As an admin or content owner, you want to set an expiration date for content assignments so that they can be reassigned via an automated rule when no longer considered valid. This is especially useful for compliance content that needs to be completed every year, for example.

For tracks: set Time to expiration on the track and on every item in it. The track's setting does not apply to its items.

When you assign the content to someone, the expiration date is automatically set based on the number of days you defined. You can change the expiration date during the assignment process or you can override the expiration date after assignment. Assignments created before you turned on Time to expiration keep no expiration date; see Give people who already completed a fresh attempt below.

Completion settings include a Time to complete (which determines the default due date) and a Time to expiration (which determines how long an assignment is considered valid). Due dates apply to when someone should complete a content assignment and expiration dates are when content can be reassigned. Only Time to expiration makes assignments expire.

You can always manually reassign content to someone who has dropped, completed, or been exempted from an assignment, but rules can only reassign content automatically once its assignments reach their expiration date.

Please note that expired assignments are not shown by default when viewing assignments. Add one or both of these filters to see them, depending on your use case:

Expires at is the date after which the assignment is no longer valid. It is set at assignment time if the content item has the "Time to Expiration" checkbox set. Yes the date can be in the future.

Remember that you cannot reassign content to someone whose assignment is still outstanding (Not Started or In Progress), as this would create two active assignments, which is not possible in the platform. You'd have to first perform one of these actions: Mark as Exempted, Mark as Completed, Mark as Expired, or Drop.

Using the Time to Expiration model, let's consider a useful scenario where you want to reassign an onboarding compliance track and all its child items to returning interns after 8 months who are now FTEs.

Here are the steps you'll follow:

Because you can't reassign people who still have an active assignment (Not Started or In Progress), mark those assignments as expired first (see Bulk Mark as Expired below). See Assignment and Re/assignment Management Best Practice for more details.

Here you can see the active statuses per an excerpt from Assignment and Re/assignment Management Best Practice:

Once the track's and its items' assignments expire, reassign the track (manually or with an automated rule) and everyone gets a fresh assignment. For compliance reporting you'll be relieved to know:

You can mark assignments as expired, one at a time or in bulk, for people who didn't finish by their due date.

Mark as Expired only works on Not Started or In Progress assignments. If a bulk selection includes any Completed, Dropped, or Exempted assignments, the whole action fails. Filter by Status before selecting, or use Edit Dates (below) for completed assignments.

If people completed content before an expiration was set, their completions never expire. Reassigning a track then marks them Completed again right away, because a track counts any non-expired completion of its items. To reset them:

Earlier completions stay in reporting as expired assignments. Add the filter Is expired = Yes to see them.