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Hi everyone, we are glad to provide you with an update on the Certification initiative.

 

Problem space: Weak relationship between certifications and training

Thanks to 25+ customer interviews, 60+ customer surveys and 50+ ideas and customer feedbacks we were able to clearly define the main pain points, needs and desires:

  • Limit of the renew process, with the main needs of
    • more options to trigger the retraining 
    • possibility to define different learning path for the retraining 
  • Lack of clarity for the learners, with the main needs of
    • avoid misunderstanding on the renew action 
    • provide to the learner an easy way to see certifications and their statuses 

The underlying problem identified is the weakness of the relationship between certification and training, which impacts heavily on administrators' management and reporting/auditing gaps.

 

Solution space: Certification as a training entity

The solution identified is to make the certification a training entity, similar to courses and learning plans, for both administrators and learners.

This will create a strong relationship between certifications and training, supporting administrators’ management activities and improving learner’s experience.

For this reason, we will work simultaneously on certification, retraining, learning plans and enrollment rules, to provide our administrators with the full capacity to support all complex training delivery use cases, especially with certifications, while reducing complexity and administrative effort.

 

Product solution: Certifications as an extension of the learning plans

From a functional standpoint, making the creation of certifications as a specific type of learning plan, we will allow to: 

  • leverage on (and extending) the process of creating advanced learning paths in certification use cases
  • ensure also for certifications the clear learner experience of the learning plan
  • direct enroll learners into a certification, automating the process and streamlining the dates management
  • inherit Power Users permissions 
  • extend certifications to catalogs and eCommerce 
  • simplify administrative tasks and reduce the overall complexity, aligning user’s experience to the existing learning plans workflow

 

Release milestones: Delivering progressive values

Thanks to this approach we will have different milestones released in different phases that will deliver value progressively:

  1. Current learning plans will be extended to support certifications use cases, by adding enrollment archive, persistent completion and further completion logics
  2. Customer will be able to create and manage certifications as a specific type of learning plan 
  3. Introduction of a brand new renew process with automation, renew window and opportunity to define a different training path for the renew 
  4. Current certifications will be migrated to the new certifications
  5. Certifications will be equipped with dedicated power users’ permissions and resources association, along with the possibility to be published into catalogs and more

 

Deliverables overview 

Scroll right to see full table

   

Stand alone release

BETA period

GA release

Progressive release
   

Learning plan extension to support certifications use cases

New certification: certifications as an extension of the learning plan

Flows managements: renew process and renew path

Migration

Further major and minor improvements
 

Today

Milestone 1

Milestone 2

Milestone 3

Milestone 4

Milestone 5

LPs: persistent status of the enrollment completion

❌

✅

✅

✅

/

✅

LPs: extended completion logics (OR logic and #of courses)

❌

✅

✅

✅

/

✅

LPs: multiple completion and enrolment archive

❌

✅

✅

✅

/

✅

Certifications: direct enrollment into a certification

❌

Prereq

✅

✅

/

✅

Certifications: improved Admins' experience

❌

Prereq

✅

✅

/

✅

Certifications: additional fields

❌

Prereq

✅

✅

/

✅

Certifications: AND logic to gain a certifications

❌

Prereq

✅

✅

/

✅

Certifications: improved learners' experience (especially on renew action)

❌

Prereq

✅

✅

/

✅

Certifications: APIs and webhooks

❌

❌

✅

✅

/

✅

Certifications: Absolute Re-Certification Date

❌

❌

✅

✅

/

✅

Enrollment rules: rules type to enroll into certifications

❌

Prereq

Prereq

✅

/

✅

Certifications: different courses for renewal

❌

Prereq

Prereq

✅

/

✅

Certifications: renew window

❌

❌

Prereq

✅

/

✅

Certifications: enrolment archive based on certification dates

❌

❌

Prereq

✅

/

✅

Certifications: "Pause" or "stop" the renewal of a certification for a specific user

❌

❌

❌

✅

/

✅

Allow power users to manage certifications

❌

❌

❌

❌

/

✅

Improve certificate - certification relationship

❌

❌

❌

❌

/

✅

Catalog-Based Certifications

❌

❌

❌

❌

/

✅

LPs: soft deadlines and external prerequisites

❌

❌

❌

❌

/

✅

 

Design proof of concept - Video

This brief demo showcases an initial graphic layout aimed at validating the concept and the user flows of having a certification as a specific type of learning plan. While this isn’t the final result, it offers a preview of the direction we’re moving toward.

