It is possible in aNewSpring to hand out a certificate to your learners. This article attends the steps you should take to make this possible.

Creating a certificate requires knowledge of an external program. If you need any help in using such a program, please contact the support of the software developer for any questions.

Our Training Improvement Engineers can create certificates for your learning journey! Read more about this and their other services and reach out to them on their website:

aNewSpring Training Improvement Engineer Service

1) Creating a certificate

You can use tools like Adobe Acrobat, OpenOffice Draw or InDesign to make a fillable PDF document.

We have an article about OpenOffice Draw that includes a few example PDF files.

For the certificate to be filled in correctly, it is important to add the right codes to the fields. See the list below for all the different codes you can use. Of course, you do not have to use all of these in a certificate. 

Course data:
courseTitle = Course Title
courseExternalID = External ID of the course
blockName = Name of the block
certificateName = Name of the activity
score = displays the score of an activity on the certificate. This field will only be filled when you enable Display activity score on certificate in the Properties of the certificate activity, and select an activity.
totalTime = The time learners spend on the course.
courseStartDate = Start date of the course (this field will only be filled if a start date is set in the preservability properties of the course settings)
courseEndDate = End date of the course (this field will only be filled if an end date is set in the preservability properties of the course settings)

Template data:
templateName = Name of the template
templateExternalID = The external ID of the template

Read the text 'Good to know' at the bottom of the Tutorial: Create a report to view the time spent by learners in activities and courses to find out how the time is measured.

Certifcate data:
accessCode = A code that will be filled in by the system automatically which is necessary for the certificate checker*.
certificateDate = Date of issue
expiryDate = expiry date of the certificate.

User data:
externalId = External ID via SSO
login = Login name, most of the time this is the learners' email address
title = Title
firstName = First name. For example: David
middleName = Prefix. For example: von
lastName = Last name. For example: Trapp
fullName = First name + Middle name + Last name. For example: David von Trapp
formalName = Last name, First name. For example: Trapp, David von
middleAndLastName = A combination of prefix and last name. For example: von Trapp
initialsAndLastName = Initials + Middle name + Last name
initials = Initials
email = Email address
company = Company
function = Function
dateOfBirth = Date of birth
telephoneNumber = Telephone number
faxNumber = Fax number
cellPhoneNumber = Mobile phone number
address = Address (Street name and number)
zip = Zip code
residence = Place of residence
country = Country
gender = Gender
invoiceAddress = Invoice address, street name and number
invoiceZip = Invoice zip code
invoiceResidence = Invoice residence
invoiceCountry = Invoice country
custom1 = Field added for our clients
custom2 = Field added for our clients
custom3 = Field added for our clients
custom4 = Field added for our clients
custom5 = Field added for our clients

The formatting of the date of birth field can be customised in your certificate file.
If you select date field instead of text field, you can change the formatting of the date in the properties of the field. 

Once you are satisfied with the look of your certificate, save / export it as a PDF. 

2) Import the certificate in aNewSpring

Use the import function to import the PDF file. See our tutorial importing and exporting content for more information. Upload the certificate PDF file under the Certificates tab in the content library.

3) Link the content library to the template you want to use the certificate in

In order to use the certificate in your template, make sure the content library is linked to the template. If you have not yet built a template, read our article on how to create a template. If you want to learn how to link content, take a look in our article about selecting content to use in a template.

4) Add a certificate activity

In your template, click +Activity and create a new 'Certificate' activity. Click Edit next to activity. Select the PDF file and click Update.

(Optional) settings under the Properties tab

Display activity score on certificate: setting if you want to show a score on the certificate and which activity score should be shown.

Limited certificate validity: set up a limited validity to your certificate.
You can activate a notification that learners receive when the certificate is going to expire.  

You can edit the expiry date of a certificate per course. This can be done on the Activities tab of a course in the column Actions. Click Manage validity to change the validity of the certificate.

Calculate expiry based on expiry date of longest valid certificate: the validity of the new certificate will be based on the end date of the longest valid certificate. The validity of the new certificate starts when the longest valid certificate is expired.
Only if it has not expired yet: if you enable this option, the expiry date will be calculated based on the certificate with the longest validity that isn't expired yet.

Send an email to the learner with their certificate as soon as they have obtained the certificate: if you enable this option, learner will receive an email with their certificate when they have obtained the certificate.
When the certificate is available after meeting conditions of the certificate, the learner will immediately receive an e-mail with the certificate in the attachment.  

This setting is compliant with the Code95 rules.

5) Add conditions

You can use conditions to determine when a learner receives the certificate. If you want to add conditions, select the tab 'Conditions' in the certificate activity.

Want to know more about conditions? Feel free to read our article about adding conditions to an activity/block.

6) Test and publish the activity

Make sure to test the activity before publishing it. Once you are sure everything is set up correctly, publish the activity.


Certificate checker

It is possible to let us enable a certificate checker in your environment which will be visible at the home page when logged out. Everyone that receives a certificate generated by the system will be able to check the authenticity of the certificate with this checker. You will have to add the 'accessCode' field to your certificates to generate this code. 

Contact our Support Heroes if you want us to enable the certificate checker.