Important release scheduling note
The administration portal elements of this update were released to customers whose lms is hosted in the EU and US regions on 14th April. The administration portal elements of this update, for customers hosted in the UK region, as well as the learner portal elements for all regions, will be released on Monday 17th April 2023.
Certification enrolment
The certification enrolment feature has previously been used to control whether learners should be associated with a certification. Where enrolment was configured for a certification, enrolled users could be awarded the certification and would receive relevant expiry/renewal reminders, whereas unenrolled learners could not gain the certification and did not get notifications relating to the certification. The certification enrolment feature has been removed from the product and replaced by functionality based on 'Certification eligibility' (see details below). The administration portal has been updated to remove the Certifications | {certification} | Properties | Enrolment | Require enrolment option.
As part of the updates for this release, any certification configured to require enrolment has been migrated to require eligibility. Learners that were enrolled on a certification that was configured to use certification enrolment, have been automatically migrated to eligible for the certification. Each enrolled user has been added as an individual user in the eligibility list; you may wish to change how eligibility is specified to be based on groups or organisational units (as defined on your lms), rather than defining eligibility on a per learner basis. Details of how to define certification eligibility are covered in the Certifications and Compliance Explained and How To articles on the Support Desk.
Compliance updates general
The platform has been enhanced in a number of areas to better support the concept and tracking of learner compliance. The lms now allows administrators to specify whether a certification is mandatory for specific cohorts, whether a cohort is simply eligible for a certification, or whether certifications are unrestricted, (and therefore any learner is can be awarded the certification, and the certification is not mandatory for any learners). Unrestricted certifications are unchanged, and behave as previously on the platform, and are simply awarded when a learners completes or passes the awarding item for the certification.
A new Require eligibility option has been added to the Certifications | {certification} | Properties page. When selected, administrators can specify the cohort(s) for which the certification is mandatory or cohorts which are eligible in terms of individual users, groups of organisational units.
Learner compliance status, is now derived from their status against any certifications which have been specified as being mandatory for the learner (i.e. the learner is included in the mandatory cohort).
The updates to the lms to support compliance, as defined above, have resulted in a number of changes across the platform. Changes have been made to the following areas:
- Administration portal
- Certification Properties | Eligibility
- Certifications Users
- Reports
- Learner portal
- Dashboard page
- Achievements page
- My team page
Please see below for more information regarding each of these changes.
Administration portal
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Certification eligibility
The new certification eligibility feature can now be configured on a certification basis (Certifications | {certification} | Properties | Require eligibility), which allows administrators to specify the cohorts for which a certification is required or is optional. For example, you may want a certification to be mandatory for all learners on the system, i.e. you require all learners to have a current certificate for the certification. This is shown in the example below:
As with the similar targeting options for content items, the cohorts specified in the MANDATORY field is a subset of the ELIGIBLE field and therefore there is no requirement to list a learner in both the MANDATORY and ELIGIBLE fields. Where a user is included in both fields, the certification will be mandatory for the learner.
The new feature allows you to have multiple certifications, each with different expiry and renewal options, but driven from the same awarding content item. This can be important where different cohorts are required to certify on a different periodic basis. For example, in a clinical environment, you might have a hand washing certification, that needs to be completed every six months by clinical staff, but only annually by administration staff. In this case, you could have two certifications, both driven from the same handwashing course, but the mandatory and eligible cohorts would be different for each certification.
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Certifications Users
The Certifications | {certification} | Users page has been updated to allow administrators to filter the displayed users to those for which the certification mandatory, those who are eligible for the certification or all users:
The page also displays the eligibility status for each user, along side their certification status (Certified, Started renewal, Expired, etc.).
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Reports
The Certification status report has been enhanced to include information relating to certification eligibility. The Certification status report generator page has a new ELIGIBILITY FILTERS option which enables the learners included in the report to be filtered, based on their certification eligibility status.
Available options for the ELIGIBILITY FILTERS are: All users, Mandatory users and Eligible users. The filter is only valid for certifications where Require eligibility has been configured for a certification.
An additional column is included in the report generated, showing the eligibility status for each learner in the report, regardless of the filter option selected. This allows you to filter the report to, for example, verify that all users have a current certification for a mandatory certification.
Learner portal updates
In line with the changes to the platform to better support compliance and certification eligibility, the learner portal has been updated in a number of areas.
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Learner dashboard
The learner Dashboard has been updated to add a new Compliance widget to the Summary section. The widget displays the learners compliance, based on the learners status for each of their mandatory certifications. The image below shows that the learner is 100% compliant, i.e. they have a current certification, for all of their mandatory certifications.
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Learner achievements
The learner Achievements page has been updated to provide the learner with a clearer view of their compliance/certification status. The previous version of the Achievements page, certification section, was as follows:
The styling of this page has been updated as shown below:
Learners now see a graphical summary of their certification status. The graphic is derived from the mandatory certifications for the learner, showing a count and percentage based on the total number of mandatory certifications assigned to the learner. The certification details are displayed for each of the certifications for which the learner is specified as being members of either the mandatory or eligible cohorts, in addition to any certifications (regardless of eligibility) for which the user has an existing certification. Compliance indicators are shown for each mandatory certification (green - certification is current, amber - certification is due to expire in less than 1 month, or red, where the certification is not current (either never achieved or expired).
As with the previous page design, learners are presented with options to Start or Renew the certification, or to Download a previously awarded certificate.
A new View history button has been added per certification (where the learner has certified against a certification more than once), this allows the learner to view their certification history, for the selected certification, as shown in the example below:
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Team leader dashboards
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Team leader dashboard
The Team leader dashboard has been restyled and updated to support learner compliance. Previously the My team dashboard appeared as follows:The updated dashboard (shown below) now displays a graphical overview of the compliance for their team, and the individual compliance for each of their team members.
A learner is considered to be compliant, if they have current certificates for each of their mandatory certifications. The Compliance dashboard allows team leaders to search for learners, and filter learners based on the compliance status.
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Team member details dashboard
When a team leader selects a learner in their Team leader dashboard, they see the detailed information for the selected learner on the Team member details page. The styling and information on this page has been updated, with an example of the old version shown below:
The new page has been updated to better surface the learners compliance status, with the display of certifications and content access now restyled to use a tabbed user interface:
The Certificates page displays all of the certifications which are either mandatory for the learner, for which they are eligible, or for which they have an existing certificate (whether current or expired). Any certification which is mandatory, contributes towards their compliance level, and has an associated compliance indicator. The compliance indicators are shown for each certification (green - certification is current, amber - certification is due to expire in less than 1 month, or red, where the certification is not current (either never achieved or expired). The team leader can select Download to download any of the awarded certifications, or select View history, to see the learner's history for the certification, as shown in the example below:
The Content access tab (shown below), shows the content access history for the learner, as previously shown on the Team member details page.
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Reporting enhancements
The reports have been enhanced to include extension property information (see Explained: Extension properties) and details of the links associated with any Web link content items. The following reports have been updated to support this additional information:
- Content status
- Non-completion
- Content activity
- Learner journey
- User activity
Bug fixes
Various bug fixes.
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