As we roll out new features on the platform, we'll highlight any changes below, pointing to the relevant knowledge base pages for more information. We list some of things in the pipeline here.
- Reinstating blockchain functionality.
- Webhooks for certificate data synchronisation.
- Improvements to the certification scheme settings user interface.
- Optional co-branding of the login page using the organisation logo of the referrer certificate during onboarding.
- Where, as a certification scheme owner, you don't offer the image file of a certification badge/mark for download (e.g. to reduce fraud and misrepresentation), but you are happy to provide files on a case-by-case basis after the recipient agrees to your terms and conditions (e.g. for printed material) we now provide a request button to send an email to your customer services team.
- Certificate misrepresentation and brand management: A new feature to find misused or out-of-date badges and logos from certification schemes on webpages.
- If you do not have full access to an organisation, but your verified email domain matches that of the admin/owner, their email address is now provided so that you may request access directly.
Our ref: PR-2014
- Added permissions within issuing organisation to view CPD folders associated with certification schemes.
- Search filters used on issued, received and inspected certificates pages retained in url so the filters remain in place after looking at a particular certificate.
- Custom fields and custom notes can now be searched for particular text.
- Analytics now includes graphs for renewal and application link click throughs where they have been added to certification schemes.
Our ref: PR-2002
- ‘Apply for certificate’ and ‘Renew certificate’ buttons now appear, when appropriate, under actions on digital certificate pages.
Our ref: PR-1971
- Custom notes are now included in exported data from the issued certificates page.
- The date filter on issued, received and inspected certificates page now includes a range of useful presets like month to date, etc.
Our ref: PR-1947
- Logging of CPD hours and/or points for different categories alongside uploaded evidence in CPD folders.
Our ref: PR-1898
- Added custom notes for certificates which are like custom fields but only visible to the issuer. These fields can be populated through manual issuance, bulk upload, or API issuance and can be used to provide some additional internal information about each certificate.
Our ref: PR-1888
- Name mismatch override for an organisation's previous name where the registered name has been changed and earlier certificates in the old name are being displayed. Where applicable, the previous name is also displayed on the organisation profile.
- Not counting ‘own view’ data any more in the analytics. For example, going forward the analytics data will ignore digital certificate page views made, where known, by the issuer and/or the recipient. This logic will also apply to other views and clicks like certification scheme page views, product & service card clicks, etc.
Our ref: PR-1883
- Improvements to the organisation settings user interface.
Our ref: PR-1872
- Improvements to the presentation of API service account requests and link this information from the issued certificates list.
- Option to view a dependency tree (where applicable) for a given certificate
- Inspection records now include any unfulfilled dependencies.
Our ref: PR-1859
- Special Continuous Professional Development (CPD) shareable folders for recipients to add supporting evidence to certain certification schemes like professional membership.
- Headline renewal data added to issued certificates analytics data, being number of superseded expired certs / total number of expired certs.
Our ref: PR-1845
- Custom text can now be added to renew and apply buttons in certification scheme settings.
Our ref: PR-1818
- Certificate dependency settings added in which a certificate's validity is further checked against holding a valid certificate in another scheme. If one or more of the dependencies is no longer met, the certificate is marked as suspended until the situation is rectified. The dependencies are described by various logic modules relating to other certification schemes and the type of certificate holder. Issued certificates can also be analysed using dependency filters.
- Option to include or omit the certification scheme's logo (mark) in the email sent to recipients.
Our ref: PR-1805
- Improved the export function for issued and received certificates by removing less useful data and increasing the download speed.
- Replaced the bar charts with line charts in the analytics area and added date-range filters for a more consistent user-experience across the sections.
Our ref: PR-1779
- Provided an ‘Additional documents' section for certification schemes which allows up to three pdf documents of up to 10 Mb each to be provided in each scheme. These can then be emailed with the issued certificate and/or made available for download by the recipient on the digital certificate page. This feature also merged in the ‘branding guidelines' option, so any existing branding guidelines are one of the three documents.
- The additional drop-down information that is available in the table view of certificates has now been added to the card views.
Our ref: PR-1768 and PR-1772
- Improved the superseded filter so that it is possible to search on certificates that have / have not been superseded. An example application is now being able to search on non-superseded but expired certificates to identify those that have not yet renewed.
