Guides & Tutorials
Step-by-step tutorials to help you get the most out of skillSYMS. From getting started to advanced workflows.
Getting Started
Begin your skillSYMS journey
skillSYMS Platform Overview
Understand how skillSYMS is organised — roles, portals, navigation, and multi-tenancy — before you dive into the role-specific guides.
Getting Started as a Training Provider
Complete guide to setting up your training provider account and onboarding your first learners to skillSYMS.
Getting Started as an Employer
Set up workplace skills programmes and learnerships using skillSYMS for your organization.
Getting Started as a Learner
Activate your account, find your programme, and learn how to submit evidence, check attendance, and view your results on skillSYMS.
Getting Started as a Facilitator
Set up your facilitator account and learn to manage classes, take attendance, share materials, and track learner progress in skillSYMS.
Getting Started as an Assessor
Set up your assessor account and learn to work your assessment queue, review Portfolios of Evidence, and record competency decisions in skillSYMS.
Getting Started as a Moderator
Set up your moderator account and learn to run sampling, verify assessment decisions, and produce moderation reports in skillSYMS.
Mobile App: Getting Started
Install the skillSYMS mobile app, sign in, and use it for evidence capture, attendance, timeclock, and offline field work.
Complete Your Organisation Profile & Accreditations
Finish setting up your provider after signup—organisation details, QCTO configuration, and multi-accreditation records.
Getting started with the Library
Set up your catalogue, add copies, and start issuing and returning items in minutes.
Getting started with Workforce Intelligence
Set up your employer, org structure and workforce register, and understand what the module can answer once it is populated.
Getting started with Academic Integrity
Run your first originality check, read a similarity report, and understand the risk bands.
Your Profile, Identity and Privacy
ProfileOS in skillSYMS — the one profile that follows you across every organisation you belong to, what each of them can see, and how to control sharing, credentials and your data receipts.
SYMID: One Person, One Identity
How skillSYMS identifies a person across providers, employers and regulators — the SYMID registry, tenant links, duplicate resolution and identity verification.
Modules and the Store: Turning Capability On
See what skillSYMS modules your provider has, what else is available, and how to request, enable and configure one — plus what metered usage means on your bill.
Personalising Your Workspace
Make the skillSYMS menu your own — the spine launcher, reordering and hiding what you do not use, workspace templates for a role, and switching between organisations.
Deploying skillSYMS Desktop: Installs, Group Policy, Kiosk Mode and Device Trust
Install skillSYMS Desktop across your organisation's computers, pre-configure them with Group Policy or a policy file, set up kiosk mode for shared computers, and manage trust, sign-out and wipe from Settings → Devices.
My Training and Team Training: Role Tracks in Staff Academy
Work through your role's track in skillSYMS Staff Academy, get steps verified against real records, claim a verifiable certificate, and track your team's progress in Team Training.
Set Up Mail: Mailboxes, Members and Response Targets
Configure skillSYMS Mail so every shared mailbox has named members and a response target, then use the counters each morning to find what is unassigned, at risk or past its target.
Get Help Now: finding a tutor for the module you are stuck on
Ask for help in a sentence, see who can help you now — starting with your own lecturer — and book a session that your institution may pay for.
Set Up Your School in skillSYMS: Grades, Classes, Learners, Registers and Reports
Activate the Schools Pack, add your school under its provincial department, create CAPS grades, classes and subjects, activate published policies, import learners from an SA-SAMS export, then take registers, capture marks, compute results, run progression and release reports.
Workflows
Day-to-day processes and tasks
Assessor & Moderator Workflow
Complete guide to conducting assessments and moderations in skillSYMS.
Learner PoE Submission Guide
How learners can submit evidence, track progress, and manage their digital portfolio in skillSYMS.
Issuing, returning, and renewing items
Run the circulation desk: eligibility checks, overdue fines, reservations, and renewals.
Using the learner library
Search the catalogue, reserve a resource, and manage your loans, renewals, and fines.
Building your Skills Genome
Design a competency framework that produces defensible ratings — domains, behaviour anchors, evidence standards, decay, and multi-framework mapping.
Running a baseline competency assessment
Enrol your workforce, open a cycle, and freeze the baseline every future improvement will be measured against.
Handling a plagiarism case
From a high-similarity flag to lecturer review, moderator oversight, and a fair, defensible outcome.