 

@Nicolo Malinverno - Ciao! Thank you so much for this detail. I need to take my time and sink my teeth into this one.

Can something not be lost? Recent work on setting up courses to have archived records have been very helpful, but we lost one component - the  Autoarchiving of webbased training is a HUGE part of the story that just did not close over the last few years.

I just watched the video - I believe this is the crucial key….

 

Relative supporting a roaming scenario is so important to the story.

 

Thanks for the detailed video. If possible, I’d be interested to see what reporting/analytics you expect to be available following the revamp.

Thank you. We started awarding certifications via Docebo when we first implemented Docebo about 5 years ago and have never used the Certifications app because it was not able to do what we needed it to do. It appears this new revision will bring it to a level where we can use it. Looking forward to that! 

Great work and happy to see the progression on this project. Just an idea/question, will it be possible to assign badges/certificates also on a section level within certification?
 

Hi @Nicolo Malinverno, in the scenario where there is just 1 course that’s required to be taken annually, would it be possible to add the certification at course level without the need of creating a Learning Plan?

With this in mind, will Learning Plans have the option to be included into a category? This is required to enable automatic assignment to Power Users as this will become a manual intensive task with the increased use of LPs.

Hi @Nicolo Malinverno, in the scenario where there is just 1 course that’s required to be taken annually, would it be possible to add the certification at course level without the need of creating a Learning Plan?

With this in mind, will Learning Plans have the option to be included into a category? This is required to enable automatic assignment to Power Users as this will become a manual intensive task with the increased use of LPs.

 

Hi @elliotmi, 

the new concept imply that the creation of a certification is the creation of a specific type of learning plan, so instead of creating a certification in the “certification” section, you will create a certification in the “learning plan and certifications” section, that will have its own course list. 

this means that also when a certification need a single course, the certification is still this specific type of learning plan. 

In addition we will provide the enrollment directly in the certification, and this imply that we have to change the way a course is associated to a certification, meaning that we want to avoid to enroll user to a course independently from the certification. 

we are however considering to provide a way to associate the course to an existing new certification in a similar way to what is possible to do toady with the association to the learning plan, so directly from the course management area. 

 

We have taken this direction since we are sure that in this way we will be able to well support a lot of use cases, especially connected to retraining and reporting, also in the use case with only one course. 

Hi @Nicolo Malinverno, in the scenario where there is just 1 course that’s required to be taken annually, would it be possible to add the certification at course level without the need of creating a Learning Plan?

With this in mind, will Learning Plans have the option to be included into a category? This is required to enable automatic assignment to Power Users as this will become a manual intensive task with the increased use of LPs.

 

Hi @elliotmi, 

the new concept imply that the creation of a certification is the creation of a specific type of learning plan, so instead of creating a certification in the “certification” section, you will create a certification in the “learning plan and certifications” section, that will have its own course list. 

this means that also when a certification need a single course, the certification is still this specific type of learning plan. 

In addition we will provide the enrollment directly in the certification, and this imply that we have to change the way a course is associated to a certification, meaning that we want to avoid to enroll user to a course independently from the certification. 

we are however considering to provide a way to associate the course to an existing new certification in a similar way to what is possible to do toady with the association to the learning plan, so directly from the course management area. 

 

We have taken this direction since we are sure that in this way we will be able to well support a lot of use cases, especially connected to retraining and reporting, also in the use case with only one course. 

Understood, thanks @Nicolo Malinverno for explaining.

 

RE: The ability to add Learning Plans into a category, is this being considered alongside the solution?

@elliotmi 

Thanks for your patience.

Categories are on our radar, but they aren’t a priority at the moment. We’ll assess when to schedule them for future planning.

@Nicolo Malinverno 

Thanks for confirmation. 

I do, however, worry for the administrative burden this will create not being able to automatically assign Learning Plans to fellow Power Users in the same way that Courses behave. Therefore, until such functionality is made available, I don’t think it could be a viable option for us to use.

Hi, will notifications be part of this revamp? Currently, the “Certification has expired” notification cannot be triggered based on Certifications or Courses/Learning Plans, and it can only be filtered by Groups or branches. It would be useful to have the option to select a specific Certification for triggering the notification.

hi @Diego Jimenez 

and thanks for your insights. 

NImprovements to notifications for certifications are on our to-do list, although they haven't been prioritized yet.

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