Have you ever wanted the freedom to create your own labs with content unique to your organization? Well, now you can!

With our new Lab Builder, you can build, manage, and publish your own labs. We have a huge vision for this particular feature. This is only the beginning.

Why is Lab Builder useful to me?

You can now create customized lab content for your organization! 

Imagine you want to build a collection of labs that explain and test your employees' understanding of your internal security policies. Maybe you have a unique internal security process to explain and need to verify that users understand. Or you might have a specific threat model or coding style that your developers need to upskill on to identify vulnerabilities earlier.

With the new Lab Builder feature, you can do all these things – and more!

What do custom labs look like?

Custom labs look and feel the same as the IL labs you’re used to. They use the same gamification and can be used in the same way as our existing labs. Custom labs can be added to custom collections and assignments, meaning you can build a tailor-made collection relevant to your teams.

How do I create a lab?

You currently need permission from your Org Admin to access Lab Builder. The feature is available to all organizations with access to our labs. You can find it in the Immersive Labs platform by clicking the Manage tab then Create Lab.

The Custom Labs dashboard is designed to give you a high-level overview of your labs – whether they’re published, still being drafted, or deleted (archived). It's a place to understand the status of all your labs quickly.

When you select Create a new custom lab, you’ll be taken to the Creator view. This is designed to mimic your lab's appearance in the platform with a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) editor.

Lab details

The Lab details page is where you’ll describe what the user will do in the lab and what the learning outcomes are. Most importantly, here you’ll set the points up for grabs upon completion.

Briefing panel

The next stage is creating the Briefing panel, where you’ll add the core learning information delivered in the lab. It supports all the standard rich media options you’d expect, including headings, code blocks, and imagery. This page is also built with a WYSIWYG editor, meaning your preview is rendered exactly as it would look on the platform!

Tasks

The next step is to write the tasks you want to include in the lab! Tasks are questions or activities the user needs to complete to finish the lab.

Select Tasks from the left-hand side menu to add tasks to your lab.

 

There are currently two tasks to choose from. But we’re rapidly expanding this and would love to hear your feedback on what other types of tasks we could include.

The two types of tasks available are multiple-choice questions and code review. You can easily add these to your lab by clicking the Add button.

Multiple choice questions

This task type is pretty self-explanatory! It allows you to write a question and a selection of answers, where only one is correct.

Code review

This task type is designed for users to review some code and spot issues. We support a vast range of programming languages. The possibilities are endless when it comes to customizing your own content!

The code review task type has many configuration options. You can define the title, the code presented in the code box, and the associated options the user will select at the bottom.

In the example above, the user selects a line of vulnerable code and must match it with an associated CVE from a drop-down list.

Go and build some labs!

I hope this was a helpful introduction to the new Lab Builder feature.

Now, it’s time to consider how Lab Builder could help your organization. Where are the gaps in your current upskilling catalog? Could you write your own content to improve your developers?

For more guidance, visit our Help Center, where there’s ample documentation on using the Lab Builder in more detail.

What’s next for Lab Builder?

There are many exciting things on the horizon for Lab Builder. You can look forward to new task types coming soon! You can also expect to see support for attaching your own virtual machines to your labs very soon!

Throughout the first quarter of 2025, we’ll be sharing more exciting news and updates on the Lab Builder feature, so make sure you’re following the Human Connection Blog and Product Updates to get updates straight to your inbox!