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— How-to

Schedule and draft lessons

Alva Courses lets you control exactly when each lesson goes live. Keep a lesson as a draft while you finish it, or schedule it to publish on a future date so students only see it when you are ready.

Last updated · October 12, 2026 Read time · 3 min Author ·

How it works

Every lesson has a publish status. A draft lesson is fully hidden from enrolled students, so you can write and edit it in private. A scheduled lesson stays locked until the date you choose, then opens automatically — no need to log back in.

Set a lesson's publish status

1. Open the lesson in the builder

In the Shopify admin, open Alva Courses, select your course, and click the lesson you want to control in the drag-and-drop builder.

Each lesson row shows its publish status at a glance.

2. Set the publish status

Use the lesson's status control to choose Draft, Published, or Scheduled. Draft hides the lesson from students; Published makes it visible to everyone enrolled.

3. Pick a publish date for a scheduled lesson

Choose Scheduled, then set the date the lesson should go live. The lesson stays locked until that date, when it opens automatically.

4. Save and check the pill

Save the lesson. The builder shows a Draft or Scheduled pill on the lesson row so you can see its status at a glance.

Change visibility for many lessons at once

Alva Courses can give many lessons the same visibility in one step. On the course's Course tab, click Edit Visibility above the course outline to open Bulk Edit Lesson Visibility.

  • Under Set state to, choose Published, Draft, Scheduled or Drip.
  • Scheduled asks for a Release date. The lessons open on that date at midnight in your shop's time zone.
  • Drip asks for Days after enrollment, a whole number from 0 to 36,500.
  • Tick the lessons to change. Each section's checkbox ticks all of its lessons, and Select all or Deselect all covers the whole course.
  • Click Apply. The button shows how many lessons are ticked.

Every ticked lesson changes, or none does. If the save fails, Alva Courses shows Failed to update lessons. Changes reverted. and the outline goes back to how it was.

The bulk editor changes lessons, not sections. To change a section, click Visibility on that section, choose a state and click Save, then click Save again in the save bar. A lesson inside a Draft section stays hidden from students whatever its own setting.

Visibility also decides which lessons count toward finishing the course. Draft lessons, and lessons in a Draft section, don't count. Scheduled and Drip lessons count from the moment you set them, even before students can open them.

After a visibility change, Alva Courses recalculates enrolled students' progress in the background. Adding lessons to the count can move a student who had finished back below 100% until they complete the new ones. The recalculation never marks anyone as having completed the course, and it leaves students who have already been emailed their certificate as they are.

Hidden lessons still appear in a PDF export, which includes draft, scheduled and drip lessons. Preview shows drafts too, so you can check them before you release them.

What learners see

Students never see draft lessons in the storefront course player. A scheduled lesson shows in their lesson list as locked, with a note saying when it unlocks, and opens on its release date. They continue the course as normal in the meantime.

See also

Building courses

Drip-feed lessons on a schedule

Release lessons a set number of days after each student enrols, rather than on a fixed date.

 Building courses

Add sections and lessons

Build the curriculum in the drag-and-drop builder before you schedule it.

 Lesson content

Require completion before the next lesson

Turn on sequential gating so lessons unlock only after the previous one is finished.

 Building courses

Search lessons in a course

Find any lesson by its name, its section or the words inside it.

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Last updated 2026-10-12