Best practice forum (Archived)

Certifications not working

This Certification training must be taken within 90 days and every five years thereafter with a 9 month certification window. Certification consists of one FacetoFace class.

After much experimentation, I developed the following manual procedure for assigning certifications and inputting the previous years training so that the system is caught up--the original date is shown as complete and the appropriate date is shown for renewal. It has worked reliably from 20013 up to 2010.

Working in six month intervals backwards from the present, I enroll in certification an audience made up of the people who originally took the certification in the particular time interval.
I run cron, and override the certification exception report.
In the certification Course, I create a past FtoF session on the date of the original training.
I enroll the staff who took the the class and take attendance. After CRON, the class completion is recorded normally.

I'm at 2009. Staff taking who took original training in 6 Feb 2009 should have the original certification and be due for renewal.

The Window is open for renewal, but the Renewal Status shows it isn't due?!

Therefore there is no indication on his My Learning page that the staff person needs to take the training. No Alerts. and Upcoming Certifications="No certifications due"

Liz

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Screenshot from 2005 case. With similar-but-different result.

Original Cert due: May 2005
Course completed: Feb 200

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Hi Liz,

I am on Totara 2.5.3 and i am having a similar Problem. For the Totara developers are we doing something wrong? Would upgrading to 2.5.5 fix this issue?

Thank you for any help!

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I just had a new thing crop up as well. "Renewal Expired."

Why would a renewal expire and how can I can control it?

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Hi Liz,

The renewal is supposed to expire. If they don't renew in the time frame provided then it reverts the person back to the original path which means taking what the original path again. If you don't want this to happen you need to create the original path as a program and the recert course as the certificate. For Example:

Certification:

Original Path: Course A Re certification Path: Course B

Expiry 12 months - If the learner at any time passes expiry time they will be required to retake course A.

If you want to avoid this you need to Create the program like this:

Program 1:

Course A

Certification 1: Begins 12 months from completion of Program A

Original Path: Course B Re certification Path: Course B

This will allow them to take Course B over and over even if they pass the rectification period.

i hope that helps?

John

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Yes. Thank you, John!

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Hi Liz,

Are you still having problems with this? I wrote the specification for certifications so should hopefully be able to help with any questions you have about the design.

According to your comment you should have set up a certification with:

- One course included and use this as the certification path and the recertification path

- Active period should be set to 5 years

- Recertification window should open 9 months before expiry

- When assigning users you should select they have to complete it either within 90 days of login or maybe at a fixed date if everyone's going through it from 'today.'

Is this what you set up?

If you have past completion data to add to the system, you should be able to upload this using the certification completion uploader. This should put all your historic dates in order and assign users to the certification for you (however it will assign them as individuals I believe.)

I don't quite understand the method you have described above - let me know if you need any more help.

Thanks

Dani

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Hi Danielle,

While I am still testing, I think the certifications are working.

My problem is that for some of my staff took it took the original training much longer than 5 years ago, the message says that the Certification was not due for renewal. Those staff aren't going to take the training.

Since I'm trying desperately to launch, after I wiped out everything and made a new site (again), I did the calculations myself and issued a new certification to people due for renewals rather then have the software calculate it.

With programs, competencies and programs, I've had a very hard time getting the software to recognize prior learning and show the progress correctly and consistently. The order I do things in seems to matter, and that's the reason for I mention developing the procedure above. I'm still running into problems that are keeping me from launching.

Thank you for asking.

Liz

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Hey Liz,

I tested this today. It took me a while to get my head around how everything is supposed to work, but it is working.

I created a certification that was valid for 3 years with a 3 month recertification window, then tested uploading a range of dates and got the expected results (keeping in mind today is the 10th Jan 2014).

user020, 01/01/2010 - Expired
user021, 01/01/2011 - Expired
user022, 01/01/2012 - Valid
user023, 01/01/2013 - Valid
user024, 01/01/2014 - Valid
user025, 01/12/2010 - Expired
user026, 01/01/2011 - Expired
user027, 01/02/2011 - Window open & Renewal due
user028, 01/03/2011 - Window open & Renewal due
user029, 01/04/2011 - Window open & Renewal due
user030, 01/05/2011 - Valid

I was expecting the window to open after expiry not in the last 3 months, but this makes a lot more sense as this should keep the certification valid at all times. The expired users still had the certification assigned to them but they had to go back through the original certification path the regain the certification. The users with the window open do have the renewal status set as due, though it was also always marked as overdue which I'm going to have to look into further.

Since you have employees who took the original certification longer than 5 years ago, can I assume they have done the recertification in that time? are you uploading multiple records for the same user? There were some issues about multiple records for the same user recently that were fixed in 2.5.5, perhaps there is still some more to do. Let me know and I will look into it further.

Cheers,
David

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