Disclaimer: Certifications have moved to the Learning plans page that will now be named Learning plans and certifications. Legacy certifications (previously Certification and retraining app) remain available on your platform.
Go to your launch pad and enable the new certifications to view the new experience from both the admin and learner perspective.
Moving forward, we strongly recommend using the new Learning plans and certifications.
Introduction
Certifications confirm a learner’s expertise in a specific area and help organizations maintain training compliance over time.
Using legacy certifications, (previously Certification and retraining app), you can create and manage certifications, configure expiration and renewal settings, assign certifications to courses, learning plans, or external training activities, and manually award certifications to users.
This article explains how platform admins can create and manage legacy certifications.
Read the learner guide article Certificates and certifications for more information on learners and certifications.
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.
Accessing certifications
Access Content and delivery > Certifications and retraining app to create and manage legacy certifications.
The page displays existing certifications with their code, name, description, expiration date, and assigned courses and/or learning plans. You can also view the users who have been awarded the certification,
Click the pen and paper icon to edit the name, code, description, and expiration date.
Click the x icon to delete the certification. Deleting a certification permanently removes its associations with users, courses and learning plans, and deletes all tracking data. For this reason, we do not recommend deleting certifications.
Creating a certification
- Click New certification.
- Enter the certification’s name (required)
- Set an expiration date: Enter a number and select the unit (days, weeks, months, or years). Enter 0 if you do not want the certification to expire.
- Optionally, enable the renewal option. More details in the following chapter.
Certification expiration and renewal options
Allowing certification renewal
Learners can renew a certification when both these conditions are met:
- The certification is configured to allow renewal.
- The associated courses/learning plans have a Completed status.
Learners can renew a certification whether it has already expired or is still valid. If they renew their certification before it expires, the previous certification record is archived.
Archived certification records remain available in the Users – Certifications and Certifications – Users (new and legacy) custom reports
Learners can renew the same certification multiple times.
Renewing by retaking the same training
When creating or editing a certification, enable Allow users to retake the same course or learning plan to renew their certification to allow learners to renew a certification by completing the same course or learning plan again.
When learners renew a certification this way:
- Their previous enrollment is archived.
- They are re-enrolled in the course or learning plan.
- Their learning progress is reset so they can complete the course/learning plan again.
- The notification User enrolled in a course is triggered.
For ILT courses, learners are also unenrolled from their current session before being re-enrolled.
Renewal limitations
Keep the following limitations in mind:
- If Allow users to retake the same course or learning plan to renew their certification is disabled, learners can renew their certification only by completing the associated courses or learning plans that they have not already completed.
- If no eligible courses/learning plans are available, the Renew now button is not displayed in the Certification section of the My Activities page.
- Courses and learning plans with the Under maintenance status cannot be used for certification renewal.
- Learners cannot renew certifications if the validity period of the associated course or learning plan has expired.
Note: The validity period of a learning plan takes precedence over the validity period of its courses.
Assigning courses and learning plans to a certification
From the Legacy certifications page
Click Assign in a certification’s row then Assign items. Select courses and/or learning plans and click Confirm. You can make multiple selections.
If a certification is assigned to several courses and/or learning plans, learners earn the certification when completing any of these courses/learning plans.
From the Courses page (for courses)
- Open a course and go to the Properties tab.
- Open the Advanced settings drop-down
- Access the Legacy certifications section
- Click the Add button and select a certification from the right panel to associate it to the course. You can only add one certification. You can change or remove the certification after adding it.
Notes: When a course is assigned to a new certification (created from the Learning plans and certifications page), you cannot add a legacy certification to it and vice versa.
From the Learning plans and certifications page (for learning plans)
Important note: The Learning plans and certifications page now lists learning plans and new certifications: Make sure you open a learning plan and not a certification to add a legacy certification.
- Access the Learning plans and certifications page and open a learning plan
- Go to the Legacy certifications tab
- Click the Add button and select a certification from the right panel to associate it to the course. You can change or remove the certification after adding it. You can only add one certification to a learning plan but you can associate the learning plan with courses having other certifications.
When you assign a certification to a course or learning plan, the certification is not retroactively awarded to the learners already enrolled in the course/learning plan.
Users cannot renew a certification if the course validity period has passed.
The same applies to learning plans. The validity period of learning plans also applies to their assigned courses and overrides the validity period set for those courses.
Assigning external training activities to certifications
- From the Configuration menu, access External training management (Training admin section)
- Click Report new training activity.
- Enter your details and select a legacy certification.
