Set up course certificates

Intended Audience: Admins, Managers 

Create your own certificates to assign to courses. Learners can download their certificates. Send learners their certificates by email.

Setting up course certificates is a 2-step process:

• Upload an image and edit the layout, using variables in the certificate editor
• Assign the certificate to a course

You can create a single generic certificate to assign to every course, with basic data like learner name, course name and the date. Alternately you can tailor a different certificate for each course. Safety Made Simple stores the certificate image plus the variable layout under a certificate name and assigned that named certificate to Safety Made Simple courses.

The variables use course data, plus your custom user data fields.

Within the certificate editor, the application saves changes automatically.

Topics covered in this article:

• Prerequisite: a certificate image
• Create and edit a certificate image
• Assign a certificate to a course

Prerequisite: a certificate image

Safety Made Simple recommends using a high-resolution image sized for regular printer paper, 3462 x 2401px @ 300dpi resolution, for certificate images. You can upload any image file format less than 5MB. PNG image files print the best results.

Note: Make sure your image uses the RGB color spaces. Other color spaces, like CMYK, cause errors in viewing and printing the variables.

Create and edit a certificate image

1. From main navigation go to Certificates.
2. From the action menu, select Add New Certificate.
3. For Title, enter a name for the certificate.
4. Select Upload File > your certificate image > Open.
5. Save to confirm upload and open the certificate editor.
6. In the certificate editor, drag and drop variables from the list, like Firstname Lastname, Course Title, Course Length, and Completion Date to appear on the certificate.
7. Optional: Adjust the font size of the variable in the drop-down list if needed.  
8. When you have all the variables in place select Preview to see the resulting certificate. 

The following screenshot shows a font dropdown sample in the editor.

You can move variables and download as many previews as you need to get the result you want. The certificate editor saves changes automatically.

The following screenshot shows a sample certificate in the editor.

Assign a certificate to a course

Tip: If you assign a certificate for successful completion of a course, and you set up a completion email for the course, Safety Made Simple sends the certificate with the completion email to your learners, as a PDF attachment.

Important! Should you wish to explore the use of the auto re-enroll feature in courses, it is important to contact Customer Support BEFORE configuring this feature on a course. Should you have existing enrollments for a course and then configure certificate expiration and/or number of days to auto re-enroll, there can be unforeseen results. Check with our Support Team first and we will walk you through the appropriate steps!

1. From main navigation, go to Courses > your course name.
2. Select Certs & Credits. 
3. In Certificate type in the first few letters of the certificate name to select it.
4. For certificate options:
   • If certificate expires, enter a number for day(s) after being awarded
   • To re-enroll learner, enter a number for day(s) before certificate expires? and select Enabled
5. Save to finish.