Authoring a mandatory training

Everything a first-time author needs to build a certification on WeLearn: who does what, how to set it up so the pass means something, and what happens after it ships.

The learner's side of the same feature is in Mandatory trainings and certification, and the manager's day-to-day work in Running compliance for your team.

01What a mandatory training is

A mandatory training is an ordinary training plus a compliance policy. You build the content exactly as you would any training; a Manager or an Administrator then declares it an obligation and sets how long a pass stays valid.

The policy belongs to the whole training (every version of it), not to one version or one learner. It has five settings, all on the Compliance card of the editor:

A learner is certified when they complete every section and the plain average of their evaluation scores reaches the passing score. Each pass is recorded for good (date, score, version taken, valid until) and produces a downloadable PDF certificate with a code anyone can check on the public verify page.

02Before you start: who does what

You can write the training with any account, but you cannot make it mandatory yourself. An author declaring their own training an obligation is refused by design, unless they are an Administrator. So a mandatory training always takes two people: the author and a compliance owner, a Manager who does not author any version of it, or an Administrator.

The Compliance card appears only to Managers and Administrators. If you are an Employee author, you will not see it at all: your compliance owner does that part.

What changes once the training is mandatory

• The answer keys are locked down. On an ordinary training any Manager can open the editor. On a mandatory one only its authors and Administrators can, plus whoever is invited to one of its drafts or revisions, for that draft only. Every time an Administrator who does not author it opens the editor, that is recorded. A Manager who needs to edit it is invited by an author or an Administrator, as a Collaborator on a revision.
• Keep at least two authors. Inviting someone does not make them an author: a Collaborator is credited on the published training but gets no rights over it (see Co-authoring and reviewing drafts). Someone becomes an author when they open a revision with Edit and that revision is published. Any Manager can do that while the training is not mandatory; afterwards only an Administrator can. If every author leaves, nobody can edit the training except an Administrator, each time on the record, and the weekly digest goes to the organisation's Administrators unless you named recipients.
• You may still take it yourself. Nothing stops an author from holding an enrolment on their own mandatory training. If it is required of you, you hold it like everyone else.

03The lifecycle at a glance

The author builds and publishes. A compliance owner who is not an author declares the obligation and assigns people. Each learner retries until they reach the passing score, within their attempts, then renews when the certification expires.

04Step by step: building the training

The editor has four steps: Basic Info, Content, Preview, Publish. Everything autosaves, and a draft may stay incomplete until you publish. The editor itself is described in The training editor.

1. Create the draft. Select Create Training in the sidebar, or New Training in My Trainings › Authored. Until it is published, the draft is visible to you, the people you invite, and any Manager or Administrator who has its link. It is never in the Catalog.
2. Basic Info. Fill in the Title, the Description, at least one topic under Topics (the publish checklist calls it a "thematic") and the Language the training is written in. All four are required to publish.
3. Content. Add the blocks in the order learners will meet them:
   • Text blocks for the material itself.
   • Link blocks for policies or documents that live elsewhere.
   • At least one evaluation. Without one there is nothing to pass, and simply finishing the training certifies the learner. Quiz, Ordering, Matching, Categorization, Numeric and Cloze are graded automatically. Peer review is graded by a person, so certification waits for a reviewer. See Building evaluations.
4. Make the quiz a question bank (recommended). In the quiz, switch on Question bank and set how many questions each attempt draws. Every retry and every renewal then draws a different subset, so nobody passes from last year's notes. Write at least twice as many questions as one attempt draws, or attempts start to repeat.
5. Invite collaborators and reviewers. Use Invite on the draft. A Collaborator writes with you; a Reviewer reads the draft and leaves notes without editing. Neither becomes an author: see section 02 for how to get a second author.
6. Preview. Play the training as a learner would. The preview shows the whole question bank, so you can check every question. Nothing you do there is recorded.
7. Publish step: Settings. Set the Estimated Duration and Difficulty, then the Evaluation Playback settings, which apply to every evaluation in the training at once:

8. Fix the checklist, then publish. The Publish readiness panel lists every gap still blocking publication (a blank title, a question with no correct answer, a bank smaller than one draw) with its location. Publish Training turns on once the list is empty.
9. Hand over to your compliance owner. Send them the settings you want (validity period, warning, time to complete, escalation recipients). If they are a Manager, send them the editor link of the draft before you publish: section 05 explains why. Section 05 is their part.

05Making it mandatory (the compliance owner's part)

The compliance owner opens the training in the editor and goes to the Publish step, where a Compliance card appears below Settings. Only Managers and Administrators see it. It saves on its own about a second after each change, and applies at once to every version of the training: hovering Saved reads "Saved on 3 versions of this training". No revision or publish is needed.

