8.7. Enabling Certificates

This section describes how to enable certificates in your instance of Open edX.

8.7.1. Overview

Organizations and course teams can now generate certificates for learners who have completed courses. Learners can view, print, or share their certificates.

For information about certificates, see the Building and Running an Open edX Course and Open edX Learner’s guides.

To enable this feature on your instance of Open edX, you must enable the feature flag in both Studio and the Learning Management System and perform the configuration tasks described in this topic.

Note

Before proceeding, review Guidelines for Updating the edX Platform.

8.7.2. Enable Certificates in Studio and the Learning Management System

  1. In the /cms/envs/common.py and /lms/envs/common.py files, set the value of CERTIFICATES_HTML_VIEW to True.

    # Certificates Web/HTML Views
    'CERTIFICATES_HTML_VIEW': True,
    
  2. Save the /cms/envs/common.py and /lms/envs/common.py files.

  3. Run database migrations.

8.7.3. Configure Certificates for Your Open edX Instance

  1. Access the Django Administration website for your instance of Open edX. To do this, go to https://<host name of your Open edX instance>/admin. For example, this might be https://YourOrganization.com/admin.
  2. Under Site Administration > Certificates, add an HTML View Configuration, and select Enabled.
  3. Modify the configuration parameters. You must set the following certificates-related parameters for your Open edX instance.
  • platform_name

  • company_about_url

  • company_privacy_url

  • company_tos_url

  • company_verified_certificate_url

  • logo_src

  • logo_url

    For each course mode, such as “honor” or “verified”, define certificate_type, certificate_title and document_body_class_append. The mode name should match your course mode name exactly.

    {
        "default": {
            "accomplishment_class_append": "accomplishment-certificate",
            "platform_name": "YourPlatformName",
            "company_about_url":"http://www.YourOrganization.com/about-us",
            "company_privacy_url": "http://www.YourOrganization.com/our-privacy-policy",
            "company_tos_url": "http://www.YourOrganization.com/our-terms-service",
            "company_verified_certificate_url": "http://www.YourOrganization.com/about_verified_certificates",
            "logo_src": "/static/certificates/images/our_logo.svg",
            "logo_url": "www.YourOrganization.com"
        },
        "honor": {
            "certificate_type": "honor",
            "certificate_title": "Honor Certificate",
            "document_body_class_append": "is-honorcode"
        },
        "verified": {
            "certificate_type": "verified",
            "certificate_title": "Verified Certificate",
            "document_body_class_append": "is-idverified"
        },
        "base": {
            "certificate_type": "base",
            "certificate_title": "Certificate of Achievement",
            "document_body_class_append": "is-base"
        },
        "distinguished": {
            "certificate_type": "distinguished",
            "certificate_title": "Distinguished Certificate of Achievement",
            "document_body_class_append": "is-distinguished"
        }
    }
    
  1. Save the configuration parameters and exit the Django Administration website.
  2. Restart the Studio and Learning Management System processes so that the updated environment configurations are loaded.

8.7.4. Customize Certificate Templates For Your Organization

Set up the templates for certificates that your organization will issue. Base templates are included, but you must ensure that they are customized for your organization. For example, you can change the images that appear on certificates for each course mode that your organization supports, as well as fonts and colors that are used on certificates.

Assets for HTML certificates exist in the following locations.

  • lms/templates/certificates - this folder contains .html files for certificates. The file valid.html is an example of a certificate file. Files with names starting with an underscore, such as _certificate_footer.html are partial files that can be referenced in the main certificate .html files

  • lms/static/certificates - subfolders of this folder contain assets used in creating certificates, such as images, fonts, and sass/css files.

    Note

    The organization logo on a certificate is uploaded in Studio. For details, see Set Up Course HTML Certificates in Building and Running an Open edX Course.

8.7.5. Configure Certificates Within Each Course

Within Studio, course team members with the Admin role can create and edit a certificate configuration that is used to generate certificates for their course, including adding signatories and images for organization logo and signature images for signatories. For details, see Set Up Course HTML Certificates in Building and Running an Open edX Course.

8.7.6. Generate Certificates For a Course

To generate certificates for a course, run the manage.py script with the following settings. When the script finishes running, grades are calculated for learners who are enrolled in the course, and certificates are generated for eligible learners.

  1. Obtain the course ID for the course for which you are generating certificates. When you view course content in your browser, the course ID appears as part of the URL. For example, in the URL http://www.edx.org/course/course-v1:edX+demoX_Demo_2015, the course ID is course-v1:edX+demoX_Demo_2015. For some courses, the course ID contains slashes. For example, edX/Demox/Demo_2014.

  2. Run manage.py with the following settings, replacing {CourseID} with the actual course ID. Do not include beginning or trailing slashes.

    /manage.py lms --settings=aws ungenerated_certs -c {CourseID}

    For example,

    /manage.py lms --settings=aws ungenerated_certs -c course-v1:edX+demoX_Demo_2015.

  1. View the certificate generation status for a course using gen_cert_report. For example,

    /manage.py lms --settings=aws gen_cert_report -c course-v1:edX+demoX_Demo_2015.