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Quick question about certification "recertification path" and annual/biennial/triennual auto recurring

Hi there, how are you doing?

Thanks for reading this thread.

We have some use cases that look like this:

When a employee joins us, he/she will take 12 courses

Among these 12 courses, 6 of them need to be recurring annually, 3 of them need to be recurring biennially, and finally, the rest of the 3 courses need to be recurring triennially.

Is this something that we can setup ONE certification, and just use the "Recertification path" to achieve?

If not, what would be the best approach to solve this problem? Maybe 12 "single course" certifications (and each one of them has its own recurring criteria - annual, biennial, or triennial)?

Currently we have a "onboarding" program (one-time training) that is setup correctly to automatically capture new hires thru dynamic audience. However, since it was setup using "program" (one-time training), so we could not have auto-recurring. We are considering to convert this "program" into one (or several) automatic recurring certifications that would meet with the auto-recurring requirement (some annual, some biennial, and some triennial). If anyone has any tips or strategies to do this, please share with us. Thanks!

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Hi Wen,

I think it really depends on a couple things first if all users do the same courses each year around the same time of the year you could set them up as a recurring program rather than a certification. (one program for each cycle)

I think the way you may be implying though is as follows.

I am by no means an expert at this but I believe that you would need to create something like this:

One Dynamic Audience that enrolls the user in the courses initially perhaps based on the organization framework or some other factor.

You also would need one Dynamic audience for each course with a rule based off the time of the course within the time period.( I think you would want this for those one off students who fail to complete the course in the window for whatever reason).

One Certification program for each course with the recertification path being the same.

So 12 Courses. 12 Certifications. and 13 audiences I think is what I would do.

Peter

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Hi Wen and Peter.

Thanks for the reply Peter. That sounds like it would work.

I'd suggest that all people use certifications rather than recurring courses in programs. Certifications are far more clearly defined and understood (at least in terms of what they are capable of and how they will behave), and I can't think of anything that can be achieved with a recurring course in a program that can't be done in a certification.

For your scneario Wen, couldn't you do basically what Peter said, but just have 3 certifications, one for all yearly courses, one for biennially, one for triennially, and stick the courses in the corresponding cert? Then all yearly courses must be completed at the same time, once each year, etc.

There has been some discussion about extending the certification paths system to allow complex setups, but it's still in the early ideas stage right now and I don't imagine it will be available in the short term, and would most likely be release as a new feature in a major release (so not in 2.7 or below).

Nathan

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Thanks Peter and Nathan! I think I came up with the same ideas for the solution as well. Thanks for validating my ideas..

One quick side question. According to Totara's documentaiton "How Certifications Work," it didn't specifically say anything about how those "Recertification path" settings work.

Let's say if I have the Original certification path setup, but the following year(s) the learner would just have to complete the same course. In such case, do I still need to define the recertification path, or could I just leave the "Recertification path" and "Program content" blank (see attached screenshot below)? Thanks!

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Hi Wen and others.

If you want the recertification to be the same course(s) as the initial certification then you need to select "Use the existing certification content" or simply manually add the same course(s). Note that if you make changes to the primary cert path in the future, you'll need to manually make the same changes to the recert path as well - the paths are not linked, the checkbox is just a shortcut to copy/paste when you make it the first time.

Nathan

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