Course Approval Workflow

By default, instructors can publish their own courses the moment they are ready. If you run a marketplace-style academy where every course needs a look before it goes live, Learnomy has a course-approval gate: a site-wide toggle, a per-instructor override, and an Approve / Reject workflow on the Courses list.

Overview#

There are three parts to this feature:

1. A global setting at Learnomy Settings > Settings > Instructors that controls whether instructors can publish without review.
2. A per-instructor override on the instructor's detail page, for requiring approval from one specific instructor even while the global setting allows self-publish.
3. A Pending Review tab on the Courses list where you approve or reject submissions.

Turn on approval site-wide#

1. Go to Learnomy Settings > Settings, then open the Instructors section.
2. Find Self-Publish Courses. The toggle is labeled Allow instructors to publish courses without admin approval and is on by default.
3. Turn it off to require admin approval for every instructor. From then on, when an instructor submits a course it is held as Pending Review instead of going live, and you approve or reject it from the Courses list.
4. Click Save Changes.

You can also require approval for a single instructor while leaving this setting on for everyone else. See the next section.

Require approval for a single instructor#

Use this when most of your instructors are trusted to self-publish but one specific instructor's courses should always be reviewed first.

1. Go to Learnomy > Instructors and click the instructor's name to open their detail page.
2. In the page header, click Require course approval.
3. Confirm the prompt.

This instructor's course submissions are now routed to Pending Review even if the site-wide Self-Publish Courses setting is on. The button toggles: click Allow self-publish to remove the override for that instructor.

Reviewing pending courses#

1. Go to Learnomy > Courses.
2. Click the Pending Review tab. It shows every course currently awaiting your decision, whether it is held because of the global setting or a per-instructor override.
3. For each course, two row actions are available:
   • Approve - Publishes the course immediately. Confirm the prompt to proceed.
   • Reject - Prompts you for a rejection reason, then returns the course to Draft status so the instructor can revise it.

The instructor's experience#

When approval is required, an instructor submits their course as Pending Review from the course editor instead of publishing it directly, and you get a "Waiting for your review" email and notification. The course stays off the catalog until you approve it.

• Approved: the instructor gets an email and a notification that the course is live.
• Rejected: the course returns to Draft and the instructor gets an email and a notification with your reason. The reason also stays on the course: it shows under the course in My Courses on the instructor dashboard and at the top of the course editor in wp-admin, until the course is approved. The instructor makes changes and resubmits.

Each of these emails has its own switch under Learnomy Settings > Emails.

Tips#

• The global setting and the per-instructor override work together: turning the global setting off requires approval from everyone, while the per-instructor override only tightens the rule for one person on top of whatever the global setting allows.
• Approving a course from the Pending Review tab publishes it the same way the Publish action does anywhere else in Learnomy - it fires the normal course-published event, so anything that listens for a new course (webhooks, notifications) still triggers.
• Rejecting a course does not delete anything. It only changes the status back to Draft; all curriculum content is untouched.

Related#

• Managing Instructors
• Becoming an Instructor