Skill Swap App Overview

Skill Swap

1. What it is

Skill Swap is an internal marketplace where employees post what they can teach and what they want to learn, then get matched into time-boxed learning partnerships. It turns informal knowledge-sharing into a structured programme with profiles, a searchable opportunity board, skills-based matching, session tracking, and ratings.

• Enablement: Skill Swap requires a license. An admin enables it per tenant from Admin → Apps → Skill Swap.
• What it is not: Skill Swap is not a formal training or certification system. It is peer-to-peer. For instructor-led courses and certifications, use Training or Practice Hub.

2. Standing it up

1. Go to Admin → Apps → Skill Swap → Settings (the Settings tab inside the app, which routes to the admin configuration page).
2. Click Enable App in the App Status card on the right. Enabling turns the app on for admins; employees see it once it is also published to them. If the notice after enabling says Skill Swap is admin-only for now, open Skill Swap’s page in Admin → Apps and use Publish to users under Access & Permissions (or give access to specific groups there).
3. Review the Workflow settings. Two decisions matter most:
   • Cross-Department Matching (on by default) — when off, each person’s board shows only their own department’s opportunities, they can join only those, invitations stay within a department, and recommendations only suggest colleagues from it.
   • Max Concurrent Learning Partnerships (default 5) — how many active partnerships each employee can hold before joining another, as mentor or learner. The choices are 3, 5, 10, or Unlimited. Posting opportunities is never limited.
4. Set a Default Partnership Duration (default 8 weeks). It pre-fills the Duration on new opportunity postings, and the poster can change it. A partnership’s expected end date comes from its opportunity’s duration, and from this default only when the opportunity was saved without one. Progress bars and overdue indicators depend on that date. Changing the default does not move the dates of existing opportunities or partnerships.
5. Decide whether to turn on Auto-Complete Partnerships (off by default). When on, a nightly sweep completes any active partnership past its expected end date and notifies both participants. When off, partnerships stay active until someone completes them manually.
6. Save the settings. Once Skill Swap is published to them under Access & Permissions, employees can open it from the app launcher, create a profile, and start posting opportunities.

The app has six tabs visible to all users — Dashboard, My Profile, Opportunities, Skills & Interests, Matches, and Partnerships — plus a Settings tab visible only to admins and app admins. On mobile devices, Skill Swap automatically redirects to its mobile-optimized views.

3. How it fits together

Skill Swap has four concepts that build on each other: profiles, opportunities, matches, and partnerships.

Skill Profile — every employee who opens Skill Swap creates one. A profile holds a bio (minimum 50 characters), availability hours (0–40 per week), a preferred meeting style, and two skill lists: skills they can teach and skills they want to learn. The profile must exist before the employee can browse or post anything — opening Skill Swap without one redirects to the setup page.

The preferred meeting style choices are: Virtual, In-person, Both virtual and in-person, Lunch & learn sessions, and Flexible.

Each teachable skill carries a proficiency level (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, or Expert) and an availability toggle. Turning the toggle off hides the skill from matching without deleting it. The skill name has a 2–100 character limit and must be unique per profile.

Each learning interest carries a current level (Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced) and a priority: Actively looking, Interested, or Someday. The same name limits and uniqueness rule apply.

When a teachable skill or learning interest name matches a skill in the organisation’s skill catalog, the system links them automatically. This connection feeds the broader skills graph — for example, while Skill Reviews is open (Competency Assessment on), completing a partnership proposes the taught skills for the learner’s skill profile, and a manager reviews them there.

Opportunity — a posting on the board. It has four types:

• Teaching — the poster is the mentor and teaches skills to participants.
• Learning — the poster is the learner and seeks mentors.
• Project — the poster leads a collaborative project; participants learn by contributing.
• Group — similar to a project but focused on group learning.

An opportunity has a title (5–200 characters), a description (10–2,000 characters), a list of skills needed, a list of skills offered, a maximum number of participants (1–50, default 1), and an optional expiry date and duration in weeks.

Example: an employee posts a Teaching opportunity titled “Excel Pivot Tables & Power Query”, lists “Excel” and “Data Analysis” as skills offered, sets max participants to 3 and a duration of 8 weeks. Three colleagues express interest; the owner reviews each match’s compatibility score and accepts the best ones.

An opportunity moves through these states: Open (accepting participants), Full (at capacity), Paused (temporarily hidden), Completed, Cancelled, or Expired. A daily automated sweep expires active opportunities past their expiry date and notifies the owner.

Match — when an employee expresses interest in an opportunity, a pending match is created. The opportunity owner reviews it and accepts or rejects it. There are two flows:

• Self-initiated interest: an employee finds an opportunity on the board, adds an optional message (up to 500 characters), and submits. The opportunity owner decides.
• Invitation: the opportunity owner invites someone from the Recommendations page. The invited employee decides.

Interest can be withdrawn while still pending, and an owner can withdraw an invitation the invited person has not answered yet. Owners can tick several pending requests and choose Accept selected or Reject selected to process them at once. A request or invitation nobody answers within 45 days is closed as Expired; an expired request does not stop the same person asking again while the opportunity is open.

Learning Partnership — created automatically when a match is accepted. It pairs a mentor and a learner. For a Teaching opportunity, the poster is the mentor. For a Learning opportunity, the interested employee is the mentor. For Project and Group opportunities, the poster leads.

The partnership sets an expected end date (from the opportunity’s duration, or the admin-configured default if none was specified). Both participants can:

• Schedule sessions (types: Virtual, In-person, Lunch & learn, or Phone call; max 480 minutes each).
• Mark sessions complete, cancel them, or record a no-show.
• Pause or resume the partnership.
• Complete it when done — a paused partnership too.

