A training course is the unit of training you assign to people: something to read and sign, a quiz to pass, or a practical task an assessor watches them do. The course holds the content, how often it has to be repeated, which other courses must come first, and the list of trainees assigned to it with how far each has got.
Where to find it: Training > Courses in the main menu.
Concepts
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Course | One piece of training, such as Food Safety Fundamentals or Forklift Operation. |
| Type | Document, Quiz or Practical Assessment. The type decides which tabs the course has and how a trainee finishes it. |
| Status | The course itself: Created, Active or Completed. Only active courses are offered when training is assigned in bulk. |
| Assignment | One trainee on one course, shown as a row on the Trainees tab with its own status and score. |
| Recurrence | How often a trainee must do the course again after completing it. |
| Grace period | Extra days a renewal has before it counts as overdue. |
| Prerequisite | Another course a trainee must have completed before they can start this one. |
Quick start
- Go to Training > Courses and click New Training Course.
- Enter a Name and Description (both are required; Save stays disabled until they are filled in) and choose the Type.
- Set Recurrence Type and Required Prerequisites if the course needs them, then click Save. The other tabs become available once the course is saved.
- Build the content on the tab for the type: Quiz, Checklist, or Form for a document course.
- Back on the course list, use the Activate action so the course can be offered in bulk assignment, learning paths and training roles.
- Assign trainees on the Trainees tab.
The course list
| Column | Notes |
|---|---|
| Name | Searchable from the box above the list. |
| Category | The course category, set up under Setup > Training > Course Categories. |
| Owner | The user responsible for the course. |
| Language | Optional. When set, the Assign Trainees dialog only offers trainees with that language. |
| Type | Quiz, Document or Practical Assessment. |
| Status | Created, Active or Completed — see Course status. |
The icons at the start of each row are, in order: Edit; Activate (play icon, on a Created course) or Complete (circle icon, on an Active course); Copy; and Delete. Activate, Complete and Copy each ask you to confirm in a Confirm Action prompt.
Course types and their tabs
Every course has Detail, Trainees, Sessions and Comments tabs. The rest depend on the type, so a quiz never shows an empty checklist and a practical assessment never shows a quiz:
| Type | Extra tabs | How a trainee finishes it |
|---|---|---|
| Document | Form — build the reading material and any fields the trainee fills in. | Works through the content in the Training Centre and signs the training declaration. Being marked attended at a classroom session of the course also completes it. |
| Quiz | Quiz for the questions and answer key, and Analysis for how trainees answered. | Answers the quiz in the Training Centre. The answers are marked on the server and the score is recorded when they complete it. |
| Practical Assessment | Checklist — the competencies an assessor checks. | Cannot be finished by the trainee. An assessor passes them from the Trainees tab — see Conducting a Practical Assessment. |
A new course has every tab except Detail greyed out until its first save, because the content is stored against the saved course.
The Detail tab
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Name | Required. |
| Description | Required. |
| Category | Optional grouping used in lists and analytics. |
| Type | Document, Quiz or Practical Assessment. Changing it changes the tabs shown. |
| Training Date | Optional and for information only: it does not schedule anything or set a due date. Use the Sessions tab for classroom dates. |
| Owner | The responsible user. |
| Language | Optional. Limits the trainees offered when you assign the course. |
| Related Procedure | Only shown when your account has the Quality module. Links the course to the procedure it teaches; nothing else depends on it. |
| Recurrence Type / Grace Period (Days) | See Recurrence and grace period. |
| Required Prerequisites | See Prerequisites. |
Below the fields, QR Code for Quick Access gives a code you can Print, Download or Copy URL. A trainee who scans it and enters their PIN goes straight to the course, if it is assigned to them.
Course status
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Created | A new or copied course. It can be edited and trainees can be added on its Trainees tab, but it is not yet offered anywhere else. |
| Active | In use. Only active courses appear in the step list of a learning path, in a supervisor’s assign list on My team, and in a training role’s Assign Missing Training (which skips a course that is not active). |
| Completed | Retired. It stops being offered for assignment. Existing trainee records stay as they are. |
There is no status field on the Detail tab: status changes only through the Activate and Complete actions on the course list.
