Previewing, publishing and managing scenarios

A scenario is always in one of four states. Only Live scenarios reach learners; the other three are visible to staff only. This article covers previewing, editing and managing your scenarios day to day. For the review workflow in detail, see Submitting scenarios for review and publishing updates.

Scenario states

On the Scenarios page, each scenario shows its status:

Draft - being written. Nobody else is expected to act on it
Waiting for reviewer - the author has submitted it, and a reviewer needs to publish it or send it back
Waiting for author - a reviewer sent it back with feedback, and the author needs to make changes and resubmit
Live - published and available to learners, subject to access control

You can keep a scenario in draft for as long as you like while you build and test it. Use the Status filter on the Scenarios page to find scenarios in any state, and the Purpose filter to show only practice or assessment scenarios.

Previewing a scenario

Preview appears in the editor header once you have saved the scenario at least once with Save draft.

Select it to open the scenario's introduction page in a new tab and run the conversation exactly as a learner would, so you can check how the AI character performs before publishing. Attempt limits don't apply to you, so you can test as many times as you need.

Who can publish

Owners, administrators and assistant administrators can publish anything, and edit live scenarios in place
Cohort leads can publish scenarios aimed at the cohorts they staff
Authors cannot publish. They select Submit, and a reviewer publishes the scenario or sends it back with feedback

See Understanding roles in SimChat.

Editor actions

The actions in the editor header depend on your role and the scenario's state:

Save draft - save your progress without changing the state
Submit - send a draft to reviewers
Publish - make the scenario live
Send back - return a submitted scenario to its author with a note explaining what to change
Update - save changes to a live scenario, for administrators and assistant administrators
Unpublish - return a live scenario to draft and hide it from learners

Before a scenario can be published, someone must choose who can access it. If nobody has, SimChat asks for a choice first.

Changing a live scenario

Live scenarios are locked below the administrator tier so that learners are never disrupted mid-edit.

Administrators and assistant administrators open the scenario and select Update to edit it in place
Cohort leads and authors select Propose an update, which opens a draft copy. The live version stays available to learners while the copy goes through the normal review

Learners' past attempts are unaffected by edits: marking criteria and answers are saved on each attempt at the time it happened.

Editing a scenario

Open a scenario from the Scenarios page to edit it. Work through the steps and select Save draft, or Update for a live scenario if your role allows, to save your changes.

Imported library scenarios cannot be edited, but you can still organise them, control access and map them to your curriculum. See Using scenario libraries and importing scenarios.

Every change is recorded in the scenario's edit history - who did what, when, and which fields changed. Open it from the clock icon on the Scenarios page.

Choosing who can access a scenario

Every scenario has a visibility setting, and it must be chosen before the scenario can be published.

In the Key details step, under Who can access this scenario?, choose one of:

All users in this organisation - all learners can access the scenario
Specific cohorts - then select the cohorts that can access it. Learners in sub-cohorts of a selected cohort can access it too

If you choose Specific cohorts, you need to select at least one cohort. If you don't have any cohorts yet, administrators can create one without leaving the page.

You can change visibility at any time in Key details, or from the Scenarios list using Manage access.

Learners who are not in the permitted cohorts will not see the scenario. See Creating and managing cohorts.

Your organisation's author policies may limit authors to Specific cohorts only, and the Only show assigned content setting hides organisation-wide content from learners unless it is in an assigned collection. See How staff access to content works.

Organising scenarios

From the Scenarios page you can also:

Start a scenario yourself
Copy a scenario to create an independent draft
Edit avatar and voices without opening the full editor
Add to collection to group related scenarios. Collections help learners find scenarios; they don't control who can access them. See Organising scenarios using collections

Deleting a scenario

Open the scenario for editing and select the trash icon, then confirm with Delete. Deleting is permanent. If you only want to hide a scenario temporarily, unpublish it instead.

Authors can delete their scenarios only if your organisation's author policies allow it.

Updated on: 07/09/2026

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