Extending Training Deadlines for Campaigns or Individual Users

If you've administered mandatory training for any organization, you've likely run into a user or two who didn't complete their training on time. When using your KnowBe4 learner experience (LX) to conduct training, there are several options for allowing users to complete their assignments after the deadline.

See: What Is the Best Method for Extending Training for My Users?

The sections below explain how you can handle users who are past due on their training.

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What is the Best Method for Extending Training for My Users?

Campaign Setting: Allow Assignments to Be Completed After Due Date

• Best Practices for Automated Past Due Notifications
• Monitoring Users With Past Due Training

User Setting: Extend User Due Date

• Monitoring Users with Extended Due Dates

Campaign Setting: Extend Campaign End Date

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is the Best Method for Extending Training for My Users?

Depending on the nature of the training content and the culture of your organization, one method may be more beneficial than the other.
See the use cases below to help you decide which method would be best for your training plan:

High Involvement: If you’re in a high-risk industry, or if your organization handles sensitive information, you may have to enforce strict deadlines for employee training assignments. The User Setting: Extend User Due Date method is a more hands-on approach, allowing more control over the due date extension. You’ll set a new due date for one or more users, and send them manual notifications from the console to inform them their training has been extended.

Low Involvement: If your organization takes more of a casual approach to employee training, or if the training content is beneficial but not necessarily required of your industry or position, the Campaign Setting: Allow Assignments to Be Completed After Due Date method may be the best fit. This permits users to access and complete their training at any time after the due date. To encourage users to complete their training, you’ll set up automated notifications for users who have missed the deadline, and you’ll specify how often they receive these reminders.

As an alternative, you can extend the campaign end date for all users without affecting users who have already completed their training, see Campaign Setting: Extend Campaign End Date to learn more.

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Campaign Setting: Allow Assignments to Be Completed After Due Date

When a training campaign has a specific end date or occurs on a relative duration schedule you can allow users to complete training assignments after their original due date.
You can customize an automated schedule for sending Past Due notifications to users, their managers, and KnowBe4 account admins, to ensure training is completed.

If you're not familiar with how to create training campaigns in your KnowBe4 account, please see the Creating Campaigns section of our Training Campaigns and Content Management article. Otherwise, see below for best practices when allowing content to be completed after it's due.

Enable Setting: Allow assignments to be completed after due date

To allow users who miss their training deadline to still take their training, enable the Allow assignments to be completed after due date setting by selecting the checkbox shown below. You can apply this setting when creating a new campaign, or when editing an existing campaign.

When enabled for a campaign, a clock icon is displayed next to the campaign dates to indicate that users are allowed to complete their training after the deadline (click to view).

The console offers several options for allowing users to complete training when they've missed their deadline, learn more here.

See the next section for our recommendations for scheduling automated Past Due notifications.

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Best Practices for Automated Past Due Notifications

With the Past Due notification category, you can schedule notifications to send continuously until the training assignments are complete. From the Create New Training Campaign (or Edit Training Campaign) page, use the + Add Notification button to schedule automated Past Due notifications for users, managers, and/or admins.

After a campaign is in progress, although automated training notifications can be modified, we recommend using our manual training notifications. Automated training notifications do not work retroactively. Although existing notifications can be modified after the campaign has begun, we strongly recommend, using our for most situations, as notifications will not work retroactively. For more information, see our Training Campaign Notifications article.

Click the drop-downs below to see our best practice recommendations for each recipient.

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Monitoring Users With Past Due Training

When you've allowed training campaign content to be completed after it's due, you can monitor the status of users with past due training from the campaign's overview:

1. From the Campaigns tab under the Training section of your console, click on the name of the campaign you'd like to review.
2. From the Campaign Overview page, click the Users tab to view each user's status for all training assignments. Alternatively, you can click on the names of individual training assignments to see which users have not completed that particular assignment.

1. Click the Past Due filter toggle to view only users with assignments currently past due.
2. The Status column will show a Past Due label until the user has completed the assignment.
3. Completed assignments show a Passed label.
4. The exclamation mark indicates the course was completed after the original due date.
5. Send users manual notification reminders by selecting the checkboxes to the left of one or more of their assignments, or use the top-level check mark if you'd like to select all users on that page (then, see f., below).
6. To send a manual reminder notification to the selected users (or their managers) click the Actions drop-down button and select Notify Selected.
7. Use the Download CSV button to download and view information such as the user's enrollment date and their original due date.

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User Setting: Extend User Due Date 

You can extend the due date for one or more users once they've missed their deadline for training assignments. You'll specify a new due date and will have the option to send an email notification to the user, their manager, and the account admins to notify them of the extension.

If you need to extend user training due dates, follow the steps below:

1. From the Campaigns tab under the Training section of your console, click on the name of the campaign that your user needs an extension for.
2. From the Campaign Overview page, click the Users tab to view each user's status for all training assignments. Alternatively, you can click on the names of individual training assignments to see each user's status for independent assignments.
   
3. Click the Past Due toggle filter on the right side of the page.
4. Select the checkbox to the left-hand side of one or more Past Due assignments, or use the top-level checkbox to extend the due date for all user assignments on that page.
5. Click the Actions drop-down button (shown below), then click Extend Selected.
   
6. After reviewing the listed users, click the calendar icon in the New Due Date field or type the new due date as MM/DD/YYYY.
   
