Managing Units

Managing units in Nimbu requires an understanding of the relationship between Draft and Published unit/ content. The system is designed to allow continuous curriculum improvement while protecting the integrity of active student data.

Once a unit is published, it becomes a permanent record of a student’s achievement. Therefore, any significant updates to a published unit must be managed through the Versioning system, which creates a separate but linked iteration of the original curriculum.

What's Covered in This Article

This article covers the key workflows for managing existing units throughout their lifecycle, including how edits and status changes affect active classes and enrolled students.

Editing a Draft Unit: Making changes to a unit before it is published.
Creating a New Version of a Published Unit: How to update a live unit without disrupting students currently enrolled in it.
Setting a Unit to Inactive: What soft deletion means and how it impacts courses and classes.

Editing Draft Units

A unit in Draft status can be edited freely. No students have access to a draft unit, so changes can be made at any time without disrupting active learning. The following can be changed in a draft unit:

Unit title, description, and coding (National Code or Internal Code)
Sections: adding, renaming, reordering, or deleting
Content items: adding or removing assessments, observations, and learning resources
Prerequisite settings for sections and content items
Unit-level settings such as Trainer Activation Required

To edit a draft unit:

Navigate to Units in the left-hand sidebar.
Locate the unit and click its name to open it.
Make your changes directly within the unit editor.
Click Save to retain your changes, or Publish when the unit is ready for use.

Note: Once a unit is published, its structure is locked. You can no longer add or remove content items, modify sections, or change prerequisite settings on the published version

Creating a New Version of a Published Unit

When a unit is already live and assigned to classes, you cannot edit its structure directly. Instead, Nimbu uses a versioning system that allows you to prepare updates in a draft version without affecting students currently working through the existing version.

How Versioning Works

A unit moves through the following stages:

Draft : Work-in-progress. Not visible to students.
Published : The live version, available for use in courses and classes.
Inactive : A superseded version, retained for continuity and compliance but no longer available for new class creation.

When you publish a new version, the previous published version automatically moves to Inactive status.

Creating a New Draft Version

Navigate to Units and open the published unit.
Locate the version bar at the top of the unit, which displays the current version (e.g. Current Version V.1).
Click + Add Draft Version.
Nimbu creates a duplicate of the current published unit, marked as Draft Version V.2.
Make your changes within the new draft version. Your edits are not visible to students until the version is published.
When ready, click Publish to make V.2 the active version.

What Happens When You Publish a New Version

New classes created after this point will use the new version (V.2).
Existing classes already running on V.1 are not affected. Students enrolled in those classes continue to see and complete V.1 until they finish the unit.
The previous version (V.1) moves to Inactive. It remains accessible to students already enrolled in it but will not be assigned to any new classes.

Note: This versioning behaviour ensures students mid-course are never disrupted by curriculum updates. New cohorts receive the updated content automatically when their class is created.

Viewing Version History

You can review a unit's full version history using the version bar at the top of the unit. This allows you to toggle between the current version and any previous inactive versions, which is useful for compliance purposes and audit reviews.

Setting a Unit to Inactive (Soft Deletion)

When a unit is no longer needed, it can be set to Inactive rather than permanently deleted. This is referred to as a soft deletion - the unit is hidden from active use but preserved in the system.

Important: Published and Inactive units cannot be permanently deleted. This restriction protects the audit trail for any unit that has been used in training delivery.

How to Set a Unit to Inactive

Navigate to Units and locate the unit.
Open the unit and access its settings.
Change the unit's status to Inactive and confirm.

Impact on Courses

An Inactive unit is no longer available for selection when building or editing courses.
If an Inactive unit was already included in a published or inactive course, it remains in that course for record-keeping purposes. However, changes to courses and units in this state will not affect classes that are already active.
New courses cannot include an Inactive unit.

Impact on Classes

Active classes that include the Inactive unit are not immediately affected. Students currently enrolled in the class can continue to access and complete the unit as normal.
The Inactive unit will not appear as an option when creating new classes or adding units to existing ones.

Note: If you need to stop students from accessing a unit in an active class, this must be managed at the class level rather than by deactivating the unit. Contact your administrator if you need to restrict access for specific students or classes.