Skill Swap FAQ
Answers to common setup and operating questions about Skill Swap.
For what the app is and how to set it up from scratch, see the
Skill Swap Overview.
Setup
Do I need to configure anything before employees can start using Skill Swap?
Enable the app from Admin → Apps → All Apps — it is disabled by default and requires a licence. Enabling turns it on for admins; employees see it once it is published to them under Access & Permissions on Skill Swap’s page in Admin → Apps (Publish to users, or access for specific groups). The notice you get after enabling says whether that step is still needed. From then on every employee it is published to can create a skill profile and browse the opportunity board. You may want to review the default settings under the Settings tab before announcing the app.
Who can access Skill Swap once it’s enabled?
Every active employee in the organization can create a profile, post opportunities, express interest, and manage their own partnerships. The Settings and Analytics tabs are visible only to administrators and Skill Swap app admins. App admins can also edit or delete any opportunity, not just their own.
Permissions and access
Who can change Skill Swap settings and view analytics?
Administrators and Skill Swap app admins. Both roles see a Settings tab in the app’s sidebar that opens the configuration page and an Analytics link to the dashboard. App admins have the same record-level access as full administrators within Skill Swap — they can open any match and edit, feature or delete any opportunity; only the poster (or the invited person) accepts or declines a request.
Why can’t an employee see the Settings tab?
The Settings tab appears only for administrators and Skill Swap app admins. A regular employee sees the six other tabs — Dashboard, My Profile, Opportunities, Skills & Interests, Matches, and Partnerships — but not Settings. To grant someone access, assign them the Skill Swap app admin role.
Day-to-day
How does matching work?
Matching is skill-overlap based. When an employee views an opportunity’s recommendations, the system scores each candidate on how well their teachable skills overlap with the skills the opportunity needs (each match adds 10 points) and how well their learning interests overlap with what the opportunity offers (each match adds 8 points). A cross-department match adds a 5-point bonus. Candidates with zero shared skills are never surfaced. Each match card shows a compatibility score and the specific shared skills. You can restrict matching to the same department under Workflow settings > Cross-Department Matching.
What are the four opportunity types?
Teaching (someone offers to teach a skill), Learning (someone requests to learn one), Project (a project needing specific skills), and Group (a group session such as a lunch-and-learn). For Teaching, Project, and Group postings the creator becomes the mentor; for a Learning posting the interested person becomes the mentor.
What happens when someone expresses interest in an opportunity?
A pending match record is created and the opportunity owner receives a notification. The owner reviews the match, sees the compatibility score and shared skills, and accepts or rejects. Accepting creates a learning partnership with a start date and an expected completion date. The interested person is notified of the outcome.
Can I pin an opportunity to the top of the board?
Yes. Administrators and Skill Swap app admins can mark an opportunity as Featured. The three newest featured opportunities are pinned above the board while no search or filter is applied; on phones, featured opportunities are marked Featured and listed first until a search or type filter is applied. Regular employees cannot feature their own postings.
What happens when a partnership is completed?
Both partners can rate each other on a 1–5 star scale and leave written feedback. Once both partners have rated, the learner’s rating is added to the mentor’s teaching record for that skill (“Taught N times” and its rating on Skills I Can Teach). A skill the mentor adds to Skills I Can Teach after they already taught it — or renames an untaught skill to — starts with the rated partnerships they finished teaching it, so nothing taught before the skill was listed is lost. If the skills taught match entries in the organization’s skills catalog, the platform proposes a skill signal for the learner while Skill Reviews is open (Competency Assessment on) — a suggestion a manager decides on Skill Reviews, not a confirmed skill.
Can the opportunity owner invite someone directly?
Yes. The owner can invite a specific employee to their opportunity. An invitation sends the invitee a notification; the invitee accepts or declines. This is separate from the normal express-interest flow — for an invitation, the invited employee is the one who decides, not the owner.
When something looks wrong
Why can’t I join another opportunity?
Each employee can be in a limited number of active learning partnerships at once, as mentor or learner. The default is 5; your admin may have set it to 3, 10, or Unlimited under Max Concurrent Learning Partnerships. At the limit you can’t express interest, be invited, be accepted or resume a paused partnership on someone else’s opportunity until one is completed or paused. Posting your own opportunities is never limited, and people accepted into your own opportunity are limited by its Maximum Participants instead.
I expressed interest but nothing happened — what’s going on?