If either partner leaves the organization, their partnerships are paused and the other partner is told. They can complete the partnership from its page; it can resume if the person comes back.

On completion, both parties rate each other on a 1–5 scale and leave written feedback. Once both partners have rated, the learner’s rating flows back to the mentor’s teaching record on the relevant teachable skill — including a skill the mentor lists only afterwards, which starts with the rated partnerships they already finished teaching it. While Skill Reviews is open (Competency Assessment on), completing a partnership also proposes the taught skills for the learner’s skills profile; a manager reviews them before they are added.

4. Running it

Reviewing matches

Go to Skill Swap → Matches. The page shows two lists: interest received on your opportunities and interest you expressed in other opportunities. Filter by status — Pending, Accepted, Rejected, or Expired. Tick several pending requests and choose Accept selected or Reject selected to process them at once.

Each match detail page shows a compatibility score (based on overlapping teachable skills and learning interests) and the specific skills that matched.

Featuring an opportunity

Admins and 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. To feature an opportunity, edit it and check the Featured checkbox — this checkbox only appears for admin-level users.

Inviting employees

From Skill Swap → Matches → Recommendations, the system shows potential matches for each of your active opportunities, scored by skill overlap. Click Invite next to an employee to send them an invitation. The invitee receives a notification and decides whether to accept or decline.

Managing the opportunity board

The opportunity board at Skill Swap → Opportunities shows all active postings. Employees can search by keyword, filter by opportunity type (Teaching, Learning, Project, Group) and status, or filter by specific skills (comma-separated). Sorting options are newest first (default) or most popular (by interest count).

Non-active opportunities (paused, completed, cancelled) are visible only to their owner and to admins.

Monitoring partnerships

Go to Skill Swap → Partnerships. The page shows partnerships where you are either mentor or learner, with summary statistics: total active, total completed, total hours, and counts as mentor versus learner. Each partnership card shows a progress bar based on elapsed time versus the expected end date. An overdue badge appears when a partnership passes its expected end date without being completed.

Inside a partnership, the session timeline shows upcoming and past sessions separately. You can schedule new sessions, log past ones, and track total hours.

Viewing analytics

Admins and app admins can open Skill Swap → Settings → View Analytics to see:

• Skills growth over time (last 6 months of teachable skills and learning interests added).
• Opportunities by type (doughnut chart).
• Partnership success rate trend (last 6 months).
• Most taught skills and most wanted skills tables.
• Most active mentors and most popular opportunities.
• Profile adoption (current members who have a Skill Swap profile versus those who do not).

Analytics can be filtered by time period (current month, last month, current quarter, last quarter, current year) and by department. Export to CSV or JSON from the Export dropdown.

Notifications

Every Skill Swap notification lands in the recipient’s in-app Inbox. The ones that ask for an answer, and the news that a request was accepted, also go out by email and mobile push while Email & Push Notifications is on. Turning Enable Notifications off stops all of them.

Important — sent whichever Notification Level is chosen:

• Someone wants to join your opportunity, or you are invited to one (email and push).
• A reminder that a request or invitation is still waiting on your answer, and a reminder of an upcoming session (email and push).
• Your request or invitation was accepted and a partnership has started (email and push).
• A session on your partnership was scheduled, cancelled, completed, marked as a no-show or taken off the record.
• Your partnership was completed — by your partner, or by the nightly auto-complete — or paused or resumed, including when your partner leaves the organization.
• An admin deleted an opportunity you posted or have a partnership on, and, when you come back after time away, the opportunities of yours that were paused while you were gone.

Updates — skipped when Notification Level is Important only:

• A request or invitation you are part of was declined or withdrawn, or closed because nobody answered it within 45 days.
• An opportunity you asked to join was closed, cancelled or deleted before you got an answer.
• Your opportunity reached its closing date and expired.
• An admin edited your opportunity.
• Your partner rated your partnership.

5. Settings

All settings live at Skill Swap → Settings (the Settings tab, which routes to the admin configuration page). Admins and app admins can access it.

Setting	Default	What it changes
Enable AI Agent	On	When off, users cannot use the Skill Swap agent through Ask AI, and the “Describe it and let AI fill the form” bar is removed from Skill Swap’s forms.
Cross-Department Matching	On	When off, each person’s board shows only their own department’s opportunities and they can join only those; invitations and recommendations stay within a department.
Max Concurrent Learning Partnerships	5	How many active partnerships an employee can hold before joining another, as mentor or learner. Posting is never limited. Choices: 3, 5, 10, or Unlimited.
Enable Notifications	On	Master switch — when off, Skill Swap sends no notifications at all.
Notification Level	All events	Set to Important only to keep requests, invitations and reminders, accepted matches, session changes, completed or paused partnerships, and deleted or paused postings, and skip updates like declined or withdrawn requests, expirations and ratings.
Email & Push Notifications	On	When off, notifications land in the in-app Inbox only — no email or phone push is sent.
Default Partnership Duration	8 weeks	Pre-fills the Duration on new opportunities (the poster can change it), and sets a partnership’s expected end date only when its opportunity was saved without a duration. Existing opportunities and partnerships keep their dates. Choices: 4, 8, or 12 weeks.
Auto-Complete Partnerships	Off	When on, a nightly sweep completes active partnerships past their expected end date and notifies both participants.

The Settings page also shows usage statistics (skill profiles, opportunities, active partnerships, skills offered and skills wanted) and an Enable App / Disable App button for the app itself.

A Reset to Defaults button restores all settings to the values listed above. A Load Sample Data card lets you load realistic demo data to explore the app before rolling it out.

6. More help

• Skill Swap FAQ — specific setup and operating questions.
• Employee Performance Management → Integrations → Skill Swap — optional integration that maps skill profiles to competency frameworks and development plans.
• Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about Skill Swap from these articles.