Managing Learners
Add learners individually or by bulk CSV import, maintain learner profiles, and track lifecycle status from enrolment to completion.
Learner Accounts & Logins
Provision learner login accounts, set or reset passwords, email reset links, use audited login-as, and issue learner ID cards.
Enrolments
Enrol learners into programmes and offerings, manage and bulk enrol cohorts, and import enrolments from a SIMS registry.
Alumni Management
Track your alumni community, run engagement and employment surveys, and verify alumni credentials from the Alumni Network dashboard.
Browse the QCTO Catalogue & Link a Qualification
Search the official QCTO catalogue of occupational qualifications, learnerships and skills programmes, then link a qualification to your provider's programmes.
Create a Programme
Create a deliverable programme in skillSYMS — from an offering or by manual entry — and capture SAQA ID, NQF level, credits and duration, including custom programmes.
Create Offerings & Intakes
Turn a QCTO catalogue qualification into an offering, then configure delivery mode, sites, pricing and intake dates for your cohorts.
Curriculum Design & Module Allocation
Use the curriculum workspace to review a programme's KM/PM/WM modules, allocate modules to cohorts and learners, and sequence delivery.
Attendance Sessions: Create, Record & Verify Presence
Set up class, practical, and exam attendance sessions, choose check-in methods (manual, QR, geo-fence), and let learners and staff check themselves in.
Geo-Fencing: Location-Verified Check-In
Set up geo-fences for your venues and enable location-verified attendance for learners and staff, including how check-in validates a person's position.
Calendar & Events: Scheduling, Deadlines & Subscriptions
Manage your training calendar—create events, track compliance deadlines, detect conflicts, and subscribe to your schedule from Google, Outlook, or Apple Calendar.
Tracking Evidence Coverage
Use the Curriculum Coverage report to see which outcomes have sufficient evidence and whether a learner is ready for a Statement of Results.
Assessment Instruments, Plans & Events
Design QCTO-aligned assessment instruments and rubrics, build assessment plans, and schedule assessment events in skillSYMS.
Recording Competency Decisions
Record Competent and Not Yet Competent outcomes, score criteria, and submit audit-ready assessment results in skillSYMS.
Moderation Sampling & Verification
Build sampling plans, execute internal and external moderation, and record verification outcomes in skillSYMS.
ICASS Cycles & Mark Capture
Set up ICASS assessment cycles, capture and bulk-upload marks, and track attendance and term marks in skillSYMS.
Trade Test Management
Manage trade tests end-to-end in skillSYMS: applications, bookings, sessions, results, moderation, appeals, and centres.
Certificates & Verification
Design certificate templates, issue certificates, and let anyone verify a certificate or student card publicly in skillSYMS.
Finance Module: Billing, Payments & Ledger
Run your training provider's finances in skillSYMS — invoicing, payments, collections, the general ledger, point of sale, procurement, and wallets.
HR Module: Staff, Credentials & Lifecycle
Manage your training provider's people in skillSYMS — staff directory, credentials, contracts, leave, performance reviews, departments, and offboarding.
Timeclock & Payroll
Track staff hours and run payroll in skillSYMS — clock in and out, approve exceptions, manage timesheets, run pay periods, and distribute payslips.
Communications & Broadcasts
Reach learners and staff at scale in skillSYMS — send SMS and email broadcasts, build reusable templates, schedule messages, and configure channel settings.
CRM: Accounts, Pipelines & Tickets
Manage relationships in skillSYMS — accounts, contacts, leads, opportunities, pipelines, tasks, support tickets, and the CRM intelligence views.
Live Sessions: Virtual Classrooms
Run virtual classrooms in skillSYMS — create and schedule rooms, share join links, join live sessions, capture attendance evidence, and track usage.
Forms Builder
Design and publish forms in skillSYMS — build multi-page forms with fields and rules, share public links, and review submissions.
Work Products & Submission Packs
Compile guided QCTO work product packs in skillSYMS — choose a pack, follow the wizard, attach required evidence, and submit a complete bundle.
Webinars: Management & Registration
Run marketing webinars in skillSYMS — create and edit webinars, manage registrations and attendees, and publish public registration and replay pages.
Academy & SOPs
Train your team and learners inside skillSYMS — manage in-app Academy modules, publish standard operating procedures, and track progress and certificates.
