Integrate with Credly’s platform to issue verifiable badges to students for courses they complete in Skilljar. In this article, we'll explain what Credly badges are, how they benefit the student, and how you can integrate them with your Skilljar platform. 

For more information about Credly and to receive specific Credly product support, please visit their website. 

What are Credly badges?

Credly is a third-party application that can integrate with your Skilljar training platform and award badges to students after they have completed one or more of your courses.

When the students accept their badges within Credly, they can promote the badges internally and share them on social media platforms such as LinkedIn. When a viewer clicks on a public, shared badge, they see a description of the event, skills developed, and verifiable information linking directly to the completed course. 

Note: 

• To integrate Credly with Skilljar, you need to have a Credly subscription.
• To set up the Credly integration, contact your Implementation Manager or your Customer Success Manager. They’ll partner with you to set up, test, and go live with the integration.

Student Experience

Earn a badge

Students can earn a badge by completing a single course. 

When a student completes a course with an associated badge, Skilljar issues a Credly badge to the student. By default, badges are issued in a pending state.

Accept a badge

There are two ways that a student can accept a badge:

1. Credly email: Upon course completion, the student receives email from Credly with a call-to-action to accept their badge.
2. Student Profile: If you choose to enable the Student Profile “Badge Earned” table via the Skilljar integration, a student can accept their badge via this page.

Students must go to Credly to create their profile, if they do not yet have an account tied to the email they use in Skilljar, and to accept the badge.

First name, last name, and email address are pre-filled for the account sign-up in Credly so that students only need to set their country, and password, and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. If a student already has a Credly account with the same email as their Skilljar email address, they need to sign in to accept the new badge.

As a next step, Credly will open the badge. Students need to click “Accept Badge” to officially accept the badge.

After accepting the badge, the student is asked to define settings for their Credly profile. Students can select “Auto Accept” so that they do not need to return to Credly to accept future badges.

View badges earned

If the Student Profile “Badges Earned” table is enabled, the student can see all badges earned from your Credly Organization as the issuer, including past badges earned prior to enabling the Skilljar integration:

1. For badges that have not been accepted, the student profile link will direct to the badge-specific page in Credly so that the student can accept the badge.
2. For badges that have been accepted (including auto-accepts), the link will direct to the Credly dashboard with all of the badges the student has earned. They can click on a badge on their dashboard to view badge details.

Note: The “Badges Earned” table on the Student Profile will not appear on a student’s profile until they have earned a badge.

Share badges

Students can share their badges via Credly. They can share their badge via:

• Social channels: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Xing
• Email
• Direct link
• Embed code for web pages, blogs, etc.
• Badge download, according to the open badge specification

Students are not able to share their badge directly from Skilljar.

Set up the integration

Note: To set up the Credly integration, contact your Implementation Manager or your Customer Success Manager. They’ll partner with you to set up, test, and go live with the integration.

Integration requirements

Once you have your badges set up in Credly, you’re ready to set up the integration with Skilljar. You’ll need to:

1. Verify that Credly’s SSO feature is turned on for your Credly Organization to ensure Student Profile links connect successfully with Credly. You can contact your Credly point of contact to confirm.
2. Verify that the badges you want to connect to a Skilljar course are set to Active in Credly.
3. Set up the Credly integration settings in your Skilljar Organization(s). This requires:
   • A name you can choose to identify your integration clearly in Skilljar (for example, ACME Corporation Credly Integration)
   • Credly Organization ID
   • Credly API Token
     • Note: If you are using a sandbox instance of Credly to test your integration, the website that you visit to get their credentials is https://sandbox.Credly.com/. You can swap out the Credly API Token and ID to your Product token within the same integration when you’re ready to go live.
4. Define the badges in Skilljar. You’ll provide your Implementation Manager or Customer Success Manager:
   • Skilljar Course ID(s), and respective Course Title(s)  for which the badge(s)  should be issued
   • Credly Template ID(s), and respective Credly Template Name(s) of the badge template you want to use to issue the badge.
     
     
     
     • Optional: Badge Expiration Duration - The number of months and days after which the badge expires. 
     • Optional: Method - Select one of these issuing methods. 
       • Only issue badge - We’ll issue a new badge whenever a student successfully completes the course. If no method option is chosen, this will be used as the default.  
       • Only update badge - We’ll check to see if the student has an existing badge from this badge template and update the expiration date. The badge issued_at date will still be the issue date of the original badge. We don’t issue a new badge if this student doesn’t have an existing badge from this template.
       • Issue or update badge - We'll check if the student has an existing badge from this badge template and update its expiration date. If there is no existing badge then a new one will be issued to the student. 
   • Confirm if you would like the Student Profile  “Badges Earned” table either:
     • Enabled / visible for those students that have earned badges, or
     • Not enabled / hidden for students that have earned badges.