Recurrence and grace period
Recurrence is for training that expires, such as an annual food safety refresher. The options in Recurrence Type are:
| Option | Interval |
|---|---|
| None (One-time) | The course never renews. The grace period field is hidden. |
| Annual (Every 12 months) | 365 days |
| Semi-Annual (Every 6 months) | 182 days |
| Quarterly (Every 3 months) | 91 days |
| Custom Interval | Shows Custom Interval (Days): any number from 1 to 3650. |
A trainee’s renewal is measured from their latest completion of the course:
- Due once the interval has passed since that completion.
- Overdue once the interval and the grace period have both passed.
- Every morning the renewal job creates a new assignment for each trainee whose renewal is due or overdue and who has no open assignment on the course. The new assignment is due Grace Period (Days) after the day it is created, and the trainee is notified.
For example, Food Safety Fundamentals recurs annually with a 14-day grace period. Ben Carter completed it 372 days ago, so his renewal is due but not yet overdue. You can also renew ahead of the job, or deliberately, from Bulk Training Renewals.
A trainee whose latest assignment was excused by their supervisor is not renewed automatically. That stops people on leave or transferred away being chased; someone has to reassign the course when they return.
Prerequisites
Required Prerequisites lists the courses a trainee must have completed or signed before this course can be opened. Forklift Operation, for instance, requires Site Induction.
The course will not save with a prerequisite that could never be satisfied. Nothing is changed, and an Error message says why:
| You tried to | Message |
|---|---|
| Make the course require itself | “A course cannot be its own prerequisite.” |
| Pick a course from another site | “Prerequisites must be existing courses on the same site.” |
| Create a loop — for example make Site Induction require Forklift Operation, which already requires Site Induction | “That would create a circular dependency: a selected prerequisite already requires this course.” |
What a trainee sees: in the Training Centre a course with unfinished prerequisites cannot be opened or submitted, and the message names the courses still to do. In a learning path, the course’s step shows as locked. See Completing a Training Course.
Staff are held to the same rule: a practical assessment cannot be recorded for a trainee who has not completed the course’s prerequisites. See Conducting a Practical Assessment.
The Trainees tab
| Column | Notes |
|---|---|
| Trainee | The trainee’s email address. |
| Created | When the assignment was created. |
| Status | Active (assigned, not done), Completed, Signed, Overdue, or Excused when a supervisor has waived it. |
| Score | Quiz courses only. |
| Retrain | Ticked when the trainee has been flagged to retrain. |
The row icons depend on the course type:
| Icon | Shown on | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Edit (pencil) | All courses | Opens the Participant record: status, score, Require Retraining and comments. |
| Answers | Quiz | Shows the answers the trainee gave. |
| Signature | All courses | Shows the training declaration and the signature captured for it. |
| Assess (clipboard) | Practical Assessment | Opens the practical assessment for that trainee. |
| Delete | All courses | Removes the assignment. |
Assigning trainees
Click New Trainee to open Assign Trainees. Search and pick any number of trainees, optionally set a Due Date, then click Assign N Trainee(s).
- The due date is optional. Without one the assignment is never due, so it cannot become overdue.
- A trainee who already has the course assigned and not yet completed is not assigned again. The message names them, for example “Grace Lee already has this course assigned and not yet completed.” Someone who has completed the course can be assigned it again, as a retrain.
- The result appears once every assignment has been saved: “N trainee(s) assigned to training”, or, if some were refused, “X trainee(s) assigned, Y not assigned”.
The same rule applies however a course is assigned, including Add Course on a trainee. To assign only what each person is missing, use a training role.
Availability and permissions
- Courses are part of the Training module.
- Creating, editing, activating, copying and deleting courses needs the Admin or Training Coordinator role.
- Courses belong to a site. You see the courses of your current site, and prerequisites can only be chosen from the same site.
Things to know
- Copy makes a new draft course. The copy is named “Copy of …” and starts as Created, with the original’s content, checklist, prerequisites, recurrence and grace period. Trainees are not copied: assign the new course when it is ready.
- Completed cannot be undone from the screen. Activate only works on a Created course, so a completed course cannot be made active again. Copy it instead.
- Deleting a course deletes its trainee records, including completions. For a course you have stopped using, use Complete so the history stays.