If a Learner is seeing a “documents need signing” message appear when they login, but there are no documents showing as needing a signature, this can be caused by three main factors.
All these apply to Commitment Statement, Apprenticeship Agreement and Training Plan compliance documents only.
Factor 1 - Compliance document is not generated for the Learner
This applies to a scenario where the learner has not signed compliance documents upon finishing the Onboarding Wizard:
- Onboarding Wizard is disabled for the programme.
OR - Onboarding Wizard is not mandatory, and the learner has not finished it yet.
OR - The compliance document(s) were added to the Programme template after the learner had finished their Onboarding Wizard.
And if the above-mentioned compliance documents are configured in the Programme template, but none of these are generated for the learner, the learner will see the Documents Need Signing banner on their Learning Plan page. If they click on the Review & Sign button, the learner will be redirected to the Documents page but will not see any items under the ‘Signatures Required’ area.
To address this, the tutor needs to create the documents for the learner in the compliance document section of their profile. The learner will then be able to see and sign these documents.
Factor 2 - Improper order of signing
(This is an extension to the Factor 1)
In case some compliance documents of the above-mentioned types are already created for the learner, but the rest are not - the learner may not see the documents due to the conflicting sign order.
For example, suppose that both Apprenticeship Agreement and Commitment Statement compliance documents are configured in the Programme template for the learner’s programme. And only the Apprenticeship Agreement document is created in the Learner profile. Since Commitment Statement must be signed prior to any other compliance documents, and it has not been generated for the learner yet, the Apprenticeship Agreement document is locked for signing - until the Commitment Statement is generated for the learner and signed.
Please find the compliance documents sign order details here: FAQ: Is there an order that apprenticeship compliance documents must be signed in?.
To resolve this, the tutor needs to create the missing compliance documents for the learner, so that these appear in the learner’s Documents page, and the learner will be able to sign those one by one in order.
Factor 3 - Compliance documents settings have been updated in the Programme template
In this scenario, the learner had already signed all the requested compliance documents and had their Learning Plan page unlocked - but now they see the 'Documents Need Signing' banner again with no documents available for signing.
This could be a result of the following updates to the Programme template:
- New Apprenticeship Agreement, Commitment Statement or Training Plan compliance documents have been added to the Programme template.
- If this situation has occurred, then the issue can be resolved by creating a new document for the learner in the compliance document section of their profile. The learner will then be prompted to sign this document.
- or, any of these documents' template versions have been changed since the learner signed the document (as shown below). For example, the learner signed Apprenticeship Agreement v3 compliance document, and then v3 template is replaced with v4 for the same compliance group in the Programme template.
The issue can be resolved by undertaking either of the following options:
- Create a new document for the learner in the compliance document section of their profile. The learner will then be prompted to sign this document. This option is best used if the provider believes that changes are significant enough to need new signatures.
OR - An administrator with the Compliance QA role can select the learner’s compliance documents and review the previous documents. If these do not require revisiting and re-signing, the administrator can accept these documents, this will resolve the issue.