Managing the Certifications and retraining app

Introduction

Certifications validate users' skills and knowledge and help organizations maintain training compliance over time. 

You can create and manage certification programs, configure expiration and renewal settings, automatically assign certifications through courses, learning plans, or external training activities, and also manually award certifications to users. Learners, on the other hand, can track their earned certifications, view expiration dates, and renew certifications when needed. 

This article outlines how to create and manage certifications programs. To learn how learners interact with certifications, refer to the Certificates and certifications article of the learner guide.

Activating the app

Activate the Certifications & retraining app as described in the Managing apps and features article of the knowledge base. The app is listed in the Docebo additional features tab.

Managing certifications

Once the app is activated, you can manage it by accessing the Certifications and retraining section under the Content and delivery (folder icon). Here, you can create a new certification with a specific period of validity or view the certifications that you created.

For each certification that you created, you will see the code, name, description, expiration date, to whom it’s awarded and to which courses or learning plans it’s assigned, and you will be able to quickly edit or delete it. By pressing the pen and paper icon, you can edit the name, code, description, and expiration date of the certification.

By deleting a certification using the red x icon in its row, you will delete any relationship between the certification and awarded users as well as assigned courses and learning plans, and your platform will delete all tracking data for the certification. For this reason, we do not recommend deleting certifications.

Creating a certification

To create a new certification, access the Certifications and retraining section under the Content and delivery (folder icon). At the top of the next page, press the New certification button. In the pop-up box, add a name (mandatory) as well as a code and description (both optional) for the certification.

Certification expiration and renewal options

Use the Expiration section to set whether the certification has a validity period by entering the number of days, weeks, months, or years and then selecting the time unit from the dropdown menu. Set this field to zero if the certification does not expire.

Users can renew their certification at any time, independently of whether the certification has expired or not, as long as their status in the course awarding the certification is Complete and the certification is configured to allow renewal. Each renewal will archive the current instance and re-enroll the learner, and this can occur multiple times.

Use the option Allow users to retake the same course or learning plan to renew their certification. Every user's prior tracking will be reset as soon as the certification is renewed to allow users to retake the same course or learning plan to renew the certification. Please note:

• if this option is disabled, learners will be able to renew their certification only by completing the courses and/or the learning plans linked to the certification that they have not yet completed. If they have already completed all of the courses and/or learning plans available for the renewal, the Renew now button will not be shown in the Certification section of the My Activities page,
• if users choose to complete the renewal process before their certification expires, their previous completion date will be retained as archived within the Users - Certifications and the Certifications - Users new and old custom reports.
• If users renew their certification, their enrollment in the course will be archived and they will be re-enrolled. In this case, the notification User is enrolled into a course will be sent again.
• For ILT courses, when learners choose to renew their certification using the same course, they are unenrolled from their current session, their enrollment is archived, and they are subsequently re-enrolled in the course.
• Courses and learning plans in Under maintenance status are not eligible for the certification renewal and are therefore not listed as available for selection during the renewal process.

Assigning courses and learning plans to certifications

Once you've created the certification, you then need to assign courses and learning plans to it, so learners will earn the certification upon completing the assigned courses and learning plans. In the certification row on the main Certifications & Retraining page, select the item in the Assign column. On the next page, press the Assign items button at the top.

In the pop-up box, select which course and learning plans you want to assign. When finished, press Confirm. Please note that if you choose more than one course, the certification will be issued when one of the courses or learning plans is completed, not upon completing all of the assigned courses or learning plans. 

You can also assign a course to a certification in the Properties area of the course. To do so, reach the Courses page under the Content and delivery (folder icon). Find the course you wish to assign the certification to, and click on its description. While in the Properties tab, click on Advanced settings and then Certifications & retraining. Click on the plus button and select the certification from the right panel. Click Save changes when finished.

An alternative way to assign a certification to a learning plan is in the Learning plans page. Once you've navigated to learning plans in your platform, choose one from the list, then select Edit. In the Edit window, select the certification from the Certifications & Retraining dropdown menu in the Settings tab. Press Confirm when finished.

Notes on assigning courses and learning plans

• If you assign a certification to a course or to a learning plan already assigned to some users, the certification will be awarded only to those users completing the course, or the learning plan, after the certification has been assigned to it. Users who have already completed the course or the learning plan will not be awarded to the certification retroactively.
• Users cannot renew their certifications if the course validity period is over. Remember that the days of validity of learning plans have priority on the days of validity set for the courses composing it. If the learning plan validity period has expired while the course validity period is still valid, the certification renewal will not be possible. 

Assigning external training activities to certifications

To assign a certification to an external training activity, you must do so from the Training admin area of your platform. Access the External training management from the Training admin section, under Configuration (spanner icon). At the top of the next page, press the Report new training activity button.

In the pop-up box when creating the activity, select a certification from the dropdown menu. When you’ve finished creating the activity, press Confirm. 

Remember that the Completion Date specified in the External Training report will be used as the Issue Date on the certification.

Learn more about creating and managing external training activities.

Awarding certifications to users manually

Users can be awarded certifications in three ways: by completing the courses or learning plans assigned to a certification, by completing an external training activity assigned to a certification, or by the Superadmin (either manually or via CSV files). For the first two options, once a user has completed a learning activity (in the platform or with the external training app) assigned to the certification, it will automatically be awarded to the user by the platform.

To view the users who have already been awarded the certification, press the item in the certification’s Awarded to column on the main certifications management page. On the Awarded users page, you will see a list of the users who have been awarded the certification.

