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        EXPIRY NOTIFICATION EMAILS
      

Expiry notification emails

An expiry reminder is an email sent to a participant before their course completion runs out, nudging them to retake it. It's tied directly to the course's Validity (days) setting and delivered by a background job rather than the instant the window opens.

        6 MIN READ
        UPDATED 4 AUG 2026
        DASHBOARD → COURSES → NOTIFICATIONS
      

BEFORE YOU START

Validity (days) must already be set in Course Settings. Without it there's no expiry date to count back from, and the Notifications tab tells you exactly that instead of showing the reminder fields.

Set up the reminder

Everything lives on the course's Notifications tab, next to the certificate setup on Certification.

1

Open the course editor and switch to Notifications. If it's disabled, go back to Course Settings and set Validity (days) first.

2

Set Days Before Expiry — how many days ahead of the expiry date the reminder should go out. Leave it empty and no reminder is ever sent for this course.

3

Open the Email Template box below it and write the subject and body — see Edit an email template for the editor itself and the placeholder list.

4

Select Save next to the Days Before Expiry field.

screenshot — Notifications tab, Days Before Expiry field and email template box

The Notifications tab, only reachable once Validity (days) is set.

When it actually sends

Reminders are not sent the instant a completion enters its window. A scheduled job checks for passed completions whose expiry date falls inside the Days Before Expiry window and haven't been notified yet, and sends a batch of them — capped at a modest number per run so a large backlog doesn't fire everything at once and risk the sending domain being flagged as spam. A completion is only ever notified once; the job stamps it the moment the email goes out.

{{first_name}} / {{last_name}} The participant's name.

{{course_title}} The course's title.

{{expiry_date}} The date this specific completion expires.

{{course_url}} An auto-login link straight into a fresh attempt. It stays usable for twice the Days Before Expiry value, and a still-valid link is reused across runs rather than reissued each time.

All four placeholders work in both the subject and the body of the template.

GOOD TO KNOW

Changing Validity (days) later and saving Course Settings recalculates the expiry date on every already-passed completion for that course, not just new ones. Reminders follow along automatically — you don't need to touch anything on the Notifications tab when you adjust validity.

A COMMON MISTAKE

Participants who signed in with a guest code instead of a real email address never receive the reminder — there's simply no address to send it to, and it's skipped silently rather than retried. If someone says they never got a reminder, check whether they registered with an email at all.

If something isn't working

The Notifications tab is disabled

Validity (days) is empty on Course Settings. Set it first — there's no expiry to count down from otherwise.

Days Before Expiry says "no reminder sent if not set"

That's the placeholder text for an empty field, not an error. Enter a number of days to turn reminders on.

A participant says they never got the reminder

Check that they registered with a real email address rather than a guest code, that an email template is actually saved for this course, and that their completion is still marked as passed.

Reminders seem to arrive late

The sending job runs periodically in small batches rather than continuously, so there can be a short delay between a completion entering its window and the email actually going out — this is expected, not a fault.

What next

Reminders only make sense once a course actually has an expiry to warn about.

Set course expiry in days

Edit an email template

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