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. Until the app is enabled, employees cannot see it.
3. Review the Workflow settings. Two decisions matter most:
   • Cross-Department Matching (on by default) — when off, the matching engine only pairs people within the same department. Turn it off if inter-department learning needs manager approval in your organisation.
   • Max Active Opportunities (default 5) — how many active partnerships each employee can hold at once. The choices are 3, 5, 10, or Unlimited.
4. Set a Default Partnership Duration (default 8 weeks). This sets the expected end date for partnerships whose opportunity posting did not specify a duration. Progress bars and overdue indicators depend on it.
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. Employees can now open Skill Swap 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, completing a partnership proposes the taught skills into the learner’s certified skill profile for review.

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. Owners can use bulk Accept All or Reject All to process multiple pending matches at once.

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.

On completion, both parties rate each other on a 1–5 scale and leave written feedback. The learner’s rating flows back to the mentor’s average teaching rating on the relevant teachable skill. Completing a partnership also proposes the taught skills as new entries in the learner’s skills profile for review.

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. Use the bulk Accept All or Reject All buttons to process multiple pending matches 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. Featured opportunities are pinned to the top of the board (up to 3) regardless of filters or pagination. 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.
• User engagement (active versus inactive users).

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

Skill Swap sends notifications for these events (when the admin’s notification settings allow):

• Someone expresses interest in your opportunity (action request to the owner).
• Your interest is accepted or rejected (to the interested employee).
• You are invited to an opportunity (action request to the invitee).
• An invitation you sent is accepted or declined (to the owner).
• Your opportunity expires (to the owner).
• A partnership is auto-completed (to both mentor and learner).

Notifications go to the in-app Inbox by default. Email delivery can be turned off separately from the Settings page.

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 query Skill Swap data through Ask AI.
Cross-Department Matching	On	When off, the matching engine only pairs employees within the same department.
Max Active Opportunities	5	How many active partnerships an employee can hold at once. 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 action-required notifications (interest expressed, invitations) and skip informational ones (match decisions, expirations).
Email Notifications	On	When off, notifications land in the in-app Inbox only — no emails are sent.
Default Partnership Duration	8 weeks	Sets the expected end date for partnerships whose opportunity did not specify a duration. 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 (total skill profiles, opportunities, active partnerships, total skills) and an Enable/Disable toggle for the app itself. If Skill Swap is included in the tenant’s subscription plan, the Disable button is replaced with a note that the subscription controls enablement.

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.