Each user’s row will display the username, first and last name, the date on which the certification was issued, in how many days the learner must renew the certification as well as the expiration date of the certification. By pressing the menu icon in each user’s row, you can edit details related to the certification and the user, or you can unassign the certification from the user.

By pressing the edit item from the menu icon in a user’s row, you can change the issue date, the expiration date, flag the certification as always valid for this user, and modify the association type (manually awarded, course/learning plan completion, or external training activity completion). When finished, press Confirm.

To manually award a certification to a user, press the Award users button at the top of the page. In the pop-up box, select the users, groups, and branches to whom you want to award the certification, then press Next. Now, set the issue date and the expiration date, or select the Always valid option so the certification will not expire for the selected users. The time of the issue and the expiration dates are set to midnight UTC of the selected date and then converted to the timezone of the user entering them. For example, if you manually award a certification at 8:00 AM on September 4, 2025, in a UTC-09:00 timezone, the certification issue date will be recorded as September 3, 2025.

Then, select the association type: manually awarded, course/learning plan completion, or external training activity. If you select the last option, you need to insert the external training activity that was completed. When finished, press Confirm.

If you have enabled external certifications for use with Docebo Connect for Credly or Docebo Connect for Accredible in the Connect section of the Advanced settings of the platform, the Association type section also shows the option External certification. When you select it, a dropdown menu labeled Source will appear for you to select the certification provider (you may repeat this process to add more than one) and add the external link to the certification in the resulting textbox. Press the Confirm button to finalize your certification assignment.

The procedure will be run as a background job if the number of awarded users exceeds 100.

Awarding certifications to users via CSV

To award certifications to users via CSV files, click the Import certification records via CSV button at the top of the page. On the new page, click on Upload file and select the CSV file from your device.

For a successful upload, it is important to create a properly formatted CSV file. Refer to the following table for the accepted values.

We recommend that you keep the settings for the Choose separator and File charset sections the same unless you need to configure them according to the file you upload.

The Consider duplicate certifications as certification renewal option is used to manage CSV files containing certification duplicates in the form of duplicated rows in the same CSV file.

• Disable this option to prevent the import of certification duplicates (should this happen, an error message will be displayed).
• Enable this option to manage duplicates by importing only the last duplicated row in the file. No date check is performed by the import procedure. The platform will renew the certifications by archiving the user’s existing certification and issuing a new one instead of updating the existing certification record. If you have configured the Certification has been Issued notification, it will be triggered for the renewed certification.

When you are ready, press Next. On the next page, use the dropdown menus to match the column names to the columns of the imported file. Then, press Next. The import will be run as a background job, no matter the amount of data to import. The newly awarded users will now also appear on the list of the Awarded users page.

Notes on dates 

Please consider the following when awarding certifications via CSV:

• The CSV import functionality always stores date and time in UTC format, and converts them according to the user timezone when displayed.
• Awarding certifications via CSV requires the date format to be as follows: YYYY-MM-DD (with dashes [–] instead of slashes [//]). Microsoft Excel often reformats the data to MM/DD/YY, so please double-check before uploading the file into the platform.
• The certification Issue Date is set at 00:00:00 of the date written within the CSV file, according to the timezone of the user uploading the file. If, for example, you upload the CSV file with an Issue Date set at November 18, 2021, and your timezone is UTC -04:00, the certification issue date will be set at 20:00:00 UTC of November 17, 2021.

Notifying users about certifications

You can notify learners when they've earned a certification, or when a certification that they've earned has expired. To do so, create a notification using the Notification app. When selecting the triggering event from the dropdown menu, select the Certification has been issued or Certification has expired notification.

For a Certification has expired notification, you should include the [renew_link] shortcode into the description body if you want learners to renew the certification. You can also set the notification to be triggered a certain amount of time (days, weeks, or hours) before the certification expiration in order to give learners time to renew the certification in advance.

Tips and tricks

Please keep in mind the following information when working with certifications in your platform:

• Deleting the certification will remove it from a learner's history.
• Removing the certification association from a course will also remove the certification from the learner's history.
• You cannot associate certifications to deactivated users. Learn more about users' statuses on the platform.
• When you recertify a course, the completion of all training materials associated with the course is reset. If those training materials are in the Training materials page, their progress will be reset in all the courses they are associated with. Please note that courses will not change their completion status, only training materials will reset their progress.
• There are two reporting behaviors when using the Users - Certifications custom report:
  1. If a user renews a certification after the previous certification has expired: The platform will archive the previous certification and its record will be available via the Users - Certifications custom report.
  2. if users choose to complete the renewal process prior to their certification expiring, their previous completion date will be retained as archived within the Users - Certifications and the Certifications-Users new and old custom reports.
• You can associate only one certification per course, learning plan or external training activity. You can still create a learning plan with different certifications assigned to it by assigning the certifications to the courses included in the learning plan, not at the learning plan level.
• For learners, showcasing their achievements, such as certifications, on LinkedIn and other social media is highly rewarding, and having the possibility to do it from their learning platform can increase their involvement. You can achieve this result using the badges of the Gamification app.
• If you have associated certifications with courses containing content from Docebo Content, always make sure that the content is not decommissioned to prevent your learners from being required to complete training material that is no longer active in the platform. If you are using Docebo Content, you can keep track of content that has been decommissioned or planned for decommissioning directly within Docebo Content. If you are using Docebo Content Classic instead, you can keep track of content that has been decommissioned or planned for decommissioning in the Courss page and in your platform’s Training materials page.