How to manage student workspaces from the Instructor Console

Modified on Fri, 17 Oct at 9:57 AM

This article is meant to be used as a guide for navigating some of the Instructor Console features.

The option to lock, unassign, and assign workspaces to students can be used in situations where a student’s workspace has become unusable and restarting the lab or getting a Fast Track developer involved are the only options to allow the student to proceed. Our goal in providing this functionality is to allow instructors additional capabilities to support their students quickly and efficiently, and allow students to proceed with learning about the great products and solutions that Fortinet has to offer.

To leverage this new ability, instructors simply need to take the following steps to provide a new workspace environment to students:

Lock the currently non-functioning workspace.
Unassign the non-functioning workspace from the student.
Assign a new workspace to the student.

The details of how to accomplish these 3 steps are outlined below.

Locking a workspace

To begin re-assigning a workspace to a student, you first need to lock the workspace. Leaving a non-functioning workspace unlocked allows another student to mistakenly claim it when starting their lab. Therefore, locking the workspace before unassigning it from a student, makes it unclaimable and sets it aside for the Fast Track development team to investigate any possible issues later.

From the Instructor Console, under the Actions menu, you will find the Lock workspace option.
Upon selecting this option, a window will appear asking you to confirm the workspace that needs to be locked.
Verify you’ve selected the appropriate student workspace and click the blue Lock button to proceed.

Depending on the size of the lab environment, the locking process can take upwards of a minute or two. In the State column of the Instructor Console, you will see the status change from Started to Locking and eventually to Locked.

Note: If the locking process takes longer than 5 minutes, an error may have occurred and the locking has failed. In this situation, please open a ticket with fasttrack@fortinet.com and note the workspace ID so we can investigate the cause.

Unassigning a workspace

Now that the student's workspace has been locked, you can unassign it without worry that another student will claim the non-functioning workspace.

From the Instructor Console, under the Actions menu, you will find the Unassign workspace option.
Upon selecting this option, a window will appear asking you to confirm that you want to unassign the workspace.
Click the blue Unassign button to proceed.
Although the workspace has been unassigned, the lab guide progress is preserved and tied to the workspace, not the student. In the Instructor Console, the unassigned workspace can be identified by the Workspace ID, if previously recorded, or by finding the an unassigned and locked workspace with progress in the lab guide as noted in the screenshot below.

The unassign action is very quick to execute. From the student's perspective, they will lose access to the devices in their lab and their lab guide progress will reset. If the student is aware this action is taking place, or they haven't seen the changes take effect, they can force a browser refresh to update their session.

Note: After the student's browser session has reset, if they have not been assigned a new workspace, the blue Start button will be visible again. The student can claim the next available workspace by clicking this button. However, if a non-functional workspace was not locked prior to it being unassigned from the student, the student could potentially reclaim the non-functional workspace. If this is the situation, we recommend proceeding to directly assigning a functioning workspace to the student rather than asking the student to claim the next available workspace with the Start button.

Assigning a workspace

Any unassigned and active workspace can be assigned to a student without an already assigned workspace. In order to assign a workspace, it must be in the Started state. Therefore, if a workshop is in the Locked state, you must first unlock the workspace before assigning it.

From the Instructor Console, in the Name column, click the +Assign User button on an unassigned workspace. Only workspaces with a state of Starting or Started are able to be assigned.
Upon selecting this option, a window will appear with a pull-down menu of all available students that are eligible for assignment.
Once you've selected the student you wish to assign the workspace to, click the blue Assign button to proceed.

From the student's perspective, once a workspace has been assigned, their browser will refresh and they'll see the lab guide progress has been reset. If the student is aware this action is taking place, or they haven't seen the changes take effect, they can force a browser refresh to update their session.

Note: If you want to assign a non-functional workspace to yourself to investigate an issue further, and you've already claimed your workspace for use during the class, your name will not appear in the list of eligible accounts. In this case, you can lock your current workspace, unassign it, and then assign the non-functional workspace to yourself.

Unlocking a workspace

Before a workspace can be assigned, it must be unlocked first. For the most part, since it is assumed a workspace has been locked because it is non-functional, unlocking should rarely be needed. However, if an instructor wants to assign a non-functional workspace to themself to continue troubleshooting an issue, you will find you need to unlock the workspace first.

From the Instructor Console, under the Actions menu, you will find the Unlock workspace option.
Upon selecting this option, a window will appear asking you to confirm the workspace that needs to be locked.
Verify you’ve selected the appropriate workspace by it's Workspace ID and click the blue Lock button to proceed.

Depending on the size of the lab environment, the unlocking process can take upwards of a minute or two. In the State column of the Instructor Console, you will see the status change from Locked to Unlocking and eventually to Started.

Note: If the unlocking process takes longer than 5 minutes, an error may have occurred and the unlocking has failed. In this situation, please open a ticket with fasttrack@fortinet.com and note the workspace ID so we can investigate the cause.