Understanding Folders in Brevity

Folders in Brevity help you organize and share your content — courses, contexts, personas, topics, training plans, and assignments. They work a lot like folders on your computer, with a few rules specific to how Brevity handles teams and access. This guide covers what folders are for, where they live, how sharing works, and the best way to use them.

What Folders Do (and Don't Do)

Folders are for organizing and sharing content, not creating it. You build your courses and assignments first, then drop them into folders to group, tidy, or share them in bulk.

Folders DO	Folders DON'T
Group related content visually	Create courses or assignments
Share multiple items to a team at once	Replace assignment-level access controls
Live at a specific level (team or All Org)	Automatically appear at every level
Cascade sharing to most content inside	Share assignments inside them (see below)

Key Concept #1: Where You Make It Is Where It Lives

This is the most important rule to internalize:

A folder lives at the level where it was created.

If you create a folder while viewing a specific team, it's a team-level folder and only appears in that team's view.
If you create a folder while viewing All Organization, it's an org-level folder and only appears at the All Org view.

This applies to everyone, including Org Admins. Being an admin gives you the ability to navigate into any team — it does not merge every team's folders into the All Org view.

Sharing extends visibility

Sharing is the one thing that changes this rule. When you share an org-level (or team-level) folder with another team, that folder also shows up inside the recipient team's view. The folder still "lives" where it was created — sharing simply makes it visible (and its contents accessible) to additional teams.

Assignments must live at the team level for team admins to see them

Team Admins only see assignments that exist inside their team. An assignment created at All Org will not appear in a team admin's view, even if the underlying course is shared with that team. If you want a team's admins to manage or run an assignment, the assignment itself needs to be created at the team level (typically inside that team's view).

Tip: If you want one place to see and manage folders across your whole org, create them at the All Organization level. But create assignments at the team level when you need team admins to own them.

Key Concept #2: Sharing Folders

Folders are also a sharing tool. When you share a folder with a team, most of the content inside the folder is shared automatically.

Why share a folder?

You want a team to access a group of courses, contexts, personas, or topics in bulk.
You want to give a team edit access to a set of training materials so their admins can modify content.
You're rolling out a library of content to multiple teams and don't want to share each item one by one.

What gets shared when you share a folder

When you share a folder with a team, Brevity automatically extends access to:

Courses in the folder (and their associated contexts, personas, and topics)
Contexts in the folder
Personas in the folder
Topics in the folder

What does not get shared

Assignments inside a folder are NOT shared when the folder is shared. Assignments are tied to specific teams and are not transferable. If you want a team to have an assignment, you need to create or share the assignment to that team directly.

You'll see a warning to this effect in the share dialog when the folder contains assignments.

View vs. Edit permissions

When sharing, you choose a permission level for each team:

View — The team can see and use the content but cannot modify it.
Edit — The team can see, use, and modify the content.

Permissions stack in the direction of "more access." If a team already has view access via one share and you share another folder containing the same item with edit access, they'll be upgraded to edit.

Who can share a folder?

Only certain people can share a folder:

The folder's creator (owner)
An Org Admin
An admin of the team that owns the folder (for team-level folders)

If you don't see a share option, you're likely not in one of these roles for that specific folder.

Sharing direction

Org-level folders can be shared to any team in the organization.
Team-level folders can be shared to sibling teams in the same organization.
Folders cannot be "shared upward" to become All Org folders. If you want a folder at All Org level, create it there.

Private folders

Private folders can't be shared. If a folder is marked private, the share option is disabled. Make the folder non-private if you want to share it.

Unsharing

When you remove a team from a folder share, Brevity automatically cleans up the cascaded access — except where the same content is still covered by another share or another folder shared to that team. You don't need to manually unshare each course or context.

Key Concept #3: One Folder Can Live in Multiple Tabs

When you create a folder, you choose which content tabs it should appear under: Courses, Assignments, Contexts, Personas, Topics, Training Plans, or any combination. The same folder can be configured to show up in more than one tab.

