Compliance Workflow Management

Overview

PowerSchool’s Compliance Management feature helps administrators automate recurring training requirements. It supports creating repeatable, self‑paced courses, enrolling participants on schedule, tracking completions, and sending reminders—without manual overhead.

Key capabilities

• Enable compliance per course (self‑paced and self‑paced SCORM).

• Define recurrence schedules (e.g., every 5 months).

• Choose enrollment strategies: Manual, Auto‑Enrollment, or Smart Enrollment.

• Configure due dates and set post‑due behaviors (grace periods, roster status).

• Send automated reminders via targeted announcements and/or email.

• Auto‑copy courses for each recurrence with settings carried forward.

Availability & Scope

• Applies to: Self‑paced courses and self‑paced SCORM courses.

• Per‑course settings: Compliance configuration is unique to each course and must be enabled/configured individually.

Getting Started

To configure compliance workflows, the compliance module will have to be enabled in the system. Please reach out to your PowerSchool administrator if the compliance configuration options are not visible in your site.

Note: Enabling compliance at the application level surfaces compliance options within individual courses. Actual compliance behavior is controlled per course.

Enable Compliance Management

1. Go to Configuration.

2. Click Course Compliance Configuration.

3. Enable compliance management for courses.

   1. Checking this setting allows administrators and course creator the functionality to mark courses as a compliance course.

4. (Optional) Configure notifications to administrators when a recurring course instance is created by enabling the Notify when a recurring course is created checkbox.

   1. Enabling this setting sends course creators, super users and pd super users in the system a notification when the next instance of the compliance course is created per the recurrence schedule configured within a course.

5. (Optional) Enable participant notifications when users are added to a recurring compliance course by enabling the Notify registered participants checkbox.

   1. When this setting is enabled, the system sends registration notification to participants that are auto-enrolled to courses

   2. Note: The Registration Confirmation notification under the registration notification setting should be active to auto-trigger these notifications.

6. Changes on this screen are auto‑saved.

Configure Compliance for a Specific Course

1. Open the Course

2. Navigate to Manage → Manage Courses.

3. Open the self‑paced or self‑paced SCORM course you want to configure.

4. In the Build Course screen (left navigation), select Compliance Settings.

   1. Users who can build courses automatically have permission to configure compliance for those courses.

5. Mark the Course as a Compliance Course

6. Toggle Mark this course as a compliance course.

   1. Off: Course behaves like a standard self‑paced/SCORM course.

   2. On: Reveals compliance configuration panels (Recurrence, Enrollment, Due Date, Notifications).

Recurrence & Enrollment

Set the Recurrence Schedule

1. Select Does not repeat for non-recurring courses.

2. For recurring courses:

   1. In Repeats Every, define how often the course recurs (e.g., every 5 months).

   2. Set Start (e.g., January 1, 2026) and End (e.g., December 31, 2035).

   3. Recurrence rules:

      1. The repeat frequency is calculated from the start date set in this screen.

      2. When the timeline for recurrence is hit, the professional learning system creates a copy of the course.

         1. For scorm courses: The scorm file is auto configured in the new course.

         2. For default self-paced: Resources if any are copied to the new instance of the course.

Choose Enrollment Behavior

The options under this setting allow creators to select how participants are enrolled when a course repeats. All participants added to the new instance of the course are automatically set to Registered roster status.

• Manual Enroll:

  • The system does not auto‑enroll participants.

  • Admins manually add users to rosters or users self‑register.

• Auto‑Enrollment:

  • All participants from the previous instance are automatically enrolled in the next scheduled recurrence.

  • The section roster is copied when the course is duplicated based on the recurrence schedule.

• Smart Enrollment:

  • Participants are auto‑enrolled based on individual enrollment history.

  • Each user gets a unique registration date for the first and subsequent instances, ensuring personalized scheduling and preventing duplicate/unnecessary enrollments and manual tracking.

Action: After selecting recurrence and enrollment, Save the configuration.

Due Date & Post‑Due Behavior

Navigate to the Due Date tab.

Set the Due Date

The options under this setting control when the course should be completed by participants,

• When No due date is selected, no deadline is enforced for learners.

  • If a section has an end date, then the course due date defaults to the section end date.

• Configure a relative due date (e.g., 20 days after enrollment).

  • The due date can also be configured relative to the course start date, course end date or learners' enrollment date.

  • For sections that have an end date, if due date is after the section end date, then the due date defaults to section end date

Note: The system only accepts whole numbers. 0 is an acceptable value and indicates '='

• When setting a custom due date, the system automatically applies the configured calendar date as the completion deadline for all users.

  • For sections that have an end date, if due date is after the section end date, then the due date defaults to section end date.

• Once a due date is configured, the After Due Date Settings panel appears.

Define After‑Due Behavior

The options under this setting allow a course creator to select what happens to participants' roster status once the due date for a compliance course has passed.

• If participants complete within the due date, the system automatically marks them complete.

• If they miss the due date:

  • Creators can choose to auto-assign a roster status (e.g., Incomplete), or

  • Set a grace period after the due date, post which a roster status may be auto-applied.

    • If the section ends before the grace period, then the roster status will be auto-applied on section end date.

• Example: Grace period of 2 days after the due date. After the grace period, users are moved to Incomplete.

Action: After configuring due date and grace/roster behaviors, Save the configuration.

Notifications & Reminders

Navigate to the Notifications tab to configure how and when participants receive reminder notifications before the course due date.

Configure Participant Reminders

• Choose to remind participants until due date or completion or until course end date or completion.

• Reminders are sent at intervals calculated from each participant’s enrollment date till the due date/course end date or until learner completes the course.

• Creators can configure the message content to be sent using the message RTE on this screen.

• Example configuration:

  • Repeat frequency: Every 1 week.

  • Delivery methods: Targeted Announcement, Email + Targeted Announcement, or Email.

• Reminders stop when the user completes the course or the due date is reached—whichever occurs first.

Action: Enter the reminder message, choose delivery method(s), and Save.

What Happens at Recurrence

When the scheduled recurrence is reached:

• The system automatically creates a copy of the course based on your recurrence and due date settings.

• The new course is auto‑configured with the SCORM file attached to the original course.

• Participants are enrolled according to your chosen Recurring Course Enrollment strategy (Manual, Auto‑Enrollment, or Smart Enrollment).

• Due date and notification settings roll over to the new course.

• The copied compliance course contains a link to the original course it was copied from, and contains all the compliance and course configurations per the settings in the course it was copied from.

• When a course approval workflow exists, a copied course bypasses the course and section workflow. The course is auto-approved and created as a published course.

• The next iteration of the course will use this copied compliance course as its original template to create a copy from.

• This process repeats till the end date of the recurrence schedule is reached.

• If admin notifications for recurrence are enabled, administrators receive a notification when the copy is created.