The CourseMill Compliance Manager automates the enrollment and tracking of annually required training. For example, company policy, governmental regulation, or skills training for mission critical tasks can require renewal and verification.
Overview
Setup a course for automatic reenrollment based on a determined schedule. Learners will receive notification of the expiration of their current certification and enrollment in future compliance training.
Course vs Curriculum
Courses have a re-enroll date associated with them. The course profile field ‘Re-enroll in course after this number of days’, provides the number of days a course completion is considered valid. Counting begins at the completion date, and once this date expires, the learner is out of compliance. The course will automatically re-enroll the learner based on the Number of Days Prior field, and with the appropriate notifications activated, CourseMill informs them of both the expiration and the re-enrollment.
Figure 1: Course Profile, Due Dates
A curriculum has an expiration date associated as well, the ‘Certification expires in (days)’ field of the curriculum profile. However this expiration applies only to the curriculum certificate supplied upon the initial completion of the curriculum. The courses within a curriculum can have associated expiration dates, and as described above, automatically re-enroll learners. However, a curriculum does not re-enroll learners just because its certification has expired.
Figure 2: Curriculum Profile
There are two distinct behaviors, one for courses, and one for curriculum:
- When a curriculum expires, CourseMill will send a notice to the learner that the certificate associated to the curriculum has expired.
- When a course within a curriculum expires, the curriculum certificate is set to incomplete and the learner automatically re-enrolls in the course. CourseMill sends an enrollment notification to the learner.
Required
The primary elements of the Compliance Manager include:
- Manage Properties:
- CertificationExpirationDays
- DueDateApproachingDays
- DueDatePassedDays
- DueDateWarningThresholdDays
- Manage Scheduled Tasks
- Batch Report Schedule
- The Course Profile:
- Due dates
- Duration of the certification
- Recertification window of time
- Notifications
- Enrolled in the course
- Course is completed
- Days prior to course due date
- Certification is about to expire
Managed Properties
Managed properties affect the system globally. There are several properties used to implement Compliance Management (Table 1).
Table 1: System Properties used by the Compliance Manager
|
Property |
Description |
Settings |
|
CertificationExpirationDays |
The number of days prior to the expiration of a curriculum certification, which determines when to send a notification email to the learner.
Note: The Certification Expiration Date is set within the curriculum profile, and is required to enable this property. |
Provide a single integer value for the number of days.
For example: 14, specifies 14 days before expiration. |
|
DueDateApproachingDays |
A comma-separated list of integers, representing the number of days prior to an impending course due date, determines when a reminder will be sent to the student warning of the approaching due date.
Note: The due date is set within the course profile, and is required to enable this property. |
Provide a list of integer values, separated with commas.
For example: 30, 14, 7, 1, 0 |
|
DueDatePassedDays |
A comma-separated list of integers, representing the number of days after a course due date has expired, which determines when a notice will be sent to the student warning of the expired due date.
Note: The due date is set within the course profile, and is required to enable this property. |
Provide a list of integer values, separated with commas.
For example: 30, 14, 7, 1, 0 |
|
DueDateWarningThresholdDays |
The number of days prior to a due date of a course before a warning indicator will appear in the students 'My Course’ tab.
Note: The due date is set within the course profile, and is required to enable this property. |
Provide a single integer value for the number of days.
For example: 14, specifies 14 days before expiration. |
DueDateApproachingDays
Set DueDateApproachingDays to a comma delimited string of integer values. Each value represents the number of days before expiration of the course. CourseMill will then send a notice to the learner at each of the intervals specified. For example, the string 14, 7, 1, 0 (see Figure 3 and Figure 4) informs CourseMill to send a notice 14 days prior to expiration, and then if the course has not been completed, send another notice 7 days, and then 1 days prior to the expiration. A zero (0) causes CourseMill to send a notice when the certification has expired.
|
|
For CourseMill to apply the values stored in the DueDateApproachingDays property, you must activate the course notification ‘Days prior to course due date’. |
Figure 3: Manage Properties - DueDateApproachingDays interval settings
Set the DueDateApproachingDay Property
To set the DueDateApproachingDays property:
- Navigate to Admin Tasks.
- Click on Manage Properties.
- Enter a search string (e.g. duedate) in the Property field, or select the category Course/Completion Settings.
- Click the Search button.
- Double-click on the property DueDateApproachingDays (Figure 3).
- Enter the intervals, separated by a comma (Figure 4):
- For example: 60, 30, 14, 7, 0
Figure 4: Set DueDateApproaching parameters
- Click the Save button.
- Click the Apply Changes button on the Manage Properties display (Figure 5).
Figure 5: Manage Properties actions
Manage Scheduled Tasks
There are three scheduled tasks (Figure 6) that participate in Compliance Management:
- Batch Report Schedule
- Mail Schedule
- Notification Schedule
Figure 6: Manage Scheduled Tasks
Each scheduled tasks has two display components:
- Current status Log
- Settings Dialog
The status log of a scheduled task shows the time and results for the last time it ran (Figure 7). To view the status log for any Scheduled task, left click on the scheduled item.
Figure 7: Status Log for the Batch Report Schedule
Each scheduled task has a settings associated to it (Figure 8). To open the settings dialog for a scheduled task, double-click on the scheduled item.
Figure 8: A Scheduled Task Dialog
Batch Report Schedule
Running the Batch Report Schedule triggers the auto-reenrollment of all courses with ‘Re-enroll in course after this number of days’. If the ‘Number of days prior’ value is not set, then the auto-reenrollment occurs when the expiration date occurs. If the ‘Number of days prior’ setting is present, the auto-reenrollment occurs based on the expiration date minus the days prior.
Set the Batch Report Schedule
To set the Batch Report Schedule:
- Navigate to Admin Tasks.
- Click on Manage Scheduled Tasks.
- Double-click on BatchReportSchedule.
- Select a Start Time (Figure 9).
|
|
All times are in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). To calculate your time, subtract your Greenwich time zone from UTC. For example, 4:45 UTC is 00:45 eastern. |
Figure 9: Select a Start Time
- Select the frequency (how often to run the task), from every 15 minutes to once every 12 hours, or once a day (Figure 10).
Figure 10: Select the task frequency
- Schedule the days of the week to run the task (Figure 11).
Figure 11: Set the schedule (days of the week)
- Click the Save button.
The Course Profile
The course profile contains several due date settings that work with the Compliance Manager (Figure 12):
- Due Dates
- Re-enrollment Settings
Figure 12: Course Profile Settings for Compliance Training
The Due Date determines how long the learner has to complete the course once enrolled. This value is used by the Notifications subsystem for sending the ‘Days prior to course due date’ notification based on the established intervals.
Re-enrollment after completion of the course settings determine how long a course completion remains valid. The learner must retake the course to ensure compliance. Specify the number of days for it to remain valid. Once the learner completes the course, the completion date starts the countdown. CourseMill will automatically reenroll the learner in the course when the last day concludes.
The ‘Number of days prior expiration to re-enroll in course’ value determines how many days prior to the expiration date that the course should auto-reenroll the learner. If the course is part of a curriculum, and I re-enrolled based on the days prior value, the curriculum is not marked incomplete until the actual expiration date of the course.
Set Due Dates
To set expiration date values (Figure 12):
- Navigate to Curriculum/Courses.
- Click Manage Courses.
- Double-click on the course.
- Select the Due Dates tab.
- Enter:
- Due Dates
- Re-enroll values
- Click the Save button.
Notifications
- Enrolled in the course
- Course is completed
- Days prior to course due date
- Certification is about to expire