Certificate validity and recertification

Some certificates have a validity period - that’s the case, for example, with workplace safety training required by the NRs, which needs to be redone periodically. With certificate validity, Eduvem calculates on its own when each certificate expires and can automatically enroll the participant in a recertification class before that happens.

Configuring validity for a piece of content

When editing a piece of content in the administration, the certificate section gains four new fields:

Certificate validity (days) - how many days the certificate is valid for, starting from the participant’s completion date. Leave it blank for a certificate with no validity (the usual behavior).
Recertification content - the content the participant is automatically enrolled in when the certificate is close to expiring. It can be the same content, redone - the most common case.
Recertification lead time (days) - how many days before expiration the recertification enrollment is made. The lead time can’t be longer than the validity period.
Create the recertification class automatically - a checkbox that only works with a recertification content chosen (without one, saving shows the error “Choose a recertification content before turning on automatic creation of recertification classes.”). See “Automatic creation of the recertification class”, below.

Certificate section in content editing, with the validity fields and the automatic recertification option

When saving a validity period on content that already has certificates issued, certificates already issued receive the new validity retroactively, calculated from each participant’s completion date - nobody needs to redo anything for the period to start applying.

Where validity appears

A certificate with validity shows the expiration date in three places, besides the PDF: on the completed content’s screen, on the participant’s profile Certificates tab (or My development, once the institution enables the feature), and on the certificate’s public verification page. An already-expired certificate is marked with the Expired badge.

Tracking who’s about to expire

On the institution’s screen, the Expiring certificates tab lists every participant whose certificate expires within a chosen period.

Expiring certificates tab, with the list of participants, the search field, the days selector, and the Export XLSX button

Search - filters the list by the participant’s name or the content’s name.
Expires within - choose between 30, 60, 90, or 180 days; the list shows every certificate that expires within that window, including ones already expired.
Division - if the institution uses Divisions, an extra filter narrows the list to participants in that division.
Export XLSX - downloads the full list as a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet includes extra columns that don’t appear on screen (CPF, e-mail, and the content’s workload), in addition to the columns already visible. For content with NR certificate fields, the spreadsheet also carries LOCATION, MODALITY, INSTRUCTOR, and INSTRUCTOR QUALIFICATION; for everything else, those columns are blank.

Each row shows the participant, the content, the class, the completion date, the expiration date, and the certificate’s status (Valid, Expiring soon, Expired, or Content updated - recertification required when the content has been replaced). A separate Recertification column shows whether the automatic enrollment has already happened, is pending, or couldn’t happen (the reason appears there, such as No open class, Class full, Already in progress, No class to copy settings from, Needs roll call (NR-35) or Could not create the class).

Triggering recertification manually

Besides the automatic enrollment made through the configured lead time, the Trigger recertification action, available on each row of the list, forces the enrollment right away - useful for cases that fall outside the schedule, like someone who needs the recertification before the automatic deadline.

Automatic creation of the recertification class

With Create the recertification class automatically on for a content, the platform no longer depends on someone opening the recertification class by hand. When someone’s certificate is close to expiring and there is no open recertification class, the daily job creates a class named “ - Recertification N” and enrolls the person in it. The new class is a copy of the most recent ordinary class of the recertification content: NR-1 fields, certification settings and technical responsible come from there.

It only applies going forward. Certificates that expired more than 90 days before you turned the option on are not picked up automatically; use Trigger recertification for those.
When it does not create one. The Recertification column explains: No class to copy settings from (the recertification content has no ordinary class to use as a model), Needs roll call (NR-35) (NR-35 classes depend on in-person roll call and are not created automatically) or Could not create the class.
A class created by the platform is the platform’s. You cannot enroll or transfer people into it manually: participants enter through the recertification job.

How it works behind the scenes

Every day, early in the morning, the platform reviews the institution’s certified enrollments and enrolls in the recertification class whoever entered the configured lead-time window - the same process the Trigger recertification action fires on demand, right away.

Expiring certificate reminder

There’s a dedicated automatic reminder that notifies the participant themselves by email that their certificate is about to expire. Like every automatic reminder, it comes turned off and is configured separately on the institution’s Reminders tab - and it only works with certificate validity enabled.

When a content is replaced by a new version, another reminder, the Content replacement notice, emails everyone who holds a certificate for the old version a few days before the effective date. It also comes turned off and lives on the same Reminders tab.

Recertification e-mails

Participant. When enrolled in recertification, the participant receives an e-mail and a message-center card with a button to open the class.
Weekly summary for institution administrators. Only for institutions with at least one content using automatic class creation. Once a week, administrators receive a summary (numbers only, no names) of the previous week: people enrolled in recertification, those left out for each reason, and certificates that expired. It is not sent for a week with no activity.
Weekly list for managers. With the manager hierarchy on, each manager receives once a week the list of their direct reports whose certificate entered the “expiring” window, expired or was enrolled in recertification during the previous week. A manager with nothing to report receives nothing.

These e-mails have no switch on the Reminders tab: they apply whenever certificate validity is enabled.

Common questions

Does an expired certificate stop counting for everything? No. The platform keeps showing the certificate normally, just marked as expired - the decision on what to do with an expired certificate (for example, whether it’s still accepted by a client or a regulatory body) is external to Eduvem.

Can I turn off validity after configuring it? Yes. Clearing the number of days in the content’s validity field makes the next certificates issued come out with no validity; certificates already issued keep the date they already received.

Does turning off “Allow certificate validity” erase the configurations? No. The Expiring certificates tab and the content’s fields disappear, but the configured validity and the history stay saved and come back once the option is turned on again. If a content version replacement is in progress, turning it off is refused until the replacement is cancelled.