1. Switch on Mandatory training. The badge appears and the training enters the compliance reports. The card reminds you: "Marking a training mandatory does not enroll anyone."
2. Switch on Certification expires if a pass should lapse, and set the period in the number and unit fields that appear beside its switch on the same row (the editor proposes 12 months; from 1 to 999 days, months or years). Leave it off for "everybody does this once".
3. Set Warn before expiry (default 30 days): how early the learner's status turns to Expiring soon. It cannot be longer than the Certification expires period.
4. Set Time to complete (default 30 days): the deadline a newly assigned learner gets when nobody picks a date.
5. Optionally pick Escalation recipients among the people who can manage enrolments (Managers and Administrators). Nobody picked means the training's authors who are Managers or Administrators receive the digest, or the organisation's Administrators if no author is.

Assigning people

Marking the training mandatory enrols nobody. There are two ways to do it, and the training must be published first:

How each learner's deadline is set

• A Due date picked on the Enrollments page wins, counted to the end of that day in the learner's time zone.
• Otherwise the deadline is the day they were assigned plus Time to complete. A group requirement always works this way.
• For a renewal started while the learner is still certified, the deadline is the expiry date itself: renew before your cover runs out. After a lapse, it is the day they start again plus Time to complete.
• A deadline is fixed when it is set. Changing Time to complete later moves no existing deadline.

Who gets reminded, and when

Nothing is sent on the day a learner becomes overdue: chasing them is what Nudge is for. The full schedule is in Running compliance for your team.

06Publishing and what learners see

Publish the training from the Publish step once the checklist is clear; only a published training can be assigned. The policy can be set before or after publishing, within the limits of section 05.

What an assigned learner sees

• A red Mandatory badge on the training's card and page, and ★ Mandatory on their dashboard.
• An Action required band on their Dashboard as soon as the training is overdue or their certification has expired.
• A Certification panel on the training's page: status, Valid until, which Cycle they are on, their deadline, and the history of past passes.
• The My learning tab in Analytics, listing every obligation they hold, healthy ones included, with a one-click certificate download. Some screens call it "My compliance".
• After passing, a Renew certification button (or Take it again on a training that never expires). Renewing restarts every section on the latest published version.

The status a learner, and their manager, will see

A learner who starts a renewal early and abandons it halfway stays Certified until their original expiry. Renewing early is never punished: the new expiry is the pass date plus the validity period.

07Certificates and tracking completion

Every pass on a mandatory training produces a PDF certificate: holder, training, version assessed, certification cycle, score, pass date and expiry (printed in UTC), plus a verification code.

Anyone holding the paper, an auditor or a client for example, can check it on the public /verify page without an account. The page confirms what the certificate says and nothing more. An expired or replaced certificate still verifies, and says so plainly. See Verifying a WeLearn certificate.

Good to know as an author

• The digest names nobody, and reaches authors only if they are Managers. It carries counts only; the list of who is behind is on Team compliance, which needs the Manager role. An Employee author receives no digest.
• Downloading someone else's certificate is recorded, and the holder is told in the app who took it, at most once per downloader per day.
• Certificates exist only for tracked trainings. A pass on an ordinary training is a completion, not a certification, and has no certificate.
• People who took the training before it became mandatory need attention. Two cases:
  • Someone enrolled before the training became mandatory does not hold it as an obligation: they read No under Assigned on By training, and nobody chases them. Require the training of a group they are in; within the hour their enrolment becomes an obligation with a deadline.
  • Someone who passed while the certification did not expire has no end date on that pass. If Certification expires is switched on later, the pass is dated from when it was made: still Certified if that date is ahead, Expired at once if it is past, which puts them on the People to chase list. Before saving, the card asks Date the passes already on record? and says how many it dates and how many have lapsed.

08Changing it after publication

A published training never changes in place: Edit opens a revision (a draft of the next version), and publishing that revision replaces the old version. Nobody loses their certification because of it. See Publishing, revisions and archiving.

09First-timer checklist and common traps

Author

• Title, description, topic and language filled in.
• At least one evaluation, ideally a quiz with a question bank twice the size of one draw.
• Passing score set (not No threshold).
• Attempts set to 3 or 5, so a learner who fails is not stuck.
• A second author arranged, or Escalation recipients named (a Collaborator is not an author).
• Played through in Preview, every question checked.
• Publish checklist empty, training published.
• Compliance owner told which validity, warning, time to complete and escalation you want, and, if they are a Manager, sent the draft's editor link before publishing.

Compliance owner

• Policy declared by an Administrator, or by a Manager who does not author it, from a draft or revision link.
• The Certification expires period, Warn before expiry, Time to complete and Escalation recipients set.
• People assigned: the Enrollments page, or a group's Required trainings for joiners too.
• People who took the training before it became mandatory checked under By training.
• Team compliance checked after the next hourly run, and again a few days later, to confirm the population looks right.

Traps people fall into

10Related pages

• The training editor
• Building evaluations
• Co-authoring and reviewing drafts
• Publishing, revisions and archiving
• Running compliance for your team
• Mandatory trainings and certification
• Roles and what they can do