How it works
Completion certificates are a per-course setting in Alva Courses. When enabled, the app watches each student's progress and, the instant they complete every lesson in the course (and pass every quiz, if the course requires it), awards them a personalised certificate showing their name and the course title. They can download it from their course player and, once the certificate email is switched on, a PDF is emailed to them — no manual issuing on your side. On a course that requires evaluation the trigger is different; see below.
Enable certificates for a course
1. Open the course settings
In the Shopify admin, open Alva Courses, click Courses, select the course you want, open its Settings tab, then open the Learning tab.
2. Enable the certificate
In the Certificates card, select Enable Certificates — new courses have it selected already. The course uses your store's default certificate design, ready to use as-is or to brand later.
3. Set the completion rule
The certificate is issued once a student completes every lesson in the course. If Require all quizzes to be passed is ticked in the same card, they must also pass every quiz. Check that all the lessons you want counted are published, so a student can reach 100% progress and trigger the award.
4. Switch on the certificate email
Save the course, then go to Settings → Email Settings and, under Certificate Email Template, click Edit Certificate Template (the Customize link in the course's Certificates card opens the same page). On the Certificates page, under Email Certificate, tick Enable Email and save. It starts switched off, and Alva Courses emails no certificates while it is off — students can still download theirs from the player.
The box belongs to the design picked in the Course dropdown. On Use store default it covers every course without its own design; a course with its own design has a separate box, so tick it there too, and on each variant's design. To edit the message itself, see the certificate email.
5. Test it
Enrol as a test student and complete the lessons. Confirm the certificate is awarded in the player and that the email arrives with the PDF attached before you announce it.
What learners see
As soon as a student finishes the course, their course player congratulates them with a Download Certificate button, and the same button appears on the course's card in their course list. The PDF carries their name, the course title and the completion date. With the certificate email on, the same certificate is emailed to them as a PDF attachment, so they keep a copy even after they leave the player.
Courses that require evaluation
If the course has Require manual evaluation before completion switched on, finishing every lesson is no longer enough to earn a certificate. The student submits their work, an evaluator reviews it, and the certificate is released only once that evaluation passes. While a submission is still pending, or after a request for revisions, there is no certificate to download and none is emailed.
See turn on course evaluation for the workflow, and add a grade to a certificate to print the grade the student earned.
See also
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Last updated 2026-10-22