Certification settings
Every field on the certification form, from Manage certifications → Add certification or Actions → Edit.
Details
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Certification name | The name shown throughout LOOP, and the value of the {certificationname} placeholder. A label only: it does not affect how editions are recognised, when notices go out, or how a status is worked out. |
| Certification validity period (days) | How many days a certificate stays valid after completion. The expiration date is the completion date plus this many days. Must be greater than 0. Correcting it reaches the certificates already issued: their windows are worked out again at the next nightly rebuild, or now from Recalculate. |
| Certification completion timeframe (days) | How many days somebody has to complete the certification after being enrolled. The enrolment date plus this many days becomes the completion due date, and somebody who has not completed by then is marked Overdue. Set to 0 for no completion deadline: no due date is worked out, and nobody is ever Overdue on this certification. A hard deadline, where one is set, still applies. |
| Hard deadline | Optional annual deadline — see below. |
| Certification expiration warning (days) | How many days before the expiration date a person's status becomes Expiring. This decides the status only. Set to 0 to mark somebody as Expiring on the expiration date itself. |
| Manager emails | One address per line. Used as the recipient of any notice addressed to the Manager, and as the recipient of this certification's monthly report. Falls back to the site-wide Fallback manager emails setting. |
| Active | Whether the certification takes part in automated processing — see below. |
There is no "never expires" option. If renewal is not actually required, use a very large validity period.
Hard deadline
For certifications governed by a fixed calendar date rather than by each person's own anniversary: everybody must have finished the course by 31 March, whenever they enrolled.
Tick Enable hard deadline and pick a day and a month. The completion due date is then capped at the first occurrence of that day and month on or after the enrolment date, whichever comes first with the completion timeframe. With 31/03, somebody enrolled in February is due by 31 March of that year, and somebody enrolled in April by 31 March of the next one.
It caps the completion due date only. The expiration date is still the issued date plus the validity period, so a hard deadline shapes when people must complete, not how long their certificate then lasts.
The day must exist in that month in every year, so 29/02 is refused. Use 28/02 or 01/03.
A site-wide default can be set under Site settings; it is pre-filled only when you create a new certification.
Active
Unchecking Active:
- hides the certification from the summary on the Home dashboard;
- stops new notices being queued for it, on all five notices;
- leaves it out of the monthly manager report;
- leaves it out of a recalculation, unless you name it explicitly in the scope selector.
It does not freeze anybody's status. A status follows the dates on record, so it goes on changing as certificates reach their expiry and people are enrolled and unenrolled. Notices already queued when you uncheck it are still sent.
Everything about an inactive certification stays readable and exportable.
Notifications
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Notices this certification sends | Which of the five notices this certification sends. All five are on when a certification is created. Switching one off silences it for this certification only; to silence a notice for the whole site, disable it on the Messages page. Anything already queued is still sent. |
| Expiry warnings (days before) | The days before a certificate expires on which the expiry warning goes out, as a comma-separated list — 60, 30, 7 sends three warnings about the same expiry. Empty sends none. |
| Overdue reminders (days after) | The same, counted after the completion deadline. 0, 15, 30 sends one on the deadline itself and two more later. |
| Expired reminders (days after) | The same, counted after the expiration date. |
Every value in a list must be a whole number of days and cannot be negative.
These three lists decide when an email is queued. They do not decide anybody's status, and the Certification expiration warning (days) field above does not decide when an email goes out. When the first warning day differs from the warning threshold, the form says so.
The enrolment and completion notices are not in this section: they follow an event rather than a date, and their delay is set once for the whole site on the notice itself.
Columns in the Manage certifications table
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ID | The certification's number. Used in the CERT_{id}_{order} pattern when linking courses by ID number or custom field, and in the cert_id column of a CSV export. |
| Certification name | |
| Certification validity period (days) | |
| Certification completion timeframe (days) | |
| Certification expiration warning (days) | |
| Enrolled, Completed, Expiry warning, Overdue, Expired | One column per notice, saying what this certification does about it. A number is the timing it sends on: the days from the lists above for the three notices about a date, the delay set on the Messages page for the two that follow an event — Immediately when that delay is zero. Off — the notice is switched off for this certification. Paused — the certification is not Active, so nothing is queued for it. Won't send — the notice is switched on but something stops it going out: its text is disabled for the whole site, no days are set, no delay is set, or it is addressed to the Manager with no address to send it to. Hover the badge and it says which. |
| Editions | How many courses are linked, and a note when more than one edition is open and taking enrolments at the same time. |
| Warnings | Conflicts — two courses claim the same position in the sequence. Visible editions taking enrolments — more than one edition of this certification is open at the same time. Manager notice — a notice is addressed to the Manager with no address to send it to. Each is a badge of its own, and no badge means none applies. |
| Active | |
| Actions | View editions, View user status, Certification history, Manage messages, Edit, Delete. |
The filters above the table narrow by name, by Active and by Conflicts.