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Certifications

What it is

A certification is a qualification an employee holds — an equipment licence, a safety or medical clearance, a technical credential — usually with an expiry date. ManpowerIQ keeps a catalog of certification types and a per-employee register of who holds what, in which state, until when.

Why it exists

Some port work may only be done by people with a current, valid qualification. Recording certifications — and knowing when they lapse — lets the system warn about expiry and (at assignment time) stop unqualified people being rostered onto work that requires a certification.

Key concepts & terms

  • Certification type — a kind of certification in the catalog. Types are hybrid: most are global (shared by every business unit), and a BU may add its own. Each type carries a validity period and an alert window.
  • Validity period — how many months a certification of this type stays valid; if unset, it never expires.
  • Alert window (alert-days-before-expiry) — how many days ahead a certification counts as "expiring soon" (bounded 1–365, default 30).
  • Employee certification (the register) — one dated record: issue date, expiry date, issuing authority, certificate number, and a status.
  • Status — Active, Expired, Suspended, or Revoked.
  • Skill ↔ certification requirement — the link that says "this skill requires that certification."

How it works

The catalog is two-tier: a set of global certification types everyone shares, plus optional business-unit-specific types. Each type defines how long it is valid and how far ahead to warn.

For each employee, a certification record captures the issue and expiry dates and a lifecycle status. When a record is saved, the system validates it — expiry must be after issue; if the type has a validity period, expiry is computed (or must match it within a day); suspended/revoked records must carry a reason; and the certification must belong to the same business unit as the employee.

The system can list certifications that are expiring soon — for each record it compares the days remaining against that type's alert window and surfaces the ones inside it. This is a live read, computed on demand.

One thing to be clear about: nothing automatically flips a certification to "Expired." The status is stored data, changed deliberately through the status action. The "expiring soon" list is a heads-up, not an automatic state change.

Where a skill requires a certification, that rule is enforced at the moment an employee is assigned to a shift — a planner can override it with a recorded reason. (See Shifts & calendars.)

Rules & what's enforced

  • Save-time validation: expiry after issue; expiry consistent with the type's validity period; required issuing-authority / certificate-number when the type demands them; suspended/revoked need a reason; the employee and certification must share a business unit.
  • You cannot save an Active certification whose expiry is already in the past — it must be moved to Expired through the status action.
  • Alert window is bounded 1–365 days (default 30).
  • Access: viewing needs certifications.read; managing needs certifications.manage.

What's live vs planned

  • Live: the certification catalog and per-employee register (full create/edit and the status lifecycle), the skill↔certification links, and the expiring-soon read.
  • Partial: expiry is stored data plus a live "expiring soon" read — there is no background job that sweeps certifications to Expired; status is set deliberately.
  • No user-facing screen (v1): the create/edit/status operations above exist as API + import only — there is no admin/HR UI to view or manage certifications, even though cert data gates allocation at assignment time. A real current-state limitation, not "coming soon" (finding F7).
  • Deferred: uploading the certificate document file (the field exists as a placeholder).

Do not describe certifications as auto-expiring. Expiry is a stored status that someone sets; the system only flags certifications that are due.