ClassroomOS: Timetables, Lessons and Coverage
Schedule teaching in skillSYMS — build a timetable, run the auto-scheduler, plan lessons against a scheme of work, and see curriculum coverage before the term ends rather than after.
Tenant Management
Create, configure, and manage tenants on the skillSYMS platform, including onboarding requests, suspension, and per-tenant settings.
LiveOS: Running a Live Class
Schedule, run and file a live online session in skillSYMS — the room, the register, chat and polls, recordings, moderation and the evidence a live class has to leave behind.
ProgrammeOS: Cohorts and the Learner Journey
Run a programme as a cohort in skillSYMS — instances, phases, the journey view, engagement rules, risk scores and the interventions that follow from them.
User Management & Role-Based Access Control
Manage platform users, send invitations, and configure roles and the permissions matrix (RBAC) across skillSYMS tenants.
Billing & Subscriptions
Manage platform billing on skillSYMS: subscriptions, invoices, payment verification, quotes, plan pricing, and billing automation.
TalentOS: Employability and Placement
Turn completed qualifications into employment outcomes — graduate profiles, employers, opportunities, matching, placement tracking and the consent rules that govern all of it.
Feature Flags & System Settings
Configure platform-wide system settings on skillSYMS: feature flags, email delivery, regions, OAuth social login, and platform diagnostics.
ApplyOS: Admissions and Applications
Take applications in skillSYMS — publish an intake, build the application form, set eligibility rules, screen and score applicants, make offers and convert them into enrolments.
AccessOS: Site Access, Visitors and Presence
Control and evidence physical access to a skillSYMS provider's sites — doors and devices, access policies, visitor management, presence records and emergency musters.
Money Hub: Bank Reconciliation and Learner Accounts
Match money to people in skillSYMS — bank accounts, statement imports, allocation of receipts to learner accounts, sponsor ledgers, approvals and holds.
Operations & Monitoring
Monitor platform health on skillSYMS using the ops cockpit: live signals, incidents, background jobs, exports, integration health, and the activity log.
API Keys & Security
Manage API keys, access logs, and security incidents on skillSYMS as a platform administrator, with guidance on revocation and incident triage.
GrowthOS: Claims, Evidence and Demand
Market a provider honestly — the claims register and its evidence, the brand constitution, demand signals, content briefs and why GrowthOS never sends anything itself.
Engage: Audiences, Consent and Campaigns
Send to learners, applicants and employers from skillSYMS — audiences, the consent gate, campaigns and journeys, suppressions, digests and what to check before your first real send.
Selling Training: Proposals and Quotes to Employers
Build and send a training proposal from skillSYMS — the product catalogue, packages, pricing, the readiness gate, recipient access and acceptance.
Support Console
Use the skillSYMS support console to find users, start audited impersonation sessions, and enter tenant shadow mode for support and setup work.
Foundry: Module Registry, Entitlements and Metering
For skillSYMS platform staff — the module registry, diagnostics and findings, plan entitlements, provisioning a module for a tenant, and usage metering.
Branding: Logos, Colours & Letterheads
Apply your provider's branding across login pages, documents, and the platform theme—logos, colours, letterheads, footers, and signatures.
Custom Domains & Subdomain Login
Connect your own domain or use your free skillSYMS subdomain, configure DNS, and verify ownership for a branded login experience.
Managing Campuses & Delivery Sites
Add and maintain your training campuses—addresses, capacity, head office, and the data QCTO reporting relies on.
Inviting Team Members & Assigning Roles
Invite colleagues to your skillSYMS tenant and assign the right role—from admin to assessor, moderator, and data capturer.
Setting Up Integrations
Connect Moodle, SMS, WhatsApp (chatSYMS), and other external systems to extend your skillSYMS operations.
Building Your Public Microsite
Create and publish a public-facing landing page for your provider—hero, about, programmes, contact, FAQ, and trust sections.
Document & Email Templates
Use QCTO system templates, create your own custom templates, and assign branding so every generated document looks right.
Design-OS: Theme, Components & Certificate Designer
Use Design-OS to control your platform theme, build role-based dashboards, browse components, design certificates, and check accessibility.
Page Composer: Arrange Your Team's Workspace
Use Page Composer to arrange My Workspace — pick live blocks, start from a preset, preview with your real numbers, save a draft and publish to your whole workspace.