Why this matters

If you want a single folder to organize both the course for a training module and the assignments built from that course, you don't need two folders. Configure one folder to appear in both the Courses tab and the Assignments tab. It's the same folder — same name, same share settings, same contents view — just visible in multiple places.

This is the recommended way to keep related content together. Creating "Q1 Onboarding" once and having it appear in both Courses and Assignments is cleaner than maintaining "Q1 Onboarding – Courses" and "Q1 Onboarding – Assignments" as separate folders.

Automatic assignment-to-folder linking

If a folder is set to appear in both the Courses tab and the Assignments tab, Brevity will automatically add new assignments to that folder when:

A course is already in the folder, and
Someone creates an assignment from that course

This works whether the course got into the folder directly or via a shared folder. So if you share a folder of courses to a team, navigate into that team, and create an assignment from one of those shared courses, the new assignment will land in the same folder automatically — as long as the folder is configured to include the Assignments tab.

If the folder only includes the Courses tab (not Assignments), this auto-linking does not happen and you'd need to add the assignment to a folder manually.

Recommended Workflow: Build, Share or Assign, Then Organize

For most admins, this sequence works best:

Step 1: Create Your Content

Build your courses (with their contexts and role plays) at either the team level or the All Org level.

Step 2: Share or Assign It

Use sharing when you want a team to have access to source content (courses, contexts, etc.) — often via a shared folder.
Use assignments when you want team members to actually complete training. Create assignments at the level (team or All Org) where you want to manage them.

For team-level assignments built from shared content, the flow is:

From All Org (or your library team), share the folder of courses to the target team with at least view access.
Navigate into that team's view (switch from All Org to the team).
From the team's Courses tab, find the shared course and create the assignment from there. The assignment will live at the team level, so the team's admins can see and manage it.
If the shared folder is configured to appear in both the Courses tab and the Assignments tab, the new assignment will be added to that same folder automatically — no manual filing needed.

Step 3: Organize with Folders (Optional)

Once your content and assignments exist, create folders to group related items. This is especially useful when you have many items and want to find or share things in bulk.

Best Practice: For high-level organization across teams, create folders at All Org. Reserve team-level folders for organization that only makes sense inside one team.

Folder Best Practices for Multi-Team Admins

Do your high-level organization at All Org. Create your main organizational folders at the All Organization level so you have one place to see the big picture.
Build content once, share it broadly. Create courses and role plays at All Org (or in a "library" team), then share them via folder to the teams that need them.
Create assignments where you want to manage them. Team-level assignments live inside team views. All Org assignments live at All Org.
Use folder sharing to onboard new teams quickly. Drop the courses, contexts, and personas a new team needs into a single folder, share with view or edit permission, and the team has everything in one shot.
Folders organize visibility — sharing controls access. A folder by itself doesn't give a team access to anything. Sharing the folder (or its contents directly) is what grants access.
Don't over-folder. You don't need a folder for everything. Folders earn their keep once you have a lot of related items to group or share together.

Quick Reference

I want to...	Do this
Organize content across the whole org	Create a folder at All Org, add items to it
Organize content inside a single team	Navigate to that team, create a folder there
Give a team access to several courses at once	Put them in a folder, share the folder with that team
Give a team access to a single course	Share the course directly (no folder needed)
Let a team modify shared content	Share with Edit permission
Let a team only use shared content	Share with View permission
Stop a team from accessing shared content	Remove them from the folder share
Share assignments with another team	Create or share assignments directly — folder sharing does not cover assignments

Troubleshooting

If something isn't showing up where you expect:

Check which level you're viewing. All Org and team views are separate. Folders and assignments only appear at the level where they were created (or shared to).
Check where the folder was created. A folder lives where you made it.
Check where the assignment was created. Same rule — assignments live where they were made.
Check sharing. If a team should see a folder but doesn't, confirm the folder is shared with that team (and isn't private).
Remember the assignment exception. If you shared a folder and the recipient team is missing the assignments, that's expected — share or create the assignments directly.

If you've checked all of the above and something still seems off, reach out to your Brevity support contact and we'll take a look.