Instructor custom lessons

Overview

Custom lessons enable you to add your own content to Instructor. You can provide message text tailored to your users, and optionally include relevant media, such as a link to a video, a PDF, or internal documentation. Custom lessons appear alongside pre-built lessons, and can be automatically sent to users via an alert rule.

Create a custom lesson

To create a custom lesson:

1. In the Incydr console, select Instructor.
2. In the Custom lessons section, select Create custom lesson. Alternatively, select an existing custom lesson to edit it.
   
3. Complete the lesson details.
   • Title: The name that appears in the list of all Instructor lessons.
   • Description (optional): Provides the option to include a summary or additional context for future reference. The Description is not visible to end users.
   • Subject: The user-facing name of the lesson. For lessons sent via email, this appears as the email subject. For lessons sent via Slack, it is the first line of the message.
   • Message: The text sent to users. For best results, use a friendly and empathetic tone. Possible items to include:
     • The activity that caused this message to be sent
     • How the user can correct the issue or improve their behavior
     • Who to contact with questions
     • A description of any included media
     • Add placeholders to include specifics about the user's activity
   • URL for video or other media (optional): To include an external reference to a video, intranet site, or other training material, enter a URL here. This field only appears if the Media URL placeholder is included in the body of the message.
4. Click Save lesson.

Placeholders

Placeholders are variables that enable you to add activity-specific details to your message. 

To add a placeholder, position the cursor in the message text where you want the placeholder to appear, then click a placeholder name. For example, + Media URL. The placeholder appears in the message text as a string enclosed in double braces (also called curly brackets). For example: {{lesson.videoUrl}}. 

Do not edit the placeholder text, formatting, or enclosed double braces. Any change will cause the message sent to users to render incorrectly.

Available placeholders:

• User name: The email address of the user receiving the lesson
• Media URL: Displays the URL entered in the URL for video or orher media field below
• Action taken: The user activity that caused the lesson to be sent. Possible values include:
  • File uploaded to [destination]
  • File downloaded from [source]
  • File emailed from [source]
  • File shared from [source]
  • File transferred to an external device
  • File pushed using git
• Timestamp: The relative and UTC timestamp when the activity occurred. For example: “30 minutes ago (10:45:33 09/20/2024 UTC)"
• File name: A comma-separated list of files that were exfiltrated
• File URL: For files shared from a cloud storage provider monitored by an Incydr data connection, displays a link to the file. For Git events, displays the Git URL.

Send a custom lesson

Custom lessons are sent via alert rules.

To send a custom lesson, create an alert rule (or edit an existing rule) and select a custom lesson in Step 2 of defining the rule criteria.

Custom lessons cannot be sent manually from the Actions menu in a user's profile because the placeholders in the message require the lesson to be associated with a specific file event.

Related topics

• Introduction to Instructor
• Create and manage alert rules