Offline Working: Registers, Logbooks and Evidence Without a Connection
Switch on offline working, choose offline packs, take the register, record logbook entries and capture evidence in skillSYMS Desktop with no connection, then sync and resolve conflicts.
Working a shared mailbox in skillSYMS Mail
Turn admissions@, accounts@ and assessments@ into a queue with statuses, response targets and correspondence filed against the learner record.
Teach & Earn: tutoring learners through skillSYMS
Build your professional profile, get your credentials verified, go online for TeachNow requests, deliver sessions in LiveOS and withdraw what you earn.
Running your SkillX marketplace
Switch the Exchange on, approve educators and verify their credentials, fund learner support, handle disputes and safeguarding reports, and read the demand your learners create.
Signature Requests: Send a Document for Electronic Signature
Send a PDF from the Document Hub for electronic signature — add recipients and fields, choose the signing order, send, follow up on outstanding signers, verify the audit trail and download the signed PDF.
Learner Support, Behaviour, Governance and the Guardian Portal
Assign teachers to classes and subjects, roll out teaching scope safely, run learner support cases and accommodations, record behaviour, manage the governing body, move ECD children into Grade R with guardian consent, give parents a portal link and work offline in skillSYMS Desktop.
Writing a MicroQuest as a file, and importing it
Draft a LearnChat MicroQuest in Markdown — by hand or with an AI tool — check it, and import it as a draft you review before publishing.
Compliance
QCTO and POPIA compliance
Audit Readiness Checklist (QCTO)
Comprehensive checklist to prepare for QCTO external moderation and verification visits.
POPIA-Safe Data Handling for SDPs
Best practices for handling learner personal information in compliance with POPIA.
Generating Statements of Results
Issue Statements of Results from assessment data, run readiness checks, and manage SoR status in skillSYMS.
Audit Trail & Compliance Enforcement
Use the QCTO compliance dashboard, enforcement rules, deadlines, waivers, and the immutable audit log to keep your provider audit-ready.
CHE Accreditation & Programme Design
Manage Council on Higher Education accreditation in skillSYMS: institution profile, self-evaluation reports, governance, policies, review cycles, programme design, and readiness.
NSFAS Funding
Track NSFAS funding status, sync disbursements, and generate evidence packs for NSFAS audits in skillSYMS.
Multi-Campus Accreditation
Register campuses and sites, manage QCTO accreditations, and link accreditations to the campuses they cover in skillSYMS.
SETA Funding
Browse funding windows, submit applications, track funded projects, process stipend claims, and run skills gap analysis in skillSYMS.
EDLES: exchanging exam data with DHET
Set up your examination centre, import the department's timetable, submit candidate entries and year marks, and read the results back — the whole EDLES cycle.
FacilitiesOS: Estate, Assets and Readiness
Record the estate skillSYMS providers deliver in — properties, assets, inspections, work orders and the readiness snapshot an accreditation visit asks for.
RegulatoryOS: Connections, Submissions and Deadlines
Manage every regulator from one place in skillSYMS — connections to the QCTO, SETAs, DHET and CIPC, the submission ledger, exception handling and the deadline calendar.
Final Assessment: EISA and Trade Test Readiness
Prepare candidates for external final assessment in skillSYMS — readiness rules, candidate registration, assessment centres, results, certification cases and appeals.
Governed mail templates and the approval workflow
Draft, review, approve and publish the wording that goes out under your institution's name — with version history an ETQA panel can read.
Best Practices
Tips for success
Evidence Pack Structure (PoE) – Best Practices
How to organize and structure digital portfolios of evidence for QCTO compliance.
Rating your team fairly
How behaviourally-anchored assessment works, why evidence changes the weight of your judgement, and what the confidence figure actually means.
Reporting
Exports and reporting
Reporting & Exporting
Generate QCTO MIS exports, compliance reports, and learner data exports from skillSYMS.
Generating QCTO MIS Exports
Step-by-step guide to generating, validating, and downloading QCTO MIS export files (QCTO01–QCTO06) for occupational qualification submissions.
Report Builder and Prebuilt Reports
Use the Reports dashboard, prebuilt report templates, and the Reports Studio to view metrics and build custom reports in skillSYMS.
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