Certificate Printing
- Seth Petry-Johnson
- Steve Ross
Summary
Many programs send printed certificates to members that complete a course or obtain a credential. The "Certificate Printing" feature allows program administrators to construct multiple types of documents using HTML templates and to configure which documents should be mailed out in response to which business events. Additional staff manage the print queue itself, printing the physical documents, mailing them out, and then tracking their status in the system.
Primary Business Case
A licensing program wants to send out a printed wall license and a wallet card when a practitioner first obtains the license. Each year when the practitioner submits for re-certification, they should get sent an updated wallet card but not a new wall certificate.
Additionally, customer service personnel want to see the status of those documents so that they can provide information and support to practitioners that call in and ask "where's my stuff?".
Alternate Business Case
A licensing program wants a record of the exact certificate generated for a practitioner. The program may never need to print the certificates as they are also provided for download. This may be needed so a program knows under which name or names a certificate has even been made available for download.
Demo
A video demo of the feature can be found here: https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/3327336990688957954
Terms and Concepts
Term / Concept | Definition |
|---|---|
Print Templates | Print Templates define the different types of documents that can be printed. They are defined using a similar syntax as Template Attributes (DRAFT). Each template produces an HTML document that that is ultimately converted into a PDF. These templates are often designed for a specific paper size and are capable of producing high fidelity, precisely laid out printed documents. These templates are constructed using the Razor language and, for security reasons, can only be edited by a System Administrator. |
Print Queues | Print Queues allow for different sets of documents to be generated for different business. Each queue has a unique name and is associated with one or more Print Templates. Whenever a Member Role is added to a Print Queue, every associated Template is rendered and resulting HTML document is stored in the database. This rendering happens as a background processing service to avoid performance issues and to provide scalability. |
Print Jobs | Print Jobs are how documents actually get sent to a printer. Whenever it's time to do a print run, an administrative user logs into the Admin → Print Queue page and creates a Print Job for a given queue. All of the documents in that queue that are ready to print are packaged up into a batch. Each batch contains one PDF file per Print Template, where each file contains one page (or group of pages) per Member Role in the batch. Each PDF file can then be sent to a printer. Upon a successful print run, the Print Job is marked as "complete" to indicate that the documents were printed and put in the mail. |
How are Member Roles added to a Print Queue?
There are two first-class ways to add documents into the Print Queue:
Using the Add Member Role to Print Queue behavior on a Workflow
Using the Member Profile → Printed Documents page
In addition, it is possible for a Custom Stored Procedure to add documents to the Print Queue if the trigger is not something that can execute a behavior on the Member Role for which the certification is to be generated.
Configuration
To use the Certificate Printing feature, you must:
Create one or more Print Templates (in Admin → Print Queue → Templates)
Create one or more Print Queues and link them to one or more Templates (in Admin → Print Queue → Queue Configuration)
Add an "Add Member Role to Print Queue" behavior to a Workflow
Grant at least one member the necessary permissions to manage the Print Queue
Permissions
Permission | Purpose |
|---|---|
Requirements
LearningBuilder 9.5 or later
Capabilities
System Administrators can define document templates with a high degree of precision, suitable for producing high-fidelity printed documents
Program Administrators can define "print queues" and choose which documents are printed for which queue
Flexible configuration options allow multiple entities to share a Workflow definition yet have separate Print Queues
Robust management tools provide a layer of quality assurance and allow document templates to be changed and documents to be reprinted if necessary
Program Administrators have a history of all certificates generated for each practitioner, including the ability to view and/or download the PDF used to create the certificate.