Update on the Certification & Retraining Initiative

Ciao Nicolò, thanks for the update and hope to see the core functionality very soon, we will be available for testing the beta if you need help. By the way, I have a couple of questions: since the new Certifications will be seen as a new LP type, what will happen to the existing ones we currently use? The two types of Certifications will cohexist? There will be an equivalence to set up? Will the old Certifications be automatically converted in LP type? Asking for a friend. Thank you!

This is written in a very confusing way. Are you saying you are only allowing Learning Plans for Certifications now?

For #3 - are you saying Archiving is coming to Learning Plans as it exists now for course enrollments?

Learning Plans are so unreliable - have alignment issues, sometimes don’t enroll the courses. We’ve been moving away from Learning Plans completely. 

Sounds great, Can't wait to test it. Thank you

I’m very excited to see the improvements come to light!  Curious to know how renewal will tie into this new approach.  I’m in desperate need of an easy way to have a learning plan for certification and a separate course or learning plan for the renewal piece.  Looking forward to learning more!

Thanks for the update. I’m optimistic, but extremely nervous. We have also avoided learning plans entirely due to unreliability and continuity issues we experienced during initial testing and implementation, so I’m hoping those have been resolved. We are also completely uncomfortable with the idea that a learner would need to be enrolled in the certification learning plan beforehand - we generally won’t know that our learners are about to complete a certification course - so I’m very interested to see how that will be managed. Very eager to be involved in beta testing when available.

​@Nicolo Malinverno , I appreciate the update and can’t wait for testing.

​@LuAmbrosio 

great question — and thank you again for your interest.

In the first phase, the current and new certifications will coexist in parallel, so there’s no disruption for existing setups.
Later on, we’ll introduce a 1:1 self-migration option, allowing admins to selectively migrate existing certifications to the new LP-based system whenever they’re ready.

This way you’ll be able to gradually move to the new structure at your own pace, keeping full continuity

​@JessOlcott tnx

The ability to manage renewals through a different path than the initial certification is absolutely in scope of the overall initiative, even though it won’t be part of the first release.

Our goal is to support this scenario within the same certification (a specific type of Learning Plan) — so that, when the renewal flow is triggered (archive + re-enrollment), admins will be able to define completion requirements that differ from the first enrollment.

This will make it possible to manage initial training and retraining seamlessly, all within the same certification structure.

​@gus 

May I ask for a bit more detail about your expected flow?
Our current direction is that, since the new Certifications will be a specific type of Learning Plan, they’ll work exactly the same way — including the ability to publish them in catalogs and allow self-enrollment.

This should help cover cases where learners aren’t pre-enrolled, while still benefiting from the new stability and tracking improvements introduced with the updated Learning Plan model.

Hi ​@Nicolo Malinverno. Thanks for following up.

We have 3 ways a learner can earn a certification (separate to renewals/recertification - users cannot retake the same course - all renewals are by self-enrollment in a recert course).

1. We have some eLearning certification courses which are available for self-enrollment. User simply chooses the course they want to complete, enrolls, and receives certification at the end. These represent almost half our new certifications. We have no way to know which users will want to enroll in these courses.
2. We have some eLearning courses which do not allow self-enrollment. Learners are enrolled by trainers or sales staff. In most cases the enrollments need to be approved (after purchase order validated) by our admin teams.
3. Facilitated courses where the learner is enrolled by one of our staff, with the same validation/approval process as above.

Our expected flow would be that the process operates as it currently does. User completes course, associated certification is automatically awarded. I understand Docebo is trying to introduce additional functionality, but to require certification to be an additional manual step just doesn’t work from a user and admin experience.

If the learner (or our staff) need to understand and remember to manually enroll in the certification learning plan, in addition to the course, and before the course is completed, this is going to fall down quickly. Almost all our learners are customers, most of which generally have very little interaction with our learning portal other than a one-time certification course and then renewal 2 years later. We already have support issues with some of the most basic learning processes.

We don’t currently use learning plans at all, they don’t suit the way our customers undertake training, so this is entirely foreign to our users and trying to introduce it as a new extra function is going to be problematic. Could there be some kind of enrollment rule for the certification learning plans? So customer enrolls in or completes course x, automatically gets enrolled in certification plan x?

Otherwise, we’re going to need to find some way to prevent learners from being able to see and enroll in any certification courses, and only be able to access and enroll in the certification learnign plan. From what I;ve been able to find, I don’t think this is possible.

Hello again ​@Nicolo Malinverno. I’ve been giving this quite a lot of thought, and there may be a simple solution, but it has a big ‘IF’ attached.