Your interest is pending until the opportunity owner accepts or rejects it. The owner receives a notification, and a reminder if they have not answered after a week. You can check the status on the Matches page under My Interest & Invitations. You can withdraw a pending interest at any time; once it has been accepted or rejected, it cannot be withdrawn.
A request nobody answers within 45 days is closed and shown as Expired, and you are told in your Inbox unless Skill Swap notifications have been limited or turned off. That is not a decline: while the opportunity is still open you can express interest again from its page. The same applies to an invitation the invited person never answered — it closes after 45 days and the person who sent it is told the same way. The person who sent an invitation can also withdraw it while it is unanswered, from its match page.
My opportunity disappeared from the board — what happened?
If you set an expiry date, a nightly maintenance sweep marks expired opportunities as Expired and removes them from the active board. The sweep runs daily. You are notified when this happens, unless Skill Swap notifications are limited to Important only or turned off. The opportunity still appears in your My Opportunities list with an Expired status. To reopen it, edit it, set a new closing date and switch its status back to Active.
Why are my employees not getting Skill Swap notifications?
Check three settings under the Settings tab. Enable Notifications is the master switch — when off, nothing is sent. Notification Level controls which events fire: All events sends everything; Important only sends requests, invitations and reminders, accepted matches, session changes, completed or paused partnerships, and deleted or paused postings, and drops updates like declined or withdrawn requests, expirations and ratings. Email & Push Notifications controls whether notifications also go out as email and phone push — turning it off limits delivery to the in-app Inbox.
A partnership has been sitting active for months — can it close automatically?
Yes, but you need to opt in. Turn on Auto-Complete Partnerships under Learning settings. A nightly sweep then marks any active partnership past its expected completion date as completed and notifies both participants; the Settings page shows how many active partnerships are already past that date. The expected completion date is set when a request is accepted, from the opportunity’s duration. The Default Partnership Duration setting (4, 8, or 12 weeks; default is 8 weeks) pre-fills the Duration on new opportunities, which the poster can change, and is used for the date only when an opportunity was saved without a duration. Changing it does not move the dates of existing opportunities or partnerships.
The board says “Full” but the opportunity is still active — what does that mean?
An opportunity can be Active and Full at the same time. “Full” means the number of active partnerships has reached the participant cap, so no new interest can be accepted. A place opens again when one of its partnerships is completed or paused, or the owner can increase Maximum Participants (up to 50) by editing the opportunity.
AI agent
What can the Skill Swap AI agent do?
When the Enable AI Agent toggle is on (it is on by default), employees can interact with Skill Swap through Ask AI. The agent can browse open opportunities, search for mentors who teach a specific skill, show the employee’s own profile and stats, list their partnerships, and list what’s waiting on them — the interest and invitations that need their answer. It can also take actions on records the employee already owns — completing, pausing or resuming a partnership, and pausing or resuming an opportunity — but it always shows a preview of the change and asks the employee to confirm before writing anything. Turning the toggle off also removes the “Describe it and let AI fill the form” bar from Skill Swap’s forms.
Licensing and limits
Does Skill Swap require a licence?
Yes. Skill Swap requires a licence and is disabled by default. An administrator enables it from Admin → Apps → All Apps; employees see it once it is published to them under Access & Permissions on its page there. An administrator can also switch it off again from Skill Swap’s Settings page.
What are the limits I should know about?
| Limit | Value |
|---|---|
| Active learning partnerships per employee | 5 by default (admin can set 3, 5, 10, or Unlimited); posting opportunities is not limited |
| Participants per opportunity | 1–50 |
| Opportunity title | 5–200 characters |
| Opportunity description | 10–2,000 characters |
| Skill name | 2–100 characters |
| Interest / response message | Up to 500 characters |
| Session duration | Up to 480 minutes (8 hours) |
| Rating scale | 1–5 stars (both mentor and learner) |
| Profile bio | Minimum 50 characters |
| Weekly availability | 0–40 hours |
| Proficiency levels (teachable skills) | Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Expert |
| Learning interest priority | Actively Looking, Interested, Someday |
| Default partnership duration | 8 weeks (admin can set 4, 8, or 12) |
| Analytics export formats | CSV and JSON |
| Analytics time periods | Current month, Last month, Current quarter, Last quarter, Current year |
More help
- Skill Swap Overview
- Ask AI — the assistant answers Skill Swap questions from these articles.