Thought Industries' Credly integration provides learners a path forward to earn, learn, and grow through verifiable credentials. Thought Industries Admins can sync Credly badges to Thought Industries instances where they can control which badges learners can see and auto-grant a badge upon course completion. Learners will be able to see what badges are available and own their progress toward earning badges.
Use Case Information
Start your credential program with Credly and be able to issue badges to learners from Thought Industries upon completion of content. Learners can view badges earned, view in progress badges, and discover new badges and how to earn them.
When configured you can control the following:
Credential Learners
- Sync badges between Credly and Thought Industries
- Display Credly badges available to the learner on the learner dashboard
- Auto-grant badges upon content completion
- Learners can accept badges from their Thought Industries dashboard
The Credly Integration is a premium feature and behind a feature flag.
Navigate to Apps in your instance to request to have this feature enabled on your site.
Setting Up a Credly Integration
First things first, get your integration turned on and ready to go! Once your Credly Integration is enabled, you will connect your Credly account. Then you can sync badges and assign content to badges.
Connecting a Credly Account
- Find and copy your Credly Authorization Token.
- Within the Credly Admin interface, navigate to Developers > Authorization Tokens and copy any token.
- In Thought Industries, navigate to Settings > Connections > Third-Party Services.
- Insert a Credly Authorization Token.
- Click Connect Credly Account.
- A green ribbon displays if you are successfully connected.
Disconnecting a Credly Account
- In Thought Industries, navigate to Settings > Connections > Third-Party Services.
- Click Disconnect Credly Account.
Warning
If a Credly Account is disconnected, learner-facing widgets will break, and no data will load for the Learner Access widget ‘Badge’ tab or the Credly Badges widget. For this reason, we recommend removing traces of Credly from the learner interface before disconnecting.
In addition to this, Credly badge info will no longer be available within the learner profile. Badge information will still be saved within content settings, but badges will no longer be issued.
Disabling the integration doesn’t affect a learner’s account on Credly. They will still have access to all issued badges to date unless the issuer revokes or removes them entirely
Reach out to us if you no longer wish to use the Credly integration.
If you no longer wish to use the Credly integration, reach out to Tech Success and Support to disable the feature flag. This is the only way to ensure all traces of Credly are removed from the Admin and Learner interface.
Syncing Badges
In order to view or issue a badge in Thought Industries, first sync your Credly Badges with Thought Industries.
Sync Badges
- Navigate to Settings > Gamification > Badges.
- In the Credly tab, click Sync Credly Badges. This will pull in all badges for your Organization.
Note
Badge templates in an active state will be pulled into this list. Archived badge templates and badges in draft status will not display in this list.
- If you add a new badge within Credly, sync badges again to retrieve the latest badges.
- If you make any change to a badge within Credly (e.g. image, name, expiration date), sync badges again to see the latest changes reflected in Thought Industries.
Note
Badge templates are synced by creation date in Credly.
View Badges
View the list of badges synced in Thought Industries by going to Settings > Gamification > Badges. Badges display in alphabetical order. From this list, view which content you've attached to each badge. The title displayed is the course group title.
Add Content to a Badge
Adding Content to a Badge
You can associate a badge with a piece of content so that when a learner meets the completion criteria to complete the content, the Credly badge is automatically issued to the learner. This is available for all content types in Thought Industries.
- Navigate to Courses > All Courses > Click on Content Title > Completion step > Awards tab.
- Click on the Credly Badges dropdown to view all available synced badges.
- Select the desired badge.
- Click Save. The Credly Badge name and image will display.
Note
A badge can only be associated with a single piece of content (or course group). However, for content with multiple sessions, the same badge may be shared by multiple sessions.
Note
Badges will not be awarded to learners who previously met the completion criteria before the badge and content were linked. If you'd like to award the badge to these learners, we recommend uploading the users to Credly.
Removing Content from a Badge
You can remove a badge after it has been associated with a piece of content so that it can no longer be earned.
- Navigate to Courses > All Courses > Click on Content Title > Completion step > Awards tab.
- Click on the trash can icon beside the badge to remove it from the content.
Note
Learners who have not yet earned the badge will no longer see the badge display in their Credly Badges Widget. There will be no impact on learners who have already completed the content and earned the badge.
Tip
If you'd like to delete a badge in Credly, we recommend first removing it from the content item.
Credly Widget
The Credly Widget is how learners can view which badges they have not yet earned, view their progress toward available badges, and own their badge journey by viewing new badges with no progress yet. We recommend adding this widget to at least one page available to learners to get the full Credly experience.
- Navigate to Site > Site Builder > Layouts or Pages.
- Click Edit (for Layouts) or Design (for Pages) beside any page where you would like to display the Credly Badge Widget.
- Select the Credly Badges Widget from the list of widgets.
- Click Save.
Tip
For learners to have the full Credly experience, they will also need access to the Learner Access Widget. The Learner Access Widget has the Badges tab which allows learners to view and accept Credly badges.
