. These settings then apply universally across your site. If you need to, you can override the Global Theme in some places, such as in particular courses. If not, everything you add to the site will be properly branded once you configure these settings. | Site > Branding |
| Catalog | The Thought Industries default catalog page, always hosted at www.yourcustomdomain.com/catalog. All released content will populate as image thumbnails by default. You can choose to customize what displays above or below the primary Catalog widget. |
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| Catalog Layout | While many organizations opt to use the Catalog page as is, you are also free to add additional widgets to the default catalog layout. Such widgets might add additional information or messaging, specifically showcase featured content that you want to draw special attention to, and more. Most of our available widgets can be used on this page, so feel free to build it out as you see fit! | Site > Site Builder > Layouts |
| Catalog Widget |
The Catalog page is one of the most important pages you can add to your public site to pique a learner’s interest. By default, your Catalog page has one widget—the Catalog widget—but it is an absolute powerhouse. It includes all content offerings that you make public, initial information about these offerings, including price if you set one, and top-level categories with nested topics the learner can use to quickly find the learning of interest to them. You can also customize the Catalog Widget to limit the content showing in the catalog, or even add it to custom pages. |
When creating a page |
| Asset Library | Thought Industries has created the Asset Library, a central repository of Rich Text, Images, Downloadable Resource Files, SCORM, and xAPI Files. Roles with Central Asset Manager permissions will be able to create, edit, and destroy asset items. All items created in the manager can be managed and edited from the manager’s interface. Any and all updates will immediately propagate to wherever the items are located in the platform. | Courses > Asset Library NOTE: Behind feature flag |
| Client | Set up a new client (a.k.a. panorama) if you have a particular learner cohort that should have a uniquely branded experience and access to particular content. | Main Menu > Panorama |
| Courses | The Courses link is where you build or load the content for your site - courses, articles, SCORM content, virtual and in-person instructor-led courses, and more. | Main Menu |
| Content Drawer | The drawer you can expand or collapse using the carrot icon on the Content page. Shows recently viewed sessions, the view archive toggle, and the option to go back to the "all content" list after viewing a session list. |
Courses > All Courses > (the arrow located in upper left of the screen) |
| Content Template | Choose from a variety of native content types to begin authoring content, including course, article, video, VILT, microlearning, SCORM, and xAPI. | Courses > All Courses > Add New Content (+) |
| Content Types | Content types are descriptions of the content you create on your site. We have a number of built-in content types, and you can create custom content types based on these built-in ones. Each content type has a template that controls how a piece of content will look and behave. | Courses > Settings |
| Apps | From the Apps interface, you can customize your platform experience by requesting to enable features relevant to your use case and get broader insight into premium features available to add to your contract and more. | Main Menu |
| Course (Content Type) | Choose from a variety of native content types to begin authoring content, including course, article, video, VILT, microlearning, SCORM, and xAPI. | Courses > All Courses > Add New Content (+) |
| Course Utilities | Course Utilities are interactive tools you can enable for a specific course, like Discussions, Resources, Galleries, Instructor Messaging, and more. | Courses > All Courses > Specific Content > Content Tab > Utilities |
| Custom Code |
Add custom code to manipulate your custom CSS, custom header HTML, and custom footer HTML and further extend your branding. You can find styles that are available to use within your custom HTML/CSS by adding this slug to the end of your instance URL: |
Site > Site Builder |
| Custom Content Fields | Custom Content Fields are used to organize learning content for your Catalog. You create fields here, then can create sub-fields on a specific piece of content at any time. Learners will then see these fields and sub-fields in the left column on the catalog and can use them to filter what they see. | Courses > Settings > Organization & Display |
| Custom Role | If any of the default roles do not fit your specific needs, you can create a new custom role with customized permissions. | Users > Managers (under Custom Role) |
| Dashboard | Dashboards are composed of several visualizations and/or specific data (Looks) displayed like tiles on one page in the Reporting area. Dashboards bring several Looks together in one place for you to review. | Reporting > Create |
| Dashboard Layout |
The learner dashboard is the main point of access once a learner has registered or signed in. Most importantly, this is where learners access their active and completed content, as well as any awards, badges, or course certificates that have been granted. The dashboard also includes links to the learner's profile and account information, along with a catalog widget with other available learning experiences. The MOST IMPORTANT page for learners. Serving as their Homebase to access or browse content, view stats, receive updates, manage their account and more. Learners land on the dashboard immediately after sign in. However, if you configure an onboarding survey, they will hit that first and land on the dashboard directly after they complete the survey. |
Site > Site Builder > Layouts |
| Site | The Site design section allows you to set up your company's branding, including logos, color scheme, page layouts, and themes. | Main Menu |
| Detail Page | Each content and Ecommerce item has its own detail page that you can build out to further educate your potential learners about what is included. You can configure these details in the settings area of each item. Detail pages are typically used as one step in the purchase flow but can also be leveraged when Ecommerce is not involved. Each catalog thumbnail links to the relevant detail page by default and each detail page can also be accessed by using a specific URL format for each item type. |
Courses > All Courses > Specific Content > Design Tab > Edit Catalog Settings Ecommerce > Products > Select the Specific Item NOTE: Must toggle on Show in Content Catalog to display |
| Event (Content Type) | This content type allows you to create offline and/or in-person events to display on your site. You can also use this content type to create virtual instructor-led trainings, or VILTs. | Courses > All Courses > Add New Content (+) |
| Event-Based Course | Event-based courses are a combination of native course authoring and a VILT so learners can access their VILT, alongside course assets like accompanying course pages and assessments that support pre- and post-event learning. | Courses > All Courses > Add New Content (+) |