- Click Confirm.
Note: The Completion date specified for the external training activity becomes the certification issue date.
Learn more about creating and managing external training activities.
Viewing awarded users
Click Awarded to. Check details such as certification issue date, expiration and renewal.
To remove the certification for a user:
- Select one or several users
- Open the Choose an action drop-down
- Select Unassign
Awarding certifications to users
Certifications can be awarded:
- automatically, when learners complete an associated course, learning plan, or external training activity
- manually by a Superadmin
- by importing certification records from a CSV file
To manually award a certification to a user:
- Open the Awarded users page of a certification
- Click Award users
- Select individual users, groups, or branches. You can make multiple selections.
- Set the issue date
- Set the expiration date. Select Always valid if you do not want the certification to expire.
- Set the association type: manually awarded, course/learning plan completion, or external training activity.
If you have enabled external certifications for Docebo Connect for Credly or Docebo Connect for Accredible (Advanced settings > Advanced options> Connect), the Association type section shows the External certification option. Select this option, select the certification provider, and add the external certification link. Repeat to add another external certification.
Notes:
- Certification dates are stored at midnight UTC for the selected date and displayed according to the administrator's timezone. This may cause the displayed date to differ from the selected date in some time zones.. 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.
- The awarding procedure runs as a background job if the number of awarded users exceeds 100.
Awarding certifications to users via CSV
Click Import certification records via CSV at the top of the Legacy certifications page and click Upload file.
Prepare a CSV file using the following fields.
| Platform data fields | Accepted values and examples | Notes |
| username |
string Examples: certified_user@gmail.com certified_user2 |
Username of the user associated with the certification record. This field is required. |
| certification_code |
string Examples: Cert_1 SME_CERT |
Code identifying the certification. Codes are optional for certifications but are required when awarding certifications via CSV files. Add a code to any This field is required. |
| certification_issue_date |
string (date with format YYYY-MM-DD) Example: 2024-12-31 |
Date certification was or will be issued. Certification issue date This field is required. |
| always_valid |
boolean Examples: yesno truefalse 10 |
Whether the certification record expires. If true, the record is created with no date of expiration. If false, you must specify a certification_expire_date. This field is required. |
| certification_expire_date |
string (date with format YYYY-MM-DD) Example: 2024-12-31 |
Certification expiration date This field is not valid, and you should not use it, if the certification is always valid ( always_valid=true). This field is required when the certification is not always valid (always_valid=false). |
| type |
string Allowed values: course learning_plan external_training manual |
Type of item associated with certification record. Use manual to indicate that the certification has been manually awarded to the user by a Superadmin, This field is required. |
| code |
string Examples: Cert_1 SME_CERT |
Code of the course or learning plan assigned to the certification. Not valid if type is This field is required when the type is course or learning_plan . |
We recommend not changing the Choose separators and File charset options unless you need to configure them according to your cvs file.
Use Consider duplicate certifications as certification renewal to control how duplicate certification records are handled.
- When disabled, duplicate rows generate an error.
- When enabled, only the last duplicate row is imported. The existing certification is archived and a new certification is issued. If you have configured the Certification has been Issued notification, it will be triggered for the renewed certification.
The import runs as a background job, regardless of the amount of data to import.
The new awarded users are displayed on the Awarded users page.
Notes on dates
Keep the following in mind when importing certification records:
- 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.
Editing certification records
- Open the drop-down at the end of a user’s row.
- Select Edit.
- Edit the issue date, expiration date, and association type (manually awarded, course completion,learning plan completion or external training activity completion).
You can choose to not have an expiration date, by selecting Always valid.
Notifications
Create notifications using the following events:
- Certification has been issued
- Certification has expired
Note: Include the [renew_link] shortcode in the Certification has expired notification to allow learners to renew their certification.
Learn more about notifications.
Tips and tricks
Certification records
- Deleting a certification removes it from learner history.
- Removing the certification association from a course also removes it from learner history.
- Certifications cannot be associated with deactivated users.
Renewal
- Recertifying a course resets the progress of all associated training materials. If those training materials are in the Training materials page, their progress will be reset in all the courses they are associated with.
- The course completion status is not reset.
Reporting
- When users renew a certification after it has expired, the previous certification records remain available in the Users-Certifications report.
- When users renew a certification before it expires, their previous completion date shows as archived in the Users - Certifications and the Certifications-Users reports.
Associations
Only one certification can be associated with a course, learning plan, or external training activity. A learning plan can contain courses with a different certification associated with each.