Due Dates And Compliance

Course Due Dates

Due Dates give learners a deadline for finishing their courses. Once the course is overdue for the learner, they will have a red “Overdue” tag on the course or learning path and the course will have the date the course is overdue. Once the Due Date has passed, the learner will still have access to the course. Due Date is used separately from the Compliance feature.

Due Date Effect on Learning Paths

If a course within a learning path is overdue, the learner will see a red “Overdue” tag on the Learning Path and will see the Due Date on each course that is overdue.

Setting a Course Due Date

There are two main settings for Due Date, “Must complete by” and “Automatic email reminder”. These two settings controls when learners are considered overdue and when they will receive the email reminders to take the course.

Learner must complete within: the time with which a learner has to complete the course. After this time the course will be considered overdue. This can either be a time span from the date they were assigned to the course or a specific date.
Automatic Email Reminder: Send an email reminder (editable in Accounts > Email) to the learner to remind them to complete the course. (Reminders are sent out at 10 pm UTC. This cannot be changed within the system).
Start X days before the Due Date: Due date reminder emails will start sending X days before the Due Date.
Send reminder every X Days/ Weeks: When enabled, set how frequently reminders will be sent to the Learner.
Until this course has been completed or X reminder have been sent: Set the conditions for when the recurring reminders will cease to be sent to the Learner.

Updating Due Dates

When Due Date settings are changed, they will be updated for all learners who are currently in progress or have not started. Due Dates will not update for completed records, as they are removed when a learner completes the course.

If the Due Date settings are updated for a course, you will see a warning modal reminding you of the impact of updating Due Dates when you select ‘Save’. Click “OK” if you wish to continue. All not started and in progress course assignments will have their Due dates and email settings updated and the Due Date changes will be saved.

Extending Due Dates

If a specific user(s) needs to have their Due Date extended, this can be achieved by:

Navigating to the People sub tab within the course
Checking the box next to the User(s) to extend the Due Date for
Select “Extend Due Date” from the “Perform a bulk action on selected people” drop-down.
Select how much to extend the Due Date and click “Update”

Manually send Due Date email reminders

You can manually send a Due Date reminder email to one or more users or to everyone in a team by clicking the checkbox next to the relevant people or teams and then selecting “Send due date reminder email” from the bulk actions drop-down list on the right-hand side at the course’s People or Teams subtab.

Troubleshooting Steps/ Things to Look For

Due Date is a separate feature from Compliance and Expiration. Due Date does not interact with these features or their settings.
Due Date is only applied on your user’s initial attempt and is no longer applicable once a user is complete. Due Dates are not applied on re-take.
Due Dates are removed from the learner’s course assignment when the course is completed.

Compliance

The compliance feature is designed to track courses that need to be taken by a learner again and again. Once a learner has completed the course, the compliance status and completion status will change according to your settings to allow the learner to take the course again before their compliance is up.

Setting Compliance for a Course

First select Compliance as the Due Date or Compliance option.

Learner must complete first attempt within: the time which a learner has to complete the course. After this time the course will be considered overdue. This can either be a time span from the date they were assigned to the course or a specific date. (This setting is also sometimes referred to as the initial attempt Due Date)

Start X days before the Due Date: Due date reminder emails will start to be sent X days before the Due Date.

Automatic Email Reminder: Send an email reminder (editable in Accounts > Email) to the learner to remind them to complete the course.

Send reminder every X Days/ Weeks: When enabled, set how frequently reminders will be sent to the Learner.

Until this course has been completed or X reminder have been sent: Set the conditions for when the recurring reminders will cease to be sent to the Learner. Maximum value of 30 emails

Compliance Options (Compliance Date Based on)

There are three different options for managing compliance courses in your organization:

Completion Date based courses calculate compliance on the date a learner completes the course
Assigned Date based compliance courses will calculate a next Compliant Until Date based on the date the course was assigned to the learner
Set End Date compliance allows administrators to calculate annually rolling compliance based on a specific date. Each configuration is explained in detail below.

Completion Date

This compliance configuration is based on when a learner completes a course and rolls forward for each learner based on the Compliant for Days setting and retake period set in the course at the time each period of compliance is completed.

Assigned Date

Compliance based on Assigned Date sets the Compliant Until Date based on the first time a Learner is assigned the compliance course and rolls forward for each user based on the Compliant for days and retake period set in the course at the time each period of compliance is completed.

