Qualifications - Linking Validity to Certificate or Achievement Expiration Date

What does this setting entail?

As an LMS manager, you usually set a fixed validity period for a qualification (e.g., 6 months, 1 year, 3 years). But sometimes this expiration period is not the same for everyone. Think, for example, of a driver's license, where the validity period can vary by country.

With the new setting, you can directly link the validity of a qualification to the expiration date on an uploaded achievement or certificate. This way, each employee within the same qualification automatically receives the expiration date that personally applies to them, instead of one fixed period for everyone.

This option can be toggled on or off per qualification.

How does this normally work, and what exactly changes?

Until now, the end date of a qualification was always calculated as start date + fixed validity period. This qualification end date was then also used to determine the end date of the linked certificate under ‘Achievements,’ even if it did not necessarily match the actual end date on the certificate itself.

With the new setting, you can reverse this: the end date of the certificate or achievement becomes the leading factor for the validity of the qualification, instead of the other way around.

Can I just turn on this setting for an existing, ongoing qualification?

Technically yes, the setting works immediately. Once you turn it on, it applies that if an employee has a certificate with a new end date, the qualification automatically receives that expiration date.

However, caution is advised. Because the old functionality has overwritten the certificate end date all these years with the qualification end date, it may be that the displayed certificate end date does not match the actual end date. If you switch the setting on, the system will take that potentially different date as the basis.

Advice: check in advance whether existing certificate end dates strongly differ from the qualification end dates. If you don’t do this, switching the setting will practically have no effect: the date will simply remain the same as the old, possibly incorrect date.

What happens if an achievement or certificate has no expiration date at all?

If an employee’s achievement never expires, then the qualification also remains valid indefinitely. This is intentionally designed this way: no expiration date on the achievement means no expiration date on the qualification.

What if an employee earned the qualification not through a certificate but, for example, through manual approval?

This is an important point. If an employee earned the qualification through for example:

• manual approval (this applies to all migrations done by our Implementation team), or
• a learning item (instead of a certificate),

then there is no certificate end date to reference. If the setting ‘Certificate expiration date determines validity’ is fully enabled and the setting ‘Repetition requirements validity’ is off, these employees will be qualified forever—since no other validity is assigned.

What is the best way to use this setting with an existing qualification?

We recommend the combined setting: letting the old and new methods work side by side. This works as follows:

This way, you prevent employees without a certificate from remaining permanently qualified, while for certificates you use the correct, current end date.

Can I still adjust the expiration date after uploading?

Yes. It is possible to adjust the expiration date of an achievement after uploading. If you change it, the expiration date of the qualification automatically changes as well—you don’t need to update it separately.

Does this also apply to external offer?

Yes. If you add an external training as a requirement to a qualification, you can now set that the date on the certificate from the provider is leading for completion, instead of the date when the participation was marked ‘completed’ in the LMS.

This provides a more accurate picture of when the qualification was truly earned, even if the administrative processing by the provider happens later.

Is it better to create a new qualification so the existing one remains unchanged?

You can, but we generally do not recommend it. Creating a new qualification means a lot of extra work, including:

• reconfiguring triggers
• loss of existing history
• additional management burden in the long term

Advice: adjust the existing qualification with the combined setting (see above) instead of creating a new, parallel qualification.

Summary: what should I do before enabling this setting in an existing qualification?

1. First check whether existing certificate end dates strongly differ from the qualification end dates.
2. Use the combined setting, not just the new setting—this prevents employees without certificates from remaining qualified forever.
3. Prefer not to create a new qualification to avoid this, but adjust the existing one.