Certificates are issued for the whole tournament at once, not player by player. The order is: choose a template → press Create all diplomas → generate the images if you need them for print. In the player's account a certificate appears after the second step — an image is not required for that, it is needed for printing and export.
Everything to do with certificates lives on one screen: open the tournament, the ⋮ menu in the header → Certificates. The item is only there for someone who can edit the tournament — the organizer and their administrators.
If an event is made of several tournaments — a main event plus a few «Trials», the individual 1×1 tournaments — the certificates belong to the tournament the participants actually played. Open the ⋮ menu on the main event and you will see an empty certificate list, even though the trials have had theirs for weeks.
Check the name in the header: certificates are created and viewed in the same tournament that holds the participants' applications.
The same menu has Give achievement. An achievement is a badge in the player's profile (top scorer, MVP and the like) and is given to a named player. A certificate is a document built from a template and produced for every participant at once. This article is about certificates.
Step 1. The template
Until a template is chosen the screen shows Certificate template not selected! and a Select template button. It opens the organizer's list of templates: the current one is marked, any of them can be opened for editing, and the + button creates a new one — that opens the editor, the same one used for posters.
A template holds more than the picture and the layout: the heading, the body text, the link to the tournament, and the name and job title of the person signing.
The heading, text, link and signature are copied into every certificate at the moment it is created. If you edit the template after the certificates exist, the old ones keep the old text — to pull in the new one you have to create the certificates again (see the warning in step 2).
Step 2. Create the certificates
The Create all diplomas / Update data in previously created diplomas button makes one certificate per participant. Who exactly it picks up depends on the type of tournament:
| Tournament type | Who gets a certificate |
|---|---|
| Team | Every player from the teams' tournament applications. Players who have left the team are not included |
| Individual | Participants whose application has been accepted. Pending and declined ones are skipped |
When it finishes, the app reports how many certificates were made. From that moment the certificate is already attached to the player.
Despite the word "Update" in its name, the action first deletes every certificate of this tournament and creates them again. The images attached to the old certificates go with them and have to be generated again. Files you have already exported to your computer are not affected: the deletion only touches what is stored in the app. This is the normal way to pull in a changed roster or an edited template, but do not press the button "just in case" once everything has been printed.
Step 3. Images and printing
A certificate itself is a record; to print it or send it out you need images. That is what Bulk create images of certificates does: the app walks the certificates one by one and draws each from the template. The screen shows how long one takes and how many are left; Stop creation interrupts the run.
Interrupting is safe: generation always takes the next certificate without an image, so starting again continues where you stopped instead of redoing everything.
Three switches at the top change the result:
- Export images in PNG format — pictures are exported instead of PDF.
- Save certificates in one PDF file when exporting to ZIP — one team becomes one file rather than a pile of separate ones.
- Do not save images of certificates locally during generation — the pictures are only attached to the certificates, nothing is written to your computer. Handy when you are not printing.
The result is handed over by Export PDF in ZIP archive (or Export PNG in ZIP archive). Next to it are Delete all created images — which wipes only the pictures, the certificates stay — and Delete all diplomas, which removes everything.
Delete all created images removes the pictures from the certificates in the app. ZIP archives and individual PDF/PNG files you saved to your computer earlier stay where they are — the app cannot reach them.
Where the player sees a certificate
The player opens their profile → the Achievements tab → the Certificates tile with its counter → the list of all their certificates, newest first. The list shows the tournament and when the certificate was issued; tapping opens the certificate itself.
That list holds certificates from tournaments of both types — team and individual. There is no separate place where a player would see "certificates of this team" or "certificates of this tournament": one list covers all of the player's tournaments.
The certificate shows up for the player right after step 2. If the image has not been generated yet, the row in the list simply has no picture — but the certificate itself already counts. So if all you want is to mark the participants, step 3 can be skipped.
Troubleshooting
"Certificate template not selected"
No create button will work until a template is chosen — go back to step 1.
Certificates were not created for everyone
In a team tournament the source is the teams' tournament applications: if a player is not in the application, or is marked as having left, there will be no certificate. In an individual tournament only accepted applications count — check whether some participants are still pending.
The certificate list is empty although I created them
Most likely the wrong tournament is open. In events with child tournaments («Trials», age brackets) the certificates sit in the child tournament — the main event will not show them. Open the right tournament and try again.
A player cannot see their certificate
First check that they are looking in the right place: Achievements in their own profile, not the tournament page. If it is empty there while the certificate exists, the player's card in the tournament is most likely not linked to their main card: a certificate is issued to whichever card is in the application. Write to us and we will check the cards and link them.
The images disappeared after recreating the certificates
That is expected: Create all diplomas recreates the certificates from scratch, and the pictures go with the old records. Run the image generation again.
Next steps
Certificates are usually issued once the tournament is over — and how the app works out those results is covered in «How the standings are calculated».
Still stuck? Write to support@nsgsoft.me and we will help you sort it out.