01. Welcome to 5Mins: how it all fits together

Welcome to 5Mins: how it all fits together

This is for you if you have been given admin access to 5Mins and have not used it before. By the end of this article you will know what the learner app and the admin area each do, what the words we use mean, and where everything lives in the admin sidebar.

Before you start

  • You need a 5Mins account with admin access. If you cannot see the admin area, ask whoever set up your organisation to give you admin rights.

  • Nothing else. This is the first article in the course.

Watch the tour

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🎬 Watch this as a short narrated video

Steps shown in this video

  1. For You — your personalised hub: daily recommendations for your role and skills, with a calendar to browse days

  2. Your Workspace — every course you're enrolled in, with progress and due dates, plus categories to explore

  3. My Progress — points, jewels and streak, your assignments and skill levels, and the rewards marketplace

  4. The Feed — your team's learning wins, day by day. Celebrate them!

Two sides of 5Mins

5Mins has two sides, and it helps to keep them separate in your head from day one.

The learner app is what everyone in your organisation sees. It is where people watch lessons, work through courses, and track their own progress. You have it too, because you are also a learner.

The admin area is what you see because you have admin access. It is where you invite people, build and assign courses, and read the data on what is landing. Learners never see it.

The learner app, page by page

  1. For You is the personalised hub. It gives each person daily recommendations based on their role and skills, with a calendar so they can browse other days.

  2. Your Workspace shows every course the person is enrolled in, with progress and due dates, plus categories they can explore on their own.

  3. My Progress holds points, jewels, and streak, along with assignments, skill levels, and the rewards marketplace.

  4. The Feed shows your team's learning wins day by day. It is the social side of the platform, and it is worth celebrating what shows up there.

The words we use

  • Lessons are the bite-sized units of content. They are the thing a person actually watches or reads.

  • Courses are groupings of lessons. When you assign learning to someone, you enrol them into a course, not into a lesson.

  • Learners are the people using the learner app. Everyone in your organisation is a learner.

  • Admins are the people with access to the admin area. That is you. An admin is still a learner as well.

  • Teams are how you group your people. Teams make it possible to enrol and report on a whole group at once instead of person by person.

A tour of the admin sidebar

The admin sidebar is the map for everything in this course. Here is what each item is for.

  1. Home is your landing page in the admin area.

  2. People & Teams is where you invite people, group them into teams, and set managers. Articles 2 and 3 live here.

  3. Content & Courses is where lessons and courses live, and where you build a course of your own. That is article 4.

  4. Reports is where you see what is landing, including Course Completion. That is article 6.

  5. Skills covers the skills side of the platform.

  6. Learning Records is the record of learning, and where you export it. That is article 7.

  7. Events covers events.

  8. Account & Settings is where your organisation's settings and branding live.

What you should see now

You should be able to open the admin area, see the sidebar with those eight items, and switch back to the learner app to see For You, Your Workspace, My Progress, and The Feed. You do not need to have changed anything yet.

What this course will get you doing

By the end of article 7 you will be able to do four things without help:

  1. Invite people into 5Mins, one at a time or in bulk.

  2. Enrol those people into a course.

  3. Read course-completion data to see what is landing.

  4. Download learning records so you have the data outside 5Mins.

Common questions

Am I an admin or a learner? Both. Your admin access sits on top of a normal learner account, so you can see your own For You page and My Progress just like everyone else.

Can learners see the admin area? No. The admin area is only visible to people with admin access.

Do I need to read these in order? Yes. This is a crash course, and each article assumes you have done the one before it.

Next up

Next: Get your people in - inviting people individually and syncing them in bulk with a CSV.