Managing the Lesson Library

The Lesson Library is the central hub for all teaching content in your church's education program. It provides multiple ways to browse, filter, and organize lessons so teachers and admins can quickly find what they need.

Accessing the Lesson Library

Navigate to Lessons from the admin sidebar. The lesson library page displays:

• Dashboard statistics showing total lessons, approved count, draft count, and archived count.
• Audience breakdown showing how many lessons target each age group.
• Category breakdown showing lesson distribution across topics.
• Recently taught lessons from the last 3 months.
• Lessons grouped by audience in tile cards for quick browsing (the Audience View).

View Modes

The lesson library supports two view modes, switchable via the List View and Audience View toggle icons in the toolbar:

List View

Displays lessons in a paginated table format with columns for title, status, audience, category, teach count, and last taught date. Best for scanning through many lessons quickly.

Audience View

Groups approved lessons by audience into visual tile cards (Kids, Youth, Adults, All Ages, and No Audience Set). Each group shows up to 6 recent lessons. Best for getting an overview of content coverage across age groups.

Your view preference is saved in your browser and persists between visits.

Searching and Filtering

Search

Type in the search bar to find lessons by title, description, or scripture reference. The search applies across all matching fields simultaneously.

Filters

The following filters are available and can be combined:

• Status -- Filter by Draft, Approved, or Archived lessons.
• Age Group -- Filter by the suggested age group values that exist in your lesson library.
• Audience -- Filter by target audience (Kids, Youth, Adults, All Ages). The audience filter automatically includes lessons marked as "All Ages" and lessons with no audience set.
• Category -- Filter by lesson category (Bible Study, Worship, Discipleship, etc.).
• Series -- Filter by series name to see all lessons in a specific curriculum.
• Has Attachments -- Show only lessons that have file attachments, or only those without.
• Taught Status -- Show lessons that have never been taught, or only those that have been used at least once.
• Archived -- Include archived lessons in the results, or show only archived lessons.

An indicator shows when filters are active so you can easily tell when you are viewing a filtered subset.

Organizing by Series and Curriculum

Series are the primary way to organize multi-week curriculum in TimelyChurch.

Creating a Series

There is no separate "create series" step. Simply assign the same Series Name to multiple lessons. The series appears automatically in the filter dropdown.

Ordering Within a Series

Use the Series Order field on each lesson to control the sequence. Lesson 1 of a series should have Series Order = 1, Lesson 2 = 2, and so on.

Browsing a Series

1. Use the Series filter dropdown on the lesson list page.
2. Select the series name.
3. All lessons in that series are displayed, ordered by their series position.

Each lesson detail page also shows other lessons in the same series for easy navigation.

Tips for Curriculum Planning

• Use a consistent naming convention for series (e.g., "Q1 2025 - Kids" or "Summer VBS 2025").
• Combine series with audience tags so you can filter by both.
• Duplicate an entire series worth of lessons to create a template for a new quarter.

Bulk Actions

Select multiple lessons using the checkboxes to perform bulk operations:

Approve Selected

Select draft lessons and approve them all at once. This is helpful when reviewing a batch of teacher-submitted lessons.

1. Check the boxes next to the lessons you want to approve.
2. Click the Approve Selected button in the action bar that appears.
3. All selected lessons are changed to Approved status.

Archive Selected

Select lessons and archive them as a group.

1. Check the boxes next to the lessons you want to archive.
2. Click the Archive Selected button.
3. Confirm the action.
4. All selected lessons are archived and soft-deleted.

Select All

Use the "Select All" checkbox in the table header to select all lessons on the current page.

Managing Individual Lessons

Viewing a Lesson

Click any lesson title to open its detail page. The detail page shows:

• Full lesson content (description, objectives, scripture, supplies)
• Audience and category labels
• Series information and related lessons in the series
• Parent-facing content (summary, memory verse, home activity, discussion questions)
• Attachments (files and links)
• Teaching History (the schedules where this lesson has been used)
• Teach count and last taught date

Editing a Lesson

1. Open the lesson detail page.
2. Click the Edit button (it switches to Cancel while you are editing) to enter edit mode.
3. Modify any fields.
4. Click Save Changes to apply your edits.

Approving a Lesson

From the lesson detail page, click Approve to change a draft lesson to approved status (this button appears for draft lessons only). Approved lessons become available for teachers to select.

Archiving a Lesson

1. On the lesson list, open the row's actions menu for the lesson.
2. Click Archive and confirm in the dialog that appears.
3. The lesson is soft-deleted and its status changes to Archived.
4. Archived lessons can be viewed by using the "Archived" filter on the lesson list.

Restoring an Archived Lesson

1. On the lesson list, filter by "Archived Only" using the archived filter.
2. Open the lesson's row actions menu (or open the lesson detail page) and click Restore.
3. The lesson is restored with Approved status.

Permanently Deleting a Lesson

1. Archive the lesson first (it must be in the soft-deleted/archived state).
2. On the lesson list, apply the Archived Only filter.
3. Open the row's actions menu for the archived lesson and click Delete Permanently.
4. The system loops through every attachment on the lesson and removes the underlying file from cloud storage, then deletes the attachment record.
5. The lesson record itself is then hard-deleted (not soft-deleted) -- it disappears from the database entirely.
6. You are returned to the lesson library with a confirmation message.

This action cannot be undone. Historical schedule records that referenced the lesson keep their lesson reference orphaned (the schedule still exists, but the lesson link will resolve to nothing). For that reason, archive is preferred over permanent delete unless you specifically need the lesson removed for storage or compliance reasons.

Lesson Settings

Access lesson settings by clicking the gear icon on the Lessons page. Settings are organized into three tabs:

Categories Tab

• View, create, edit, and delete lesson categories.
• Each category has a name, color, and active/inactive status.
• System default categories (Bible Study, Worship, etc.) cannot be deleted but can be deactivated.
• Custom categories can be freely created and deleted.
• Use Reset to Defaults to restore the original category set.

Audiences Tab

• View, create, edit, and delete target audiences.
• Each audience has a name, emoji icon, color, age range, and active/inactive status.
• Default audiences (Kids, Youth, Adults, All Ages) are system entries and cannot be deleted but can be deactivated.
• Custom audiences can be created for more specific groups (e.g., "Toddlers 0-3" or "College Age").
• Use Reset to Defaults to restore the original audience set.

General Settings Tab

• Require approval for new lessons -- When enabled, new lessons are saved as drafts until an admin approves them.
• Allow teachers to create lessons -- Controls whether teachers can submit new lessons from the portal.
• Require Scripture Reference -- Makes the scripture reference field mandatory when creating lessons.
• Require Learning Objectives -- Makes the objectives field mandatory when creating lessons.
• Show teach count -- Controls whether the number of times a lesson has been taught is displayed.
• Show last taught date -- Controls whether the most recent teaching date is displayed.
• Show parent content in portal -- Controls whether parent-facing content (summary, memory verse, home activities) is visible in the member portal.