Let's break down certifications for you, this way you get a better understanding what will occur when you create and assign users with past completions.
First, let's set a scenario:
You are creating a certification, those users that are assigned to said certification are going to have past completions. Some users may have completed this course in 2019, 2020 & 2021 say. We then assume that your Certification will be set up to last for 1 year, so users will be certified for 1 year and then we will say that their window open period is 1 month. Window open period means that the users will have 1 month to recertify before they expire. You can however set the window open period and the certification period for however long you wish and what your business needs is.
So we have our scenario, so now let's work out some examples using the logic that the certification will be 1 year long and will be 1 month for the window open period.
Example 1:
You are assigning a user, that user completed this course on 21st May 2019. So let's break down what will happen when the user gets assigned to the certification. We will say that they get assigned today 5/7/24.
- The user will be assigned, and the certification will be marked as complete.
- If we then take the 21/05/19 date and add 1 year to this, this makes it so that the expiry of said certification is 21/5/20. Their window would open on 21/4/20.
- As we are now in 2024, the certification will recognise that this user is actually no longer certified and therefore will move them to an expired status within the certification.
- When a certification expires for a user, it removes the completion of that user. We would refer to it as "Archiving" the completion. You will not lose the completion, these past completions are still reportable using the Course Completion including history reporting source.
- The user would then show as expired on their learner dashboard and therefore now need to retake the certification to recertify and be shown as such on their dashboard and your reporting.
Example 2:
You are assigning a user, that user completed this course on 1st April 2024. So let's break down what will happen when the user gets assigned to the certification. We will say that they get assigned on 5/7/24.
- The user will be assigned, and the certification will be marked as complete.
- If we then take the 1/4/24 date and add 1 year to this, this makes it so that the expiry date of said certification is 1/4/25. Their window would then open on 1/3/25.
- As we are still in 2024 and therefore within the 1 year set within the certification, the certification will recognise that this user is certified and they will remain this way until their window opens in 2025.
Example 3:
You are assigning a user, that user completed this course on 5th August 2023. So let's break down what will happen when the user gets assigned to the certification. We will say that they get assigned today 5/7/24.
- The user will be assigned, and the certification will be marked as complete.
- If we then take the 5/8/23 date and add 1 year to this, this makes it so that the expiry date of said certification is 5/8/24. Their window would then open on 5/7/24.
- As we are still in 2024 and therefore within the 1 year set within the certification, the certification will recognise that this user is still certified. However, you will notice that their window open period is today so they are within their 1 month window open period.
- The certification will therefore archive off the completion still but the user will remain certified until 5/8/24. However, the LMS is now giving them 1 month to complete to remain certified.
Summary:
When dealing with historic completions and assigning those users to a certification, if the completion is outside of the amount of time set within the certification then the LMS will archive off their attempt therefore removing the completion against the course. However, this will still be reportable within the LMS using the reporting source Course Completion including history. If you have users who have up-to-date completions, therefore within the last year, they will remain complete so the course completion will carry over to the certification and they will remain complete until a time that their window opens for them to retake. You may also have users that are now within their window open period and therefore their completion will also archive off but they will remain certified until their valid until date.
When you assign users to a certification that will contain historic completions, you will see after the assignment that you may have users in the following statuses:
- Certified
- Window Open (Still Certified)
- Expired
Important to note, that the above logic has been worked out using the "Use Certification Completion Date". This is the option that we would always recommend using rather than "Use Certification Expiry Date", using this date will double the amount of time that a user remains certified.
Messages:
Another aspect of assigning a certification to users with historic completions is the messages within the certification. So let's say that you have a certification set up with the following messages:
Enrolment message - Advising the users that they have now been assigned to the certification.
Program Due message - Triggered 1 week before the Certification is due
Program Due message - Triggered 2 days before the Certification is due
Program Overdue - Triggered 1 day after the certification was due
When you have messages added like the above, when you have a user being assigned let's say it is the user in example 1. When they are assigned to the certification as the LMS works through the process of expiring these users, it also works through the triggering of the messages mentioned above. This means that if you are assigned to a certification with a completion outside of 1 year, you are going to receive every message that has been set against the messaging tab. Therefore, in summary, if you have say 6 messages with all different triggers and meanings and assign a user with a historic completion, that user is getting 6 messages in 1 go.
All users that are assigned to a Certification will receive the enrolment message even those that are currently certified. If you would like to mitigate all risks of confusing your users there are a few options that you can choose to do.
Option 1:
This option would be disabling your emails on the site (Support can do this for you), this would mean that emails triggered on the site such as seminar sign-ups, program messages and password resets would not be sent during this time. We would normally recommend leaving your emails disabled for 24 hours to allow time for all messages relating to the certification to trigger. Please note, that once emails are re-enabled on the site messages will only start to be sent from that time going forward. Disabling emails on the LMS does not create a backlog and does not trigger the unwanted emails once re-enabled.
* Some customers choose this option, but they would do this during downtime on the site. An example is either on a weekend or after 6 pm and then re-enabling the messages at 7 am the next morning.
Option 2:
You would add the Enrollment message only to the certification and change this message to cover all of the aspects above of the statuses. So it could read something like "You are now enrolled onto Certification Name, if you have completed this within the last year, you have nothing further to do. If you have completed this outside of 1 year ago please log on and retake the course. If you are unsure we recommend logging on and checking your Record of Learning".
You would just have that one message sent to your users and then you can incorporate option 1 in that you could then disable your emails and add in the rest of the messages and allow these to trickle through. Again, we recommend leaving this for 24 hours before re-enabling them.
Option 3:
You could have all your messages added to the Certification, then disable your emails. This means that no messages will be sent from the Certification. What you can do then is make use of the Bulk user actions, this allows you to send a message to an audience which will already be assigned to the certification and you can let them know that they have been assigned to the certification. This will need to be done either before or after you disable the emails.
Option 4:
If you do not want messages, you do not need to have any added to your certification. Therefore, you can leave these blank if you need to.
* We would always recommend disabling emails before you assign the users to the certification. This means less risk of emails being sent during the time in which it takes for the email to be disabled on the site.