Our ref: PR-1750
- Introduction of in-app notifications to inform you about changes to certificates, imminent expiry of certificates, changes to watched items, etc. Can be set as appropriate for your personal account as well as one or more organisation accounts you are associated with.
Our ref: PR-1724
- Increased the speed of certificate issuance by making the pdf creation and emailing processes asynchronous. This speeds up the manual process, bulk-uploading process and API responses.
Our ref: PR-1719
- Improved certification scheme table and card views with additional metrics and sorting options.
Our ref: PR-1689
- Added a multi-scheme bulk issuance option in which a csv file can be uploaded with certificate details for more than one certification scheme. One of the columns is used to identify which scheme the certificate should be issued from.
Our ref: PR-1679
- Improvements to watchlist pagination, search, and sorting.
- Made pdf original certificates and pdf inspection copy certificates harder to tamper or edit
Our ref: PR-1645
- Improved the email templates used to send out certificates by adding support for longer custom messages, improving the specimen overlay of the scheme badge, and reducing the BlockMark branding.
Our ref: PR-1627
- Added the option to have a side menu or top menu on issued, received and inspected certificate table / card view pages to suit different preferences
Our ref: PR-1589
- A major refresh of many aspects of the user experience, particularly certificate tables, certificate cards and the digital certificate itself. Some of the functionality should now be more intuitive and consistent, and also more efficient.
Our ref: PR-1473
- Some certification schemes are closely related, like a bronze, silver and gold level of membership. A new feature allows similar schemes to be grouped so that issued certificates can then be easily upgraded or downgraded along some preset options as to how the orginal and new certificates are handled.
Our ref: PR-1381
- Improved the speed of searching issued certificates by further indexing the database and moving the functionality to search for the issuer to an advanced search option.
Our ref: PR-1364
- Rebased the credit system to £1=100 credits rather than £1=10 credits so that prices are easier to calculate and other new services can be priced with 1p resolution. Added a credit transaction record table on the credits page of both users and organisations. Added a new permission category for organisation users to manage and view credit transactions and credits.
- Improved the speed and consistency of manual certificate issuance with new forms.
- Added .html and .txt code downloads to further help with embedding smart badges in email footers/signatures.
Our ref: PR-1314, PR-1316 and PR-1341
- Email forwarding to improve the onboarding experience after receiving a certificate, particularly if it has been sent to a colleague or IT consultant.
- Search facility to find the profiles of individuals, organisations or things, encompassing their certification schemes and product & service card descriptions.
- Connections feature to allow two parties to mutually accept a connection to allow certificate information to be more easily shared in the future.
- Watchlists to monitor the certificates of individuals, organisations and/or things. This facilitates staff training and supply chain management.
Our ref: PR-1246 and PR-1259
- If a public expired certificate has been superseded by a new active certificate within an account, its status will be marked as ‘superseded’ in the issued certificates entry, received certificates entry, and on the digital certificate page. A link is also provided to view the superseding certificate.
- The issued and received certificate analytics graph now shows ‘email smart badge clicks’ and ‘web smart badge clicks’ rather than displays, as this is a more useful metric to indicate that a certificate's smart badge has been noticed and acted on.
Our ref: PR-1229
- Bulk issuance of certificates can now be done from an uploaded .csv file as an intermediate option between sequentially issuing certificates manually and using API automation.
- Data can now be exported from received and inspected certificate tables using a similar facility available for issued certificates.
- Archived certificates are no longer displayed on personal or organisation profile pages.
- Organisation account users can now be classified as staff or assistants. Assistants could be IT support or consultants that have some permissions associated with your account. Schemes relating to their personal certificates, if any are applicable, are not shown on the organisation's profile page.
- Users can now view (but not change) their assigned permissions relating to an organisation account.
- Improved organisation domain management for email security, including highlighting which is your home page to facilitate with blue tick applications.
- The navigation dropdown for logging out now includes links to switch to personal and linked organisation accounts.
Our ref: PR-1194 and PR-1211
- Private certificates can now be inspected using a provided share link, enabling the inspector to keep a record of their checks. The inspection area now includes inspection lists made by you and members of your organisation. Inspections by you or your organisation of a particular certificate can also be reached from the digital certificate page.
