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Quick Summary: Journeys let administrators define an ordered sequence of steps a person moves through automatically over time — for example, the path from finishing required training to being promoted into a new career. A person enrolls when they meet the journey’s enrollment condition, then advances through each step in order until the journey is complete.

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Overview

A Journey is an admin-built workflow made of ordered steps. Each person enters a journey when they meet its enrollment condition, then advances through the steps strictly in order — step 2 only becomes active once step 1 is satisfied — until the journey is complete. Journeys solve a real problem: the multi-step processes a person moves through over time, such as the path from completing required training to a promotion, are usually run manually across training records, manager conversations, and career assignments. There is no single place to define the sequence, watch who is in progress, or audit what happened. Journeys give you that single place. The most common use is promotion automation: when an employee completes all required training for a target career, a journey can route an approval to their manager, request a sign-off from a specific approver, automatically assign a new career or career level, and notify stakeholders — all without manual hand-offs. Only administrators can see and manage journeys. Employees are silent participants: they are enrolled, progressed, and assigned automatically, with no journey-facing screens. The one exception is approvals — a manager or designated approver receives an email and an inbox item linking to a single Activity Page where they action their approval, even though they cannot otherwise see the Company section.
Note: The Journeys feature must be enabled for your SkillsDB account. Contact your account manager if you do not see Journeys in the Company sidebar menu.

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Prerequisites

Before you create a journey, you need:
  • Permission level: Administrator or Global Administrator role
  • Target career: At least one career (job role) with required training defined, to use as the enrollment condition
  • Access requirement: Company > Journeys in the left navigation

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Understanding journey states

A journey is always in one of three states. The state determines which actions are available and whether new people can enroll. You can edit a journey’s steps only while it is in Draft. Activated and Inactive journeys are read-only to preserve the integrity of in-progress enrollments. You can delete a journey only while it is in Draft. An activated journey has people enrolled on it, so it cannot be deleted — retire it with Deactivate instead. Deleting a Draft permanently removes the journey and its steps.

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The five step types

When you add a step, you choose one of five types and give it a name and description. Each type has its own configuration and its own rule for when it is satisfied.
Note: The target career used for the enrollment (first) step may differ from the career granted by a later Assign Career/Level step. For example: complete training for “Senior Technician” → approvals → assign “Lead Technician”.

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Adding a condition to a step

Any step except the enrollment (first) step can carry an optional condition. A condition is evaluated per person at the moment the step would become active. If the condition is not met, the step is marked Skipped and the journey advances to the next step with no one asked to act. If the condition is met, the step runs as normal. You set a condition in the step’s configuration under Only run this step if…. The default is Always run. The one condition available today is Person has a career assigned, which you pair with a specific career. If you select Person has a career assigned and the person does not have that career when they reach the step, the step is skipped and the journey moves on. A step with a condition shows a Conditional badge wherever it appears.
Note: A skipped step is terminal — once skipped, it is never re-evaluated. On a person’s Activity Page a skipped step shows a Skipped status and the reason it was skipped, and it counts as done in the “X/Y steps done” progress.
Warning: If the career a condition depends on is later deleted, SkillsDB cannot check the condition. The condition then fails open — the step runs for everyone — and an alert appears on the step. Edit the step to choose a career that still exists, or remove the condition.

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Creating a journey

Build a journey in a three-phase wizard — Details, Enrollment, and Build.
1

Open the wizard

Navigate to Company > Journeys and select Journey.
2

Enter details

On the Details phase, enter a Journey Name (required) and an optional Description. Journeys do not have a due date. Select Continue.
3

Set the enrollment condition

On the Enrollment phase, select Set Enrollment Condition. This is always the first step and must be a Training Completion step — choose the target career whose required training a person must complete to enroll. Select Continue.
4

Build the remaining steps

On the Build phase, select Add step, choose a step type from the selector, then name the step and set its type-specific configuration. Add a condition here if the step should run only in certain cases. Use the up and down arrows to reorder steps into the intended sequence.
Your details and steps are saved as you go, so the journey stays in Draft until you explicitly activate it. Select Save as draft to leave the wizard and return to the journeys list.
Tip: When you pick a career for a Training Completion step, SkillsDB summarizes what that career’s required training actually demands — how many skills are required for everyone, any minimums per section, and whether the career has no required training at all (in which case no one can meet the condition). Use it to confirm the enrollment condition will behave the way you expect before you activate.
Note: The enrollment condition is pinned as step 1. It cannot be reordered, and it cannot be deleted while other steps exist — deleting a step first renumbers the steps after it, so SkillsDB asks you to confirm and explains that the following steps will be renumbered. No other step’s configuration changes.

