Virtual training labs for SaaS: How to build your own with examples

Even after clear instructions and videos, customers can struggle to complete a task on their own once they get into the actual platform. They may remember the goal but lose track of the steps, especially if they haven't had a chance to try them.

Virtual training labs give them somewhere to work through those steps in a simulated version of your product. And the best thing about it all is that they are even easier to create than a video.

What are virtual training labs?

Virtual training labs allow customers and partners to learn how to use your software by completing tasks in a simulated environment.

These simulated environments faithfully reproduce a product's interface, but they are not your production app (nor linked to it in any way). This means learners can practice workflows without affecting production data or requiring account provisioning.

To be effective, virtual environments must provide:

1. Scalable access: A single link can give a whole class access to a lab, with each learner having an independent instance, but without the need to manually provision accounts.
2. Data protection: Learners work with sample data (fully managed and controlled by the creator of the lab) and in separate sessions (so one person's actions don't affect anyone else's experience). Access controls can restrict who can open private training content.
3. Realistic interactions: The lab recreates how the product behaves during the task, so learners can apply what they've learned in the lab to their own accounts.
4. Reset and resume: Learners can return to a known starting point to try again. Saving progress lets them pick up an unfinished exercise later.
5. Course integration: Embedding lets you place virtual IT labs inside existing courses and training resources. An LMS reporting integration via SCORM can also record each learner's progress or completion to help with certification programs.

Which type of virtual training lab do your learners need?

You can use two main types of virtual training labs to teach software workflows: guided labs and sandbox labs.

An example of a guided lab

A guided lab presents a workflow as a mostly linear sequence of interactive steps, with instructional guides overlaid on a captured product interface. In HowdyGo, that interface is an HTML copy of the product.

The captured page retains the product's exact UI and reacts to user input in the same dynamic way the real product does. You can scroll, hover, click and type in the UI just like you can in the real thing.

Each guide points to a clickable area of the interface and explains the action through text, audio, video, or a combination of these. Clicking that area advances the learner to the next step.

Guided labs can offer branching paths, but each branch still follows a prescribed sequence. This makes them best suited to teaching an unfamiliar workflow: learners perform each action with an explanation of what to do and why, inside an on-rails experience to help keep them on track.

Follow the example guided lab below to get a feel for the format. I created it to teach users how to make a payment in the Mercury Bank app.

An example of a sandbox lab

Sandbox labs behave more like your real product. Learners can click anywhere in the interface and move across screens as they want in any order, without guides keeping them on a set, linear path. They can explore different areas as they please, just as they would in the real product.

A sandbox exercise can still have a specific goal, though. In the Mercury example, learners need to make the payment, but they decide how to approach the task without instructions pointing out each click.

That freedom makes sandbox labs useful for independent practice and assessment. Completing the task proves whether the learner can apply the workflow they've been taught. Sandboxes are also handy in live training, allowing instructors to jump to a relevant captured screen when a learner asks a question, without being confined to a linear journey.

Try making the same payment in the sandbox below, without the guides. You will notice that you can click through many areas of the app and explore it at will, at least superficially. But once you get into the payment flow, you're able to follow it all the way to the end.

In the sandbox you'll see that some buttons are animated with a ripple. We've added those in as hints to help guide people through the primary payment flow.

How to teach and assess learners with virtual training labs

Start by teaching the workflow, then let learners practice in whichever format helps them. You can check that they've completed the lesson or assess an independent attempt, and give them another chance with guidance or hints if they need it.

1. Teaching the workflow

Send learners a guided lab to work through in their own time, performing the actions as the guides explain them. This adds hands-on experience to what they've read in an article or seen in screenshots or a video.

During live training, give everyone access to a sandbox lab and lead them through the workflow yourself. Learners follow your instructions in their own session, with time to complete each step and ask questions before you move on.

2. Letting learners practice independently

Let learners choose between repeating the guided lab for a reminder of the steps or trying the same task in a sandbox without the instructions. For the Mercury example, that means making the payment again. Anyone who's already familiar with the workflow can start here.

3. Checking their understanding

Completing a guided lab shows that someone has worked through the lesson. That may be all you need to record before letting them move on.

For an assessment, ask them to complete a task in the sandbox without guides or hints. Reaching a specific screen, such as the end of the Mercury payment flow, shows they've found their own way to the required outcome.

HowdyGo can check and record sandbox completion and send the result to your LMS through SCORM.

4. Helping learners try again

A hint can draw attention to a useful button or field when someone gets stuck. The ripple animations in the Mercury sandbox above do this for the payment flow.

Give feedback on the step they missed, then let them revisit the guided lab and try the task again. Check the next attempt without hints when you're assessing independent understanding.

How I created the virtual training labs embedded above

I created the two virtual training labs above from a single click through of my Mercury Bank account. The work happens in HowdyGo's Chrome extension and editor, with no pre-configuration or coding needed.