7. Click the Extend Due Date button to save the new due date and open the notifications page.
   
8. We recommend sending a notification to both the user(s) you've extended the due date for and their manager(s) so they're aware of this extension.
   
   Before using this feature, make sure that your user profiles have correct and properly-formatted email addresses for their managers.

If you'd like to send additional notifications before the user's new due date, you can do so by sending manual notifications from the Campaign Overview page. See h. and i. in the next section for instructions.

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Monitoring Users with Extended Due Dates

If you'd like to monitor the status of users with extended training deadlines, you can do so from the campaign's overview:

1. From the Campaigns tab under the Training section of your console, click on the name of the campaign you'd like to review.
2. From the Campaign Overview page, click the Users tab to view each user's status for all training assignments. Alternatively, you can click on the names of individual training assignments to see user statuses for independent assignments.

1. Click the Past Due filter toggle to view only users with assignments currently past due.
2. Completed assignments show a Passed label. (Use the trophy icon to download the user's completion certificate.)
3. The exclamation mark indicates the course was completed after the user's original due date.
4. The Status column will show a Past Due label until the user has completed the assignment.
5. The hourglass icon indicates that the training assignment's due date has been extended.
6. The Time Left column will tell you how many days the user has to complete the training.
   Note, if the new due date is greater than 30 days from the current date the Time Left column will round to the closest number of months left to complete the assignment.
   

   Tip:
   To see the exact due date, navigate to the user's profile and see Extended to under their Training Details (click to view).
   If you need to see the extended due date for a larger number of users, download a CSV (using the Download CSV button) and refer to the Extended Due Date column.

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   Training Details

   

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7. Send users manual notification reminders by selecting the checkboxes to the left of one or more of their assignments, or use the top-level check mark if you'd like to select all users on that page (then, see h., below).
8. To send a manual reminder notification to the selected users (or their managers) click the Actions drop-down button and select Notify Selected.
9. Use the Download CSV button to download and view information such as the user's enrollment date, their original due date, and their extended due date.

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Campaign Setting: Extend Campaign End Date

When users don't complete training assignments on time, you can edit the training campaign to extend its end date for all users. Changing the campaign's end date will not affect users who have already completed their training.
Extending a campaign end date is an alternative to the two recommended methods described in the sections above:

• Campaign Setting: Allow Content to Be Completed After It's Due
• User Setting: Extend User Due Date

If you decide changing the campaign end date is the best option to handle past due users, follow the steps below:

1. Navigate to the Training section of your KnowBe4 account.
2. From the Campaigns tab, click the drop-down arrow to the far-right of the training campaign you need to extend and select Edit, as shown below.
   
3. Extend the due date as you see fit:
   • If your campaign ends on a specific date, change it to a date your users should be able to complete the training by.
   • If your campaign is on a Relative Duration schedule, you'll need to consider the past due user's campaign enrollment date. The number of days, weeks, or months you set for the new Relative enrollment duration must be greater than the length of time between the user's enrollment date and the date you want the user to complete the training on or before.
     

     Tip:
     To see a user's enrollment date, navigate to the user's profile and find this under their User Timeline (click to view).
     If you need to see the enrollment date for a larger number of users, download a CSV from the campaign overview and refer to the Enrolled column.

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     User Timeline

     

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4. Click the Update Campaign button at the bottom of the page to save the campaign's new end date.

A note about automated notifications in training campaigns:

The automated notifications scheduled for users, managers, and admins will continue to send after extending a campaign end date.

Although they can be modified during a campaign, we recommend not modifying scheduled automated notifications once the campaign is in progress, as they do not work retroactively. We suggest using manual notifications instead.

You can add additional automated notifications to a campaign at any time.

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Question: Why does my user still show a Past Due label even though I've extended their training deadline?
Answer: If you've extended a user's training due date, (as described in User Setting: Extend User Due Date) the assignment will show a Past Due label until the training is complete.
The hourglass icon to the right of the Past Due label shows the user's due date was extended. (See e. in the image under the Monitoring Users with Extended Training section, above.)

Question: How can I find out how many days past the original due date my users completed their training?
Answer: To see a user's enrollment date, navigate to the user's profile and find this under their User Timeline (click to view).
If you need to see the enrollment date for a larger number of users, download a CSV from the campaign overview and refer to the Enrolled column.
Users will see how many days their assignments are overdue when they log in to complete their training, as shown below:

Question: What kind of reports can I see for users who haven't finished their training?
Answer: Download a CSV from the Users tab under the Campaign Overview screen (see i.: click to view) to see information like user's training status, enrollment date, original due date, and the extended due date (if applicable).
You can also use the reports found under the Reports tab in the Training section of your console. Learn more in our Training Reports article.

Question: I've extended training for my users. Will they know when their new due date is?
Answer: If you've used the User Setting: Extend User Due Date method to extend user deadlines, you can send notifications with the [[extended_due_date]] placeholder to inform them of the new due date. You can use our System Templates or customize your own training notifications. See our How to Use Placeholders article for more information on training notification placeholders.
For admins: You can see how many days the user has left to complete their training from the Users tab under the campaign overview screen. You can also use the Download CSV button to download a CSV of all users, then refer to the Extended Due Date column (see i.: click to view).

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