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Deleting a draft journey

To delete a draft, open it and select Delete draft in the wizard header, or select the ⋯ menu on the journey’s row in the journeys list and choose Delete. Both ask you to confirm. Deletion is available only for a Draft journey — an activated journey with people enrolled is retired with Deactivate instead.

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Activating a journey

Activation makes a journey live so that eligible people begin enrolling. SkillsDB validates the configuration before activating. Activation is blocked, with a clear message, if any of the following are true:
  • The journey has zero steps.
  • The first step is not a Training Completion step.
  • A required step configuration is missing — for example, a Training Completion step without a target career, or a Custom Approval step without an approver choice.
  • A step points at a career that has been deleted. Edit the step to choose a career that still exists, then activate.
  • A Custom Approval step has a fixed approver who is no longer an active user. Edit the step to choose a different approver before activating.
To activate, open the journey landing page and select Activate. Once activated, any eligible employee who reaches 100% required-training completion for the first step’s target career is enrolled automatically. Their Started on date equals the date the triggering training was approved.
Warning: Enrollment happens only while a journey is Activated. A person who meets the enrollment condition while the journey is Draft or Inactive is not enrolled.

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Deactivating a journey

Deactivating a journey stops new people from entering it. How SkillsDB handles people already mid-journey depends on whether anyone is in progress.
  • If no one is in progress, the journey deactivates directly with no warning.
  • If at least one person is in progress, a warning shows the count and offers two choices:
    • Let them finish the journey — the journey deactivates, but in-progress people finish their journey.
    • Remove them from the journey — the journey deactivates and all in-progress people are removed.
To deactivate, open the journey landing page and select Deactivate, then choose how to handle in-progress people if prompted.

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Backfilling eligible people

Enrollment is edge-triggered: a person enrolls only when they newly reach 100% of the required training for the enrollment career. Anyone who already met that condition before the journey was activated is not picked up automatically. Backfilling is how an administrator finds those people and enrolls them manually. To open the backfill list, open an activated journey and select Backfill on its landing page. The Backfill action is available only while the journey is Activated, and it is disabled if the enrollment career has been deleted — with no live career, no one can meet the enrollment condition. The backfill list shows everyone who currently meets the enrollment condition, with these columns:
  • Name — the person’s name.
  • Manager — the person’s manager.
  • Required training — how much of the career’s required training the person has completed, shown as completed / required.
  • Enrollment — the person’s current status for this journey: Not enrolled, In Progress, or Complete.
Filter the list with the Not Enrolled / Enrolled / All quick filter, and narrow it further by Name, Manager, or Org structure.
1

Open the backfill list

On the activated journey’s landing page, select Backfill.
2

Select people to enroll

Only people whose status is Not enrolled can be selected. Tick individual rows, or use the header checkbox to select everyone in the current view. Already-enrolled people are shown for reference but cannot be selected.
3

Enroll

Select Enroll [N] people, then confirm. Each selected person starts the journey from its first step.
Warning: Enrolling people from the backfill list starts the journey’s automation immediately and can send approval emails. Enrollment can only be reversed by deactivating the journey, so review your selection before you confirm.
Note: SkillsDB re-checks each person’s eligibility and existing enrollment when you confirm, so anyone who no longer qualifies or is already enrolled is skipped. A large selection is enrolled in batches, and the result tells you how many were enrolled, already enrolled, no longer eligible, or failed.

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Monitoring progress

The journey landing page summarizes participation with three tiles — In Progress, Complete, and All — plus a summary of the configured steps. Selecting any tile opens a person-journey table where each row is one person’s run through the journey, with columns:
  • Name — the employee’s name.
  • Started on — the date the enrollment condition was met.
  • One column per step — the step name, the number of days since the prior step, and a status chip (grey if incomplete, green if complete).
  • Completed on — the date the final step was completed, or blank if still in progress.
Selecting a row opens the Activity Page for that person-journey.

