How to create a certification

Click on the cog in the top right hand corner of the page and click on 'Certifications' under the Learning category: 

This will then take you to the below certifications page, from here, select the certification category you would like your certification to sit under. These categories are automatically populated from the course categories already in AssessBook. For this example, I will click on 'Health & Safety':

You will then be taken through to the below page in order to create your certification. To add a new certification, you will need to click the 'Add new certification' button:

You will need to give the certification a full and short name: 

You will then need to scroll to the bottom of the page and click 'create certification'.

How to add program content

The next step will be to add courses to the certification. After going to the content tab, click the 'add' button below: 

This will then take you to the course selection page below, I have clicked on the Health & Safety drop down and clicked on the course 'Fire Awareness Training'. Once you have selected all of the courses that you would like to add, click the 'OK' button at the bottom of the page. 

Next you will need to give the course that you have added a name, set the completion criteria from the 'Learner must complete' drop down and set the minimum time that is required to complete the course. This value indicates a minimum amount of time that a user might realistically need to be able to complete the course set. It is used to determine if the completion period set on the assignments tab is realistic for a particular group of users. If the assignment is not realistic, a time allowance exception will be generated and the user will not be assigned to the program until the exception has been resolved. You can view these exceptions under the 'Exceptions Report' tab within the certification. 

Next, you will need to set the recertification path. If they need to complete the same course or set of courses that you have added to the program content, you will just need to tick 'Use the existing certification content', however if they are required to complete additional or different courses in order to recertify, you can add these below following the same process as adding the program content. Once you have added all of the content needed for your certification, click 'Save changes'. 

The below message will appear whenever you save changes within the certification, this shows how many learners enrolled in the certification will be effected by these changes. We advise that before you create your certification and assign any users, you ensure that all of the information within the certification is correct. Once the certification has been saved, the changes will only hit learners who need to recertify, any learners who are already certified will not see the changes until it is time for them to re-take the certification. 

How to set the recertification details

Next you will need to define the recertification details. There are three options that you can select from under 'Recertification date';

Use certification completion date - The active period is added to the completion date. Over the span of several recertifications, this option can cause the expiry date to drift backwards (when completed early) and forwards (when completed overdue).

Use certification expiry date: Uses the last expiry date to calculate the next. The first time this is calculated, it adds the active period to the assignment due date if there is one, otherwise it uses the date the certification was completed. If the user is overdue or expired, it adds the active period to the date the primary certification was just completed (as if the user was newly assigned), so that certifications are active for a minimum of the active period. Over the span of several recertifications, this option can cause the expiry date to drift forwards (when completed overdue) but not backwards.

Use fixed expiry date: This option causes the expiry time to be calculated based on the specified assignment due date (if available, otherwise the first completion date), and subsequent completion expiry dates will be calculated using that same base date, regardless of whether they are late or early. The active period is repeatedly added to the base date until the first future date is discovered. The Minimum active period is available only with this setting, and must be at least as big as the Recertification Window (see the Minimum active period help for more information). Over the span of several recertifications, this option will prevent the expiry date from drifting forwards or backwards.

The option that we usually would suggest would be 'Used fixed expiry date', however this is personal preference. You will then need to chose how long the certification is active for, and then if using the fixed expiry date option, the minimum active period. If you set this for less time that the certification is active for, the learners will then always have the same recertification date, regardless if they take the course before or after the due date. 

You will then need to select the recertification window and click 'Save changes' once you are finished. 

How to assign users to the certification

Messages in the certifications are already completed for you, you can however amend these if you wish in the 'messages tab'. Once you are confident that your certification has been set up as needed, you can start assigning users. You can do this by organisation, audience, position, management heirachy or by individual user. We recommend that, when adding users via audience, you ensure that everyone within that audience is supposed to be assigned to the certification and also that there are only active users in the audience. Once users have been added via audience, you are unable to remove them individually. 

Select which assignment option you would like to use to add your users from the drop down and click 'add': 

Then click 'Add audiences to program':

You will then be shown a list of the audiences available, click which you would like to add, and click 'OK' at the bottom of the page: 

Once you have added all of the audiences to the certification, click 'Save changes'. You have now successfully set up the certification and a notification will be sent to any users who are required to take the certification: 

How to add notifications to the certification

Go to the notifications tab, this will then show a list of notifications that you can add for the certification: 

As you can see, all notifications are currently set as enabled. For this example, we will take a look at the learner assigned notification. To edit the notifications, click the arrow next to the certification name and then then three dots next to the notification you'd like to edit and click 'edit': 

Here, you can set the recipient, delivery channels and amend the subject and body of the email. Once complete, click 'save' at the bottom and this will update the notification.