Renewing certification

Hi ​@harryn, once they click the “Renew” button, their course tracking status is reset. If they pause the course and want to return to it later, they need to access it from their “In progress” courses. The renew link will reset their status every time.

With regards to the other issue, if the learners are selecting the wrong course then that’s on them - it’s not a system problem because it’s working as it should. If they do accidentally click the wrong course, then you would need to manually change their induction status to “Complete” again and tell them to select the correct course for renewal.

Could you create and share some ‘how to’ guides with your learners on LMS best practice?

Hi Harryn, yes it’s a total nightmare. The current certification renewal process doesn’t work. We don’t use the renew now button because of that and because a lot of people someone manage to complete the course again without clicking it. In either case it results in a lot of manual work.

They have been working on an updated certification and renewal process for at least the last 5-6 years. I am hopeful that something will be released soon but not holding my breath given the amount of time we’ve been told it’s coming. I will share with you the page where you can follow the progress. 

Aimee

This is the reason we stopped using certifications and now process a monthly re-enrolment to the relevant refresher courses for all those who require them in the coming month. It was just causing too many issues for us and made for a really poor user experience, so we decided the extra administration was the best option. Not ideal at all unfortunately. 

Hi Anya - same for us. It is a lot more work for us but there are fewer mistakes, it’s a better experience and as a regulated industry we have to be sure our compliance numbers are correct and keep people up to date so this isn’t something we can fluff. 

The frustration you're seeing here is very common, and you've hit on a specific architectural quirk with how Docebo handles multiple courses tied to a single certification. As you can see from the other replies, it's a known pain point, but adjusting your setup can eliminate the manual work.

Regarding the progress reset: ​@admin_mhshomes  is entirely correct. The "Renew" button intentionally archives the previous tracking attempt to start a fresh one. If a user clicks it again while midway through, the system archives their partial progress and starts over. A practical mitigation is to place the "Resume Where You Left Off" widget prominently at the top of your main learner dashboard to intercept users before they navigate back to the Certifications page.

For the wrong course selection: Because both the Induction Learning Plan and the Refresher course are tied to the same certification, Docebo natively treats them as equal, valid paths for renewal.

Initial vs. annual refresher compliance requirement - the cleanest fix is to change the architecture to remove the user choice entirely. We remove the Induction LP from the certification. Instead, we tie the Certification only to the Annual Refresher course. When a user completes their initial Induction, we use an Enrollment Rule to automatically enroll them into the Refresher certification path (often with a relative due date 11 or 12 months out). This completely eliminates the risk of them resetting their induction progress because the induction is no longer an option to click.

You can review the specific behaviors of how courses link to certifications in the Certifications and Retraining documentation.

Let me know if you want to dig deeper into setting up that enrollment rule alternative.

​@Moshe.Machlav I like your approach with the enrolment rule for the refresher certification path.

​@harryn - same boat and this has been discussed extensively with docebo’s product team, as the UX is not at all the best. The enrollment rules sounds like the best approach in the meantime until Docebo releases their updates to Learning Plans and Certifications.

We to have abandoned Certifications.  We now use automation archive and reneroll learners in Recurring Courses. Automations use 3 course or learning plan additional fields:

• Recurring =  if this equals yes the course or learning plan will trigger the automation
• Expires = the number of days until the completion is expired
• Renewal window = the number of days before expiration when the learner should be archived and re-enrolled.

We get an email for learning plans since the APIs to Archive and Reenroll are not available, and then we manually archive and reenroll learners.

Hi ​@RonB  and ​@harryn ,

I was just looking into this! I put together a post on my blog that dives into the pros and cons of using the Archive vs. Certifications in Docebo. It should give you some good answers.

Feel free to take a look: https://digitalstep.biz/guides/docebo-recertification-archive-vs-certifications/

Yes! It’s super annoying and confusing.  For the repeated re-enrolling issue, I made a custom block right above the renew section I have on the homepage, and wrote:

“Do not click "Re-enroll to Renew" more than once per renewal period per course

Otherwise, you will re-enroll again, which resets your progress each time.”

They do need a user-friendly message that says, “You have already re-enrolled during your enrollment period. Are you sure you want to re-enroll and reset your progress?” or something like that.  We all complain about how terrible the certification experience has been over the past many years, and once we get a small “enhancement,” it seems like it wasn't even thought through or tested very well.