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How to Create a Certificate Issued to Entrants on Entry Approval

As users go through the award selection process, it may be useful to issue a Certificate to officially recognise distinct levels of an entrants’ achievement, such as with an award, nomination, bursary or grant. Nucleus has the ability to generate Certificates for entries upon approval. Nucleus enables you to turn this option on/off per award. This feature makes the recognition of certified achievement an automated process to enhance user experience while maintaining an efficient workflow.

For example:

  • Certificates in PDF format can be automatically emailed to a list of entries who have been approved
  • Certificates can be customised with specific text and images to reflect consistent branding

Please note that Nucleus also has a feature that allows Admins to distribute documentation/certificates to entrants at any stage and that can be accessed at a future date. This guide explains how this functionality works.

How to Turn On the Generating Certificate Feature

  1. Log into the Admin Interface
  2. Go to Actions>Awards
  3. Choose the relevant Award
  4. Click Actions>Edit
  5. Scroll down to Options section
  6. Set the Generate certificate on entry approval question to Yes
  7. The Rich Text Editor will automatically appear at the bottom of the Options section

How to Use the Rich Text Editor to Curate its Content for an Award

The content of the Certificate can be curated by the use of the Rich Text Editor. This will enable you to:

  • Create unique certificates per award/project
  • Curate the data that appears on each certificate, including answers to questions, categories, dates, project ref etc.

A certificate may include a vast range of colours, logos, design and text to reflect specific needs of your form or organisation. Please follow this instructions to see how to customise the certificate’s style:

  1. Scroll down to the Rich Text Editor. Please note that the Rich Text Editor uses HTML. For complex design requirements, an HTML specialist is recommended
  2. Fill in with the text you wish to display. Text must not exceed the length of A4
  3. Insert any useful Special Values. Data pulled from the form can be used to build certificates automatically by specifying special values in conjunction with the symbols %, @, $. When typed in a certain way on the Rich Text Editor, Nucleus is told which data to pull from the forms and add to include on the certificate.

For example:

  • Use %%Phrase from cms%% to use a phrase from the CMS
  • Use @@Special value name@@ to include a special value

You can use the following special values:
award_id, award_name, categories, categoryList, entry_id, user_id, user_firstName, user_lastName, user_name, user_email, organisation_id, organisation_name, approvalDate, approvalTime

  • Use $$Question name$$ to include answers from the entry form. You must use the “internal” question name. The question name lookup is not case-sensitive and ignores all characters which aren’t a-z or 0-9.

How to Access the Certificates

Once you’ve switched on this functionality, you will be able to access the Certificates in different ways. Certificates will be automatically generated only once entries have been approved.
Please also note that certificates will be deleted as part of the entry tidy up process which kicks in 18 months after the last login.

Access Certificates from the Admin Interface

  1. Log into the Admin Interface
  2. Go to Actions>Entries
  3. Select the relevant award from the dropdown menu on the top right corner of the page
  4. Approve an entry. Once approved, it will be displayed in green
  5. Click on Actions>Certificate PDF
  6. A PDF with the Certificate will open. If needed, you can download it and email it to the entrant

Access Certificates from the Entrant interface

  1. Log into the Entrant Interface
  2. From the main Dashboard, at the top of the page click on My Submitted Entries
  3. Look for the relevant Award
  4. Choose the relevant Entry that has already been approved
  5. From the Actions column, click on the three dots button
  6. Select View Certificate
  7. A PDF with the Certificate will open. If needed, you can download it

Important Note – From the Awards setting page, on the Options section, you can decide which functionalities to set up in order to keep entrants informed on the entry approval process.

  • You can display the approval status on the Entrant’s Dashboard by setting the Show approval status on entrant dashboard to Yes
  • You can send Entrants an email to inform their entries have been approved by setting the Send emails on entry approval to Yes. This can also be managed from the entry/approval email template. Certificates are included as a PDF attachment in the approval email.