Platform access level: This guide is for learners taking Arist courses in Microsoft Teams. You do not need an Arist login or any platform role to follow it.
Arist delivers courses as short conversations inside Microsoft Teams, so your training arrives in the tool you already have open instead of a separate site you have to remember to visit. You read a lesson, reply in the message box, and pick the course back up whenever you have a few minutes. This guide covers finding your courses, answering a lesson, staying notified, and enrolling yourself.
Arist installs in Microsoft Teams as two separate apps, and they do different jobs:
Arist is the course app, and it is the only one you can reply to: Your lessons arrive here, you read them here, and you send your answers here. Everything you do in a course happens in this app.
Arist Comms is the alert app, and it is one-way: Its only job is to tell you that something is ready, whether that is a new course, the next lesson, a survey, or a nudge. Lessons never arrive here, and you cannot reply to it.
You need both. Without Arist you have nowhere to take the course; without Arist Comms nobody tells you a lesson is waiting.
Note: If your organization rebranded Arist, both apps carry your own name and logo instead. Everything below works the same way.
1. Setting up the Arist apps in Teams
Most organizations grant access and pre-install both apps, so Arist may already be sitting in your sidebar. If it is, skip to the next section.
Note: Only install the apps by hand if your administrator or a leader at your organization has told you to. In most organizations this is handled for you, and a missing app usually means permission has not been granted yet.
If you have been asked to install them yourself:
Open Microsoft Teams and select Apps in the left sidebar. On mobile, this is under More.
Search for Arist and press Enter. Both Arist and Arist Comms appear in the results.
Select Arist Comms, review the overview, then select Add. Wait for Added successfully! This is the app that will alert you.
Do the same for Arist. This is the app you read lessons in and reply from.
Select Open to launch Arist. Your enrollments page may be empty until your first course arrives, which is normal.
Two things can come up during the install, and both are handled inside your organization:
A Request button instead of Add means you need permission: The request goes to your own IT team rather than to Arist, so follow up internally.
A rebranded Arist may not answer to "Arist" in search: Ask your training leader which name to look for.
Right-clicking Arist opens this menu:
Tip: Right-click Arist, either in your sidebar or in your list of apps, and select Pin so the app stays easy to find. Courses arrive over days or weeks, and a pinned app is easier to come back to.
2. Finding your courses
Everything you are enrolled in sits on one page inside the Arist app.
The heading counts what is underway, such as 2 active enrollments, and every course in the list shows you:
The course name and a preview of the latest message: You can tell what a course is and where it left off without opening it.
A prompt telling you where you stand: This reads Continue your course when a lesson is waiting on you, or You finished this course when it is complete.
The time of the last activity: Today's activity shows as a clock time, and anything older shows as a plain count like 8 days ago.
A progress badge: This reads Lesson 1/5 while a course is underway and Done once you have finished it.
Two controls help when the list grows:
Search all enrollments looks across every course at once: Use it to jump straight to a course by name rather than scrolling.
The filter control beside the heading reaches past and completed courses: Anything finished is still here, so you can revisit a lesson after the course ends.
In Microsoft Teams your courses run alongside each other, so you can have several underway at once and move between them in any order. Two things can still put a course in line: your organization may cap you at three active courses, and courses sent under the same named sender take turns. A waiting course shows as Up next and starts on its own when one of your active courses finishes. See Taking an Arist Course, Survey, or Nudge for how waiting courses behave.
3. Taking a lesson and replying
Select an enrollment and it opens as a chat, the same shape as any other Teams conversation. Read the lesson, then type your answer in the message box and send it, exactly as you would reply to a colleague.
Answering is what moves you to the next lesson, and it is also how your organization learns whether the training is working.
Try it: Open your most recent enrollment and answer the lesson waiting there. A single reply is usually all it takes to unlock the next one.
For what to expect across a whole course, from the welcome message to the last lesson, see Taking an Arist Course, Survey, or Nudge.
4. Staying notified when new lessons arrive
Alerts come from Arist Comms, never from the Arist app itself. This is the whole reason there are two apps: one carries the course, the other carries the alerts about it.
Arist Comms appears as its own chat in your Teams chat list, and each alert names the course, previews the lesson, tells you how many questions it holds, and carries a button straight into it: Start lesson for a new one, Continue lesson when you are partway through. It also sends a reminder if a lesson has been sitting unanswered.
Selecting that button moves you into the Arist app, where you read and answer. You cannot reply inside the Arist Comms chat, and Teams says so directly. Its message box reads You cannot send messages to this bot. That is expected, not a fault.
If notifications stop arriving, the usual cause is that the Arist Comms bot has been blocked, which is fixed in a couple of clicks and never affects your course content. See How do I unblock the Arist Comms bot in Microsoft Teams? for the steps on both a computer and a phone, or Why isn't Arist responding in Microsoft Teams? if the alerts are not the only thing that has gone quiet.
5. Pausing a course or checking its details
Open the three-dot menu at the top right of any course conversation and you get three options: Manage enrollment, Pause, and Help.
Pausing stops lessons arriving until you are ready to start again, and it holds your place rather than cancelling anything. Choosing Manage enrollment instead opens the course's own details:
The Manage enrollment screen tells you how the course reaches you, naming its delivery method, whether lessons arrive instantly or on a schedule, and the timezone your delivery times are based on. It also shows how far through the course you are, and the same Pause control sits at the bottom.
You can also pause without leaving the conversation by replying PAUSE, and pick the course back up with START or RESUME. See Using System Keywords for every keyword a course understands.
6. Enrolling yourself with a course code
If your organization shares course codes, you can add a course without waiting to be enrolled.
Open the Arist app in Microsoft Teams.
On the enrollments page, open the three-dot menu and select Enroll.
Enter the code you were given.
The course appears on your enrollments page and the first lesson follows.
Course codes are one of several ways to enroll yourself. For enrollment links, QR codes, and browsing your organization's course catalog, see Self-Enrolling in a Course.
7. Opening help from inside the app
You can reach Arist's help resources without leaving Teams.
Open the three-dot menu on the enrollments page or on a course conversation, then select Help.
For anything the Help Center does not answer, your training leader is the fastest route, since they can see your enrollments and your learner record.
Related articles
How do I unblock the Arist Comms bot in Microsoft Teams?
Note: Need help at any point? Reach out to your Arist Customer Success contact, or email [email protected].