🎓 Academy — training

Academy is where your company's know-how lives. It comes in two layers, and you choose how far you go:

1. The video library — your how-to, onboarding and product videos in one place, organized by category, each with a player and a discussion. Available to staff, to clients in their portal, or both.
2. Structured training (Instruiri) — real training programs: an ordered learning path of steps (video, material, test, task, link), assigned to people, with progress tracking, scored tests, a login-free candidate portal for people you haven't hired yet, and an automatic training record in the employee's HR profile when they finish.

Everything is off by default. Nothing changes until an administrator turns it on.

Turning it on

1. Install the module from Config Center → Module Management (Module Management Center) — or from the Modules page. Its tables are created automatically.
2. Open the Academy card in the Config Center (always available, even while the module is inert).
3. In Academy → Settings set Module status:
   • Off (inert) — nothing is shown; only this Settings page is reachable.
   • On — the Academy item appears in the sidebar and a Training tab appears in your clients' portal.
4. Still in Settings, decide whether you also want the training layer:
   • Enable structured training — adds the Training programs, Tests and My learning menus and the HR training-record feed. Leave it off and you have the video library alone, exactly as before.
   • Allow candidate (pre-hire) access via invite link — lets you invite someone who isn't a staff member yet (see Inviting a candidate below).
   • Candidate invite validity (days) — how long an invite link stays alive (14 by default).

Once structured training is on, Academy becomes a menu with children: Video library, Training programs, Tests and My learning.

The Academy overview

Clicking "Academy" itself opens an overview page — the section's own landing page, not a seventh list. It answers the two questions you actually arrive with: what is in here, and what do I owe right now.

• Tiles for the video library, training programmes, the test bank, certifications, the training matrix and the knowledge base, each with a live count, so one glance tells you whether a section has anything in it.
• My open training — the programmes assigned to you that aren't finished, with anything overdue marked.
• You only see the tiles your role gives you access to; a section you can't open is not shown at all.

Until v9.1.0, clicking the section name only unfolded the submenu on the left and left the right-hand pane on whatever page you had open before — reported by a client in exactly those words. A section that has a real page of its own now opens it.

Who can do what (permissions)

Set these per role under Setup → Roles. A right granted on a role works exactly like one granted to a person directly.

Administrators have everything.

Part 1 — the video library

Organizing videos into categories

Open Academy → Categories (managers only) to group your videos:

• Add a category with a name and an optional sort order.
• Edit a name or order inline, or delete a category.
• Deleting a category never deletes its videos — they simply become Uncategorized.

Adding a video

Open Academy → New video (managers only) and fill in the form:

About the video link: a YouTube or Vimeo address is recognized automatically and turned into an embedded player. A direct video-file link (for example an .mp4 or .webm) — or a video stored in File Hub — plays in a built-in player. Paste the address into the Video URL field.

Watching videos (staff)

The Video library opens a grid of video cards grouped by category, each showing the thumbnail, title and number of views.

• Filter by category with the dropdown, or search by title or description.
• Click a card to open the video's page — the player, the description and the discussion below it.
• The view count goes up each time a video is opened.
• Discussion: any staff member can post a comment on a video; managers can delete comments.

Who sees which video

An inactive video is hidden from everyone except managers. In the library itself there is no per-person assignment — everyone who can reach Academy sees the videos their role and each video's visibility allow. When you need to assign training to a specific person and follow their progress, that's what the training programs below are for.

The client "Training" tab

When Academy is On, logged-in customers get a Training tab in their portal, showing the videos marked Clients only or Staff + clients, grouped by category. A client can watch and comment — nothing else.

Where videos are stored

Academy does not host video files itself. Every video is either an embed link (YouTube, Vimeo…), a direct video-file URL, or a video kept in TSync File Hub — so one library can mix links and hosted files.

Part 2 — structured training (Instruiri)

Create a training program

Academy → Training programs → New program: give it a name and a description (and mark it active). Save, and you land in the program builder, which has three parts: the learning path, the assigned people, and the candidate invite box.

Build the learning path

The learning path is an ordered list of steps. Add a step, choose its type and title, and set two switches:

• Required for completion — on by default. A step left optional is shown with an optional badge and doesn't hold up the program.
• Hiring gate — marks the step as the point a candidate must reach. A candidate sees the path only up to and including the first hiring gate; nothing beyond it.

Sort decides the order. You can edit or delete a step at any time.

Build a test

Academy → Tests → New test sets the rules:

Then add questions in the test builder: Single choice, Multiple choice or True / False, each worth the points you give it, with the correct answer(s) ticked and an optional explanation shown after grading.