Our ref: PR-1146
- Certification scheme renewal and application links to direct users to appropriate web pages. These new links augment the currently available certification scheme information link to help drive new applications and facilitate renewals from the platform.
Our ref: PR-1122
- The issued, received and inspected certificate pages now have improved and consistent menus allowing multiple filters to be applied together to improve searching through larger lists of certificates. The date range selector has also been improved to provide defaults and custom ranges on each of these pages. The inspected certificates page now makes use of the left-hand menu rather than non-standard tabs to display different types of inspections and self-presentations.
Our ref: PR-1114
- The certification scheme page now provides a name-on-certificate search facility for publicly viewable certificates issued within the scheme. This facilitiy makes it easier to find out if a particular person, organisation or thing is or has been certified and to click through and view the details.
Our ref: PR-1103
- Service accounts page now shows their API keys and activity in a drop-down area rather than having to go to a separate page.
- Users lists on organisation settings page improved and made more consistent on each page.
Our ref: PR-1078
- Added personal analytics for user profile views and received certificates.
- Improved the layout of some pages so that menu positions and page urls are more consistent across the platform.
- Bespoke ID of issued certificates, where applicable, now shown in the drop-down information on the issued certificates page.
Our ref: PR-1040
- Improved organisation settings layout with clearer menus.
- Improved analytics with custom date filter and a league table for certificate and certification scheme.
Our ref: PR-1021
- Revamped personal dashboard with personal settings, email addresses, and account security all now reached via one button. Personal analytics button ready for insights about your own profile and certificates along similar lines to that available for organisations. New ‘Interact’ button in place for some exciting features that will be rolled out soon.
- Additional filters on the Issued Certificates page allow results to be based on the accredited entity (organisation, individual or thing), whether the certificate's visibility is public or private, the ownership and verified status of the organisation, and the email status from when the certificate was sent. Certificates with name-mismatches can also be filtered.
- Improved organisation analytics now shows the key metrics in each section based on selectable time filters of month to date, last month, year to date, last year, and total.
Our ref: PR-988
- Searching issued certificates now includes the email address that the certificates were issued (sent) to.
Our ref: PR-980
- The next Bespoke ID that will be issued is now previewed in the certification scheme settings to help with fine tuning the format.
- A certificate search widget is now available for issuers to add to their website so that visitors can find certificates issued from one or more of their schemes and be directed to the digital certificate page.
- The pdf version (where applicable) of a digital certificate can now be downloaded as an 'Inspection Copy' by the issuer and recipient to share with those requesting a copy. This pdf ‘Inspection Copy’ also forms part of the formal inspection record when a digital certificate is inspected. This functionality is an option within the certification scheme settings.
- Self-uploaded certificates now have a clearer ‘View Evidence’ button, displaying the uploaded certificate file as a pdf with the ‘Inspection Copy’ watermark overlaid.
Our ref: PR-974
- Improved analytics for organisations, including headline data about the organisation profile page, product & service cards, received certificates, and issued certificates.
Our ref: PR-937
- Improved certificate inspection records, including tabulation of inspections by you and inspections of your certificates by others.
Our ref: PR-907
- Certificate schemes now have category tags to improve classification and searching.
- Improvements to the self-uploaded certificate page to help find schemes based on name and category, as well as only showing those relevant to the role of the user (i.e. displaying certification scheme options suitable for an individual or organisation).
Our ref: PR-875
- Date range search filter added for issued certificates which in turn improves the selection of data that can be downloaded.
- Improved options for requesting help or reporting an issue via the link in the footer.
Our ref: PR-856
- Improved layout of settings and associated instructions for smart badges.
- Added the ability to search your issued certificates based on the name of the (non-service account) issuer within your organisation.
- Added more choice for the auto-logout time: 1 hour, 10 hours, 1 day, 1 month, or never. 1 month is now the default setting.
- Included the custom fields and any suspended fields in the record of a certificate inspection.
Our ref: PR-827
- Added revised image placeholders for creating docx certificate templates.
- Improved the caching of pdf certificates so that once created they are quicker to view if there have been no changes since.
