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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 Better Comply creates fresh assignments for them and marks their prior evidence as superseded - without touching the underlying evidence records.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  • Finds all learners who hold evidence on any prior version of the training that has not already been superseded.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  • Marks each prior evidence row with recertification_status = 'superseded'.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.