RTO Milestones and Validation Panels

🔒 Pro feature — requires the Pro plugin.

Beyond trainer currency, an Australian RTO has organisation-level dates to keep track of: re-registration, the annual self-assessment against the Standards, policy and marketing reviews, and the cycle of assessment validation. These two screens, part of the Pro RTO module, keep those dates in one place inside Attestation Core:

• RTO Milestones: a register of organisation-level compliance due dates, with optional repeats.
• Validation Panels: scheduling and records for assessment validation meetings, including participants, the units under validation, and a verdict for each unit.

Both are for the compliance manager or RTO administrator. Trainers don’t see them. The plugin helps you gather and organise evidence for these activities. It doesn’t decide whether your RTO meets the Standards.

Requirements and access

Both screens appear only when all of these are true:

1. Dantian Attestation Core Pro is active with a valid licence.
2. Attestation Core → Settings → General → Industry is set to RTO — Registered Training Organisation (Australia).
3. You have the manage-settings permission. Administrators have it by default. Department Coordinators and trainers don’t.

In the menu they sit in the RTO group: Attestation Core → RTO Milestones, then Validation Panels, after Qualifications.

When it’s locked: on the free plugin, on a non-RTO industry, or with an inactive Pro licence, both menu items are hidden. Saved milestones and panels are kept and come back when the conditions are met again. A user without the right permission who opens either page directly gets an “Access denied” message.

RTO compliance milestones

Go to Attestation Core → RTO Milestones. The page is titled RTO Compliance Milestones.

What a milestone is

A milestone is a dated compliance task for the RTO as a whole, rather than for one trainer. When Pro is first activated, it adds three starter milestones, each due 12 months from the activation date and set to repeat annually:

• ASQA Re-registration Review
• Annual Self-Assessment Against Standards
• Marketing Materials Review

You can edit or delete them like any other milestone.

The list shows Title, Category, Due Date, Status and an Edit link for each milestone.

Adding a milestone

1. Click Add Milestone.
2. Fill in the form:

Field	Notes
Title	Required. If it’s empty you’ll see “Event title is required.”
Description	Optional notes.
Category	External Audit, Annual Review, Registration / Accreditation, Policy Review, AVETMISS / Regulatory Report or Other.
Due Date	Required (date picker).
Status	Pending, In Progress, Completed, Overdue or Archived.
Recurrence	One-time (default), Monthly, Quarterly, Bi-annual or Annual.
Notify (days before)	Shown with the default 30,14,7.

1. Click Add Milestone. You’ll see “Event created.” and stay on the milestone’s edit screen.

Completing, repeating and deleting

• Mark as Complete appears on any saved milestone that isn’t completed. It sets the status to completed and records who completed it and when. You’ll see “Event marked complete.”
• If the milestone repeats Quarterly, Bi-annual or Annual, completing it automatically creates the next one with the same title, description and category. The new due date is 3, 6 or 12 months after the original due date (not after the date you completed it).
• Delete Milestone asks you to confirm (“Delete this milestone? This cannot be undone.”) and then removes it. The deletion is recorded in the Action Log.

Known limitations in this version

The milestone form and the stored values don’t fully line up yet. Keep these in mind:

• Category is saved as a general “custom” category whichever option you pick. The list shows the stored category code; the starter milestones show their own codes.
• Pending and Archived are both saved as upcoming, so you can’t archive a milestone. Use Mark as Complete or Delete Milestone instead.
• Monthly and One-time don’t create a next occurrence.
• Notify (days before) isn’t saved. Reminders use the fixed schedule described below.

The daily milestone checker

The RTO milestone checker runs once a day through WordPress’s scheduler (WP-Cron), starting from the first page load after Pro is active. Each run, it looks for:

• Upcoming milestones: due between today and 30 days from now, not completed or archived. Each one triggers an RTO compliance milestone upcoming notification, at most once every 20 hours, so effectively once a day until the due date. The subject reads “[RTO name] RTO compliance milestone due in 30 days — title“. It quotes the 30-day window, not the exact number of days left. The message gives the milestone, category and due date.
• Overdue milestones: due before today, not completed or archived. These trigger RTO compliance milestone overdue (“…milestone overdue — title“) daily until you complete or delete them.

Who receives these emails: a milestone reminder goes to the staff member the milestone is assigned to. In this version the milestone form has no assignee field, so reminders have no recipient. They’re recorded in Attestation Core → Notifications as Failed with the reason “No recipient email available”, not emailed. Until an assignee field is added, use the Compliance calendar and this list to keep an eye on due dates. A developer can route these reminders to a chosen staff record if you need emails now.