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The Activity Page and approvals

The Activity Page shows a single person’s status and a full activity log detailing each step in sequence. It is also where approvals are actioned.
  • A Manager Approval step is approved by the enrolled person’s direct manager.
  • A Custom Approval (Fixed Approver) step is approved by the configured approver.
  • A Custom Approval (Case-by-Case) step can be approved by any admin.
On the active approval step, whoever can action it sees two buttons: Approve advances the journey to the next step, and Choose Approver hands the step to a different person. Any administrator can use Choose Approver to reassign a step — including to unblock a step whose approver can no longer act. Approvers reach the Activity Page through a link in the approval email and a matching item in their SkillsDB Inbox. A non-admin approver — a manager or fixed approver — gets access to only that one person-journey’s Activity Page to action their approval; they cannot see other journeys or the Company section. The approval and notification emails name the step the person has reached and include the step’s Description, so an approver on a multi-step journey can tell what they are approving. When you author a step, the Description you enter is what appears in these emails.
Note: If an approval step is rejected or simply not approved, the person-journey stalls on that step — the step chip stays grey and no rollback occurs. The step can be approved later to resume the journey.
A skipped step appears in the stepper with a Skipped status and the reason it was skipped, and it counts toward the “X/Y steps done” progress.

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When a step is stuck

If the active step cannot be routed to an approver, SkillsDB shows a warning banner on the Activity Page and emails administrators. The banner explains the problem and how to unblock it:
  • The person has no active manager when a Manager Approval step becomes active — add a manager on their account (or, for an account managed by your identity provider, set the manager there), or use Choose Approver to unblock them now.
  • The person’s manager is no longer an active user — same remedies as above.
  • The assigned approver is no longer an active user — use Choose Approver to reassign the step.
Warnings are computed each time the page loads, so fixing the underlying problem clears the banner on the next load.

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When a referenced career is deleted

A journey depends on the careers its steps point at. If one of those careers is deleted from your account, SkillsDB protects the journey automatically:
  • Every activated journey that references the deleted career is deactivated, and administrators are emailed. No one new will enroll.
  • People already part-way through the journey continue and finish as normal.
  • The affected step shows an alert naming the problem. To restart the journey, edit the step to point at a career that still exists, then activate the journey again.
An hourly journey health sweep keeps approvals accurate over time. It re-routes Manager Approval steps whose approver has changed since the step activated, and it alerts administrators when a step’s approver becomes inactive after the step was already active — so approver drift is reconciled without anyone having to watch for it.

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Permissions

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Common Questions

No. Managers cannot see the Company section, so they cannot browse journeys or journey data. The only exception is approvals: when a Manager Approval step routes to a manager, they receive an email and an inbox item linking to the Activity Page for that one person-journey, where they action their approval. They see nothing else.
The person-journey is not rolled back. Once a Training Completion step has been satisfied, later expiry or revocation of the underlying training does not reverse the person’s progress through the journey.
No. If a person who is already in progress on a journey meets the enrollment condition again, they are not enrolled a second time and no duplicate person-journey is created.
No. The Assign Career/Level step only adds a career or career level. If the person already holds the exact career-and-level assignment, the step does nothing and still counts as satisfied. Existing assignments are never replaced or removed.
In this version, every journey’s Type is “Promotion”. The column is reserved for future journey types and is the same for all rows today.
Enrollment only fires when a person newly reaches 100% of the required training. Anyone who already qualified before you activated the journey is not enrolled automatically. Open the activated journey, select Backfill, and enroll them from the list of people who currently meet the condition.
Yes. Any step except the enrollment (first) step can carry a condition. Set Only run this step if… to Person has a career assigned and choose a career. When a person reaches the step, SkillsDB checks the condition: if it is not met, the step is marked Skipped and the journey moves on without asking anyone to act.
You can delete a journey only while it is in Draft, from the Delete draft button in the wizard or the ⋯ menu on the journeys list. An activated journey has people enrolled, so it cannot be deleted — deactivate it instead. Deleting a draft permanently removes it and its steps.

Careers

Define the careers and required training that drive journey enrollment.

Training Approvals

Understand how training is approved — the signal that triggers journey enrollment.

Inbox

See how approval requests reach managers and approvers.

Surveys

Compare journeys with the survey workflow they are modeled on.

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Need More Help?

If you need additional assistance:
  • Email support@skillsdb.com
  • Use the in-app help chat
  • Schedule a training session with your account manager