You may run into a use case where learners have third party or external certificates that need to be available in their learning experience and profiles.
Use Case Information
Right from the learner dashboard, you can allow learners to upload third party certificates. Below are the details on how to configure this feature as well as how to report when your learners have earned third party certificates.
Enabling Third Party Certificate Uploads
To enable the setting to allow learners to upload third party certificates:
- From your homepage, select Settings > Certification.
- Toggle Allow learners to upload third-party certificates? toYes.
You can also allow learners to fill in additional information attached to those certificates based on your certificate fields. If enabled, the certificate fields will display to the learner as required on the third party certificate upload form.
The following certificate field types can be added to the upload form:
- Content Title
- Certificate Grant Date
- Certificate Expiration Date
- Award Type
- Short Text
To add a field to the upload form:
- From your homepage, select Settings > Certification.
- If you have not already added a certificate field that matches the qualifying fields above, click Add Certificate Field.
- If you have already added a certificate field that you think may match the right certificate type, click the pencil icon in that field's row.
Tip
Make sure the Type matches one of the qualifying fields. As a reminder, the fields are: Content Title, Certificate Grant Date, Certificate Expiration Date, Award Type, & Short Text.
- If the Type matches one of the qualifying fields, the toggle Learner needs to fill this in during third-party certificate upload? will be available.
- Enable Learner needs to fill this in during third-party certificate upload? toYes.
How Learners Upload a Third Party Certificate
Let's check out what the learner's experience is! To upload an external certificate:
- A learner will start on their learner dashboard.
- Using their Learner Access widget, the learner will go to the Certifications tab
- They then need to click Upload Third-Party Certificate at the bottom of their certificates list.
Tip
We recommend including the certificate field type Content Title on the upload form, if nothing else. This will allow you to capture a Resource Title that will display to the learner in the Learner Access Widget > Certifications tab. The Resource Title will also display to you in the admin interface for the learner profile > Activity tab, as well as in Reporting Hub. You can see the difference in the screenshot below for the learner experience when viewing the Learner Access widget after upload. The example shows the Access widget when a learner was not required to fill in Content Title and when a learner was required to fill in Content Title.
Note
File types that are accepted are PDF, JPG, and PNG, up to 20MB.
Reporting on Third Party Certificates
Now that your learners are uploading external certificates, how do you know how many certificates are being uploaded, when they are being uploaded, and what values are being added to those upload form fields?
- From your homepage, select Reporting > Create.
- Click on the base configuration What external certificates are being uploaded?.
- This base configuration has the following columns already laid out for you, but feel free to modify it to fit your needs, as Explore reports are fully customizable.
- External Resource Title
Note
This will only display a value if you've added the certificate field type Content Title to the upload form. See the instructions in the first section, Enabling Third Party Certificate Uploads, for guidance.
- Issued Date (uploaded date)
- Expiration Date
- Third Party Certificate Fields - Certificate Type Name - List Field Value
- Lastly, you can view the learner profile to see if an external certificate has been uploaded by that learner. Go to any learner profile by:
- Navigating to Users > Learners.
- Click on a learner's name.
- Select Activity tab.