Running online courses with a tool like Teachable can be a breeze. From managing attendees, to handling payments, Teachable can handle just about everything for you. All you need to do is teach the class!
Another great way you can improve your classes is to offer certificates for each of your attendees. With Formstack Documents, you can automatically generate certificates, invoices, and more right from Teachable. You’ll never have to manually create documents again.
In this example, we’re going to show you how to instantly generate a completion certificate after a student completes a course. The certificate will then be emailed directly to our student. With the help of Zapier, all of this will happen automatically.
To get started, we’re going to setup the template for our certificate using a Word document. Inside the Word document, we’re going to add our certificate information, then for the spots that we want to insert our student’s information we’re going to use merge fields that look like {$FirstName}, {$LastName}, etc.
Here’s what our certificate template looks like:
Once we have our template ready, we need to upload it to Formstack Documents. Inside Formstack, click "New Document" and enter a name. On the next step, pick Office Document, and then select the file from your computer.
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After you have uploaded your template, you’ll be taken to the "Settings" tab where you can modify various options like the type of file that you want to generate and the name of the file. For this example, we’re going to generate a PDF and include the name of our student in your file name.
Next, we’re going to setup the email delivery of our document so that the certificate is automatically emailed directly to our student. On the "Deliver" tab, click the Edit button on the default email delivery. For the email address, we’re going to use a merge field for the student’s email address. Feel free to customize any of the other settings of the email.
Once you have updated the email delivery, we’re all done with the setup process in Formstack Documents, and we’re ready to integrate with Teachable using Zapier. Inside Zapier, we’re going to create a "New Zap". For the Trigger, we’re going to choose Teachable as the service and then "Course Completed" as the trigger.
Once you have authenticated your Teachable account, Zapier is going to load a test student to make sure everything is working correctly. Follow those steps, and continue. Next, we’re going to setup the Action of our Zap. For the Action, we’re going to choose Formstack Documents and "Create Document Merge" as the action.
Once you authenticate your Formstack Documents account, Zapier is going to load a list of all your document templates. Select the certificate template that you setup at the start of the tutorial, and Zapier will load a list of all the merge fields in your document.
For each of the merge fields in your certificate, you’ll need to pick the corresponding fields from Teachable. This tells Zapier how to send your student data over to Formstack Documents so that it is populated in the correct spot on your document.
Once you have matched up all of your merge fields, save your Zap and turn it on. We’re ready for a test! Login to Teachable and mark one of your courses as complete. Zapier will detect this completion and send the data over to Formstack Documents and your certificate will be generated.
Here’s what our certificate looked like ready for our student:
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