Grading is automatic and points-weighted — the learner's score is their points divided by the total points, compared with the pass threshold. A learner who has already passed cannot retake to spoil the result, and once max attempts is used up the test is closed to them.

Assign people

In the program builder, pick one or more staff members, optionally set a due date, and click Assign. Each person now sees the program in My learning.

• Unassign removes someone from the program (with a confirmation).
• Assignments made automatically — for example by Quality Control after a failed evaluation — appear the same way, marked with where they came from.

Inviting a candidate (before you hire)

If candidate access is enabled, the program builder also has Invite a candidate (pre-hire): type the person's name (and optionally an e-mail) and click Generate access link.

• You get a tokenized link to hand over — the candidate opens it in any browser and studies the program without an account and without logging in.
• The candidate sees the path up to and including the first hiring gate, and nothing after it.
• The link expires after the number of days set in Settings, and you can revoke a candidate at any time — the link stops working immediately.
• When they finish the pre-hire part, the portal tells them your team will be in touch.

Doing the training (the learner's view)

My learning lists everything assigned to the logged-in person, with a status — Assigned, In progress, Completed — a due date if there is one, and a Continue (or Review) button.

Inside a program the learner sees the path in order, with a progress line ("3/5 required steps completed · 60 %"), the optional and hiring gate badges, and per step:

• a video step opens the library video;
• a test step opens Take test (or Retake test, or View result once passed);
• every other step has a simple Mark done button.

When all required steps are done, the program is marked Completed and the learner gets a confirmation — including that a training record was added to their HR profile.

The HR training record

When a staff learner completes a program, Academy writes a training record into HR Records: one training per program (so a second person completing it joins the same record instead of creating a duplicate), with that employee as a participant. The employee's HR file therefore reflects the training they actually completed, without anyone re-typing it.

Where it shows up elsewhere

• Dashboard — a My learning tile shows what you still have to do; switch it on from Customize widgets on the dashboard.
• Quality Control — a failed evaluation can automatically assign a remedial program; see Quality Control.
• Automations — training assignments and completions are ordinary system events, so TSync Automations can act on them.

Certification: "valid until", not just "completed"

For mandatory training the question you have to answer is not "did they finish the course?", it is "are they certified right now?". Those are different things: somebody may have finished a course three years ago that has since expired.

On a programme you set a validity period, in months. From then on, whoever completes it automatically gets a certificate with an expiry date. You see them all under Academy → Certifications, split into valid, expiring soon, expired, no-expiry and superseded.

A few things worth knowing so they do not surprise you:

• Validity counts from the completion date, not from the day you entered it. A certificate recorded a month late does not gain an extra month.
• Recertification deletes nothing. When somebody retakes the programme the old certificate becomes "superseded" and stays in the list. The history — who held what, and when — is exactly what an audit asks for.
• The state is computed every time it is displayed, from the expiry date. It is not a separate field that can quietly fall out of date overnight.
• A programme with no validity period issues certificates that never expire. That is how every programme behaves until you set one — nothing changes by itself.

Warning ahead of time. At 30 and 7 days before expiry (both adjustable in settings) the system flags certificates that are about to lapse. If you tick auto-reassign on the programme, it re-assigns itself at expiry. Left unticked, you are simply told — because putting a course in front of somebody is an action, not a notification.

What was actually taught

A training record is only defensible if you can show what the course contained at the time. Programmes get edited: without this, a 2024 certificate would point at today's material.

The system takes a snapshot of the programme — the ordered list of materials, tests and tasks — at the moment somebody completes it, and ties it to the certificate. The certifications list shows it as "Revision attested". A new snapshot is only taken when the content actually changed; a save that alters nothing does not create one.

Certificates issued before this existed show "—". That is an honest gap, not an error.

The training matrix: who must hold what

Until now a course reached somebody because a manager assigned it, or because a quality evaluation failed. What was missing is the sentence compliance actually runs on: "everyone in role X must hold certification Y".

Under Academy → Training matrix you write exactly that. A rule has a name, a programme, and who it covers: all staff, a role, a department or a position. "All staff" is the default — a new joiner falls under the rule automatically instead of silently sitting outside it.

For each rule you see the real coverage: how many meet it out of how many are covered, plus how many are missing it, how many have expired, how many are in progress. It is shown with its denominator, never as a bare percentage — "9 of 11, 2 missing" tells you who to go and find; "82% compliant" does not.

A rule does not act on its own. Tick "automatically assign the gaps" and the daily run assigns the programme to whoever lacks it or whose certificate expired. Left unticked — which is the default — the rule only shows you the picture, which is the useful part anyway.

