EventsDesk: How do I upload a CPD certificate and send it to attendees?

CPD certificates can be given out to attendees of events which provide professional development and education. You will be provided with this option when you create a new event, and enable award CPD points as part of the Event's settings.

1. Create new event via "New Event" button, or edit an existing event's settings.
2.  Ensure that " Award CPD points" has been checked (refer to the screen shot above)
3.  Once checked, select a CPD template for your event's certificate by navigating to the Certificates section in Event's Settings.
4. You can also edit your CPD template and customise it to pull through specific details. Do this by downloading a template from the template list. The download icon sits next to the Link icon under 'Action'. Once you've downloaded a template, the file will be available to you on your device where you can edit it with Word or another text editing application.
5. You can include the fields from your event settings to populate the CPD certificate. Find them in this article.
6. Once the template has been set up and/or created, save your document and upload it in Event Settings > Certificates.
   Note: The document must be in .docx format or simply in standard Microsoft Word format.
7.  You publish certificates via email by providing the corresponding link, found in the certificates section of your EventsDesk settings.
8. Your email should be published to Event participants and not a mail group as the link uses registration IDs. If you publish to a mail group instead of your event's attendees, the certificate will not pull through the unique details of your event's attendees.
9. You can grab the link for your event CPD certificate from the same template list as before. The 'link' button can be found in the Action column.

How to publish an event's CPD certificate

1. Before sending out your certificates, ensure that attendees have been marked in your registrations tab. Your event's certificate should only be awarded to those who attended your event, after all!
   
2. Go to Email Composer, and create or clone a document. This will be the email sent out to event attendees with the link to download their unique CPD certificate.
3. Hyperlink a string of text in your email, outlining where the attendee can download their CPD certificate from. 
4. Once the email has been created and saved, click , and go through the publishing steps.
5. When you are defining your email's recipients, you MUST use the select participants option from the drop down menu (where you might usually select mail group).
6. You will then be able to select EventsDesk, and locate your event via the search bar. 
7. Click the checkbox which coincides with your event, and then only those participants whose status is marked attended via the drop down menu.
8. Each attendee who receives the CPD certificate will have their details populated in the certificate. 

Note: If you would like to test the CPD certificate first before sending it to the rest of your attendee list, register yourself as a guest, and mark ONLY yourself as an attendee. You will then need to go through the publishing of the email composer document (with the CPD link embedded) as instructed above.

What have we learned about CPD certificates?

• CPD certificates are awarded to event attendees who complete an event. Certificates are usually awarded for events which results in professional or educational development.
• You can award CPD certificates for any event, just check the 'Award CPD points' checkbox in your event settings.
• You can edit what details are shown on your CPD certificate, and more, by navigating to the 'Certificates' section of your event's settings, downloading the certificate template to your computer, and editing it using Word.
• To refer to the unique details of your certificate recipients in your certificate template, you will have to write out field names in $THIS_FORMAT$.