Create a Module for an Enablement Site

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Create and format a module.
Create a quiz.

Convert Drafts

To bring an enablement site to life, your company first develops a content strategy for the trails and modules it wants to create. Then content creators develop and review drafts in a tool that allows for authoring, collaboration, and reviews. The next step is for content creators to convert those drafts into the actual trails and modules that you want to publish to your company’s enablement site.

To learn more about developing a content strategy and writing drafts, check out the Writing for an Enablement Site module.

Cindy, a content creator at Pure Aloe, a fictional company that’s implementing an enablement site, has finished writing the drafts of two new modules. She and her subject matter experts collaborated in a word processing tool to write, review, and finalize content. Now she’s ready to convert those drafts into modules.

You can’t follow these steps in a Trailhead Playground, because enablement sites aren’t available in Trailhead Playgrounds.

Create a Module

Cindy’s first task is to create a module in Trailmaker Content. She logs in to the Pure Aloe enablement site, clicks her user avatar in the upper right, and selects Trailmaker.

As a content creator, Cindy is responsible for writing and converting content, but another colleague is responsible for publishing content. So, Cindy has permission to access the Trailmaker Content app, but she can’t access any of the other Trailmaker apps.

When Cindy logs in to Trailmaker, she’s already in the Trailmaker Content app (1). To get started with adding her content, she clicks Add Content (2) and selects New Module (3).

Workspace in Trailmaker Content, highlighting the New Module entry in the Add Content dropdown

On the Edit Module page, she enters the module’s information.

The Edit Module page in Trailmaker Content, showing the module’s information that a writer enters.

The art for the badge that a learner earns when they complete the module (1).
A title (2).
A unique API name (3), which is the programmatic name that appears in URLs to the content. Accept the suggested API name, which is based on the title you entered, or enter a custom name. Each module API name must be globally unique.
A short description (4).
Filter values that help learners find the content when they search your enablement site (5).

Let’s pause here and talk about filters. Trailmaker requires you to select at least one filter value for each category: Roles, Level, and Products. You can select the default values, or a user with the Manage Site Settings permission can use the Trailmaker Settings app to customize the available values.

Cindy knows that this module is intended for the Pure Aloe Sales team, and understands that the content will be included in the Sales Team content collection that the admin, Joseph, created. Cindy knows that various stakeholders at Pure Aloe collaborated to define a content strategy that outlines how filters complement the content collections that the company plans to create. Cindy makes sure that she selects the correct filter values for this module.

Let’s say that the content strategy for the Sales Team content collection allows for these filter values.

Category	Values
Roles	Sales Associate Sales Staff Sales VP
Levels	Beginner Intermediate Advanced
Products	All Products

For this module, Cindy selects these filters.

Role: Sales Associate
Level: Beginner
Products: All Products

Cindy is ready to save her progress, but she doesn’t see a Save button. Thankfully, she notices the timestamp in the upper right corner of the page. Trailmaker saves your work to the cloud automatically every few seconds, so you can work with confidence that your progress won’t be lost.

The new module page in Trailmaker Content, showing the timestamp when the module was most recently saved.

Create a Unit

Content collections, trails, modules, and units help organize, structure, and deliver content in meaningful ways for learners. A module consists of units in a sequence, where each unit covers a bite-sized topic (in fact, you’re reading a unit right now!).

Let’s see how Cindy adds a unit to her module. From the Edit Module page in Trailmaker Content, Cindy clicks New Unit. Then she enters the unit's information.

The Edit Unit page in Trailmaker Content, showing the unit’s information that a writer enters.

A title (1).
A unique API name (2), which is the programmatic name that appears in URLs to the content. Accept the suggested API name, which is based on the title you entered, or enter a custom name. Each unit API name must be globally unique.
The number of points that a learner earns when they complete all the quiz questions correctly (3).
An estimate for how many minutes it takes to complete the unit (4).
The content of the unit (5), copied from the draft document.

Format Content

If you’ve ever copied text from one application to another, then you know that sometimes styles and formatting don’t persist between applications. Trailmaker Content is subject to the same limitations. When Cindy pastes her text into Trailmaker Content, most styles carry over—headings, lists, and more. For any formatting that doesn’t carry over, Cindy can use the toolbar to restore styles, add multimedia, create a table, and more.

Add Images

If your draft contains images, double-check that your images copied correctly after you paste the unit content. To adjust an image in Trailmaker Content, select the image, and use the options in the formatting mini toolbar.

Replace the image with a different file.
Specify whether the image appears on its own line (for most images) or inline (for small images, such as icons).
Align the image left, center, or right.
Adjust the image dimensions.
Enter alternative (alt) text for accessibility.
Add a link to the image.
Delete the image.

You can also insert a new image by clicking the image icon on the Trailmaker Content toolbar. Upload an image file, or reference a file on a content delivery network by URL. You can drag corners to resize an image, but the formatting mini toolbar doesn’t support wrapping text around the image.

Add Accessibility Information to an Image

To support visually impaired learners, add alternative text (alt text) to every image. Alt text provides a description of the image that a screen reader can read aloud. For example, a screenshot of the Edit Unit page in Trailmaker Content can have the alt text, “Screen of the Edit Unit page in Trailmaker Content.”

To add alt text to an image, select the alt text icon icon from the image formatting mini toolbar.

If you forget to add alt text to an image, Trailmaker Release reports a warning for the unit. A warning doesn’t prevent your release manager from publishing, but alerts you to issues in your content that can affect the enablement site experience and that you probably want to fix.

Add Videos

To add a video, find the embed URL for the video from the hosting platform where the video is published. The embed URL isn’t necessarily the same path as the URL where the video is accessed. Click the video icon on the Trailmaker Content toolbar, and enter the embed URL.

Create a Multiple-Choice Quiz

After you update your unit’s content with the appropriate formatting and accessibility attributes, there’s one thing left to do: Add the quiz! A quiz gives your company a handy, built-in tool for assessing learners’ comprehension of your content. You can get creative with your evaluation and ask scenario-based questions that ask learners to apply what they’ve learned.

Here’s how Cindy adds a quiz.

Edit Unit page in Trailmaker Content, showing the New Assessment button.

From the Edit Unit page, click New Assessment.
On the Edit Assessment page, click New Question, and copy the first quiz question from the draft.
To add the possible answers, click New Answer and copy an answer from the draft.
To select the correct answer, check Select next to the appropriate answer.

Edit Assessment page, showing quiz question with four answers and highlighting the Select radio button for the correct answer

To add another question, click New Question and repeat these steps.

Cindy can also rearrange questions and answers. To more easily rearrange questions, she enables the Collapse toggle (1), selects a question’s grabber handles (2), and moves the question to a different order.

Edit Assessment page, showing the Collapse toggle enabled and highlighting the grabber handles on a question.

Cindy has finished building the first unit in the Pure Aloe Sales Strategies module. She creates the remaining two units in this module, then creates the second module, Pure Aloe Competitors.

Next, Cindy previews the modules in her Trailmaker Content workspace, so that she can confirm that her content copied correctly from her drafts and is formatted correctly.