About Certifications
Applicable Product:
PeopleFluent Learning
Applicable Release:
All Versions
Summary:
A Certification indicates a learner is formally recognized as having a particular achievement or skill set.
Typically, certifications are provided upon completion of learning events or passing an exam. Learners can use them to demonstrate their skill in specific areas, and they can also be used by third-parties, such as LinkedIn, as evidence of course completion or skill attainment.
You can create certifications and award customizable certificates on completion of a course or learning
program. Certifications can be awarded in the following ways:
- Automatically by the LMS on completion of one or more specific courses or exams
- Manually by another user, such as a manager or instructor, if the certification allows manual awarding
- Manually by the learner, if the certification allows self-awarding
You can assign a period of validity to certifications and configure email notifications and auto-enroll rules that are triggered when certifications expire. Certifications can be set to expire a number of days or years from the date they were awarded, or on a specific date each year.
You can categorize certifications by creating certification types. For example, you could have different
certification types for internal and external courses. You can also group related certifications into pools for easy reference and assignment.
Like users and learning modules, certifications can have attributes. You can use attributes to add custom fields to certifications and PDF certificates. You can create attributes and reviewers can assign values to them when awarding certifications or importing certifications via the Awarded Certificates CSV Loader. Certification attributes are shown in certification reports and when reviewing learners’ certifications in the Career Development Center.
Certifications can include PDF certificates, which provide proof of course completion or passing the associated exam. Learners can download their certificates and use them outside the PeopleFluent suite of applications. To issue certificates, you create and upload custom PDF templates with form fields that are dynamically filled in with learner and course information. These form fields can include module, user and custom attributes, such as an external reference, for example. Learners can download and print their own certificates.
Certifications do not have to include an actual certificate, but to generate certificates you must
use the certification functionality.
You can configure permissions for certifications to specify access for other administrators.
The workflow steps to configure certifications and award them on course completion involves some or all of the following steps:
- Create a certification pool.
- Create a certification type.
- Configure a certificate PDF with the relevant form fields.
- Create certificate award attributes.
- Configure an email template for the certification award message.
- Configure an email template for the certification expiration reminder message.
- Create the certification.
- Assign it to a learning module or certification exam.
Some steps may be optional. For example, you may not need to create a new certification pool, if the
appropriate pool has already been created.
Administrators with unrestricted access to the Certification Manager features in System Roles (Manage
Features > Certification Manager) can create and manage certifications