Request for Feedback: Course Certificates are Coming 🚀
You have been asking me for this one for a long time. It is the most requested thing on the backlog. So we are finally building it, and 80% is done.
Current State:
- Best-in-class visual builder: A drag-and-drop editor with six starter designs, or upload your own artwork and put the text on top. We compared it with all existing LMS plugins, and you will love it.
- Issuing Certificates: The certificate shows up the moment a student finishes the course. You do nothing.
- QR Code-based verification. Every certificate gets a public page and a QR code, with a live status read from your database, so an edited PDF cannot fake it.
I wrote the full docs early, with screenshots of every screen, so you can judge it properly before it ships:
https://docs.fluentcommunity.co/course-certificates
Before we ship, we need to hear from you if we missed anything. What else would you want in the module? Please let me know in the comments.
Love it!
Fantastic! Yes, this is definitely needed. It looks like you've thought of everything that I would want it to do, but I'll be interested to see other peoples thoughts and comments about it.
Oh yes ! Thanks you 👍
Awesome news. Do you have more specifics on th visual builder? Limtiations as to what output we can include inside a lesson. Some real life examples of what kind of content a lesson can contain in additional to html/text/media etc.
I"m personally struggling with adding interactive content within a lesson without it being stripped by the builder.
James Maduk I have attached a few screenshots to the doc. So it's full drag and drop builder with all the required elements to build dynamic certificates.
Shahjahan Jewel sorry i misread the announcment I was thinking that the visual builder was new and also applied to the lessons. My apologies.
Love this.
Would also love to see a feature for selling group access (like in learndash). So as you can sell a B2B access to a course, different users can access the platform with the license, and thus, every user can get their certificate. 🫡
Awesome !
...and with the verification QR Code ?! Whaaaat ?! Thank you !
Please use the Open Badges standard!
They have become a recognisable and acceptable standard and they are transferrable.
I personally use an external provider on mine, popular in international youth work, which is the context within which the project the course has been developed for operates: https://climate4all.org/community/course/facilitator-training/lessons
It would be great if the students don't have to jump in and out of the course in order to get their badges and associated certificates.
Antonios Triantafyllakis Yes, we wil use use openbadge standard and one click add to Linkedin
Great feature, we've been waiting for it. One request before release: full RTL support (Hebrew/Arabic). That means right-aligned text, correct word order in names and course titles, Hebrew fonts (e.g. Google Fonts like Heebo/Assistant or custom font upload), and RTL in the PNG/PDF export, not only in print-to-PDF. We run an Israeli academy on FluentCommunity, and certificates for our coach-training graduates are a top use case for us. Happy to test a beta build on RTL.
Lavi Learning and Training Technologies Ltd Ltd RTL will be supported from day one and we will improve over time is something is broken :)
Include a verification page that uses a unique code for every issued certificate, include transcripts too, let it show course topics
Gilbert Mutingu Jaddy Already done!
It seems quite similar to PressPrimer Certificate. Was there a collaboration?
Ryan not sure what's PressPrimer Certificate.
Let the admin approve or not the certificate or maybe an extra step (like fill out a form and send proof of the final work).... For example we have a clothing academy and before we send certificate we ask for photo proof of the clothe made...
A feature for "Share on LinkedIn" would be nice too.
NICE! My vote (if not already said) would be a printable PDF that is issued via email and also some type of community badge on their profile.
kyler boudreau I'm pretty sure you can assign a badge on course completion with FluentCRM.
Hi Shahjahan and team!
Really excited about the upcoming certificate feature! 😊
I run a training centre in Switzerland, offering hands-on workshops in osteopathy, Shiatsu, Qigong and Tai Chi.
For our workshops, we regularly issue certificates of attendance that need to meet the requirements of Swiss professional associations (EMR/ASCA).
I have two questions/suggestions:
- Custom course content: Will it be possible to include detailed, multiline descriptions of the actual workshop content, along with the date, duration (e.g. 8 hours), instructor and other relevant information? Ideally, we could freely edit these fields for each course.
- Manual certificate issuing: Could we issue certificates manually to participants of in-person workshops, even if they haven't completed an online course in FluentCommunity?
Being able to use our own certificate design with automatically inserted participant names would be fantastic!
These two features would make the certificate builder incredibly useful for professional continuing education providers like us.
Thanks for all your great work!
Till
That's great news. I was preparing to develop a plugin on my own. It spares me some time :-)
Thanks.
