Overriding HTML certificate properties in Open edX Studio

In Tahoe, you get a lot of control over what appears on your certificates. But what happens when you want to totally customize a certificate for a particular course? What happens when you want to offer certificates for a partner organization on your site? That's where course-specific overrides come into it.

First, head on over to Studio, open up your course and head to Settings and Advanced Settings.

You're going to want the setting labelled Certificate Web/HTML View Overrides by scrolling down the page.

This field can hold a range of properties in JSON format that affect the text you'll find on your certificates for this course, namely:

  • Platform URL - "footer_about_platform_url" - This URL is where the user will be taken if they click the link on a certificate to learn more about your site.
  • Certificate banner text - "certificate_banner_text" - The text that appears in the "Congratulations you earned a certificate!" banner.
  • Certificate organization name - "certificate_custom_org_name" - The name of the issuing organization on the certificate.
  • About accomplishments text - "footer_about_accomplishments_text" - The text that appears at the bottom of the page in the footer, explaining what the certificate is.
  • 'We hereby'  - "we_hearby_text" - the first bit of text that appears in the body of the certificate text, normally something like "We hereby certify that:"
  • Header text - "header_text" - Text that appears in the header of the page, typically only shown to the learner who claims the certificate to congratulate them
  • Optional certificate text - "optional_cert_text" - Extra text that appears below the course name at the bottom of the certificate
  • About the Platform text - "footer_about_platform_text" - Text that appears in the footer of the page explaining what your platform and organization do and why you can issue the certificate
  • 'Successfully completed' text - "successfully_completed_text" - The bit of text that appears after the user's name and the 'We hereby' text. This is normally something like "has successfully completed the course"
  • Short platform description - "short_platform_description" - Another short description of your platform for people who visit and go 'Who are these people giving these beautiful certificates?'
  • Footer copyright text - "footer_copyright_text" - additional copyright text at the bottom of the page for your trademarks and other such legal things

In case you want to skip ahead, here's a full list in the correct format, but you'll only want the ones that you specifically want to customize. We've got a specific example about this below.

{ 
    "footer_about_platform_url": "https://NEWsite.com",
    "certificate_banner_text": "NEW certificate banner text",
    "certificate_custom_org_name": "NEW certificate_custom_org_name",
    "footer_about_accomplishments_text": "NEW footer_about_accomplishments_text",
    "we_hereby_text": "NEW we hereby text",
    "header_text": "NEW header text",
    "optional_cert_text": "NEW optional_cert_text",
    "footer_about_platform_text": "NEW footer_about_platform_text",
    "successfully_completed_text": "NEW successfully completed",
    "short_platform_description": "NEW short platform description.",
    "footer_copyright_text": "NEW footer_copyright_text"
 }

Let's look at a specific example, because not everyone likes working with JSON.

Change the issuing organization name

To just change one property, such as the issuing organization, you need the "certificate_custom_org_name" property. That looks something like this:

{ 
    "certificate_custom_org_name": "University of Smartsville"
}

You just have to replace the second part with whatever you want to show up on your certificate.

If you want to do more than one property, you just have to add a comma between them, for example let's change the organization name, and also change our footer copyright text:

{ 
    "certificate_custom_org_name": "University of Smartsville",
    "footer_copyright_text": "Copyright University of Smartsville 2020"
}

Make sure you hit Save when you're done!

If you run into any trouble with this feature or get stuck, just reach out to support or your assigned Customer Success Manager. We'll help you figure it out!

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