Expect 3 new features in your summer upgrade of BuildEmpire as we work to continually improve Totara.
Over the last few months, we’ve been listening closely to how admins and learners actually use BuildEmpire and Totara day to day: where things feel slow, where they feel clunky, and where they just feel a bit dated.
This update tackles all three.
We’re calling it the Summer 2026 Update, and it brings three new features to the BuildEmpire Edition (our version of Totara):
- Course Wizard — get courses live faster, with far less friction
- Course Ratings — let learners tell you (and each other) what’s actually worth taking
- New Catalogue — a browsing experience that finally looks as good as it works
Let’s get into it.
Course Wizard
Uploading a course in Totara is incredibly detailed and gives you lots of areas for customisation so you can make something completely tailored to your needs.
However, we know that the state of learning is changing and that content consumption is happening more quickly than content creation.
To support that, we’ve created a brand new feature.
The Course Wizard is a simple, guided, step-by-step process so you can get content live in minutes, not hours.
No more jumping between screens or second-guessing what field goes where. Just follow the steps, and your course is ready to go.
This is just stage one. Here’s what we’re considering for the roadmap:
- Templates
- Course duplication
- Much more – why not suggest what’s next?
Course Ratings
Social learning is trending and the reason for that is because learners trust other learners.
So instead of learners having to doomscroll lengthy course options with no idea which is best, we’ve now added course ratings.
Course ratings lets learners leave a simple star review after completing a course.
Admins stay in control of the experience as you can decide when learners are prompted to leave a review. We would suggest triggering it right at the end of a course when the experience is freshest in their mind.
Those ratings then surface on the catalogue, giving other learners a quick, honest signal of how good a piece of learning content really is before they dive in.
New Catalogue
Great learning content deserves a great front door. So this summer, we gave the catalogue a makeover.
We’d already built a really strong catalogue design for our eCommerce product. It’s clean, visual, easy to browse so it makes sense to bring that experience over to the core catalogue.
The result is a browsing experience that’s more visual, easier to scan, and genuinely nicer to spend time in.
It has the same underlying functionality you already rely on but just presented properly.
Rolling out this summer
Course Wizard, Course Ratings, and the New Catalogue are all part of the BuildEmpire Summer 2026 Update, live now.
If you’re a current customer of BuildEmpire, you’ll receive this update when your platform is next upgraded.
If you’re currently using Totara but looking for a new partner, then why not book a demo. We offer free migration to current Totara users.
If you’re not currently using Totara, then book a demo to see what features it has that could help you deliver better learning.