| Gamification | The Thought Industries platform leverages two powerful and flexible pieces of functionality—awards and badges—to enable you to create a gamification program tailored to your learner demographic and industry/business needs | Main Menu > Settings |
| Instance | Your instance is your main learning site where your content resides and where learners interact with the site. | N/A |
| Layouts | Your learning site includes a number of pages that come in handy for specific scenarios and user flows. These include a homepage, catalog, support page, etc. You can edit/change these built-in layouts using the page builder tool. | Site > Site Builder > Layouts |
| Left Navigation (Main Navigation) | The left (or main) navigation is the list of areas of the tool on the left side of your screen. This list can change once you click into an area of the tool. | Upon admin or manager signing in |
| Look | A Look is available in the Reporting area. Each Look is a standalone visualizations or one data tile. | Reporting > Create |
| Menu Drop Down (aka Actions Menu) | Three dot vertical icon that users click next to a piece of content to get to a menu. | On lists of items, like Content or Learners |
| Microlearning (Content Type) | MicroCourses are a single lesson content type that allow you to create engaging, hyper-relevant content for your learners. They are quicker to develop, but have all of the same robust features as a regular course. | Courses > All Courses > Add New Content (+) |
| Help? | Click on "Help?" in the sidebar for easy access to featured content as well as quick links to the full Academy site and our Help Center. As you navigate around the application, you will find curated learning experiences based on the part of the platform you are in. | Main Menu |
| Pages | Create as many custom pages for your site as you want using our built-in widgets or your own custom HTML/CSS. Include these custom pages across your learning site. |
Site > Site Builder |
| Panorama | With Panorama, you can create clients and licenses on your learning site, which allows for various cohorts to have a fully white-labeled, branded experience and be segregated from other cohorts. You can provision access to specific content to each cohort, track licensing details, view client reports, and much more. This is most useful if you are selling or otherwise granting content access to other companies or even to departments within your organization. | Main Menu |
| Preview Thumbnail | The area a manager role would click on in a course to open a preview in a new tab. Top right of the screen. Click the eye icon. | From a specific piece of content |
| Reporting | The Reporting area's intuitive and centralized interface offers rich data visualizations with built-in reporting and the ability to customize your reports to meet your unique business reporting needs and KPI measurements. | Main Menu |
| SCORM (Content Type) | Standalone SCORM content provides an optimal learning experience by directly launching the SCORM file in a new window without requiring the learner to enter the standard course learner view. You can incorporate an existing SCORM file into your learning site by using the SCORM template, which is intended for uploading single SCORM files. | Courses > All Courses > Add New Content (+) |
| Session | If you plan to offer multiple sessions of a course or webinar, you can create separate sessions with unique start and end dates. | When creating or editing a course |
| Snippets | Snippets allow you to create a collection of HTML elements to reuse and pull into WYSIWYG editors across the platform. These could be buttons, panels, pre-formatted paragraphs, or anything else you'd like to create. For example, if you are consistently adding headers to paragraphs in your courses, you can add a code snippet to your snippet library that will save the styling you'd like for your headers and allow you to use it over and over again. In order to add snippets to your library, navigate to: Courses > Settings > Snippets > New Snippet. You can also edit, copy, and delete existing snippets from this page. After giving your new snippet a name, add in the HTML code using the WYSIWYG editor. |
Courses > Settings |
| SSO | Single sign-on is a mechanism that allows you to authenticate users in your systems, and subsequently tell Thought Industries that the user has been authenticated. The user is then allowed access to Thought Industries without being prompted to enter separate login credentials. | Settings > Connections |
| Sublicenses | A sublicense is a subsection of a client account. When you create a client account in Panorama, we automatically create a Main license for that account. Under this account, you can create sublicenses to further segment the content your learners need to access and complete. | Panorama > Specific Panorama (click on Panorama name) > Sublicenses |
| Tags | Tags can be added to a piece of content to help you organize and provision that content however you need to. | Courses > All Courses > Specific Content |
| Branding | Using global Branding settings, the Thought Industries platform allows you to quickly configure four critical components of your global theme: logo, font, color palette, and (if you choose) background. These settings then apply universally across your site. If you need to, you can override the global Branding in some places, such as in particular courses. If not, everything you add to the site will be properly branded once you configure these settings. | Site > Branding |
| Third-Party Services | Our platform supports six different types of integrations, including native integrations, middleware, notifications, tracking scripts, single sign-on, and APIs. | Settings > Connections |
| Translations | Translations allow you to customize the default boilerplate language used on the site to match your organization’s own voice and terminology. This could be as simple as using the term "surname" instead of "last name,” for example. Such changes may seem small, but they make a big difference in making your site feel like your own. | Settings > Translations |
| Users | In the Users area, you can set up your Learners, Administrators, and Managers who will interact with your learning instance. This area also provides access to adding registration and redemption codes for your content. | Main Menu |
| Video (Content Type) | The video template creates a standalone scrollable text page featuring a video at the top. Multiple settings and features are available. The video template is used to display a video as one page, with additional text if desired. | Courses > All Courses > Add New Content (+) |
| VILT (Content Type) | This content type lets your create a training session held remotely through a remote meeting tool. | Courses > All Courses > Add New Content (+) |
| Webinars | Our webinar and online meeting integrations let you use the most common virtual meeting platforms in your virtual instructor-led events. Admins can create and monitor webinars and meetings from within the Thought Industries platform, and learners can easily join from your site. | Courses > Settings |
| xAPI (Content Type) | This content type allows you to upload an xAPI file as a standalone module on your site | Courses > All Courses > Add New Content (+) |