Best practice forum (Archived)

Annual Certification Program Per Calendar Year

Hello everyone!

I think I have a reasonable goal that can be achieved within Totara and I'm hoping someone will be able to shed some light on this topic.

I'm working with several people in my organization to create training certification programs for our annual training. All good so far. However, we differ from what (I understand) Totara to be programmed for in that we require the certification training to be completed for each calendar year (between January 1st and December 31st) rather than a specified period of time starting from the date of the original certification. As far as I can understand, the certification settings built-in with Totara out-of-the-box treat certifications much like how the DMV issues driver licenses with expiration dates - once a person completes the original certification, that certification is only good for X amount of time (e.g., 365 days) until that training has to be repeated in order to maintain the certification. However, we don't want each user to have a different, rolling training window requirement (where new users who take their original/last certification training in July would have to complete their training before the next July to maintain their certification...whereas users who take their original/last certification training in February would have to re-complete their certification training before the next February to maintain their certification). We want users to complete the training certification in one calendar year (e.g., 2019) and then re-complete the training within the next calendar year (e.g., 2020) to maintain their certification.

When we spoke to our contractors, they believed that this kind of personalization could be programmed into Totara. However, I was wondering if there was a better (or out-of-the-box) method of achieving this result without additional programming. If anyone has any ideas, they would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time and expertise!

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Hi Edison

I think the Use fixed expiry date option is best to use so the certification expires on same date each year

Each user can have a fixed Assignment due date in the assignment tab

There is an explanation of the different re certification scenarios

The options for certification Fixed expiry date are

the active period - this needs to be more than the minimum active period
the minimum active period - less than the Active period and more than the window open period
re-certification window (window open)

My suggestions for these (in the same order ) are 1 year, 12 months and 11 months depending on how long you want the window open for.

If the dates don't go according to plan then its possible to use the certification completion editor

regards

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Thank you so much for your help! I really appreciate it! I'll talk with our contractor and staff and see if your suggestions will work.

It seems that even the "fixed expiry date" isn't a truly fixed date. Unfortunately, Totara is set up to treat Certifications like a professional license (which works for most industries in most cases, which entirely justifies why it is set up that way)...in which the "fixed expiry date" just means a static ("fixed") amount of time between when the certification is originally completed and when it must be renewed, rather than an absolute due date/deadline set for all users. However, our user annual training requirements are by calendar year rather than being relative to the individual. [In other words, it doesn't matter if the user completed their original certification on December 30th, 2019...due to how our requirements are written/set up, that user would have to re-complete their training during the next calendar year and before December 31st, 2020 in order to retain their certification (if that makes sense); there isn't really a period of time (other than before January 1st of the next calendar year) that a user's certification is valid, which is why we are having trouble with the "active period" and "recertification window" settings.]

But I did see a flash of light at the end of the tunnel with your last suggestion of the certification completion editor. It appears that with the certification completion editor, you can establish an absolutely fixed "due date"...however, it would appear that you can only establish a due date on a per user basis (though it seems like it could be done for all users at once, like an executable being run on-demand)...which would mean that at some point during each calendar year (perhaps on the last day of the calendar year - December 31st) we would need to run the certification completion editor and set everyone's certification due date to be "December 31st". This wouldn't be ideal, but it sounds like this might be our best option (that doesn't require additional programming) to meet our training requirements.

Otherwise, we might just have to change our training requirements to fit the new system. We'll have to explore all of our options with our management and see what solution will fit best.

Thanks again for your help!

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I found that you can set a "due date" for audiences under the "assignment" settings tab of the certification settings...but I'm wondering if changing that due date for each audience every calendar year would negate the purpose/function of a certification in Totara (and would just end up turning into a recurring course/program that we manually reassign to audiences each calendar year with a new due date of 12/31/XX).

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Hi Edison

If the assignment date for the audience is set to a future date then someone who gets added to the audience may get an exception as they don't have enough time to complete the certification.

This shouldn't affect the expiry date calculation for the certification though - the expiry date using the fixed expiry date is calculated as the closest date that is at least the minimum active period in the future (31 Dec 2020) This means you could use an assignment due date way in the future and the expiry date will be calculated for the correct year.

regards

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Hi Craig,

I am trying to do the same as Edison is doing. One of our clients has 20 certifications that need to be completed in one calendar year (so before the 31st of december 2019) and users need to re-certify within the next calendar year (so before the 31st of december 2020). One user can complete the initial certification in januari 2019, another user can complete it in december 2019. Both users have the time to re-certify themselves until the 31st of december 2020.

Reading your post, I have a couple of questions:

- With the suggestions you mention in your post (for the active period, minimum active period and re-certification window), do both users still see in their account that they need to re-certify before the end of the year? Are these periods calculated based on the fixed expiry date?

- What will happen with users that did not complete the initial certification before the 31st of december 2019?

- What will happen if new users will be added to the certification? They would still have the time to complete the initial certification before the end of the year. However, since the due date is still on the 31st of december 2019, will they receive a message that they are late with the initial certification?

- In the certification completion editor, is it possible to change completions for multiple users at once? Or is it only possible to adjust it for one user at a time?

I apologize for the many questions. However, I cannot find the answers on the above questions in the help-site.

Thank you in advance for your time and help!

Kind regards,
Robin Venema

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