BioSig Authentication - Information & Setup

What BioSig does

BioSig adds identity verification to a training category. When it's on, the learner is asked to verify their identity (via our third-party BioSig provider) at set points during the training — not just at login. It's used for regulated training (e.g. NMLS mortgage licensing) where we must prove the person doing the training is who they say they are.

When the checkpoints appear

There are three kinds of checkpoint. Begin and Final are automatic. Middle is manual — it only appears where the setup team places it.

The key things to remember: the toggle gives you Begin and Final — but you also must add the biosig:<NMLSid>|<duration> token to the category (step 5) or verification fails, and Middle checkpoints must be added by hand (step 6). These two are the easy-to-forget steps.

Before you start (prerequisites)

• The client is provisioned with the third-party BioSig service. Verification is performed by an outside provider — confirm the client is set up on that side first, or the checkpoints will appear but won't complete. (Check with the team that manages the BioSig / NMLS integration.)
• You have the course's NMLS course ID and credit-hour count. You'll need both for step 5 (biosig:<NMLSid>|<duration>).
• All the courses that need verification live under ONE category. BioSig is set per category and applies to every course inside it.
• Course order is correct. Begin is anchored to the first course and Final to the last course, so the order of courses in the category matters.
• The first course has at least 3 chapters. Because Begin lands on chapter 3, a first course with fewer than 3 chapters won't show the Begin checkpoint where expected.

How to enable BioSig (step by step)

Steps 1–5 are required. Step 6 (Middle checkpoints) is optional.

1. Sign in to Courseware Management.

2. Open the category you want to protect (the one containing the client's regulated courses).

3. Go to the category's Category Rules section.

4. Turn Enable BioSig Authentication to ON, then Save.

   "Authenticate user identity with third-party BioSig verification."

   This activates the Begin (chapter 3 of the first course) and Final (last chapter of the last course) checkpoints.

5. Set the category's NMLS ID + duration — REQUIRED. Edit the category's Internal Description and include this token:

   biosig:<NMLSid>|<duration>
   

• <NMLSid> = the NMLS-approved course ID for this course (a number, e.g. 16348).
• <duration> = the course's credit hours, a whole number 1–12 (e.g. 1). Anything over 12 is ignored and treated as 1.
• Example: biosig:16348|1 (a 1-credit-hour course). Real live values:
  1 Hour CA SAFE → biosig:16348|1, 2 Hour OR → biosig:16375|2, 3 Hour NY → biosig:16438|3.
• You can leave other text in the description — the service just scans for the biosig:… token.
• ⚠️ Without this token, verification fails. The toggle alone is not enough — the BioSig service rejects the request ("biosig catid is required") if the description has no biosig: entry.

6. Add Middle checkpoint(s) — manual, only if the client needs mid-course checks.
   For each mid-course point where a verification should appear, the setup team inserts a custom chapter at that position whose internal path points to the BioSig Middle URL. The path format is:

customInternal|https://webservices.lightspeedvt.net/client/nmls/biosig.ashx?status=Middle%231&catId=<CatID>&coid=<CoID>

• ⚠️ The # MUST be encoded as %23. Write Middle%231, not Middle#1. A literal # in a URL starts the "fragment" — everything after it (1&catId=…&coid=…) is dropped before the request reaches the server, so the checkpoint silently breaks. All live checkpoints use %23.
• status=Middle%231 for the first mid-course check, Middle%232 for the second, and so on (%231 = #1, %232 = #2).
• <CatID> = the BioSig category's ID. <CoID> = the ID of the course that chapter lives in.
• Type the IDs carefully — these values are entered by hand (a wrong or spaced-in ID breaks the checkpoint).
• Real example (from a live NMLS category):
  customInternal|https://webservices.lightspeedvt.net/client/nmls/biosig.ashx?status=Middle%231&catId=39731&coid=201883

The system automatically handles the "resume" case for these (a returning learner sees the Resuming version) — you only author the Middle#N entry.

Once steps 1–5 are done (and any Middle chapters from step 6), every learner who opens a course in that category hits the Begin, any Middle, and Final checkpoints automatically.

How often verification happens (cadence)

There is no automatic "every N hours" timer in the platform. Verification frequency is set two ways:

• duration (step 5) — the course's credit hours, sent to the third-party BioSig provider. It tells the provider the expected seat-time for the course (whole number, 1–12).
• Number of Middle checkpoints (step 6) — you decide how many mid-course checks there are by how many Middle chapters you place, and where.

Recommended cadence: one Middle roughly every ~2 hours

The BioSig-ID standard integration (documented by others that use the same Begin / Middle #N / Final Exam tokens) triggers a Middle about every 2 hours of course duration — e.g. a 6-hour course prompts at the 2-hour and 4-hour marks (splitting it into thirds), plus Begin at the start and Final before the exam. NMLS itself only requires verification "at various times during the course" and does not publish an exact interval, so ~2 hours is the practical, provider-standard cadence. (See Sources below.)

Suggested Middle placement by course length:

Status values (reference)

These are the status= values BioSig sends to the verification service — useful when reading a URL in the browser or troubleshooting with the integration team:

The #N above is the decoded value the service receives. In the authored URL it must be typed encoded as %23N (see step 6).

How to confirm it's working

Log in as a test learner with access to the category, then:

1. Open the first course and move through the chapters — on chapter 3, the BioSig verification screen appears in place of the chapter (Begin).
2. Complete it — training resumes automatically.
3. If you added Middle checkpoints, reach each of those chapters — a verification appears (Middle #1, #2, …).
4. Go to the last course and reach its final chapter — verification appears (Final).
5. Log out, log back in, and re-enter mid-way — a Resuming verification appears.

If a checkpoint appears but the verification screen shows an error like "biosig catid is required," the category is missing the biosig:<NMLSid>|<duration> token (step 5) or it's malformed.

If a checkpoint doesn't appear at all, re-check the prerequisites (most common causes: the courses aren't all in the flagged category, the client isn't provisioned on the third-party side, or a Middle path has a mistyped catId/coid).

How to turn BioSig off

1. Open the category in Courseware Management → Category Rules.
2. Turn Enable BioSig Authentication to OFF, and Save. (This removes Begin + Final.)
3. If you added Middle checkpoint chapters, remove those chapters too — they are separate manual inserts and won't disappear on their own.

Note on copying content: if you duplicate a BioSig-enabled category, the copy keeps BioSig on. Turn it off on the copy if the duplicate shouldn't require verification.

Good to know

• One toggle, whole category for Begin/Final. There's no per-course or per-user BioSig setting.
• Middle checkpoints are the manual part — the toggle never creates them.
• Where the ID/photos live. The actual identity capture and verification records are held by the
  third-party BioSig provider, not inside LightSpeed VT. Requests for verification records go through that integration, not standard LSVT reports.
• Who to contact. For provisioning a client on the BioSig provider, or to pull verification records, contact the team that owns the BioSig / NMLS integration.