Re-Certification FAQ

his page describes which guidelines should be considered for recertification. By following these recommended practices, you can maximise the impact of recertification, ensuring your employees are compliant with the mandatory training.

The following best practices can be followed based on the different scenarios

Excluding users from the re-certification process

An employee in the target group does not have to complete this recertification for certain reasons. What needs to be done? It is not an option to remove the user from the target group, as the target group can also be used for other purposes. To remove a user from the recertification, this can be done via the ‘Exceptions’ tab of the participant administration of the course templates.

Under the ‘Exceptions’ tab, you can explicitly add users who should not be included in the recertification process. On the other hand, users who are not part of the target group can also be integrated into the process.

Including users who already completed a course without re-certification

The users who did a course in the past but no re-certification was configured and no automatic enrolment on course level at that point in time, if later became part of a target group which has re-certification configured, are handled as new users who are just starting the re-certification process.

Handling for participants who have the status “enrolled” or “in progress” after due date

Not all users complete a course until the given due date. Formerly, only users, who successfully completed a course were considered for the next certification period. To also let learners of the status “enrolled” and “in progress” continue with a next course, the setting “Change status after a defined number of days” in the section “Re-certification settings” can be used.

If this setting is selected the text field to specify the days after which the status change shall take place after the due date will be activated. Here a 3-digit number can be entered which defines the number of days after the due date when the status change will be executed.

Users can be overdue for the defined number of additional days before the status changes, as defined. Entering “0” does not allow any additional days and the status is directly changed the day after the due date.

It is possible to select a status to which the user status will change. The following options are available:

Cancelled
Passed
Failed

The change of the status will be executed by the ParticipantAutomaticStatusChangeJob which needs to be scheduled on a daily basis.

(de.imc.clix.comp.edu.type.participant.ParticipantAutomaticStatusChange).

In combination with the setting “Re-enrol canceled and failed users” these learners will be considered for the re-certification cycle. If this setting is not active those learners will not be part of future cycles.

Handling for participants who failed the course or have the status cancelled (also multiple cancellations)

The option “Re-enrol cancelled and failed users” allows failed and cancelled participants to be enrolled in the next available course and to continue the re-certification process. Also, participants who are cancelled multiple times are considered. This option can only be selected if “Recertification” is selected.

If this option isn’t selected the users with the status failed or cancel will not be considered for further enrolments.

Note: If a user has completed a course and is then removed from the target group, after rejoining they will be reassigned the previously calculated next due date (which may be in the future, in the past, or on the same day as the reassignment). If the next due date is in the past the will be directly enroled to the lastest available course.

Handling of re-joiners

User who are supposed to do re-certification training might be dropping from their assignment to re-certification training caused by different reasons, e.g. by switching jobs/positions, parental leave, or long-term illness.

The system handling of those cases differs in dependency on the status quo the user had in the moment of leaving the group. Thereby, it’s to be differentiated:

whether or not a user who drops from the group had completed a course of the course template before dropping, and
whether or not the setting “Automatic cancellation” has been activated

Re-joiners who did not complete at least one course of the course template

Users who have not completed a course of the template will be handled in dependency on their user status and whether or not the automatic cancellation checkbox is active for their group or not.

If the checkbox “automatic cancellation” is active, the user will be cancelled from a running course; else - if the checkbox has not been activated, the user remains enrolled on a running course.

In any case, the user will be removed from the personal syllabus tab of the course template when the user is no longer a member of the group.

When re-joining the group, those users will be handled like new joiners of the group. This is to say that all settings of the “Enrolment settings” section in the assignment dialogue will be applied.

Re-joiners who have already completed at least one course of the course template

Users who completed a course of the template are still listed on the personal syllabus tab of the course template, but re-certification and automatic enrolment are set to “no” for them. A next due date will not be displayed; however, the system stores it permanently to bring it back when the user rejoins the group.

If the checkbox automatic cancellation is active for their group, they are cancelled from any actual course they might be enrolled at the moment they drop from the group, the enrolment status is not affected.

When those users are re-joining the group, the personal syllabus status for the user is updated based on the restored next due date as it was before dropping. Further actions are dependent on whether enrolment calculated by next due date - days to finish - buffer day is <= today.

If not, the status of the user stays successfully completed and the next due is displayed again; else the status “Participant status (template)” will change to “Personal syllabus”. In the latter case, the system subsequently checks whether or not a course is available. If those, the user will be directly enrolled on that course under consideration of the later date applies approach as exemplified in the following illustration.

Examples for the “Later date applies” approach for re-joiners (Based on conclusion)

Examples for the “later date applies” approach for re-joiner (DD/MM)

The system compares, as for any other conducted enrolment in the context of re-certification, the set next due date with the date which is calculated by enrolment date plus days to finish and applies the later date of both as the due date for the course the user is enrolled on.

