Knowledge Base

Environment type

You can specify whether your Skills Base instance is a production or test environment. Setting the environment type to "Test" does the following things (only):

  • Displays a banner at the top of each page stating "TEST ENVIRONMENT - NOT FOR PRODUCTION USE". This is designed as a visual deterrent for people who may otherwise accidentally enter production data into the instance in cases where you are not using the instance in a production capacity. This is especially useful when you have multiple Skills Base instances (eg: A "production" instance and a "test" instance).
  • Disables self-assessment reminder notifications and emails. Administrators will still receive administrative emails such as license expiry reminders.
  • Disables Qualification Expiry notifications and emails (As of Q4 2025)


Important note regarding notification emails

If you change the environment type from "Test" to "Production" the system will send out the backlog of emails that has accumulated, with the following limits:

  • Assessment reminders - 7 days of backlog will be sent
  • Qualification expiry - The system will send emails for all qualifications that haven't yet expired but are within the notification threshold. By default the threshold is 7 days, however customers may have elected to increase or decrease this.


If you don't want a backlog of emails to be sent out:

  • Disable assessment reminders via the "Email reminder" option in [Admin > Settings] (which is only available when the environment type is set to "Production"). Disable this setting immediately after changing the environment type to "Production".
  • Disable the "Qualification expiry notifications" feature in [Admin > Modules]