- Enabled the sorting of template schemes by creation date.
Our ref: PR-783
- Improved audit trail records for individuals and those acting on behalf of an organisation.
- More functionality on the table and card views of certificate schemes making it easier for those with lots of schemes to manage.
- Introduced a preview of a bespoke ID in the set format in pdf certificate templates.
- Improved default labels for certified things (for supply chain tracking, change of custody and viewing certificates).
Our ref: PR-767 & P32
- Time zone support for certificate schemes, enabling issue, start and expiry times to be set based on your scheme location rather than being fixed by our London-based server time zone. London (GMT / BST) will remain the default setting.
- Improved certificate editing options to cope with newly added and suspended custom fields in relation to when the certificate was issued.
- Improved API activity table for organisation accounts, allowing column ordering.
Our ref: PR-746 & P27
- Improved image placeholders in docx certificate templates for pdf certificates, allowing them to be stretched vertically or horizontally rather than being restricted to being a square. The replaced images retain their original aspect ratio but will fill the space defined by the placeholder, improving the rendering of rectangular images, logos, etc.
Our ref: PR-P25
- Added links to what's new (this page) and coming soon to the footer of the platform so users can quickly refer to these pages.
- The ‘select an account’ dashboard buttons now support organisation logos optimised for the default black background setting used on the organisation profile pages.
- Added improved error reports for issues relating to pdf certificate generation processed via an API request.
Our ref: PR-724
- Added a facility to download up to 250 issued certificate search results as a csv format for off-platform analysis.
- Organisation profile pages can now show relevant certification schemes that associated staff (users) are accredited to, showcasing personal training and attainment within an organisation.
- Organisation profile pages can now show product / service cards to help market what an organisation does alongside its accreditations.
- Searching issued, received and inspected certificates now supports accents, umlauts, etc.
- Incorporated links to this knowledge base.
- Added organisation contact details in organisation settings for forwarding customer enquiries and billing.
- Smart badges on websites and in email signatures now stay visible and link to a replacement / successor certificate issued to the same entity from the same scheme. This means if the renewal process involves issuing a new certificate rather than renewing (extending) an existing certificate, the smart badge code does not need replacing. This feature also works retrospectively for website embedded smart badges, but not for existing email embedded smart badges, so their code will need updating.
- Added ‘View as yourself / view as visitor’ options to personal profile pages and certification scheme pages. This feature was already available on organisation profile pages and was presented in a different way on the personal profile pages.
Our ref: PR-703
- Added links to reach a user's profile page from the organisation accounts list, enabling staff's personal profiles to be easily viewed.
Our ref: PR-619
- Added the ability to filter for the ‘imminent expiry’ of certificates on the issued, received, inspected and self-presented certificate tables.
Our ref: PR-596
- Added an ‘imminent expiry’ warning icon to the issued, received and inspected certificate tables.
- Added a new optional field in certification schemes for scheme owners to provide a weblink to their external information page.
Our ref: PR-590
- Added background transparency option for smart badges for embedding in websites and email footers
Our ref: PR-576
- Improved the management of service accounts for API automation. Included highlighting their permissions in the certification scheme overview and providing a warning about editing a scheme if it is likely to be in use by a service account, as this could introduce errors.
Our ref: PR-568
- Added the ability to delete ‘Test/Demo’ certificates.
- Added coloured email status icons to the issued certificates table to indicate if it has been sent, received, opened or rejected/bounced.
Our ref: PR-565
- Improved the interface for self-uploading legacy certificates with more information about the available schemes and who manages them.
Our ref: PR-562
- Added an icon to indicate if an organisation has a registered owner on the platform. This is visible both on the organisation profile page and the issued certificates table.
Our ref: PR-545
- Added some certificate insights for certification scheme owners showing:
- the percentage of their issued certificate smart badges that have been embedded on websites and emails.
- the number of views by date of their issued certificates, inspected certificates, website embedded smart badges and email embedded smart badges.
- the number of issued certificates by date for each of their certification schemes.
Our ref: PR-516
- Added password reset facility in account settings, rather than only being able to this from the login page.
Our ref: PR-513
Earlier updates, prior to 2023, are not publicly documented.