In the illustrated examples, this means that for both deadline types, “based on conclusion” and “DD/MM”, the following applies:

Re-joiners who get a member of the group again on a date which is less than the defined days-to-finish away from the restored next due date get a due date calculated by enrolment date plus days to finish, as this due date is later than the restored next due date. (Re-joiner A)
Re-joiners who get a member of the group again on a date which is after the restored next due date get a due date calculated by enrolment date plus days to finish, as this means the next due date is in the past. (Re-joiner B)
Re-joiners who get a member of the group again on a date which is more than the defined days-to-finish away from the restored next due date get the next due date applied as their due date as this date is always later than the date calculated by the enrolment date plus days to finish for such cases. There, it makes no difference whether the user rejoins in the time range where buffer days are applied (Re-joiner C) or even before (Re-joiner D)

Recertification in combination with Skill usage

A popular use case is the inclusion of skills in the recertification process. Skills, or the lack thereof, are used as criteria for target group formation.

Skills can be generally used as usual meaning being assigned to a course template or course, having achievement triggers with course completion, as well as having a skill expiry date. However, this skill achievement should not be used for inclusion or exclusion for target group building, which is used for recertification purposes. Otherwise, users might be unintentionally dropping from the target group after skill achievement and rejoining the target group only on the skill expiry date. This would cause an unintentional handling as a rejoiner and might irritate the otherwise regularly running through the re-certification process. This is especially the case when the recertification interval equals the skill expiry period. In such cases, users would only rejoin the re-certification process on the same day as the next due date. Therefore, their due date would be calculated by enrolment date plus days to finish regularly after the planned next due date.

Conclusion:
There is no need to remove users from the target groups based on skill validity. Users are only taken into account when their enrollment becomes due, which is calculated as Next Due Date – Days to Complete – Buffer Days. While completing a course can still grant a skill, this does not require removing the user from the target group.

The skill has a defined expiration date, for example, 365 days. This means that the learner is assigned the skill with an expiration date of 365 days upon completion of the initial course.
The target group is defined in such a way that the participant is removed from the target group once they have achieved the skill. If the skill has expired, the participant is reassigned to the target group.
With a recertification interval of 12 months, this is the same date as the next due date.

Example

Recertification Setup

Recertification interval: 12 months
Buffer days: 7
Days to finish: 30 Days

Timeline Example

Course completion: The learner completes Course 1 on December 31, 2024.
Next due date: The system sets the next due date to December 31, 2025 (12 months later).
Skill validity: The acquired skill is valid until December 31, 2025.
- As long as the skill is valid, the learner is removed from the target group.
- Once the skill expires (December 31, 2025), the learner is re-added to the target group.

Booking / Assignment Behaviour

Normally, with a 7-day buffer, the system would allow a booking as early as November 24, 2025.
Problem: On November 24, 2025, the learner is not in the target group, because their skill has not yet expired.
Result: The learner cannot be booked in advance.

Outcome

On December 31, 2025 (the expiration date):
- The learner is reassigned to the target group.
- The assignment and due date occur on the same day.
- From this point, the learner must complete the recertification course by the due date (December 31, 2025).

In short: Because the learner drops out of the target group while their skill is valid, they cannot be pre-booked. They are only reassigned on the exact due date, meaning assignment and due date coincide.

How to steer fixed enrolment dates for 2nd and following courses

Customer scenarios might have the need to steer that enrolment dates for 2nd and following courses are staying in a defined distance after the regular course completion before an enrolment for the next course iteration is carried out.

Basic steering mechanism

The following slide illustrates the basic steering mechanism which which combines different configuration options to setup such a scenario.

General approach for steering the start-to-end process for recurring enrolment on the same dates

The general business needs of the illustrated scenario are as follows:

User are supposed to complete the initial course and be enrolled on the target group assignment to the course template in their first course.
When the first course is completed:
- The company wants to ensure that learners afterwards can not enrol to a following course before a defined waiting period is passed. This waiting period is a time range in which the user has completed a former course but can not yet enrol in a following course. It’s conception-wide to be considered however, it’s not a configuration parameter in imc Learning Suite.
- The company wants to ensure that users get automatically enrolled in the following course on a defined date after the waiting period. e.g each 1.2. for any following course.

To serve this business need, the following system processes and parameters are applied:

The learner is assigned to a course for automatic enrolment on the course template level and is directly enrolled on the day of assignment if a course is available.
With completion of the first course, the system sets the learner to successfully completed on course template level and calculates the next due date for the following course.
With every job run, the system checks whether enrolment is due by “Next due date - days to finish- buffers <= today”
If enrolment is due, the system checks whether a course for enrolment is available. If that is the case enrolment is carried out with the same job run; no enrolment takes place.
When a company only has one re-certification interval, such a scenario can work without the option for steering the enrolment execution via the availability of the following course with automatic course creation.

