Setting up a program

This page is the walkthrough: you have nothing yet, and you want a program that can actually run. It follows the creation wizard in the order the wizard really presents it, then covers what still has to happen after the wizard finishes.

If you’re instead trying to find where an existing setting lives, start from the orientation map.

Before you start

Two things are worth knowing before you click Create.

The wizard makes the program, not the run. It produces the program — the template: its identity, its roles, and its journey. It does not create a group of people or a set of dates. That’s a cohort, and you add it afterwards.
You can stop at any point. The wizard saves drafts. You can leave halfway through and pick the draft back up later; any drafts you have in progress are offered to you at the start. You can also delete a draft you no longer want.

The shape of the wizard

The wizard has three fixed steps at the front, three fixed steps at the back, and a middle section that changes size depending on what you switch on.

Always shown, in this order:

Template
Type
Basics

Then any optional steps you enabled (see below), then always:

Matching
Sessions
Review

Matching and Sessions cannot be skipped, and Review is always last.

Step 1 — Template

Choose to start from an existing template or from scratch.

Picking a template pre-fills the rest of the wizard — its type, its roles, its matching and session configuration, its items — so the remaining steps become “confirm and adjust” rather than “fill in”. Starting from scratch means every step starts at its defaults.

This step never blocks you: you can move on either way.

Step 2 — Type

Two choices here, and both matter more than they look.

The program style — Coaching, Mentoring, LIA, Reverse Mentoring, or Team Development. This sets the program’s character and its sensible defaults, including the default names for the participant roles.

The cohort model — this is a required choice, and the wizard will not let you past it:

Fixed cohort — defined start and end, and participants move through together. Suits time-boxed leadership programs and training initiatives.
Rolling program — continuous intake, and each participant runs on their own timeline. Suits ongoing coaching and buddy-style programs.

Step 3 — Basics

This is the heaviest step, and it decides what the rest of the wizard looks like.

Identity

Program name — required.
Program code — a short identifier (letters, numbers and hyphens). It must be unique within your organization; the field checks availability as you type. If you leave it blank, one is derived from the name.
Description — optional.

The roles

Support receiver — required, and there is exactly one per program. You pick the role from the library and give it the display name participants will actually see.
Support givers — optional, and you can have several (for example a mentor and a senior mentor). Each one you add needs both a role and a display name. A program with no support giver is a valid, self-paced program.
Side roles — optional, and you can have several (for example a line manager or an HR contact). Each needs a role and a display name.

Duration — optional. If you set it, it’s a number of weeks from the start, and it must be at least one.

Feature toggles — this is the part people miss. The switches at the bottom of Basics decide which configuration steps appear for the rest of the wizard. Exercises and Evaluations start on; Demand Collection, Handshakes, Tasks, Sidekick AI and 360 feedback start off.

Each switch you turn on adds its step to the wizard, in this fixed position:

Switch	Step it adds	Appears
Demand Collection	Intake	after Basics
Exercises	Exercises	after Intake
Handshakes	Handshakes	after Sessions
Tasks	Tasks	after Handshakes
Sidekick AI	Sidekick	after Tasks
Evaluations	Evaluations	after Sidekick
360 feedback	360 Feedback	after Evaluations

Turning a switch off later in the wizard removes its step again, so it’s cheapest to get this right here.

The optional steps

Each of these only appears if you enabled it on Basics. None of them is a hard gate — you can pass through them on their defaults and configure the detail later — but the wizard will warn you when a choice looks incomplete.

Intake — how people register and join: via an intake form, or added manually by an administrator. If you choose the form route and don’t pick a form, the wizard warns you and lets you continue; you can attach one later from Settings.
Exercises — pick the self-reflection and learning packages and their order. The wizard warns if you select none (participants would have no content) and warns again beyond five (too much).
Handshakes — stakeholder alignment and approval steps. Optional throughout; nothing required.
Tasks — real-world assignment packages, and which role each is aimed at.
Sidekick — AI coaching support: which themes are available and to which roles.
Evaluations — the pre, mid, and post program evaluation forms.
360 Feedback — the assessment type is required once the feature is on, and the minimum number of responses before results are shown must be between 1 and 20.

Step — Matching (always)

How participants are paired: manual, self-service, hybrid, or algorithm-driven, plus the shortlist size and how long a matching round may run.

Two things to know:

Shortlist size must be at least 1 — this one blocks you.
Algorithm and hybrid modes want a template. If you pick either without choosing a matching algorithm template, the wizard warns you and proceeds with the default algorithm. It’s a warning, not an error, but it’s usually worth going back for.

If you defined more than one support giver role, each can override the program’s matching mode and algorithm template — and each override is warned about separately if it lands on algorithm or hybrid without a template.

Step — Sessions (always)

The 1:1 session structure: which session package to use, the minimum and maximum number of sessions, the default duration, whether virtual and in-person are allowed, and whether session evaluations are required.

Two rules are enforced: the minimum must be at least 1, and the maximum must not be lower than the minimum.

Step — Review

The last step summarizes everything: type and style, name and code, the roles, the features you enabled, and your matching and session configuration. You must explicitly confirm before the program can be created.

Review re-checks the essentials rather than trusting earlier steps — if the name or the program type has gone missing, it tells you which step to go back to.

Creation is all-or-nothing. If any part fails, nothing is written and you stay in the wizard with your work intact. The one rejection people hit here is a program code already in use in the organization — go back to Basics and choose another.

What you have when the wizard finishes

The program is created and active, and you land on its hub. You now have a program with its identity, its roles, and a first draft of its journey assembled from what you chose.

What you do not yet have is a program that runs. Still to do:

Refine the journey. The wizard lays down the items your choices implied; the Items page is where you add, reorder, enable, disable and actually configure them. Every item has its own settings screen, and most of the real configuration lives there rather than in the wizard.
Work through Settings. Branding, language, competencies, closure rules and the rest are on the program’s Settings tabs — the wizard doesn’t ask about any of them.
Create a cohort. This is the step that turns the template into something people can be in. The wizard never creates one. Until a cohort exists, there is nothing for a participant to join.
Add the people. Members are added to the cohort, in a role — by an administrator, by invitation, or through intake if you enabled it.

Two things worth getting right early

The program code. It’s unique per organization and used as the program’s identifier. Choosing a throwaway code and regretting it later is a common, avoidable annoyance.
The feature toggles. They’re set once on Basics and they shape the entire rest of the wizard. If a step you expected never appeared, the toggle for it is off — go back to Basics.

Permissions

Creating a program requires the program-settings management permission. Program managers can’t create programs; the create route is closed to them.