The atingi certificate is a simple, customizable, digital PDF, which is automatically issued to each learner who completes the course once it has been set up as an ‘activity’ into your course. Learners can then download the certificate as a PDF and email or print it or share their certificate on their LinkedIn account. If you go to “my certificates” you can see the LinkedIn sharing button next to each certificate that is awarded to a learner.
The authenticity of the certificates can also be verified via the ID number printed onto the certificate; the verification page lists all the details for the certificate so that you can manually verify the copy.
There are two options to create a certificate. Option one is simply using our ready-made certificates as they are and adding them to your course. Option two is to design your own certificate using our editable templates or from scratch.
Option 1: Choose a ready-made atingi certificate
Precondition: To select from available certificates in your category, you must be assigned as a Category Manager/Category Assistant or as a Course Manager.
We have prepared different language versions to choose from (English, French, Spanish). Those certificates are already complete setup, and you only need to choose one and add them to your course as an activity.
To find them and add correct settings for them, please scroll down to chapter three which explains the correct way to select certificate settings.
Option 2: Design your own certificates
Preconditions: To start designing certificates, you must be assigned as a Category Manager or Category Assistant in your designated course room (“Category”).
You can use any of our certificate templates in English, Spanish or French in either landscape or portrait format in which you can edit the pre-build elements or delete them as you like. Our pre-built templates already give you a structure and contain all necessary elements.
How to copy an editable certificate template in your category:
- Go to your category overview page:
- Click on "copy certificate templates"
- Select the one you like per language and format of certificate (portrait or landscape) and click on “preview” to take a look at the certificate template and click “copy” to add a copy of the template into your category
- On top of your screen, you will see a green text field indicating that the template was copied successfully in your category. Click on “Edit template” to go to the newly copied certificate
- You now see the copied editable certificate in your category.
- You can rename the title of the certificate by clicking on “Details”. Please consider that learners will see the certificate title when they share their certificate on LinkedIn. The title will be visible in the learner profile and should be phrased in a user-friendly way.
How to edit the certificate template
- Background Image:
After renaming the certificate, go back to the tab “Template”. Here you can now finalize your certificate design.
Our pre-build templates already have a background design. You can either choose to keep that one as it is or delete it and build your own background image depending on your project’s color design.
If you choose to keep our design, your certificate can be completed very quickly. Simply check if you would like to keep all the built-in elements that we provided. If any of those are not needed, such as a signature from a partner organization, simply delete those elements or add your custom text inside the pre-defined text fields.
If you choose to use your own background design, please follow these additional steps:
You can use e.g., PowerPoint, Canva or Adobe Photoshop. For PowerPoint, make sure to first format the slide in a common format, e.g. A4 vertical and then export the slide as a JPG/PNG, so that it is ready for upload.
To ensure greater inclusivity for learners using a screen reader (e.g. for the visually impaired), ensure that the dynamic elements you add to your certificate template include all the key elements of the certificate. This is because screen readers can only read dynamic text elements aloud. Any wording on the background image cannot be read.
On the Template, to upload the background image, click on the existing background image anywhere in the template. A window will open.
On this window, you can click on the file itself and press ”delete”.
Then, upload your pre-designed background image via drag & drop, or by clicking on the purple folder icon (add’). Ensure that the checkbox next to “use as background image” is clicked and click on “save”. Now your background image will appear instead of the atingi one.
2. Adding/Editing elements to the background image
You have either kept our background image or uploaded your own design into the template. Now, you can look at all the fields and decide which ones you like to keep and edit with your course content and which ones to delete. Kindly note the required elements for all certificates are the atingi logo, learner name, course name, verification code and date of issuing as well as a combining sentence.
To delete fields from the template simply click on the bin icon next to the respective field name on the menu on the left side. For example, if you do not want to add the duration of the course on your certificate, just click on the bin icon next to “course duration” to delete this text field.
To edit one of the existing text fields and add your own wording, simply click inside the template on the respective text. A new window will open where you can simply exchange the text with your own words and press “save”.
For each element, you can also change the font, size or color of your text in the same window.
Language Note: If you are creating a certificate in a language other than English, French, or Spanish, you can translate all text fields accordingly. Please note that different alphabets require specific fonts to display correctly—there is no single font that works for all scripts. It can be helpful to switch your own name into the alphabet of your course to check if learner names using that script will be shown correctly when issuing.
If your text is not shown correctly, first try changing the font. If the issue persists, contact your Customer Success Manager for assistance.
For example, the font “Free Serif” supports languages such as Arabic and Vietnamese, while “STSong Light (Simplified Chinese)” is recommended for Chinese.
Once you are done with your template, you can simply go back to your course where you can work on the certificate settings. There is no “save” button on the template. You simply exit the page, and the template is saved in the version you finished last.
Certificate Settings
Once you completed your certificate or you chose an existing certificate, go to your general course page to add the certificate into your course structure:
Go to your course and turn edit mode on
General certificate settings:
You should give the certificate’s activity a name, and a description for learners.
Unless you want to hide the certificate temporarily, set the availability to “Show on course page”. Usually, you also do not need to define user groups.
Under “Template” choose in the dropdown menu either the certificate you have designed and named previously or the standard atingi certificate of your choice.
Access restriction
The certificate should conclude your course and therefore only be issued after at least one final assessment has been passed (and/or the whole course has been passed).
In the previous chapters you already learned how to set up a custom certificate. If you are done with this or just chose to use the standard atingi certificate template, you now need to configure some more settings in the activity to make sure that the certificate is issued automatically after completing the course.
The most important setting is the access restriction because this determines under which conditions the certificate is issued. In general, we recommend using the “Course completed” access restriction. This means that all activities defined under “Course completion” must be completed before the access to the certificate is granted.
Please note that for this to work you need to configure the “Course completion” as well! Otherwise, no certificate will be issued at all.
Alternatively, you can also select the “Activity completion” restriction.
However, for this you need to set a new ‘rule’ for each activity that should be mandatory to complete before the certificate is issued. The other restrictions available in the list usually do not make sense for most courses.
Completion settings
After having decided on an access restriction, you need to configure the activity completion. Please choose the option “none”.
You do not need to change anything in “Tags” or “Competencies”. Click “Save and Display” to return to your course.
Please note that for the certificate it is especially important that everything is set up correctly when your course is being launched, because the template cannot be changed after it has been issued one time. If you are sure that everything works fine, you can also enable the automatic sending of the certificate:
Your learners will now automatically receive the certificate after they have completed the course.