Certificates and Notification Templates

Certificates can be created to be issued to learners for the completion of courses or learning paths, passing tests, and achieving skills. The certificates can contain an end date or course-planning status. Participants can access certificates directly from the course as well as via the learning history. The "Never" option allows only an Administrator to view or print certificates; participants cannot do so. Administrators can view certificates in the course’s Participant administration or Course instruction functions

• Certificate: attendance/fail (10146) - This meta tag can be added if certificates are to be provided to participants who participated in training but did not successfully complete the course. This meta tag is optional and must be added to Course Types or Course Templates if its use is desired.

• Type of certificate (11812) - This meta tag controls the certificate type used. A choice is available between an automatically generated certificate (default) and the upload of an external certificate per participant, which is ideal for externally delivered training. This meta tag is optional and must be added to Course Types or Course Templates if its use is desired.

If the above meta tags are desired but not visible when a course is created, the Course template or Course type settings in the "Meta tags and attributes" tab must be checked to add or make them visible in the Course.

Test Certificate

Test Certificates have no additional options or specific meta tags as with Courses and Learning Paths. In a Test, certificates are uploaded in the "Test player" or applied automatically if an existing Test player is selected, with options available for "Certificate: pass" and "Certificate: attendance/fail". Therefore, creating two certificates with different wording may be desirable. A useful point to note when creating Test certificates is that no variables are available that relate to the Course, although Tests are delivered via Courses.

Skill Certificate

Skill Certificates have no additional options or specific meta tags as with Courses and Learning Paths. Once created, the Skill certificate can be linked by editing the desired Skills and uploading it in the "Skill certificate" field. When creating certificates, using variables to describe the name, description, achieved level, and achieved level description can be useful; this requires a consistent approach when creating the skills and skill levels. Where achieved skills are subject to expiry dates, inserting the "Date" (achieved date) and "Scheduling" variables is worthwhile.

Course Notification Template

Course notification templates are not certificates, but rather PDF attachments that draw course and participant information and can be added to course Notifications. In the "Notification" tab of all Notifications related to courses, a field called "Attachment template" is available for selecting Course notification templates.

Duplicate

Duplicate is selectable only when a single existing certificate is highlighted. This creates a copy of the highlighted certificate and is ideal when an existing certificate is close to the requirements of a new certificate, for example, when changing a logo or signature image.

Duplicate

Edit

Edit

Delete

Delete

Clearances

Clearance

Versioning

Versioning

Preview

A preview of the certificate and its appearance is shown. The preview includes the placeholders that will later be replaced by the participant’s course data.

Download Placeholders

The export templates manager allows a CSV file containing all available placeholders to be downloaded. It contains the following three columns:

• Name of the placeholder

• Context of the placeholder (course, location, enrolment or user)

• Placeholder

Docx Certificates

When creating Course and Learning Path certificates, externally produced certificates in .docx format can be uploaded. When the "Use uploaded template" option is chosen, an upload field is enabled so that the administrator can upload a .docx-based certificate template. This .docx can be downloaded as .docx or .pdf, depending on the selected document generation mode.

When working with the template, it is important that the resulting content is valid. Therefore, special attention must be paid to formatting only complete placeholders; otherwise, the placeholders will no longer be recognized. A tool for checking the validity of the .docx file content can be found at https://docx4java.org/docx4j/. This add-on can be installed and is then available in MS Word for use after a certain portion of text has been selected. This tool helps identify whether any placeholders have been affected by the formatting.

The placeholders used here must follow the pattern shown in the sample file, with the special characters ${placeholder_key}. Moreover, a new placeholder can be added for any of the document generation modes to display cumulative certifications on the certificate when completing a course (using this placeholder in the indicated format → CourseCertifications) or a learning path (using this placeholder in the indicated format → CumulativeCourseCertifications). The certifications are the sum of all certifications that can be achieved and assigned to a certificate.

The certifications placeholder must be added to the certificate and assigned directly to the learner; otherwise, the certifications will not be visible on the certificate. The certification will be visible at the bottom of the certificate page, structured by certification set. Next to each individual certification, the learner can see the cumulative certification hours or points achieved.

An improperly formatted placeholder will be split in the XML structure and will no longer be recognized. Valid formatting should keep the placeholder together with the surrounding special characters that help the application recognize it as a placeholder rather than plain text. A list of course- and user-related placeholders can be downloaded from the toolbar action in the manager.

Note: For custom fonts to be recognized, they must be available on the LMS server in the path: data/printdesign/fonts. If custom fonts are not loading, a ticket should be lodged with the Scheer imc Support team; providing the font set may be required if it is not held by Scheer imc.

Certificate validation

Course and Learning Path certificates (excluding level-based Learning Paths) now have the option of including a QR code validation workflow. The update provides administrators with a new variable placeholder that can be inserted when creating or updating certificates. When the variable placeholder is inserted in a certificate, a QR code is included upon generation (assignment to a learner). The QR codes can be scanned to check the validity of the learner’s certificate and ensure that the details match.

Administrators can further decide via a checkbox in the certificate whether validation is publicly accessible or requires a login. This is possible via a new ‘Allow certificate validation access only for logged-in users’ checkbox when certificates are created or edited.

• When ‘Allow certificate validation access only for logged-in users’ = false, the validation screen returns a publicly accessible validation page containing less information, excluding the Email Address information.

• When ‘Allow certificate validation access only for logged-in users’ = true, access to the validation page displaying all the information is allowed for logged-in users:

  • Certificate holder: user name 

  • Learning object name: e.g. course name 

  • Completion date of the corresponding certificate (Personal end date of the learning object (Course/Learning path))

  • Person ID

  • User’s Email Address

  • Course/Learning path Identification code

Hints & Tips

• Participants can be alerted by email notification when they receive a new certificate. This can be enabled in the "Notification" function by expanding the "Comprehensive notification" folder and activating the "Assignment of a new certificate" notification.

• HTML editing of certificates using the "Source" button is rather limited due to an HTML sanitizer. Where more control is required for certificate design for Course and Learning Path certificates, uploading a .docx template is recommended.

• Adding certificate meta tags to Learning Path types is likely required if this was not done by a Scheer imc consultant during the original system implementation.

• Loading certificates dynamically generates them each time, meaning that variable data is subject to change if object meta tags (e.g., a change in course administrator) or the learner profile (e.g., a last name) have changed after completion.

• In Learning Path and Course certificates, almost all meta tags and personal attributes can be inserted with variables. Where restrictions are required to prevent certain meta tags or attributes from being included, this can be configured in the "Configuration" function by editing the "Placeholder" option.

• Where a unique ID is desired for certificates, many Scheer imc customers insert variables for the Object ID and Person ID at the bottom of the page.

• By configuring the scheduled jobs “GenerateCertificatesJob“ and “DeleteCreatedCertificatesJob“, an automatic certificate export for external systems can be used. The jobs are influenced via the certificate export configuration.

• Detailed user feedback can be provided by the administrator based on the evaluation level achieved. This feedback can be used and displayed on the certificate using the dedicated placeholder ($USERFEEDBACK$). To configure this, the Feedback to learner field can be defined in the Tests Manager by editing an evaluation level under the Rating tab.

Related Functions

Course Administration
Course Type Administration
Learning Path Administration
Learning Path Type Administration
Test Manager
Test Player
Skills
Notifications
Configuration Manager