A certification scheme can have a number of features depending on your requirements. But it also needs to promote your accreditation, protect your brand, offer some security, and make the holder proud of their achievement. These objectives can all be achieved by setting up a scheme on BlockMark Registry and considering some of the options available.
When creating a new certification scheme, consider some of these issues at the outset as they will help you shape the scheme and use the right settings on BlockMark Registry.
You can set the restriction appropriately on BlockMark Registry so only the desired type of certificate is issued.
You can decide if a certification scheme expires or not. When it expires, BlockMark Registry automatically shows the certificate as expired and can send reminders as expiration nears.
On BlockMark Registry, you can provide a title and description for each scheme and easily replicate schemes for later years, similar courses, etc. We recommend this approach so that schemes are easily differentiated and you don't need to provide dynamic information every time (like '2025', '2026', '2027' as you issue certificates in subsequent years)
The settings within BlockMark Registry allow you to select some common phrases for the various certificate attributes or to provide your own for greater flexibility. You can also designate a different noun for your certificate which will be reflected across the site where it is referenced - for example if you are issuing a license or badge only.
You can add custom fields to certification schemes to capture and display this extra information on a certificate. You can also set it as required or optional. The bespoke ID facility also allows auto-incrementing number schemes to be created as certificates are issued which can be useful for your own certificate numbering conventions.
On BlockMark Registry you can set how the date and time appears on the certificate. You can also set defaults like midnight or midday to keep the time element simpler.
Each scheme on BlockMark Registry has a logo that then appears on the scheme's profile page and also the digital certificate. You can also decide how this is made available (as a downloadable graphic and/or a smart badge for websites / email signatures). You can also provide variants (like grey scale / monochrome) and branding guidelines to that recipients use the mark properly.
You can then add weblinks to these pages in the scheme settings on BlockMark Regsitry. These are then linked with context-sensitive buttons that get shown to visitors enabling them to find out more about a scheme, apply for certification or renew their own certificate if it is expiring soon or has expired.
Personal certificates are always issued as private, but with certificates to organisations you have a choice. Unless the certificate is sensitive (like an insurance certificate) we recommend they are issued as public. This is usually beneficial to the recipient who can showcase the achievement without intervention, but also helps publicise your scheme too.
In addition to the settings, have a think about the certification process you will run.
BlockMark Registry differentiates between the issue time and that start date, so you can post-date certificates and they will be marked as 'pending' until the start date and time arrives.
On BlockMark Registry you can suspend (usually temporary) or revoke (usually permanent) a certificate. However, we do recommend you have a clear policy as to when to do these actions as people rely on certificates and may not like you changing their status. That said, this is a major advantage of the digital certificates we offer, as you have control over their status.
On BlockMark Registry you can edit certificates in your schemes and they instantly update both on the digital page and when the pdf is next viewed. This is also recorded in the certificate changelog. Being able to edit a certificate like this can save time when mistakes are made, but we recommend you have a policy as to when a certificate can be edited (e.g. typo?) or when it needs reissuing (e.g. change of legal name?).
You can do either on BlockMark Registry: either 'Issue a superseding certificate' which creates a new certificate or 'Renew' which allows you to extend the expiry date of the current certificate. Both approaches are fine; one gets a new certificate id number and new bespoke ID if in use, and the other just keeps the original certificate but changes the expiry date. Having a new certificate is often clearer, especially if other dynamic information on the certificate needs to change as well (like an assessor name or assessment version number, etc)
On BlockMark Registry, different staff / service accounts can be permitted to create, edit and issue from schemes. This helps to ensure only the right people make changes to scheme settings or issue / edit associated certificates.
If this is the case, you can replicate and edit schemes to reflect the different levels and link them in a group with some default rules. Going forward, you'll be able to easily upgrade or downgrade a certificate by issuing the new level with much of the information carried across to check.
BlockMark Registry offers parent / child certificate relationships so that it is easy to issue a further certificate that is linked to a master certificate. This can be activated in the scheme settings.
People still like to receive 'pdfs' as certificates so they can print them, email them or upload them somewhere. Others wanting to check a certificate expect 'pdfs' as tangible evidence. But not all schemes have to have a pdf version of the digital certificate - that's up to you.
BlockMark Registry can auto-create pdfs when certificates are issued using a Word document template and placeholders. We recommend having static graphics and fixed text as the background of the document template and then using the placeholders to show the dynamic information.
BlockMark Registry offers a QR code placeholder for pdfs that automatically creates a QR code that points to the digital version of the certificate so it can be checked and the details verified with the live version. Moreover, the digital certificate itself can remain private as the QR code includes a share key that allows the holder being shown the pdf to reach the digital version.
On BlockMark Registry we have made it much harder to edit the pdf. Firstly, the pdf is password protected which provides an initial hurdle. But also, we flatten the content so that optical character recognition (OCR) and AI recognition tools find it harder isolate and replace the text. We also include metadata and some other security features to help with forensic analysis, should that be necessary.
On BlockMark Registry you can turn on pdf accessibility which provides an additional overlay of hidden but machine-readable text. We're still refining this to meet with the full accessibility standards.
There are pros and cons to both approaches. Obviously, we'd like people to log in as we'd like them to benefit from the service and extra features we provide. But for convenience it is often best to attach the pdf to the email that our system sends out so they get it and can log in as well if they choose. We provide some guidance about this on the email that they receive, but you can add extra instructions too for each scheme as you see fit.
Smart badges help you reduce fraud and misrepresentation as well better protecting your brand (certification mark). Sometimes this is less important, but the smart badge also brings other benefits.
BlockMark Regsitry's smart badges use small snippets of code to get the real time status of a certificate before showing the scheme's badge. You can turn the feature on for web and or email use cases, and make this the standard approach without making the scheme graphic available to download as a file. This is the recommended best practice if you want to improve the security and reliability of your certification scheme and badge use
These are options, for each case, within the scheme settings. The advantage is that the smart badge still points to the certificate and your certification scheme, but whilst indicating the reason it is not valid. But, in some cases, it may not be appropriate or valuable to show these other states, in which hiding the badge is the better option.
Certification schemes can also have other features that you may want to consider.
BlockMark Registry offers CPD integration with a certification scheme so that you set the categories and thresholds required. Recipients can associate other certificates or evidence to the certificate over time and share their progress with you the issuer.
BlockMark Registry allows you to set up dependencies which will suspend a certificate you have issued if the recipient holds others that are no longer valid or fails to hold a requisite certificate.