¶ Displaying certificates
Once you have received a certificate, you can manage it and determine how it is shared, displayed or otherwise disseminated.
¶ Public or private
If you receive a personal certificate, it will be private by default. If you receive a certificate for an organisation or a thing, it may be public or private depending on the settings determined by the certification scheme owner.
When you first view your new certificate, you may see the following message to remind you that your new certificate is private and will need to be made public if you wish to use any of the dissemination tools to display your certificate.
A private certificate is viewable by only you, the issuer, us*, and anyone holding a valid share-link that you provide.
A public certificate is viewable by anyone visiting the platform. Any associated smart badges that you have added to your website or your email footer using our embed code will be visible. A personal certificate will appear on your profile page, an organisation's certificate will appear on the organisation's profile page, and a thing's certificate will appear on the thing's profile page.
Only you (and we*) can change the public or private status of a certificate once it has been issued. The issuer can see this status, but cannot change it.
By *us or *we, we mean some of our designated staff working in customer service, content moderation, and some software testing roles can view private certificates. However, we treat this information as client confidential.
If you change a certificate from public to private, any smart badges you have embedded will be invisible until you return the status to public.
¶ Certificate page
Each certificate you receive has its own page on the platform. This is the standard view of the digital certificate showing the badge (certification mark), issuer (certification scheme owner or certification body, with link to their profile), certification scheme name (with link to the scheme's profile page), the recipient (accredited entity, for example you, your organisation or a thing, with a link to the profile page), issue date, start date and where applicable expiry date.
The certificate may also show some additional custom information based on the certification scheme. Some of this additional information may be public or private. Private information is only viewable by you, the issuer and us and is indicated by an icon. Note the certification scheme owner can change the public/private settings of these custom fields, so information shown as private could become public in the future.
The certificate page also shows various options on the right-hand side menu, depending on whether you are the recipient, issuer or an inspector, as well as depending on the settings of the certification scheme itself:
View
- Download and print certificate (if applicable to the scheme, only for issuer and recipient)
- Download and print inspection copy (if applicable to the scheme, available to all if the certificate is public)
- View audit log (available to all if the certificate is public)
- Download certification mark (if applicable to the scheme, only for issuer and recipient)
Share
- Share with a shareable link (only for recipient)
- QR code, pointing to the certificate page (only for recipient)
- Smart badge for website*
- Smart badge for email*
- Add to LinkedIn profile (if a personal certificate)
- Add to Google Wallet
- Add to Apple Wallet
Actions
- Issue a superceding certificate (only for issuer)
- Upgrade or downgrade a certificate (only for issuer)
- Public / private switch (only for recipient)
- Archive / unarchive switch (only for recipient)
- Record inspection (only for issuer and inspector)
- Edit (only for issuer)
*Find out more about smart badges.