Sending Customized Completion Certificates in Kartra? (2021 Edition)
If you prefer a video version, watch below..
If you’re using Kartra, or you’re thinking about using Kartra..and you’re wondering if your course members can receive a completion certificate or PDF like users can on some other platforms, this article is for you.
To cut to the chase, as of writing (April 2021), Kartra does offer a type of completion certificate, but it is not like you may expect..
If you have not signed up for Kartra yet and want to explore a bit, you can get a 14-day free trial right here (this is an affiliate link, so I’ll get a kickback as a thank-you but with no additional cost to you)
The completion certificate is essentially a pop-up that happens “in-app”. And the users do not receive an email with a PDF of some sort.
If you do want your users to receive an actual PDF via email; there is a workaround, it just requires a bit of setup and creativity.
To achieve this, we’ll need..
- Zapier
- Google Sheets
- Google Slides
- Google App Script (functionality of Google Sheets)
Once setup, your course members can receive a completion certificate of any design. For example…
The Workaround
We will be creating an automation that when we are notified a user has completed the course, they will..
1. Be added to a Google Sheet
2. The Google Sheet with an automation will generate them a PDF certificate using a Google Slides document as the template for the PDF
3. Emails the recently created PDF to the user
Just follow the steps below and feel to reach out or comment if anything is not clear.
Connect Your Zapier and Kartra
As mentioned, we’ll need Zapier to achieve this.
Connect Zapier to Kartra
The first step is to connect Zapier to Kartra.
In Kartra, go to “My Integrations”..
Search or scroll to find Zapier. Click the drop-down and select, “Request activation”.
You’ll need to explain your goal, “I’d like to use Zapier to notify myself when a certain number of units of a product has been sold”.
There should be little reason your request will not be approved.
The Kartra side of things is done.
Setup the “Course Completed” Automation in Kartra
For us to connect later with Zapier, we need to add a tag in Kartra when a user completes the course we want to send a certificate for.
In “My Communications” > “Communications” > “Automations”, we want to add a new automation that looks like below..
Setup a Google Sheet
We need a Google Sheet to add the users who have completed the course to.
The “Last Name” is not necessary but..
- “First Name”
- “Email”
- “Certificate Sent”
Are required.
The first part of Google Sheet is done now.
Setup a PDF Template in Google Slides
Google Slides is actually really nice for quickly creating good looking designs with images, and text.
It also integrates and connects really well with Google’s other systems and Google App Script (it is Google’s automation software).
There are 2 very important things to note in Google Slides when you design your template:
ID of the Document
The red block in the screenshot above indicates the ID of the Google Slides template. Save this to a text document or just keep the window open because this will be required later
Placeholders
In the screenshot of the template above, you see two interesting pieces of text:
- ##NAME##
- ##DATE##
These are called placeholders. These placeholders are later replaced by Google App Script automation with the information we receive from Kartra when a user completes the course.
You can add more placeholders if you like’d, it is recommended you use the format of double-hashtags on either side of the word. But, adding placeholders requires you to understand how to change the automation code a bit.
Setup Zapier
The Zap is simple. We are monitoring for a specific tag in Kartra (the tag and automation we created earlier) and adding the user to our new Google Sheet.
Adding the Google App Script (the most technical step)
These steps are more easily shown using short video clips. Before we start, you must have the following link open (because you will need to copy paste it across).
Required automation script: https://pastebin.com/TZGH7xdc
Watch the below on how and where to copy-paste the automation script above in Google Sheets..
Now we need allow permissions to send emails, access your Google Slides template, and then setup the trigger to run the automation.
From this point, we have added everything we need.
If you have not signed up for Kartra yet and want to explore a bit, you can get a 14-day free trial right here (this is an affiliate link, so I’ll get a kickback as a thank-you but with no additional cost to you)
Summary
Being able to send a customized PDF completion certificate to users who complete your course in Karta requires a bit of creativity and automation because Kartra does not offer it at the moment (April 2021).
It is in-development but there are no timelines provided.
This automation requires using Zapier, Google Sheets, and Google Slides to create a customized completion certificate from a template in Google Slides.
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