Overview

When someone completes a common Workflow, like an Examination or Course, we often want to produce an electronic artifact that displays the details of that activity in a pleasant and usable graphical form. We use the Workflow Completion feature for this purpose.

We also may want to produce a PDF document that supports a process such as an Invoice to pay by check or a downloadable summary of an employee evaluation or letter of reference.

Other examples of electronic artifacts are Certificates of Completion that a person uses to download and then share with an external source and Score Reports that provide a sophisticated interpretation of their exam results. We may also want to email a link to download the certification. Please see the PDF Templates entry for the various kinds of PDFs other than Entity Templates.

Step-by-Step Instructions

Follow these steps to create an Entity Templates:

• Configure your Workflow to contain the attributes you want to show in the PDF;

• Use an external HTML editor to create a visually pleasing document without the substitution variables;

• Create the template object in the System Administration → App Config → PDF Templates area

• Create the template on the same page in the PDF Template Section

• On the step in the Workflow you wish to display the PDF, use the Action menu to create a PDF in the quick actions. Configure the permissions to make sure:

• Complete a Workflow Instance to the point you see the PDF. Confirm that the PDF displays as you want with static values.

• Edit the PDF to introduce the substitution variables where you want them.

• Proceed to enter all substitution variables;

• Test with a variety of values, like:

  • No values

  • Long values

  • Values with the wrong data type

• To then enable sending a link to the template in an email:

  • Add a row on the System Administration → App Config → PDF Templates page in the Entity Template Area as follows:

    • PDF Template ID - The ID of the template created above.

      Entity ID - The Entity ID from the table on the page in the Entity Template Area that corresponds to the workflow on which you have configured the behavior.

    • Area - 8: Public; which allows access from an email without first logging in.

  • Make note of the Entity Template ID assigned to the new row.

  • Create a new email template (or add to an existing one) the following code where you want the link to appear:

    • ${@model.UrlForPublicTemplate(Entity_Template_ID)} where Entity_Template_ID is the ID from the Entity_Template table (not the PDF_Template table).

  • Add a behavior in the workflow to send the email at the appropriate point in the process.

Examples

We have several examples that can serve as starting points, including:

Score Report:

• ABOM Score Report

• Baseline Score Report

Certificate of Completion:

• LearningBuilder Academy Certificate

• Baseline Activity Completion Certificate