Certificate and Compliance Manager for Learndash — Documentation

Certificate ID formats

Choose the ID format before issuing live certificates. Existing IDs never change when the format, prefix or starting sequence is updated.

The custom prefix accepts 2–12 letters or numbers. The starting sequence is used only before the first sequential ID is issued; CCM does not reset or reuse sequence numbers.

Expiry rules

Set the default under Certificate Compliance → Settings. Each native LearnDash certificate can inherit the default or override it from the Certificate Verification Expiry panel.

The resolved expiry date is frozen into each issuance. Changing a certificate rule later does not rewrite historical records. Administrators can adjust an individual record’s expiry from Issued Certificates.

When CCM creates a record

CCM creates an issuance when LearnDash awards an assigned native Course, Quiz or Group certificate. A Quiz must meet LearnDash’s Certificate Awarded for threshold, which may be different from its ordinary passing score.

Installing CCM, editing a certificate or activating a licence does not silently create historical records. A later genuine retraining or qualifying award creates a new issuance while earlier credentials remain unchanged.

Add CCM shortcodes to the normal LearnDash certificate editor. They resolve for the specific learner and award represented by the protected LearnDash certificate URL.

Course evidence is optional and applies only to Course certificate records. The three evidence groups can be enabled independently under CCM Settings and overridden on an individual LearnDash Course.

Best passing attempt is the default assessment policy. Sites with stricter compliance rules can use the most recent passing attempt instead. Failed and incomplete quizzes remain visible in the counts but are not inserted into the average as zero scores.

Use the per-Course controls to inherit, show or hide each evidence group, set a required average and optionally require a minimum number of eligible quizzes. A Quiz can also be explicitly excluded from Course assessment summaries without removing it from LearnDash progression.

If no eligible assessment quizzes exist, CCM records the assessment as Non-assessable. The assessment result is evidence only: LearnDash remains responsible for deciding whether the Course is complete and whether its certificate is awarded.

More granular shortcodes are also available for individual step totals, Quiz counts, averages, required scores and attempt-history values.

Public verification

CCM creates a verification page containing [lecv_certificate_verification]. Visitors can search by certificate ID or open an issuance through its secure QR or verification URL without signing in.

Choose the Credential Card or Formal Record template, inherit the active theme accent where available or select a custom accent, and control the card width, border radius and site logo.

Learner name, completion date, expiry and instructor visibility can be configured. LearnDash Group names and IDs are hidden by default because they may identify an employer, client or department.

Certificate email

Course, Quiz and Group emails can be enabled independently. CCM sends the learner an HTML message with a verification button and a LearnDash-generated certificate PDF attachment. If PDF generation fails, the verification link can still be delivered.

The shared template provides Visual and Text editing modes. Available tokens include:

{learner_name}, {award}, {certificate_id}, {verification_url}, {completion_date}, {expiry_date}, {context_type}, {course_steps_summary}, {assessment_summary}, {attempt_history_summary}, {membership_group_names}, {membership_group_ids} and {membership_groups}.

Administrators can resend an eligible historical certificate email from the Issued Certificates report.

Administrator report

Certificate Compliance → Issued Certificates lists every issuance. Search or filter by certificate ID, learner, email, award type, status, issue date or expiry date.

Administrators can view a verification record, update its expiry, revoke or reactivate it, review an internal revocation reason and resend its email. Revocation reasons are not shown on the public verification page.

Front-end Certificate Report

Add [lecv_certificate_report] to a normal WordPress page to provide authorized users with a searchable, responsive report and scoped CSV export.

Use Certificate Compliance → Report Access to admit each user explicitly and assign only the required scopes:

Site administrators receive all-record access by default, following LearnDash conventions. Group Leader inheritance is disabled by default and does not admit every Group Leader automatically. The optional Compliance Officer role can be added without replacing a user’s other WordPress roles.

CCM begins with a 15-day full-feature trial. Activate a Pro or Agency key under Certificate Compliance → CCM License.

Deactivate or uninstall

Ordinary plugin deactivation retains records, settings and the server licence allocation. Use Deactivate this site on the CCM License screen when you intentionally want to release that site activation.

The clean-uninstall option permanently removes CCM tables, settings, expiry metadata, report-access assignments, generated QR files and the untouched plugin-created verification page. Take a full backup before enabling it.

No issuance record is created

Confirm a native LearnDash certificate is assigned to the relevant Course, Quiz or Group. For Quiz certificates, confirm the attempt met the separate Certificate Awarded threshold. Then check that the CCM trial or licence permits new issuance.

CCM fields are blank on a certificate

Blank fields mean no matching CCM issuance exists for that exact learner and award. CCM deliberately avoids reusing an older ID or QR code for a newer completion that did not create a record. Check Issued Certificates before changing the certificate template.

Verification page shows Not Found

Check that the correct verification page is selected and published. Use Repair or recreate page in CCM Settings if it was deleted, trashed or altered, then save WordPress permalinks if necessary.

QR code does not open on another device

Confirm the certificate was issued on a publicly reachable site. Local development URLs cannot normally be resolved by external phones or verification users.

Site logo appears missing

CCM uses the active theme or block-theme Site Logo and falls back to the WordPress Site Icon. A white transparent logo may be present but invisible on the white verification card.

Certificate email is not received

Confirm the relevant Course, Quiz or Group email is enabled, no competing certificate-email module is active, and WordPress email delivery is working. Review the issuance report for send status and test with a real receiving address.

Report access is denied or empty

Confirm the user was explicitly admitted under Report Access and has at least one Course, Quiz, Group, managed-Group or all-records scope. A WordPress role or LearnDash Group Leader assignment alone does not grant access.