Check a certificate design

What this achieves

A certificate design is the template used to produce the certificate a learner receives when they complete a course. This is where you check what your designs look like before one goes out with somebody’s name on it.

Required role: Administrator.

Steps

Go to Learning → Certificate Designs.
Read the list: each design’s Name, Orientation, Page size, Status, and Last updated.
Open a design.
Check its Metadata.
Under Test PDF, select Generate Test PDF.
Select Open generated PDF and check the layout.

What the list tells you

Option	Description
Name	What the design is called.
Orientation	Whether it is portrait or landscape.
Page size	The paper size it renders at.
Status	Whether the design is in use.
Last updated	When it last changed.

Where no designs exist, the screen says so and explains that templates issued on course completion appear here once created.

Test with sample data before trusting a design

Generate Test PDF renders the design with sample learner and course details. The panel states why it exists: to verify the layout before real certificates are issued.

Do this after any change, and before a course that carries a certification goes live. A design that looks correct in its metadata can still place a long name over a border or push a date off the page, and the first person to notice should not be the learner.

Example: a design at HC Corp UK Ltd that renders cleanly for a short name may not for a longer one. The test render is the cheapest place to find that out.

Metadata

The metadata panel reports the design’s status, orientation, page size, and how many elements it contains. The element count is a rough measure of how much is on the page — a design with very few elements is likely incomplete rather than minimal.

Creating and editing designs

Designs are reviewed and tested from these screens. Creating a new design or changing an existing one’s layout is not done here.

Where you need a design that does not exist, raise it with whoever administers your Humavera workspace rather than looking for a control on this screen.

What happens next

A design in use is applied when a learner completes a course that issues a certificate. Which certification a course grants, and how long it stays valid, are set on the certification template rather than on the design — the design governs what the document looks like, not what it certifies or for how long.