The Certifications query center helps you answer custom questions about certifications, applications, courses, exams, credits, activities, and training providers when the standard search and list pages do not show enough detail.
When to Use This
Use the query center when you need a custom list or report. For example, you can find certifications that expire next quarter and who holds them, course registrations paid by a specific organization, or exam registrations that are still unscored. Certifications uses the same query, save, and export tools as the rest of Rhythm, so the process will feel familiar if you already build queries elsewhere. See Design and Run a Query for the shared basics of criteria, columns, and sort order.
For example, Rhythm does not include a prebuilt query for applications approaching certification activation, but you can build one. Start with an Applications question, filter it to statuses such as Missing Requirements and Approved, then save and schedule it for recurring delivery.
Prerequisites
- Permission to access the Certifications query center.
- Permission to run, download, or schedule each query type you use. Rhythm checks these permissions separately from access to the query center.
Ask a Question
- Go to Certifications › Queries.
- Start a new question, choose a category and a query type, then continue to the designer.
- Set your criteria, choose the columns you want, and pick a sort order.
- Run the question.
Result
Rhythm shows a results table with the records that match your criteria. From there, you can download the results, save the question for later, or, after you save it, schedule it to be emailed on a recurring basis or send it to an email integration.
| Category | What you can ask about |
|---|---|
| Certifications | Certifications, with applications available as a separate option |
| Courses | Courses, course offerings, and course registrations |
| Exams | Exams, exam offerings, and exam registrations |
| Credits | Credits granted to people |
| Activities | Logged activities, and activity credits with one row for each credit type earned |
| Training Providers | Training providers, the programs each is linked to, and the territories each serves |
| Billing | Billing run actions across every billing run |
| Custom | Any custom query types your Rhythm account has added for Certifications |
A Certifications or Applications question only returns records that already exist. You cannot currently query an application while it is still in Draft, before it has been submitted. An organization or contact with no certification record will not appear as a certification with a blank status, because there is no certification record to return. For that reason, a blank-status filter will not find people or organizations that are not certified. Certifications query types also do not currently show the number of registrations for a specific course offering, so you cannot use them to build a live seat-count report. Adding the Fee field to a Course Offerings question currently causes an error, so leave that field out of Course Offerings questions for now.
Tip
If you do not see the field name you expected, look for the same field under a different label. Some query field names use a different label today than the underlying record used in the past.
Bring in Related People, Organizations, Orders, and Memberships
Most Certifications query types can include columns from related records, so you do not need to run separate questions and combine the results yourself:
- A Certifications question can include the holder's contact or organization, the holder's most recent application in that program, that application's order, and, when the holder is a contact, the holder's membership. Membership columns stay empty for an organization-owned certification. A Certifications question can also include the contact's own status, such as active or inactive, as a separate field from the certification's status. Those two statuses describe different things, so choose the one you mean, especially when you need certifications tied to inactive contacts rather than inactive certifications.
- An Applications question can include the applicant, the applicant's organization, the applicant's order, and the applicant's membership in the same way.
- Course Registrations and Exam Registrations questions can include the student, the course or exam, the offering, the order, the application, and, for exam registrations, a linked course registration when one exists.
- A Credits question can include the contact who earned the credit and, for credits earned through a course, the course and offering behind it. It does not currently include membership columns. If you need to compare credit activity with membership status or type, run a separate Membership question and compare the two.
- Training Provider questions can include the organization behind each training provider.
Certification fields such as program, certification dates, status, expiration, renewal, or certifying body are only available from these Certifications query types. You cannot currently pull those fields directly into a Contact or Membership question. To bring certification data together with broader contact or membership reporting, build the question from Certifications and add the related contact or membership columns there.
Tip
When a certification, application, or registration does not have a related record, such as an order or membership, the row still appears and those columns stay empty. A missing related record does not remove the row from your results.
Tip
Membership fields are available in certification, application, exam registration, and course registration questions. Use them to filter or report on certification-related work by the certificant's membership status or type, without comparing two reports by hand. These fields use the contact membership tied to the certification or application. Even when the holder is linked to an organization, the fields reflect the individual's own membership, not the organization's.
Tip
When a certification's organization column is filled in, it shows the organization that was linked when the certification was created. If the contact's organization membership changed later, this column can still show the original organization instead of the contact's current one.
If you report on imported course-completion data alongside application fields, use the completion field that matches how your imported data was mapped. A different, similarly named completion field can make the question look empty even when the underlying data exists.
Report on What a Billing Run Did
The Billing Run Actions type shows actions that billing runs have taken or planned across every billing run, including reminders, drops, reinstatements, and forecasts. This is different from viewing one billing run's results page. Use this type when you need to compare activity across runs instead of reviewing one run.
If a Result Looks Wrong
If a custom-field column displays incorrectly, such as showing blank when you know the record has a value, try filtering the question on that same field. The filter can still return the correct matching records, which helps you verify each record's saved value while a display issue is being reviewed.
A similarly named field can point to a different value than you expect. If a certification-number field under a custom category returns your account's standard Certification # instead of the custom certification number you meant, double-check that you picked the field from the category that holds your custom value.
If a boolean custom field does not show Yes/No correctly in results, try creating a new field for the same data. If the new field displays properly, you can use a mass update to populate it for existing records before retiring the old field.
Save, Schedule, or Export Your Results
After you run a question, you can download it in a couple of Excel formats, CSV, or JSON. You can also save it to your private folder or to a shared folder others can see. After you save it, you can set up recurring email delivery or send it to an email integration. An unsaved question, including one you opened from a figure elsewhere in Certifications, does not offer scheduling or integration until you save it.
Warning
Completion-date timestamps in an exported file show in UTC, with a trailing Z, and you cannot currently change that time zone for the export. Depending on your local time zone, the same moment can appear as one calendar day in a record view and the next day in the exported file. If you need the timestamp in your own time zone, convert it after exporting. For the same reason, a scheduled question with a narrow date window, such as a single day, can miss records near local midnight. Widen the window slightly to avoid missing expected results.
Tip
To find certifications that likely need attention, build a Certifications question with certification status equal to active and membership status not equal to active. That combination finds active certifications held by people whose membership has lapsed, so you can follow up by hand.
Related
The query builder works the same way across every part of Rhythm, including criteria, saving, folders, and scheduled delivery. Certifications only controls which kinds of records you can ask about here. Certifications also has a separate reports page, which uses the same shared reporting tools rather than tools specific to this application.