Course Settings

As part of the integration setup, we recommend reviewing your course settings to align with the desired experience. If the issuance of the badge is based on passing a quiz within the Skilljar course, you can manage this at the course level. 

1. Within the Course Details section, navigate to the Course Score section. 
2. Select the "Use Lesson Score As Course Score" option
3. Select the lesson that contains the associated quiz
4. Select "Mark the course as complete if the student passes or fails"
   • With these settings enabled, the badge will only be issued upon successful completion of the course. 
   • This will allow you to set customized completion emails for if the student successfully passes the quiz or if they did not pass the quiz. Learn more here.  

Learn more: Marking a Course as Complete Regardless of Pass/Fail Status.

Testing and verification

When a student completes a course with a Credly badge successfully:

• Students will receive an email from Credly that prompts them to accept their badge and
• Credly admins will be able to see the badge issue event in the Credly dashboard.

When the Badges Earned table on the Student Profile page is enabled:

• Students can click “Accept” to accept their badge for their first badge or subsequent badges if the student chooses not to turn on the auto-accept badges setting in Credly.
• Students will be redirected to Credly when they click the badge link from the table on their student profile page.

Note: You can manually complete students with a Pass / Fail status and score in Skilljar to trigger a badge to issue. Learn more: Manually Issuing Certificates.

Frequently asked questions

Credly and Skilljar Accounts

Is there an option to use SSO so that students don’t have to create a Credly account?

No, students must have a Credly account with the current integration. 

Skilljar submits the first name, last name, and email address of the student to Credly, and Credly displays this information on the sign-up form so that students only need to set their country, password, and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Once the student’s Credly account is set up, the student has an active log-in, and they’ve accepted their badge, clicking on a badge in Skilljar will automatically open the Credly dashboard for this student.

Will students see badges they earned before you used the new integration?

Yes, all badges associated with your Credly organization and the email address Skilljar has for this student will display on the profile page. 

For example, a student may have earned badges from your company before your company started using the Skilljar / Credly integration, as well as from a number of other companies that offer badges via Credly. The student profile page will show the badges the student earned via Credly from your company, and will not display the badges they have earned from other companies.

Students will see past badges issued from your organization when they use the same email address for Skilljar and their Credly account. 

What happens if a student’s email address changes?

Credly offers the option for students to merge accounts or add additional email addresses to their primary account. Badges associated with all email addresses on a student’s Credly account will be displayed in their Credly dashboard. Students need to log in to their Credly account, click on their avatar in the top right corner, click on ‘Settings’, and then ‘Account’. They can select ‘Add an Email Address’ or ‘Merge an Account.’ 

In Skilljar, only the badges associated with the student’s current email address are listed on the profile page.

Credly Notifications

Are students reminded about new badges if they don’t claim them right away?

If a student doesn’t accept their badge, they will receive two reminder emails:

• The first reminder is sent the day after they earned the badge, and 
• The second reminder is sent four days after they earned their badge.

Can students opt-out of receiving new emails from Credly?

Yes, students need to log in to their Credly account, navigate to their avatar in the top right corner, click on ‘Settings’, and then ‘Notifications’ to opt-out of emails.

Can you turn off email notifications for students?

Emails are sent by Credly when a badge is issued to a student. Currently, there is no option for you to opt students out of Credly notifications from Skilljar. 

Skilljar Setup

Are students notified about their new badge on your Skilljar training domain?

Students do not receive any notification on your training domain when they earn a badge.

You can add content to the last, optional lesson of a course to inform the student about earning their badge and a call-to-action (for example.  “Navigate to your Student Profile page to accept your badge.”).

Am I able to define and add badges when authoring a course on my own?

At this time, you’ll need to reach out to your Customer Success Manager or Implementation Manager to add additional badges to courses in Skilljar.

Is the “Badges Earned” table on the Student Profile page available in languages other than English?

No, the Badges Earned table on the Student Profile page is currently only available in English.

Can I move the order of the “Badges Earned” below the “Registrations” table on the Student Profile?

The “Badges Earned” table will always display above the Registrations table.

Badge Functionality

If I add the new badge to an existing course, do students who have completed the course in the past receive a badge upon adding the integration?

No, the new badges are only issued going forward from the moment the badge is installed on the course. 

On what criteria can I grant a badge?

Currently, you can grant a badge based on the completion, or successful completion, of a single course.

Does Skilljar support badges with an expiration?

Currently, Credly badges in Skilljar do not expire. 

What happens if you revoke a badge from a student?

If you revoke a badge from a student, the badge will no longer appear in the Badges Earned table on the Skilljar Student Profile.

What happens if a student takes the same course again?

When a student successfully completes a course again:

• If the Credly badge template is set so that it can be issued twice to the same student, the student earns a new badge from the same template. Both badges will look identical. 
• If the Credly badge template does not allow being issued more than once to the same student, the student will not earn another badge.