Absorb Skills unifies Job Skills and Job Competencies onto a single five-level Proficiency Level scale. For Portals that were configured before this change, Absorb applies the new scale through a one-time migration that remaps existing ratings, level descriptions, Job Role requirements, and Course links. This article explains what the collapse changes, how existing values map to the new scale, which records the migration leaves untouched, and why the legacy awarded Competencies feature is unaffected.

What the Collapse Changes

Before the collapse, Job Skills and Job Competencies were managed as two parallel lists with smaller rating scales. After the collapse, both are managed as a single list from the Skills Report, and both use the same Proficiency Level structure of Levels 1 through 5. Each entry can carry a separate description for every one of the five Levels.

This means an Absorb Admin maintains one library rather than two, and Learners, Managers, Job Roles, and Courses all reference the same scale. For a full description of the current model, see the Skills: Introduction article.

How the Migration Runs

The collapse is applied through a migration rather than a setting. There is no toggle in the Admin Experience (AE) that turns the new scale on or off, and the migration does not run on a schedule. The following characteristics apply:

• One-time: The migration is a single data update. It is not a recurring process.
• Per Portal: Absorb runs the migration against one Portal at a time, so timing can differ between Portals in the same organization.
• Requested, not self-serve: Absorb initiates the migration on request. To arrange it, contact your Client Success representative.
• Applied in full: All remapped records are committed together once the migration completes.

How Existing Values Map to the New Scale

The migration stretches the previous three-point scale across the new five-point scale. The same mapping applies to every type of record the migration touches:

The migration does not populate Levels 2 or 4. These Levels remain available so that Admins and Managers can apply finer distinctions after the migration completes.

Records the Migration Updates

The mapping is applied across four areas of your Skills configuration and data:

Records the Migration Skips

The migration is written to preserve work that has already been done on the new scale. It leaves the following records unchanged:

• Job Roles that already require a Skill at Level 4 or Level 5, since the requirement was set on the new scale.
• Course links already set to Level 4 or Level 5, for the same reason.
• Job Roles that have been deleted.

If a Job Role or Course retains a Level 2 or Level 3 value after the migration, confirm whether that value was set manually on the new scale before adjusting it.

Legacy Awarded Competencies Are Not Affected

Absorb LMS also includes an older Competencies feature that awards named credentials and badges to Users on Course completion. Despite the shared word, it is a separate system with its own report, its own scale, and its own integrations. The collapse migration does not read, rewrite, or remove any part of it.

The table below summarizes the differences:

Badge images, earned Competency Levels, Transcript records, and ADP Connector sync behavior all continue to work as before. For details on that feature, see the An Intro to Competencies article.

Related Articles

The following articles cover the areas of Absorb Skills that the collapse affects:

• Skills: Introduction
• Skills: Administration
• Skills: Configuring Job Roles
• Skills: Self-Assessment
• Manager Review and Evaluation of Learner Self-Assessment
• Absorb Skills Change Log