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Recertification

Recertification is the process of re-enrolling learners after a significant update to a training. When a new version is activated, you can opt in to re-certify everyone who holds prior evidence, requiring them to complete the updated material. Better Comply creates fresh assignments for them and marks their prior evidence as superseded, without touching the underlying evidence records.

Who this is for

Quality Admins and Corporate Admins - the roles that can approve and activate training versions.

When to recertify​

Use recertification when a training change is substantive enough that prior completion is no longer sufficient for compliance, for example:

  • A significant revision to a quality procedure that all affected workers must acknowledge.
  • A new regulatory requirement incorporated into an existing training.
  • A change in process that invalidates the previous version's content.

Minor clarifications or formatting fixes typically do not warrant full recertification.

Your call

Better Comply cannot decide whether a change is significant enough to require recertification. That is a quality and regulatory judgment. Document your rationale in the change_reason field when approving the version. It appears in the Audit log as part of the approval record.

Trigger recertification when approving a version​

Recertification is triggered during the version approval flow in the Quality Review Queue.

  1. Open a training version that is pending approval in the Quality Review Queue.
  2. Review the content and confirm you are satisfied.
  3. Before clicking Approve, check Re-certify everyone if you want to re-enrol all learners who hold prior evidence.
  4. Enter your change_reason (required, minimum 10 characters).
  5. Click Approve and activate.

Better Comply then:

  • Marks the new version as active.
  • Finds all learners who hold evidence on any prior version of the training that has not already been superseded.
  • Creates a Recertification: <training name> v<version label> campaign and inserts a fresh not_started assignment for each learner.
  • Sets the due date as now + training.initial_due_offset_days.
  • Marks each prior evidence row with recertification_status = 'superseded'.

The audit trail records the activation, the change reason, and the number of learners re-enrolled.

Screenshot pendingQuality Review Queue approval panel with the "Re-certify everyone" checkbox visible alongside the change reason field

What recertification does not do​

Immutable evidence

Prior evidence records are never edited or deleted. Better Comply marks them as superseded, a status flag on each row, but the underlying completion date, e-signature, and content snapshot remain unchanged.

This is required for compliance with ISO 9001 §7.5.3 and 21 CFR Part 11. Evidence records are append-only and DELETE-blocked at the database level. See Compliance for the full rationale.

In practice:

  • A learner's prior completion still appears in the audit trail and historical reports.
  • The superseded flag signals that the completion no longer satisfies the current version requirement.
  • The learner's new assignment appears alongside the superseded record.

Recertification is idempotent​

If you trigger recertification and then trigger it again (for example, because you approved a corrected version shortly after), Better Comply does not create duplicate assignments. The campaign name is deterministic (Recertification: <training name> v<version label>) and a UNIQUE(user_id, campaign_id) constraint prevents duplicate rows. Re-running the operation is safe.

Grace period and recertification​

The overdue grace period on the training applies to recertification assignments the same way it applies to all other assignments. A learner has initial_due_offset_days + overdue_grace_days before their new recertification assignment turns overdue. The recertification scan also respects the grace window: it will not escalate an assignment to overdue while it is still within the grace period.

See Scheduling and overdue rules for how to configure these values.

Periodic recertification without a version change​

If your QMS requires periodic retraining on a fixed interval (for example, annual refresher training), configure that as a campaign with a future due date or use assignment rules. The "re-certify everyone" option is specifically for re-enrolment triggered by a training content change.