1. Choose the workflow you want to teach

Start by figuring out the task you want learners to be able to complete by the end of the lab. For my Mercury examples, that was making a payment.

Decide where the exercise starts and what counts as completing it, then map the screens and actions in between until you’re ready to jump in and click through the flow yourself.

2. Capture the workflow

Install the HowdyGo Chrome extension, click "Start recording" and click through the payment workflow inside your live product. The extension captures the screens and interactions as you click.

Each click captures a screen and adds a step to the lab. Don't sweat it if you take a wrong turn. You can remove extra steps in the editor or capture and insert a missing screen without starting again.

3. Edit the captured data

Any captures you make will include whatever data was on your screen when you clicked. So for the Mercury example, I changed the text and numbers in the captured interface to anonymize it all.

I chose to use realistic sample names and values and keep them consistent across screens so learners can follow the same payment from start to finish. You can blur sensitive data instead, but I think it detracts from the realism and look and feel of the lab.

This was as simple as prompting the built-in Howdy AI agent to do it for me.

4. Generate the guides with Howdy AI

Howdy AI created the guides for me from a single prompt. It understands each captured screen and the actions between them, so it can write instructions for the whole workflow in the tone you prefer.

You can edit the generated text afterward or ask Howdy AI to revise it. AI voiceovers are also an option, but I kept these labs text-only (I don't love it when a blog post I'm reading starts playing audio unexpectedly).

5. Convert it into a sandbox

I then wanted to create a sandbox that I can use to evaluate whether someone can go through the same flow unguided. I just clicked "convert to sandbox" in the guided lab and that was pretty much it. HowdyGo automatically linked the buttons and navigation elements across all my screens.

Since everything was already anonymized from earlier, all I did then was click share… On second revision, I did feel that it was a bit easy to get lost in it for someone who's never used the Mercury app before. So I added some ripple animations to a few key buttons and screens to help guide people through the flow, even though they can still go and explore the rest of the sandbox as they please.

Sharing virtual training labs with learners

HowdyGo's cloud training labs are standalone environments with shareable links. Learners can use the same link while working in independent sessions, without accounts to provision or an integration to set up. You can also embed a lab using an iframe.

1. Embed labs in your existing pages

You can embed a lab in your documentation or a custom course website, right beside the material that teaches the workflow. Readers can perform the actions as they learn, without leaving the page. To do so, just copy the embed code from HowdyGo and paste it into your page's HTML or embed block.

2. Organize labs into a course

HowdyGo Collections let you organize several labs as a multi-step course under one shareable link. For the Mercury payment workflow, the guided lab can come first, followed by the sandbox exercise. You can share the collection directly or embed the whole course on another page.

3. Add labs to an existing course/LMS

An HTML embed also lets you place labs inside existing LMS lessons or a course builder such as Articulate Rise. Put the guided lab alongside the lesson that introduces the workflow, with the sandbox at the practice or assessment point.

To send learner events back to your LMS, export a SCORM package from HowdyGo and import it into the LMS. This lets you record when someone completes a guided lesson or reaches a specific success screen in a sandbox.

What virtual training labs cost to set up and maintain

To work out what cloud training labs will cost, consider platform setup, the subscription, lab creation, and ongoing maintenance.

Platform setup: $0

Just install the HowdyGo Chrome extension in your browser to start creating virtual IT labs. There's no setup process or fee.

Platform subscription: From $159/month

HowdyGo starts at US$159/month and includes unlimited guided labs, viewers and editors. For more advanced features like sandbox labs, collections and SCORM, you can upgrade to Pro which starts at US$399/month.

Lab creation: 5-10 mins per lab

I spent about 5 minutes creating the Mercury guided lab. Once you've chosen the workflow, you just click through it to capture it, then write the guides yourself or ask Howdy AI to generate them.

That said, I am one of the co-founders of the tool so you could argue that I create them faster than most people, but even one of our customers Business Warrior reports creating AI-assisted guided walkthroughs in 5 minutes for customer onboarding. Sked Social, which also creates walkthroughs for help documentation, reports a 10-minute build time for their labs.

Ongoing maintenance: < 15 mins to update

When your product changes, just swap the affected screens and adjust any guides that no longer match. Your share links and embeds stay the same so you don't need to reconfigure your docs or LMS.

In HowdyGo's broader interactive-demo benchmark, 92.6% of editing sessions measured at least 7 days after creation lasted under 15 minutes. That's the duration of individual editing sessions; allow time to check the updated lab as well, including any sandbox paths affected by the change.

Virtual training labs FAQ

Can I create virtual training labs for free?

HowdyGo's 14-day free trial lets you build and test both guided labs and sandbox labs before choosing a paid plan.

Can virtual training labs support customer or partner certification?

Yes, you can either check whether someone has completed a guided lab to confirm they've worked through the lesson or you can assess their understanding by asking them to complete a task independently in a sandbox. HowdyGo can send the completion results to your LMS through SCORM.