For system usage scenarios with different intervals or different targeted recurring enrolment dates, the usage of automatic course creation is mandatory to achieve recurring enrolments per different scenarios. This is outlined in the following section.

System-wide steering mechanism

The system-wide configured puffer days affect not only individual course templates for re-certification but all setup course templates, even if the re-certification interval is different, and therefore the recurring planned re-enrolment dates should differ per course template.

The following slide illustrates some examples of re-certification training with different re-certification intervals in one and the same system.

Steering of recuriing enrolment dates in a system wirde setup with different re-certification intervals

Challenges in this scenario:

Automated course creation intervals can only be defined on day but not on months basis, that causes necessary manual adaption for of the automatic course creation for leap years. In leap years the number of days need to be adapted by one day to land on the same recurring date as the year before.

Identifying the correct moment of automatic course creation

A common business need is that courses should be available for enrolment when enrolment is due. Problem with manual course creation is that it is time-consuming and error-prone.

Instead it is highly recommended to use automatic course creation, but it is challenging to identify when to create courses.

Steering mechanisms

Courses should be automatically created at least before the enrolment is due (Next due date - days to finish-buffer days)

It is best to use automatic course creation with “Deadline type” as “Always valid on DD/MM” and “Automatic course enrolment” as active so that we have a fixed date by which course would need to be automatically created for all users of a target group, also as soon as the enrolment is due, the user is enrolled to the latest course available. Automatic course creation would lead to high efficiency and minimise administrative work.

Initial due date based on DD/MM should be the same as the deadline chosen for recertification so that from the beginning a 12-month cycle is achieved.

Recertification training with a deadline type based on conclusion

If each individual needs to be personally certified and there is no need for the whole organisation to be certified at a certain time of the year e.g. first aid course. then in such cases, deadline type based on the conclusion should be used.

Advantage is individual flexibility.

Disadvantage is

If a person is enrolled too early because the days to finish and buffer days are higher, there is no sufficient gap for the learner between two trainings, because as soon as he finishes the first training, he gets enrolled on the next training.
One cannot foresee when to offer the training. Steering automatic course creation is not plannable as there is no common enrolment date for users.

Steering mechanisms

Admin needs to make sure that a course is always available either via automatic course enrolment or by creating the course manually.
If different target groups have different recertification intervals, courses should be automatically created as per the shortest recertification interval.
The ParticipantAutomaticRegistrationJob should be scheduled daily to consider enrolments for all users. Because the enrolment date can vary significantly, especially if the due date is based on the conclusion.

Recertification training with deadline type based on a concrete date in the year

For a certain group of learners, there can be a business need that by a certain moment of time, the employees should be certified. Everyone should have a common defined deadline e.g. for refresher trainings for machines to be operated or trainings with seasonal dependency.

Steering mechanisms

Deadline type = Always valid on DD/MM

Make sure that the employees do the refresher training till a specific time in the year.
Also, for all participants, the next due date and the enrolment date are the ,same and hence automatic course creation can be used to make sure that a course is always available when the enrolment is due.
The initial due date based on DD/MM should be the same as the deadline chosen for recertification so that from the beginning, a 12-month cycle is achieved.

Recertification based on Self-enrolment

For the business case, where learner needs to do face-to-face training and he/she needs to pick a date/place which is suitable for him/her, self-enrolment is an option but it is not recommended because if self-enrolment is chosen, it is very difficult to make sure that the learner self-enrols himself to the course when the enrolment is due and might start overdue. Also it is difficult to use automatic course creation for such cases as the minimum difference between creation of 2 courses is 28 days and the requirement might be to provide courses with less gap in between.

Instead it is recommended to activate the setting “Automatic course enrolment”, to ensure that the participants are automatically enrolled to a course if the “Next due date - days to finish - buffer days” has reached and a course is available.

Steering-mechanisms

Self-enrolment
Manual creation of courses

Direct enrolment of the learner

If there is a business need that learner is required to be enrolled immediately when coming back to target group if they are outside the recertification cycle, then “Consider newly added group members” should be activated.

Steering mechanisms

It is recommended to activate “Consider newly added group members” so that the users of the groups/job profile are regularly checked and considered for the recertification process. If deactivated, only the users at the time of group/job profile assignment are considered and not updated later on.

Handling of overdue users

It is recommended to activate the setting “Automatic status change after due date” so that the overdue users who are still in progress or enrolled are cancelled/passed/failed and considered for further enrolment.

In combination with the setting “Re-enrol, cancelled and failed users to the next re-certification course”, the cancelled and failed users can be brought back in the recertification cycle.

Handling of users who were enrolled manually to a course

Users who are manually enrolled to a course would be handled in the similar manner as the users who are automatically enrolled. There is no differentiation.

For these users also, as soon as they complete the course, next due date would be calculated and enrolment would happen according to the enrolment date.