Notification templates and the master on/off switch are covered in Automated email notifications.

Validation panels

Go to Attestation Core → Validation Panels. The list shows each panel’s Title, Scheduled Date and Status, with an Edit link.

Creating a panel

1. Click Add Panel.
2. Fill in the form:

Field	Notes
Panel Title	Required. If it’s empty you’ll see “Panel title is required.”
Qualification	Optional, with — None / Multi-qual — as the default.
Scheduled Date	Required (date picker).
Status	Planned, Confirmed, Completed or Cancelled.
Notes	Free text.
Participants	Hold Ctrl/Cmd to select several trainers (up to 500 are listed).
Units for Validation	Hold Ctrl/Cmd to select several units.

1. Click Create Panel. You’ll see “Panel created.” and the panel opens for editing. Each later save replaces the participant and unit lists with what’s selected.

Recording outcomes

Once a saved panel has units, a Unit Evaluation Outcomes table appears with a row per unit:

1. For each unit, choose a Verdict: — Pending —, Validated, Not Validated or Deferred. Add Notes if needed.
2. Click Save Evaluations. Each verdict records who evaluated it and when. Rows left on Pending aren’t saved.
3. When the meeting is finished, click Mark Panel Complete. The panel’s status becomes completed and the completion date is recorded.

To remove a panel, click Delete Panel and confirm “Delete this panel and all its records? This cannot be undone.” This removes the panel together with its units, participants and verdicts, and records the deletion in the Action Log.

Known limitations in this version

• Planned and Confirmed are both saved as scheduled, and the list shows “scheduled”.
• The Qualification and Notes fields on the panel form aren’t saved yet. Put the qualification in the panel title, and use the per-unit verdict notes for minutes.
• Saving a Validated verdict doesn’t update the unit’s validation date. So the Validated column on the Qualification delivery summary doesn’t change.

The daily validation panel checker

The validation panel checker also runs once a day through WP-Cron. Each run, it looks for:

• Upcoming panels: scheduled between today and 30 days from now, not completed or cancelled. These trigger a Validation panel upcoming notification, “[RTO name] Validation panel scheduled in 30 days — panel title“, at most once a day per panel.
• Overdue panels: scheduled before today and not completed or cancelled. These trigger Validation panel overdue, “[RTO name] Validation panel overdue — panel title“.

Who receives these emails: panel reminders go to the panel’s chair. The current panel form has no chair field, so, as with milestones, these reminders are recorded in Attestation Core → Notifications as Failed (“No recipient email available”) instead of being emailed. Completing or cancelling a panel stops its reminders.

ASQA credential categories and the Under Direction Register

These RTO items aren’t shown on the milestone or panel screens. They live elsewhere:

• The ASQA Credential Policy categories (1A–1E for Tier 1, 2A–2C for Tier 2) are used on trainer credentials. See Staff profiles and credentials.
• The Under Direction Register report lists trainers working under the direction of a Tier 1 supervisor, with days elapsed. Find it under Attestation Core → Reports. See Compliance reporting and audit exports.

Milestones and panels also appear on the Pro Compliance calendar.

Data

Milestones, panels, panel units, participants and verdicts are stored in Pro’s own database tables on your site. Nothing is sent to outside services. They’re kept when you deactivate Pro or change industry, and removed only if you uninstall Pro with data removal turned on (see Privacy, security and data).

Troubleshooting

• The menus don’t appear. Check that the Pro licence is active, Industry is set to RTO, and you’re logged in as an administrator.
• “Milestone not found.” or “Panel not found.” The record was deleted, possibly in another browser tab. Go back to the list.
• No reminder emails arrive. That’s expected in this version (see Who receives these emails above). Check Attestation Core → Notifications for the Failed entries.
• Reminders never appear in the log at all. WP-Cron only runs when the site gets visits. On a quiet site, ask your host to set up a real server cron job.

Worked example

Southern Skills Institute validates its TAE units each spring.

1. On RTO Milestones, the compliance manager edits Annual Self-Assessment Against Standards to set the real due date, 31 March, keeping the Annual repeat.
2. On Validation Panels, she adds “TAE40122 assessment validation — Spring”, scheduled for 12 September. She selects four trainers as participants and six TAE units for validation.
3. After the meeting, she sets five units to Validated and one to Not Validated with the note “Marking guide lacks benchmark answers — revise by Nov”, then saves the evaluations and clicks Mark Panel Complete.
4. When she marks the self-assessment complete in March, next year’s milestone is created automatically for the following 31 March.