Background: We currently use groups to limit which catalogs our learners have access to, and by extension which courses they can see. We use this for two key purposes:

• Regions: Allow learners to only see facilitated courses in their region
• Cert Levels: Allow learners to only see level 2 and higher courses if they have completed the lower levels

Question: If a learner is enrolled in a certification learning plan which contains multiple courses (e.g. 1a, 1b, 1c) but their group assignments only allow them to see the catalog for 1a, will this catalog restriction carry through, or will being enrolled in the certification learning plan allow them to see all courses in that learning plan, ignoring the catalog restrictions?

If the catelog restriction also applies to courses in the cerftification learning plan, then in theory we could automatically enroll all learners in all certification learning plan streams, so they will be enrolled and eligible for all certifications, but they will still only have access to the courses that the group and catalog assignments currently allow. Problem solved.

Additional separate question: When a learner renews a higher level certificaiton (e.g. level 2) we automatically renew the lower levels (we need to do this otherwise the lower levels expire and it creates confusion with customers and our systems). We tried using an equivalency course to do this, but it won’t renew the lower level if the customer already has that certification. It will only add the lower certification if the customer does not already have it. So we have to monitor and update these manually. Will there be anything in the new certification functionality to better manage these equivalency requirements?

Thank you.

Hi ​@gus 

Thanks again for raising these points — they are very aligned with the direction we’re taking with the new Certifications (and one of the key reasons why we chose to build them on top of Learning Plans), even if there’s a small twist compared to the model you described.

Here’s a high-level overview of how this will work as the feature evolves.

1. The new experience is that learners self-enroll directly into the certification.
The certification becomes the single entry point.
This removes the need for learners to interact with a course first and only later discover that it is linked to a certification — a flow that often creates confusion and adds administrative overhead, especially in reporting.
In the new approach, the learner journey stays simple and consistent.

2. Inside the certification, we will support flexible completion paths.
To support scenarios like yours, certifications will allow OR-based completion logic:
“earn the certification by completing 1 course among these X available options.”
This covers variations such as different regions, delivery modes, or course versions within the same certification.

3. We aim to replicate your visibility model.
This is an area we are actively exploring.
The goal is that enrolling into a certification should not automatically expose all courses contained in it.
Learners should continue to see only the courses they are allowed to access (via catalogs, groups, regions, etc.), just like today.
We are evaluating a model that makes this explicit inside the certification — similar to group-driven visibility — so that the same certification can safely serve multiple audiences.

4. Bringing this together, the future flow looks like this:

• Learners self-enroll into the certification → single, consistent entry point

• Certification supports multiple valid training paths → OR logic

• Learners see only the courses relevant to them → audience-based visibility

• Certification is awarded automatically once the eligible course is completed

This is the direction we are designing toward, even though not all elements will be included in the first deliverable.

Happy to keep iterating with you — your scenario is exactly the type of use case we aim to support end-to-end as the new model evolves.

Thanks ​@Nicolo Malinverno. I appreciate the follow-up and clarification. A couple of additional points/questions:

1.  A couple of times you specifically stated that ‘learners self-enroll’. I assume it will still be possible to also enroll learners in the certification plan, either manually by power users or automatically through enrollment rules? Or will we have to rely on our customers understanding that they need to now enroll in a certification plan instead of a course? This would be challenging.
2. Will there be any functionality built into this process to handle course/certification prerequisites (e.g. no access to level 2 courses/certification unless level 1 cert is active/valid) and equivalency updating (e.g. level 1 certification automatically renewed when associated level 2 certification is renewed)?

Thanks agin.

Hi Gus,
Thanks for the follow-up — happy to clarify both points.

1. Yes, absolutely: administrative and automated enrollment will still be available.
Since the new certifications are a specific type of Learning Plan, they inherit the same enrollment capabilities, including:

• manual enrollment by admins or power users

• enrollment rules

• API-based enrollment

So compared to the current system, this actually adds a new entry point (direct enrollment into the certification) without removing any of the existing administrative controls you rely on today.

2. Prerequisites and multi-level logic are part of our long-term vision.
Your scenario (e.g., restricting access to Level 2 until Level 1 is valid, or automatically updating Level 1 when Level 2 is renewed) is fully aligned with the direction we’re taking.
Prerequisites specifically are part of the broader evolution we intend to support, even though they won’t be included in the first release.

We’ll keep sharing updates as we define these next steps — your multi-level structure is one of the key reference use cases guiding the design.

Hi ​@Nicolo Malinverno ,

We have several use case scenarios that we believe will be valuable for shaping the Certification & Retraining initiative. We’d be happy to share these through our Customer Success Manager to ensure you have full visibility.

Please let us know the best way to proceed.

Thank you,

Natasza