Firstly, I feel this may very well have been asked before but I've tried searching the forums for a specific answer and I don't appear to have any luck so apologies if this comes up all the time. 

Here's a scenario: A member of staff needs to complete a specific certification every X years. Let's say Information Governance (IG) every 1 year. 

 The IG certification is set up to have a 1 year duration from completion date and features a single course (IG online) The same member of staff needs to complete Fire Safety every 2 years, so the certification is created with a single course, Fire Safety (FIRE online) on completion date lasting 2 years. 

 This works as expected. The problem/query I have is, say we introduce a 3rd course, this one called FIRE + IG (face to face) and this course covers both topics, if we introduce this as an OR course set to both certifications, one will attach to that member of staff, the other will produce an exception (duplicate course in another certification). If we check all exceptions every day we might be able to get around this but we have essentially moved away from automation as an individual would have to monitor and correct these users and it would have to be everyday at least. 

 To combat this, I adjust the completion criteria for the IG online and FIRE online to both trigger a completion when the FIRE + IG (face to face) is completed. This works as expected and both courses are triggered when an individual completes the FIRE + IG (face to face) course. 

 However, as soon as the renewal window opens for IG certification, and the IG online module is reset to allow for the next completion, the FIRE + IG (face to face) triggers a new completion with the same original date, which 2 hours later, is archived and the process repeats. A new (duplicate) course completion date is added to the course completion history (for IG and FIRE online), the certification is marked as complete, then immediately window is open. 

 So this would suggest that the above solution is not feasible - In this scenario, the courses not directly linked to a certification are not affected by the window opening so will not be reset and the cron will process the completion trigger regardless of date - during the window open time, this will unavoidably cause the loop to start - it doesn't have an effect of window-not-yet-open certifications or expired certifications. 

 I've investigated Recurring Courses, but as we are talking about a multitude of courses (some may form initial 14 week+ training, others may be specific one off, newly introduced to top up activity in a certain topic) there's no pattern to how courses are introduced to cover the various certifications being completed (they don't all have an online, face to face and then bumper training day session). Similarly, the course that completes the certification may be the 2019 version this year but after April we would want all staff to renew via the 2020 version. 

 At the moment, there needs to be a manual reconciliation of data, cross referencing which courses trigger a completion of which certification and this information is then periodically uploaded as a completion record in the certification course - nothing happens automatically as this would cause the same loops later down the line. 

 Another situation affecting this is pressure to increase the window period on all courses - for a 1 year renewal the window may be anywhere up to (and possible over) 6 months, so this would just exacerbate the issue if we went down that path. 

 Has anyone come up against this challenge and does anyone have any useful suggestions that could stop this being reliant on a manual upload of course completions as often as time allows? 

 Many thanks,

Jade