Skills: what they are and how to use them
Skills are a team-defined list of things a training teaches, such as rope rescue, GPS navigation or scene safety. They label trainings so the calendar shows what each session covers. They are not certifications, and they do not grant anything.
About 3 minutesStep 10 of 23 in team setup
What a skill is
A skill is a label for something a training session teaches. Your team decides the list: Rope rescue, Night navigation, Litter carry, Radio procedure, whatever your curriculum is built from. A training can cover several skills at once.
Skills live alongside certifications but do a different job. A certification is something a member holds, with a date it was earned and a date it expires, and it can be required by a group. A skill is attached to the training, not to the member. It says what the session is about so people can decide whether to attend and so an instructor can see what the calendar has covered lately.
Nothing is written to a member when they attend a training that covers a skill. If you want attendance to count toward something, use a certification or a group requirement.
Build the list
Sign in as an admin, open Admin Settings and expand Skills. Click Add Skill, give it a name and an optional description, and save. Edit or delete from the same table. Keep names short: they appear as chips on the training calendar and on each training page.
A skill that is deleted disappears from every training that used it, so rename rather than delete when the wording changes.
Tag a training
When you create or edit a training, the Certification & Skills section has a Skills Covered picker. Choose every skill the session will teach. The training page then lists them under Skills Covered, and the same chips show in the mobile app when a member opens the training.
On the phone, the training create and edit forms have the same picker, so a trainer scheduling from the field can tag the session too.
Where skills do not reach
Skills are not part of group requirements, member profiles, callout paging or reports. If your team needs to know who is qualified for something, give that thing a certification: members hold it, it expires, groups can require it, and the Analytics page reports on it. Treat skills as the subject line of a training and certifications as the record of competence.
- Use a skill for: what a session teaches, so the calendar reads well.
- Use a certification for: what a member is qualified to do, with expiry and group requirements.
- Use an Education Hub module for: self-paced material a member must read and pass.