This compliance method is well suited for courses where you may want to assign all Learners or groups of users on the same date and roll compliance forward from there. It also has the flexibility to roll for shorter periods such as 180 days and means all Compliant Until Dates will be aligned for Learners assigned on the same date. This can make compliance reporting simpler for Administrators.

Set End Date

Compliance based on Set End Date is unique. It sets Compliant Until Date based on the day and month selected and rolls forward for each user annually. For example, Learners can be asked to complete their compliance course annually by October 1.

This compliance method is ideal for organizations who want all Learners to have the same compliance period for a specific course. It makes compliance easy and straightforward to manage, as all Learners, regardless of when they are initially assigned to the course, will be compliant until a specific date each year. Learners all move into the same compliance cycle as soon as they first attempt a course when this configuration is used.

This makes reporting on these compliance courses simple as all Learners are due on the same date each year.

Other Settings

Compliant for: (Available for Completion Date and Assigned Date only). This setting sets how long the learner will be compliant for. They will be compliant for this long after they have taken the course. For example, if the learner completes this course on March 1st and this setting is set to 60 days, their compliance will be up on April 30th.
Automatic retake: In an ideal world, your learners will never fall out of compliance. This setting allows the completion status to reset so that they can retake the course and send them a reminder email (editable in Accounts > Email) while keeping the compliance status. For example, if a learner completes this course on March 1st and this setting is set to 21 days, they will receive a reminder email and their completion status will go back to incomplete for all modules; however, they will still remain compliant.
In short, the compliant email is sent = (Completion date + compliance period) – (resit period)
Send additional reminder every X Days/ Weeks: When enabled, set how frequently reminders will be sent to the Learner after the initial retake email. (Learners are sent an email to let them know when they need to retake a course)
Until this course has been completed or X reminder have been set: Set the conditions for when the recurring reminders will cease to be sent to the Learner.

Compliant Until Dates

All Compliant Until Dates will be calculated (where Compliant Until Date is used) based on the last achievement a learner had for that course rather than the last result. This has been consistently applied across Litmos Training, including in the reporting functionality.

Updating Course Compliance Settings

If the Compliance or initial attempt Due Date settings are updated for a course, you will see a warning modal reminding you of the impact of updating Due Dates and Compliance when you select ‘Save’.

When initial attempt Due Date settings are changed, they will be updated for all learners who are currently in progress or have not started. They will not update for completed records since Due Dates are removed when a learner completes their course.

Click “OK” if you wish to continue. All not started and in progress course assignments will have their Due Dates and email settings updated and the Due Date changes will be saved.

When Compliance settings are updated for a course, you will see a warning modal reminding you of the impact of updating Compliance when you select ‘Save’.

These changes will only update for learners who are currently in progress or have not started. They will not update for completed records until the next retake period is reached. This means that Learners will only update to any new compliance settings when they retake the course as determined by the Automatic Retake value.

Updating Compliance Settings for Learners

After updating the compliance settings of a course, Administrators may want to update the current compliance values for completed learners to match the new configuration settings. In order to do this, navigate to Courses and search for the course. Click on the People tab. Select the learners you wish to update based on the current compliance configuration and then select ‘Reset Learners Compliance’ from the ‘Perform a bulk action on selected people’ menu.

You will receive a warning before continuing. Select ‘OK’ to confirm.

All selected users will now have their compliance settings updated.

Note: This can also be used where a course previously did not have compliance configured (and now has compliance) to move the learners into a compliance cycle.

Moving Learners with Historical Records into Retake

Occasionally learners may have old historical records imported for a compliance course which may mean they are now past their retake period and compliant until date. In these circumstances an Administrator may wish to move them into retake now to get them back into the compliance cycle for the course.

In order to do this, navigate to Courses and search for the course. Click on the People tab. Select the learners you wish to update based on the current compliance configuration. Select ‘Compliance Retake Check’ from the ‘Perform a bulk action on selected people’ menu.

You will receive a warning before continuing. Select ‘OK’ to confirm.

All selected users will now have their compliance checked and if required, they will be moved into retake.

Note: There is also a new option within the ‘Import Course Completions in Bulk’ function to complete the same action (checking for retake) when an import is completed.