Automatic Sign Off for Qualifications

When defining Qualifications, you can select how sign offs should happen -- manually or automatically. This article details the options available to you and when to use each option. The term "Sign Off" in this context means the creation of a Training Completion record - officially recognising someone as having completed all the requirements to achieve that Qualfication.

Manual Sign Off

Training staff will need to manually create Completions for this Qualification once learners have met all of your success criteria.

Automatic Sign Off (Attendance)
When a learner attends this Course, they will automatically receive this Qualification afterwards. This is the right approach if the Qualification is based on attendance only, i.e. a person only has to show up to one Event of this type to achieve Completion, and there are no additional evaluations or requirements to be met. An example might be a "Workplace Safety Awareness" course, where being present is all that is required. Don't use this option if a learner has to attend multiple events to receive the Qualification. For this mode, the Lead Instructor for the event will be used as the "Assessor" for the Training Completion record.

Automatic Sign Off (Achievement)
If a learner has Completions for all of the Learning Objectives and all of the Prerequisites for this Qualification, and meets any criteria set regarding the number and level of credits needed, they will automatically receive this Qualification as well. This mode requires a Coordinator to be set, and at least one Learning Objective or Prerequisite to be linked to this Qualification. The Qualification Coordinator will be the person used as the "Assessor" when the Training Completion record is created.
Make sure you have the Objectives & Prerequisites fully set up before you enable this option, because otherwise the system may start handing out Completions to people before you've created all the criteria you want.

Automatic Sign Off (Achievement) with Manual Review
This is the same as above, but with an additional step for the Training Level Coordinator to review the pending items before letting the system proceed to create the Completions. This can be helpful if you want to ensure a human is involved in the process, and is also required if your Training Level does not have any Learning Objectives associated with it. In this mode, the system will send an email to the Coordinator (no more than once per day) if there are any items waiting for review. The full workflow is detailed here.

About processing
Note that the system checks once every hour for anyone that meets the criteria for an automatic sign off. If some criteria are missing at that time -- for example if there is no Qualification Coordinator set for a Qualification that is in "Automatic Sign Off (Achievement)" mode, or if there is a Coordinator but they are missing an email address, then no action will be taken.

Processing will be skipped for Qualifications that have a status of "Inactive" or "Under Development".

Enforcement of Prerequisites and Designations
Administrators can set two Preferences that impact how sign off works:

Enforce Prerequisites for Completions
Enforce Designations for Completions

In all Sign Off Modes, if these options are set to "Enforce", then sign off will only work if the learner has the required Prerequisites, and the Assessor has the required Designation.

Example 1:

Bob is a learner and has completed all the Learning Objectives to achieve an "Advanced First Aid Certificate", but he does not yet hold the pre-requisite "Basic First Aid Certificate". If the preference "Enforce Prerequisites for Completions" is to set to Enforce, then the system will not issue a Training Completion to Bob.

Example 2:

Sally is the Lead Instructor for an event "First Aid Course", which is set to "Automatic Sign Off (Attendance)". However the preference "Enforce Designations for Completions" is set to Enforce, and because Sally does not have the Assessor Designation for "First Aid Course", none of the attendees of that event will be automatically signed off. However once Sally is given the Assessor Designation for "First Aid Course", then the next time the process runs, the system will create Training Completions for all attendees.