The Recompute now button gives you the current picture immediately instead of waiting for tomorrow.

Making a retake a real test again (question pools)

A test with a fixed set of questions stops testing anything after the second attempt. Shuffling the order does not help: it is the same questions in a different sequence, so a retake measures memory of the test rather than knowledge of the material.

Put your questions into pools — a short word on each question, like safety or handling — and then tell the test how many to draw from each. Twenty questions in the pool, five drawn, and two attempts genuinely differ.

• A test that draws nothing asks everything, exactly as it does today. Nothing changes until you say so.
• A pool asked for more questions than it holds gives what it has, rather than failing.
• A draw that matches no pool falls back to the full set — a learner never opens an empty test.
• The system records which questions were actually asked on each attempt, which is what makes the next section possible.

Which questions are doing their job

Under a test you can see, for each question, how it behaves in practice:

• How many got it right. A question everybody answers correctly teaches you nothing about anybody; one almost nobody gets is usually badly worded rather than hard.
• Whether it agrees with the rest of the test. If the people who score well overall are the same people who get this question right, it is measuring the same thing the test measures. If it is the other way round, the question is probably confusing or the marked answer is wrong.
• Whether the test hangs together as one coherent measurement.

Two honesty notes, because a number next to a question is easy to act on:

• A question everybody answers correctly is shown as "undefined", not as a bad question. There is nothing to compare it against — calling that "weak" would send you to delete a perfectly good question.
• Below 30 attempts the whole thing is marked as indicative. A judgement drawn from four attempts is noise, and it deserves to say so rather than look authoritative.

Where these three live

They were described here before they were reachable. As of 2.5.0 each has a screen:

• Pools. On a question, fill the Pool field (it suggests the pools already used in that test). Then open the test's settings and, under Draw from question pools, say how many to ask from each. Leave it empty and every question is asked, exactly as before.
• Item statistics. In the tests list, the small chart button beside a test. Every figure is shown next to how many answers it is based on.
• Refreshers. At the top of My learning, whenever one is due.

One thing worth knowing about pools: because each attempt draws a fresh set, a retake is not the same test. That is the whole point — and it also means the number of questions asked is the number you configured, not the number in the bank. Somebody who answers all ten drawn questions correctly scores 100%, not 25%.

Refreshers, spaced out (boosters)

Most of what a person learns on a course is gone within weeks unless something brings it back. A short quiz at widening intervals is the single best-evidenced fix, and it costs almost nothing because it reuses the tests already in the programme.

Set the intervals in the module settings — for example 7, 30 and 90 days. After somebody completes a programme, they get a short refresher at each of those points, drawn from the tests inside it.

It ships empty, so no install starts sending quizzes it never asked for. And the daily run only signals that a refresher is due — it never marks anybody down.

"Do this one first" (prerequisites)

Ordering the steps of a learning path is not the same as enforcing them. A learner could always jump ahead, and a programme that assumes the safety module came first had no way to insist.

Two levels are available:

• Inside a path — an item can require another to be finished, optionally with a minimum score. "Open the practical only once the theory scored at least 80%."
• Between programmes — a programme can require another. Here the system checks the person currently holds the certificate, not merely that they once completed it: an expired certificate does not satisfy a prerequisite, or it would not be one.

When something is locked, the learner is told which item to finish and what score it needs. "Locked" with nothing further just produces a phone call.

One deliberate choice: if the requirement cannot be checked at all — say the item it points at was deleted — the step opens. Locking somebody out of their own training because of a broken reference is the worse mistake. The purpose is to sequence learning, not to trap people inside it.

Classroom sessions and attendance

For anything taught in a room, the evidence a regulator asks for is the attendance sheet. A classroom session recorded only as a ticked-off step proves nothing about who was actually there.

Under the programme you schedule a session — date, place, trainer, capacity — enrol people, and mark who attended.

You cannot mark attendance for a session that has not started yet. That is not an early entry, it is a false one, and the whole value of an attendance record is that it cannot be made.

Good to know

• Deleting a program cleans up after itself. Its assignments, progress and test attempts go with it, and any candidate links for it stop working — no orphan portal links left resolvable.
• The candidate portal opens in your install's language, not in English, so a Romanian or Russian candidate gets a page they can read.
• Nothing is destroyed when the module is uninstalled — videos, programs and progress stay in the database.

Where to go next

• ✅ Measure the work and trigger training on a failure → Quality Control
• 👥 Employee files, departments and training history → HR Records
• 📁 Store your materials → File Hub
• 🏠 Lost? Head back to Getting started with TSync