Most companies already have their training material. It's in a handbook, a policy document, an SOP, or a deck — written, accurate, and unread.
/courses new is the step that turns that into something people finish.
What the command does
You paste in the document. Poplearn does two things:
Splits it into modules. Each one short enough to complete in a single sitting, around six minutes. This is the structural work that turns reference material into training — a forty-page handbook and a forty-page course have exactly the same problem.
Writes the quizzes. Each module gets questions, so completion means something more than a message being marked as read.
You don't author anything. There's no editor, no templates, no layout decisions.
What makes a good source document
Real heading structure. The split follows your headings, so if section titles are proper heading styles rather than bold text, the modules land where you'd expect. In Google Docs or Word, check the outline view — anything not appearing there isn't a heading as far as anything automated is concerned.
Sections of a sensible size. Since sections tend to become modules, section length drives module length. Skim for anything that would take more than ten minutes to read and consider breaking it up first.
The original, not a PDF export. If the document started life in Google Docs, Word, or Confluence, use that. A PDF describes how a page looks rather than what it means, so structure has to be inferred — and multi-column layouts and heavy tables are where that goes wrong.
Clean of editorial artefacts. Resolve comments and suggestions, remove tables of contents and cover pages, and rewrite cross-references like "see section 4.2" — module four doesn't have one.
What to check afterwards
Read the generated modules before you assign anything. It takes a few minutes and it's the step people skip.
Did the split land sensibly? Each module should end somewhere that feels finished rather than mid-thought.
Does each module stand alone? Because they're completed separately, sometimes days apart, a module opening with "as described above" will confuse someone who did the previous one last Tuesday. Add a sentence of context or merge.
Are the questions testing anything? The common weakness in generated questions is an obvious answer — if one option is clearly the responsible-sounding one, someone who skipped the module still gets it right. Look for plausible distractors, and prefer questions about a decision over questions about wording.
Is the order right for teaching? Reference documents are often organised by system or alphabetically. Training should be ordered by what someone needs first. Reordering after generation is quick.
Keep the document canonical
The most important habit: treat the course as derived from the document rather than as a second copy of it.
If you start editing the course directly, the two drift, and within a year you have two versions of a policy that disagree — which is worse than either being slightly out of date. When the source changes, regenerate.
This works particularly well with Google Docs, where the version history and comment thread stay in one place and your team keeps the collaborative editing workflow they already use.
Then assign it
/assign #support sends the course to a person, a channel, or every new hire from that point forward, with reminders included. Modules arrive as Slack direct messages, one at a time.
/progress gives live completion by team, exportable on demand.
Add Poplearn to Slack and try it with one document you already have. Free under 20 seats, installs in about a minute.
