Totara Learn Open Discussions

certification emails

 
Joanne Pratt
certification emails
par Joanne Pratt, Thursday 29 August 2019, 04:37
Groupe Most helpful contributor 2023

Our compliance / certifications set up in the LMS sends out emails to the learner one month before & one week before expiry then again after expiry.

My issue is...

A new starter to the organisation receives a number of emails from the LMS before they have started work informing them they are about to expire on such and such certification.

The certification set up is via their start date as the 'Assignment due date'.

My question is how do other organisations who use certifications manage their new starters?

Thank you

Jo

David
Re: certification emails
par David Shaw, Thursday 5 September 2019, 04:37
 

Hi Jo,

It sounds like a simple config change might fix this for you.

I suggest (if you are not doing this already) that you set the due date using the 'complete within' section of the settings rather than the 'complete by'.  Assuming you are storing the start date in a custom field you can set the due date to: Complete within 1 month(s) of profile field date 'start date'  which would allow you to send out a message 1 month before start date (which is their start date) to tell them why they are doing the learning, and then base another message 1 week before due date to tell them they really need to do this learning and the last one after the due date.

Hope that helps

Regards

David

David
Re: certification emails
par David Shaw, Thursday 5 September 2019, 04:39
 

Sorry meant to say...

which would allow you to send out a message 1 month before due date (which is their start date)

David

Joanne Pratt
Re: certification emails
par Joanne Pratt, Thursday 5 September 2019, 23:53
Groupe Most helpful contributor 2023
Thank you David

That sounds like it may well work

I have made the changes 

Kind regards

Jo

Andy Murphy
Re: certification emails
par Andy Murphy, Friday 6 September 2019, 02:29
Groupe Learn Site AdministratorGroupe Partners

Hello Jo.

Firstly thank you to David for the good suggestion. 

The only issue with the suggestion Jo is that your certifications typically have one audience assigned to them [ i.e for all users who need to complete it ].  So when the certification was set up you had to choose a due date for all users factoring in both existing staff and future new joiners.  Whilst the 'complete within one month of start date' is great for new joiners to stop them receiving 'overdue' reminders and stop them showing 'overdue' on their first day, it does mean that existing staff will have due dates based on when they started, which could have been 10+ years ago.  For example, on setting up you probably wanted to make sure all staff were compliant on a certification immediately [ as they were existing staff and already should have done it ], but you want new joiners to have a different due date.  The only way to achieve that is with multiple audiences [ one for existing staff and one for new joiners ].  There is no audience rule for 'is new joiner' so you'd essentially have to have an audience with the targeting rules and add in 'and start date is > than today.  Then have a second audience with just the normal targeting rules and 'is not in audience xxx new joiners.  That obviously creates more audience management and work.

An additional point is if you have customised reports for certification status, like a Red, Amber and Green report.  I've worked with lots of trusts that specify new joiners should show up as 'red' on that report.  So you may want to check your organisations requirements if you have such a report, as if the new joiner is not overdue they may appear a different colour to what you expect in any of those custom reports.

Best wishes,

Andy