Content and assignments

Content in Knowspread is not just a set of lessons. For operations, it is useful to distinguish the content itself, its versions, its availability in a client space, and concrete assignments to learners.

What assignments are good for

Content available in a space trains nobody by itself. It is the assignment that says who, what, and by when — and whether once, or again in a year. Telling a group from an individual and a deadline from a repetition pays off before you assign the first course.

• A whole department in one step. Everyone in production has to do safety training. You assign the content to the production group, and whoever joins the group later receives it with the group. Nobody walks the list of people one by one.
• An exception for one person, without touching the group. A contractor has to take a single course. You assign it to them directly; it shows even without group membership, and the group stays as it was.
• Training comes back on its own, not when somebody remembers. A forklift licence is valid for a year. The assignment carries a repetition rule — after what period the training should appear again — and reporting shows the expected deadline. You keep no separate spreadsheet of dates.
• Licences do not run out halfway through a rollout. You want to give a marketplace course to two hundred people and there are a hundred licences. You check the purchased content’s capacity before assigning broadly, so you decide up front rather than while assigning.

When a person reaches the same content by several paths, participation sources explain why their study record exists. What to decide before each assignment is summarised in the client decisions table below.

Simplified model

flowchart LR
  Content[Content] --> Version[Content version]
  Content --> CICS[Content in company space]
  CICS --> License[License]
  CICS --> Assignment[Assignment]
  Assignment --> Group[Group]
  Assignment --> User[User in space]
  Assignment --> Participation[Study record]

Own and purchased content

Type	Meaning
Own content	The space created the content and manages its versions.
Purchased content	The space has the content through an offer or marketplace.

Purchased content usually has a limited number of licenses. A license is consumed for a user and content in a space.

Content versions

Content can have multiple versions. The important concept is the active version in a space. When a newer active version exists, content may be upgradeable, but that does not automatically mean every in-progress study record should change.

Assignments

Content can be assigned to:

• a group,
• an individual user.

One assignment should not target both a group and an individual user. If a user gets to the same content through several paths, the system must be able to explain why the study record exists. Participation sources are used for that.

Client decisions

Decision	Recommendation
Group or direct assignment	Use groups for stable recurring audiences; use direct assignment for exceptions.
Deadline	Decide whether the deadline comes from the group, direct assignment, or rollout policy.
Repetition	Define what should happen after completion and when the learning should return.
Version change	Decide whether learners should continue the current version or move to the latest one.
License limit	Check purchased content capacity before assigning broadly.

Repetition and deadlines

An assignment can carry a deadline and repetition rules. From a client perspective, it is important to distinguish:

• when training should be completed,
• after what period it should appear again,
• whether a direct assignment should override the group deadline.

These details are handled internally by ContentAssigner.

QA checks

• A user added to an assigned group receives the content.
• A user removed from the group no longer receives the assignment unless another source still applies.
• A direct assignment appears even if the user is not in the group.
• Reporting shows the expected deadline.
• Completed learning stays traceable after assignment changes.