Cohort Trigger

The Cohort trigger attaches a track to a cohort program, so the track runs as part of each cohort that program creates. Use it for onboarding intakes, training groups, and any experience where people who start together should move through content together.

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Created from the program, fixed for life

A cohort track starts on its program’s page. Create a cohort track and Create a per-person track open the track editor with the trigger, the run mode, and the program already filled in, and the builder shows the trigger as Cohort · Once per cohort or Cohort · For each person. Attaching tracks to a program needs editor access on it (see the People list). A program has at most one Once per cohort track, counting drafts, and any number of For each person tracks. Archiving the cohort track frees the slot. The run mode and program are the track’s identity, so they’re fixed from then on. The builder shows both read-only, and an existing track can’t be re-pointed at a different program, switched to the other run mode, or turned into a cohort track later. Filters, steps, and everything else stay editable. To change the run mode or program, archive the track and create a new one. Archiving any track that’s attached to a cohort program, not just a track built this way, warns you first: the confirmation names the program and, if it still has active or upcoming cohorts, says they’ll lose this content when you go through with it. It’s a warning, not a block: archiving still goes ahead once you confirm.

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Start from an existing track

Instead of building from scratch, Import an existing track on the program’s page copies one of your existing tracks into a new draft already wired to this program and run mode, and opens it in the builder. The source track is never changed. Only your non-archived, non-cohort tracks are offered, since a cohort track already belongs to a program and can’t be moved to another. The copy carries over every step. Any that don’t fit the chosen run mode, like an Introductions or Tasks step imported into a once-per-cohort track, are kept but flagged as invalid in the builder, the same as if you’d added them there directly. Resolve or remove them before you can activate the copy.

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When per-person tracks start

A cohort has one clock: its first day. Day 1 of every per-person track is the first day of the cohort’s dates, at the program’s start time, read in each person’s own timezone. A 9:00 AM start lands at 9:00 AM local time for everyone, and later steps count from that same day. Per-person cohort tracks are not timed from each person’s own start date; that anchor belongs to the First day trigger, a separate feature. Most people land in a cohort days before it starts, and their tracks don’t start early. Each person is enrolled when the cohort opens, so the cohort, and its channel if it has one, exists before anything is sent. Someone who joins on the start day converges onto that clock: steps already due are delivered right away, and the rest keep their scheduled days. Someone who joins after the start day is enrolled and invited to the channel right away, and their track runs from the beginning at the next weekday slot during business hours, counting forward from there, rather than delivering past days all at once.

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Where each run mode sends

A Once per cohort track speaks to the group. Its steps post to the cohort channel by default, so the whole cohort receives messages, quizzes, or surveys together. A step can instead target a specific Slack channel, that channel’s members, specific people, or groups. Destinations relative to one person (User, Manager, Mentor, and the like) aren’t offered, because the track runs once for the whole cohort. A For each person track is a personal journey. Its steps deliver to the person being onboarded, or their manager, mentor, and the other per-person destinations, and can’t send to the cohort channel. Group announcements belong in the cohort track. Sending to the cohort channel only works when the program actually has a channel, meaning its Slack channel setting is Create automatically or Link existing. If a track sends to the cohort channel but the program is set to No channel, the track editor warns you and offers a one-click fix that switches the program to create a channel for each cohort. Publishing is blocked until the mismatch is resolved. If a published track ends up in this state anyway, for example because the program was edited later, the channel step fails with a stated reason and the rest of the track continues.

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Editing a published cohort track

You can edit a cohort track while cohorts are running through it. Edits apply to steps that haven’t been sent yet, including in runs already in progress. The editor shows a notice reminding you of this when you edit a live cohort track.

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