How to work with certifications in TalentLMS

TalentLMS lets you award your users with custom certificates each time they complete a course. Certificates can also be set to expire after specified periods of time. This is useful in cases where you need your learners to retake courses to update their knowledge or as a regulatory requirement.

Here's how to set up a custom certificate in a few steps:

Step 1: Create a custom certificate

1. Sign in to your TalentLMS account as an Administrator and go to Account & Settings > Courses (1).

2. Scroll down to the Other section and click the arrow next to Certificates (2).

Note: A numbered indicator will inform you of the number of the already available certificates

Note: By default, there are 4 certificates available in the portal. These are Classic, Fancy, Modern, and Simple. You can Preview (3), Edit, Reset to default template and Clone (4) them.

Here you will see all the available certificates and you can Preview, Edit, Clone or Delete any of the custom certificates. 

Note: Only custom certificates can be deleted. It is not possible to delete a default certificate.

3. To create a new certificate, click Add certificate (5).

4. Add a Name (6) for your certificate, and under the Certificate body (7) text box, you can customize the wording of your certificate. Inside the text box, find the blocks of plain text you want to change (e.g., This certification is awarded to), and replace them with your own. If you want to use custom fonts in your certificate template, please review this article.

Note: Use the Smart Tags (8) below the Certificate body code block to pull the corresponding information (first name, last name, organization, etc.) from your system. In your text, each tag appears in curly brackets (e.g., {first_name}). When your certificate is printed, the brackets are replaced by their corresponding values (e.g., the user's first name). Any custom fields that have been added to User and Course profiles are automatically available as smart tags. If you want to always show the latest issued date on certificates, use the smart tag {last_issued_date}. 

5. Select one of the available backgrounds (9) or upload your own (10).

6. Click Save (11) to save your changes.

Note: Be careful not to change any HTML elements in the code block. When you've made a change by mistake, and you cannot correct it, you can go back to the Certificates list and click Reset to the default template to start over. This option is only available for the default certificates.

Step 2: Assign your certificate to a course

1. As an Administrator or an Instructor, go to Courses (1) and select a course (2) to edit.

2. Click Edit course (3). 

3. Click the gear icon to open the Course options (4).

4. On the Certificate (5) tab, select a certification from the drop-down list (6).

Note: You can preview the certificate you chose to assign to your course by clicking the Preview (7) button.

5. From the Duration drop-down list, select how long your certification will remain valid (e.g., 1 month) (8).

Note: If necessary, choose Custom duration and use the control bar to set your preferred duration in days. You can also select a specific expiration date for your certificate.

6. Under the Re-assign course to user (9) option, select a timeframe within which your users must retake the course to get recertified.

Note: This option is displayed after you have selected the Certification duration.

7. Click Save (10) to complete the process.

Next steps

You can send (and receive) an automated email notification each time a certificate is awarded to one of your users. You can see how in this article.

You can also send the certificate directly to your users, as described in this article.