Shahjahan Jewel Could the leaderboard also receive some love? Ideally there should be a leaderboard based on time spent learning every day, every week, etc.
And then users can have different badges next to their name based on the completed courses.
Barnabas Chris Yes please, so many things could be added to gamification in FCommunities
Jorge Nava (SolidCapo) the best leaderboard I have ever seen is the "Partner" Plugin (WP Magic) created by Jeff Mapes :
https://wppluginmagic.com/partner-for-fluentcommunity/
Prosper I appreciate the kind words!
Shahjahan Jewel Is there a print button? Is there an option to disallow download cert, in case we prefer to send hard copy? 😊
Here's what would help the TrainingSites.io campus.
- Pathway certificates. Award one certificate when a student has finished a chosen set of courses (for example courses A, B and C). Same template editor, credential ID and verification page.
- Quiz pass as a requirement. An option to award only when the course quiz is passed at or above a set score, not just when the last lesson is finished.
- Prerequisites. Optionally lock a course until the listed courses are finished. This would fix the order problem without manual enrolment.
- Developer hooks. A WordPress action when a certificate is issued, suspended or revoked, and one when a course is completed. Then FluentCRM tags, emails or a custom pathway check can run off them.
- Certificate Name field. A field for the certificate’s name (such as “Build Certified”), so a pathway certificate isn’t labelled with the course title.
#1 is the Big one....
Drip lessons please
Itachi Sensei, we have this in our notes. It will be available in one of the upcoming releases.
Tawsif Ahmed Riyad thanks, hovewer some of your team members said excatly this months ago. I cant switch from suredash and leave that ecosystem only because of this missing feature.
Itachi Sensei, the work is in the development phase, after that, the feature will be reviewed, then shipped later on. Once shipped in one of the future releases, I will inform you, thank you.
Tawsif Ahmed Riyad thanks
Shahjahan Jewel Thank you so much for implementing this, much needed indeed!
It looks like the starting point is already very good. I only have a few suggestions/requests at this early stage:
1a) Option to check that the user has spent a minimal amount of time in the course before delivering/validating the certificate (this could be linked to allowing the user to take a final quiz in the course for example, asking the user to spend more time in the course if they are under x hours). This is to avoid giving a certificate to users who spend 15 minutes rushing through all the topics of a 10-hour course just to complete the course / get the certificate. This often happens in group/cohort training, where people have to go through an online course to participate in a live workshop. Checking that a final quiz is passed could also be a block, as suggested by @James Maduk below, but it doesn't work when quizzes are used for gamification / learning and there is no pass/fail for the quiz or course.
1b) This links to an option to track for each user the time spent in the course, time to completion, total time spent in the course (including after completion), date course started, date course completed, and make this info available in the course report CSV for a specific group of users (essential for B2B training).
2) Option to email the PDF certificate automatically once it's validated (automatically based on time spent in the course as suggested above or manually, after an admin is advised that a user has completed a course). This means that PDF certificate needs to be generated server-side. An option to validate the certificate manually before it's sent / made available would be great. An option to disable email sending will be useful, for example during migration of users who have already received/downloaded their certificates from another LMS platform.
3) Make sure that we can insert one or more pictures in the certificate content, in addition to the picture used for the certificate border. For example, we like to add a scan of a handwritten sentence and signature to personalise the certificate (same picture for all the certificates, but it still feels more personal).
4) Facebook, X, Pinterest as well as LinkedIn for options to share the certificate on social media (as well as an easy way to share the image on Instagram). LinkedIn is great for us, but Facebook and Instagram are important too, and I guess that for other users X and Pinterest might be too.
5) Migration-related needs: we plan to migrate our users from LearnDash to Fluent Community. It would be great to get detailed documentation on hooks and events, and a feature request if they are not available yet, for editing the completion date and issue date before backfilling the certificates, as we'll want to use the original dates from LearnDash. We would also need a "Certificate issued" action, plus a FluentCRM trigger or merge tag (download URL, credential ID, verification URL). This would allow us to tag a user, send our own email and let the migration script react. It would also be great to be able to backfill selected users or courses, as well as to bulk revoke or re-issue. Finally, a CSV export of issued certificates would also help.
Very much looking forward to testing the feature. Keep up the good work!
Hi,
Thanks for asking, the certificate feature looks great. One request that matters a lot for us.
We run a training organization for healthcare professionals, and our certificates have legal and administrative value. Right now, as far as I understand the docs, a certificate is issued as soon as the student completes the final lesson. For us, that is not enough: a certificate must only be delivered once specific requirements are met.
