Configure your Learning Center workshop

This topic describes the two main steps required to configure your Learning Center workshop. The first specifies the structure of the workshop content and the second defines the runtime requirements for deploying the workshop.

Specifying structure of the content

There are multiple ways you can configure a workshop to specify the structure of the content. The sample workshops use YAML files.

The workshop/modules.yaml file provides details about the list of available modules that make up your workshop and data variables for use in content.

The list of available modules represents all of the modules available to you. You might not use all of them. You might want to run variations of your workshop, such as for different programming languages. As such, which modules are active and are used for a specific workshop are listed in the separate workshop/workshop.yaml file. The active modules are listed with the name to be given to that workshop.

By default the workshop.yaml file specifies what modules are used. When you want to deliver different variations of the workshop content, you can provide multiple workshop files with different names. For example, you can name the workshop files workshop-java.yaml and workshop-python.yaml.

Where you have multiple workshop files and don’t have the default workshop.yaml file, you can specify the default workshop file by setting the WORKSHOP_FILE environment variable in the runtime configuration.

The format for listing the available modules in the workshop/modules.yaml file is:

modules:
  workshop-overview:
    name: Workshop Overview
    exit_sign: Setup Environment
  setup-environment:
    name: Setup Environment
    exit_sign: Start Workshop
  exercises/01-sample-content:
    name: Sample Content
  workshop-summary:
    name: Workshop Summary
    exit_sign: Finish Workshop

Each available module is listed under modules, where the name used corresponds to the path to the file containing the content for that module. Any extension identifying the content type is left off.

For each module, set the name field to the page title to be displayed for that module. If no fields are provided and name is not set, the title for the module is derived from the name of the module file.

The corresponding workshop/workshop.yaml file, where all available modules are used, would have the format:

name: Markdown Sample
modules:
  activate:
    - workshop-overview
    - setup-environment
    - exercises/01-sample-content
    - workshop-summary

The top-level name field in this file is the name of this variation of the workshop content.

The modules.activate field is a list of modules to be used for the workshop. The names in this list must match the names as they appear in the modules file.

The order in which modules are listed under the modules.activate field in the workshop configuration file dictates the order pages are traversed. The order in which modules appear in the modules configuration file is not relevant.

At the bottom of each page, a Continue button is displayed to allow the user to go to the next page in sequence. You can customize the label on this button by setting the exit_sign field in the entry for the module in the modules configuration file.

In the last module in the workshop, a button is displayed, but where the user goes after clicking it varies. If you want the user to go to a different website upon completion, you can set the exit_link field of the final module to an external URL. Alternatively, you can set the RESTART_URL environment variable in a workshop environment to control where the user goes. If a destination for the final page is not provided, the user is redirected back to the starting page of the workshop.

When the user uses the training portal, the training portal overrides this environment variable so, at the completion of a workshop, the user returns to the training portal.

VMware recommends that for the last page, the exit_sign be set to “Finish Workshop” and exit_link not be specified. This enables the destination to be controlled from the workshop environment or training portal.

Specifying the runtime configuration

You can deploy workshop images directly to a container runtime. The Learning Center Operator is provided to manage deployments into a Kubernetes cluster. You define the configuration for the Learning Center Operator with a Workshop CRD in the resources/workshop.yaml file:

apiVersion: learningcenter.tanzu.vmware.com/v1beta1
kind: Workshop
metadata:
  name: lab-markdown-sample
spec:
  vendor: learningcenter.tanzu.vmware.com
  title: Markdown Sample
  description: A sample workshop using Markdown
  url: YOUR-GIT-URL-FOR-LAB-MARKDOWN-SAMPLE
  content:
    image: {YOUR-REGISTRY-URL}/lab-markdown-sample:main
  duration: 15m
  session:
    namespaces:
      budget: small
    applications:
      console:
        enabled: true
      editor:
        enabled: true

Where YOUR-GIT-URL-FOR-LAB-MARKDOWN-SAMPLE is the Git repository URL for lab-markdown-sample. For example, {YOUR-GIT-REPO-URL}/lab-markdown-sample.

In this sample, a custom workshop image bundles the workshop content into its own container image. The content.image setting specifies this. To instead download workshop content from a GitHub repository at runtime, use:

apiVersion: learningcenter.tanzu.vmware.com/v1beta1
kind: Workshop
metadata:
  name: lab-markdown-sample
spec:
  vendor: learningcenter.tanzu.vmware.com
  title: Markdown Sample
  description: A sample workshop using Markdown
  url: YOUR-GIT-URL-FOR-LAB-MARKDOWN-SAMPLE
  content:
    files: YOUR-GIT-URL-FOR-LAB-MARKDOWN-SAMPLE
  duration: 15m
  session:
    namespaces:
      budget: small
    applications:
      console:
        enabled: true
      editor:
        enabled: true

Where:

YOUR-GIT-URL-FOR-LAB-MARKDOWN-SAMPLE is the Git repository URL for lab-markdown-sample. For example, {YOUR-GIT-REPO-URL}/lab-markdown-sample.

The difference is the use of the content.files setting. Here, the workshop content is overlaid on top of the standard workshop base image. To use an alternate base image with additional applications or packages installed, specify the alternate image against the content.image setting at the same time you set content.files.

Next steps

Learn about configuration options for the workshop.yaml custom resource definitions (CRD) in Workshop resource.