Manage Learner Badges
View Learner Badges Earned
Within a learner’s profile in Thought Industries, Admins can see a list of all issued badges for a particular learner.
- Navigate to Users > Learners.
- Click on the learner’s profile.
- Within the learner profile, click on the Activity tab.
- View the Credly Badges table.
For each issued badge, the following information displays:
- Badge
- Name
- Resource (Content associated with this badge)
- Awarded At date
- Expires At date
Note
If a Credly Badge is issued to a learner directly from Credly (not triggered from Thought Industries), it should still display in this list, but there will be no resource associated with the badge.
Manually Issue a Badge
Admins are able to manually issue a Credly badge to a learner from directly within Thought Industries. A Credly Badge can be manually issued to a learner if both conditions are true:
- The learner is enrolled in the associated Content Resource
- The learner has not already earned the badge
- Navigate to Users > Learners.
- Click on the learner’s profile.
- Within the learner profile, click on the Activity tab.
- View the Credly Badges table.
- Click Manually Grant Badge.
- Select the Credly badge from the dropdown.
- The associated Resource will populate.
- Click Save.
Archived and Revoked Badges
Archived Badges
Within Credly, you can archive a badge. If you archive a badge in Credly after you have synced badges in Thought Industries, you will need to sync badges again to remove the archived badge from the options in Thought Industries. Archived badges will be removed from the Credly Badges list in Settings > Gamification > Badges. Archived badges will be removed from content-level settings if it was previously assigned to a piece of content.
Impact to Learners
- Learners who are in progress towards earning a badge that has been archived:
- Learners cannot earn a badge after it has been archived. The archived badge is removed from the Credly Badges Widget for learners who are in progress towards completing the content and earning the badge.
- Learners who already earned a badge before it was archived:
- There should be no impact to learners who previously earned the badge. It will still display to them as earned within Thought Industries and Credly.
Revoked Badges
An issued badge in Credly can have four states:
- Pending
- Accepted
- Rejected
- Revoked
If a learner’s badge has a Revoked status, the badge will not display in that learner’s list of issued Credly badges anywhere in Thought Industries. You can only revoke badges in the Credly interface.
Learner Experience
Earning Credly Badges
Learners will be able to earn a Credly Badge by completing content in Thought Industries. Once a learner has satisfied all the completion criteria for content, they will be marked complete in the content and automatically issued the associated Credly badge. A learner can earn Credly Badges from any type of content in Thought Industries, including Learning Paths. Badges are associated with learners via their email address and learners will also receive an email from Credly when they are issued a new badge.
The following required fields get passed to Credly when a badge is issued from Thought Industries:
- Badge template ID
- Learner email address
- Learner first and last name
- Issued on date
Earning Duplicate Badges
In Credly, there is a badge-level Duplicates setting that allows a learner to earn the same badge more than once. Since a Credly badge cannot be assigned to more than one piece of content or course group in Thought Industries, it is unlikely that a learner would earn a duplicate badge from Thought Industries. However, the same badge can be assigned to multiple sessions within a course group. If the Duplicates setting in Credly is enabled for a badge AND a learner completes more than one session of a course, the learner can earn the badge multiple times from Thought Industries.
View and Accept Badges
Learners can accept an issued badge in two ways:
Automated Email from Credly
There are no learner notifications triggered from Thought Industries. Learners will receive an email from Credly when they are issued a new badge.
Learner Access Widget Badges tab
Learners can see all issued Credly Badges within Thought Industries in the Learner Access Widget Badges tab. This tab contains only Credly Badges and does not reflect any native Thought Industries badges. For each Credly Badge, the following information displays:
- Badge Image
- Badge Title
- Date Earned
- Content Title (if applicable)
- This is the Course Group title
- Expiration (if exists)
To accept a badge from the Learner Access Widget, learners can click the Accept. Learners can also click View to view a badge - which redirects learners to Credly. The learner will be prompted to log into Credly or if they do not have a registered Credly account, they will be prompted to set one up first.
Note
If a Credly Badge is issued to a learner directly from Credly (not triggered from Thought Industries), it should still display in the Badges tab, but there will be no content associated with the badge.
Tip
Learners can share badges to LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook from their Credly account. This is not available to do within Thought Industries.
View Progress and Discover Badges
Within the Credly Badges Widget, learners see a complete view of all Credly Badges that they have earned or are in progress towards earning. Learners can also discover new Credly badges and find out more information on how to earn them.
The Credly Badges Widget displays badges in the following order:
- Badges that a learner is in progress towards earning (sorted by % progress in the content)
- Click to launch the content
- Badges where the learner has not yet enrolled in content and they can Learn More
- Click to open the public badge page in Credly and find more info on the badge (opens in new tab)
- Badges that have been issued to the learner
- Click to open the learner’s unique badge page in Credly (opens in new tab)
For Badges where the learner has not yet enrolled in content and they can Learn More:
- Site-level: Content must be Released in order for the associated badge to display (unless it is directly provisioned to the individual learner).
- Panorama-level: Content does not need to be released, but learners only see badges associated with content that they have access to via their panorama/sublicense.