What we would need, per course, is a list of certificate requirements, for example:
- Specific lessons completed (not just the last one).
- A quiz passed, with a minimum score (e.g. 80%).
- A form submitted, attached to a lesson: typically a final assessment or a satisfaction survey that is mandatory for our certification. Ideally with Fluent Forms, and if possible Gravity Forms too, since that is what we use today.
The certificate would only be issued when all requirements are met, whatever the order in which the student completes them.
A few related points that would make this solid:
- The "Past completions" backfill should check the same requirements, so it does not issue certificates to students who finished the lessons but never submitted the form or passed the quiz.
- On the student side, a short checklist showing what is still missing ("Final assessment form: not submitted yet") would avoid a lot of support emails.
- A developer filter before issuance (something like "can this certificate be issued for this user and course?") would let us plug in our own conditions for edge cases.
Happy to test it on our site as soon as a beta is available.
Thanks again
Marc-Antoine Richard Should we add an option about Issue certificate manually? so an human can take a look and issue the certificate manually after reviewing all. In the current system, user have to complete all the lessons to get the certificate.
Shahjahan Jewel Thanks for the quick answer! Honestly, a manual option would not help us. We are a small team and everything is automated today. Checking each student by hand before issuing a certificate would be a step backwards.
Here is our real case. In France, training organizations must hold the Qualiopi quality certification, which requires every student to fill in a final satisfaction survey. Before we automated it, students attended the last day, did their quizzes, got their certificate... and never came back to fill in the survey. Why would they? They already had what they wanted.
So today, the quizzes must be done first, and the final survey form is what triggers the certificate. No survey, no certificate. That one rule solved the problem completely.
Maybe the simplest way to support this is at the lesson level: a lesson can only be marked as complete once its quiz is passed (with a minimum score) or its form is submitted. With the final survey as the last lesson, the current rule "all lessons completed" would cover our case naturally.
Does the quiz already block lesson completion until it is passed? And would a form (Fluent Forms, ideally Gravity Forms too) be possible as a completion condition for a lesson?
Shahjahan Jewel For context: I have been struggling with LearnDash on this project for years, and I'm really looking forward to moving it to FluentCommunity. This certificate logic is one of the last pieces we need.
Marc-Antoine Richard Would you be interested to help us for testing a Learndash migration module?
Shahjahan Jewel Yes, definitely! I'd be happy to help, with one honest warning: our setup is not a typical LearnDash site.
On the LearnDash side: dozens of lessons across several courses, real students with their progress, and groups. That part is a good real-world test for your module.
Less typical: our quizzes are simple Gravity Forms forms, not LearnDash quizzes, and a lesson is only marked as complete once its form is submitted (done today with Uncanny Toolkit Pro). The final Qualiopi survey works the same way and unlocks the certificate. Enrollment goes through WooCommerce and Zapier today, and we are considering FluentCart to move the whole stack to Fluent.
I already looked at your code, and I think I can rebuild the form rule with the "fluent_community/is_allowed_to_complete_lesson" filter, then CourseHelper::updateLessonCompletion() and CourseHelper::completeCourse() on form submission. Two questions:
- Are these safe to rely on in the long term, and will the certificate be issued through "fluent_community/course/completed" in that case?
- Do your native course quizzes support a minimum passing score that blocks the next lessons?
I would run the tests on a staging copy on our server, not on production, since it holds real student data. What would you need from me, and on what timeline?
Love this! So much better than our current LearnDash certs that look terrible. Thank you for putting this together. 👏👏👏
Greg Robins if we build a migrator, would you migrate from LD?
Shahjahan Jewel we would LOVE a migrator. We don't mind rebuilding the courses (they need a spruce up anyway), however, if there is a way to retain student progress or at least completions, that would be very useful.
Greg Robins we actually have a migrator from our R&D but still on the testing phase. Would love to get some help with some testing about this module so we can get some real world result.
Shahjahan Jewel we might be able to help out a bit. Not on our live site, but we could make a copy and give it a shot. We are a tiny team but happy to do what we can to give some real-world testing.
Fantastic news. But i'm waiting very impatiently for FluentMembers (group membership?) to use it with FluentCommunity.
Remik Woroniecki good things take time. We use a membership plugin and I can attest it takes a lot of thought and consideration. I hope to see this from Fluent as well, but very much understand the complexity when it comes to serving actual users who are paying.