About Initial, One Time Only, and Recurring Assignments

When you create a Learning Plan Assignment for an audience or an individual, you must decide if the assignment should be a one time only assignment or a recurring assignment.

Additionally, you must decide when the assignment should be made available to the learners, and when the assignment is due for completion. If the assignment is recurring, the due dates and available for training dates are different for the initial training assignment and the recurring assignment.

Initial Training Assignment

All Learning Plan Assignments have an Initial Training period. Initial training refers to the first time the assignment appears on a user's Learning Plan. The initial training period includes settings that determine the due date and when the assignment will be available for training.

A learner can receive an initial training assignment in several ways:

• A new assignment is created explicitly for the user or for an audience the user is associated with
• A user is new to Compliance and is associated with an audience for which an assignment already exists
• An existing user is assigned an attribute that associates him with an audience for which an assignment already exists

However, Initial Training can also occur if a learner has a prior completion for a course, but that completion is no longer valid. See About Completions for more information about valid completions and how they are calculated.

One Time Only vs Recurring Assignments

Learning Plan Assignments can be either a One Time Only Assignment, or a Recurring Assignment.

A One Time Only assignment is used when learners only need to take the course once during the duration of their employment with your organization. For instance, your HR department may require all new hires to take a one-time only course on an Introduction to Company Policies.

For a one time only course, the initial training settings are used to determine the due date and the date available for training.

A Recurring, or Retraining Assignment is used when learners need to take the course again in the future. For instance, local laws may require employees take an annual course on Preventing Harassment in the Workplace.

A recurring assignment has due dates and available for training dates that differ from the initial training dates.

The first time a learner receives an assignment that is set to recur, the system uses the values from the initial training settings to determine the due date and the available for training date.

For each subsequent assignment, the system uses the recurring training settings to determine the due date and the available for training date.

Recurring Assignment Type

There are two types of Recurring Assignments: Recurring by Completion Date (RCD), or Recurring by Due Date (RDD).

An RCD assignment uses the date of the learner's prior completion to determine when the next assignment is due. When you create the assignment, you determine how many days, weeks, or years from the previous completion the course will be due again.

For RCD courses, the recurring due date might be different for each learner that receives the assignment.

An RDD course uses a calendar date to determine when the next assignment is due. When you create the assignment, you set the recurring due date to be based on the number of days, weeks, or years from a specific beginning due date.

All learners that receive the assignment will most likely complete the initial assignment on different dates. However, each of their due dates for recurring assignments will be on the same calendar date, regardless of the initial completion date.