How to issue European Digital Credentials for Learning

Overview of webtools

Note: We encourage you to explore EDC using our available webtools, but know that you can also implement your own custom-built infrastructure based on the open source code available on code.europa. 

These tools are designed to provide a foundation and comprehensive starting point for your EDC issuing journey. First, open an Online Credential Builder account where you can create various reusable templates only accessible to you. Once you built a credential template, you can proceed to adding the personal data layer, including your credential recipients’ names, identifiers and, if applicable, grades, then issue these personalised credentials to your learners. Please note that data from this layer of personal information is never stored in the EDC infrastructure. Next, you can proceed to sealing the credentials using an advanced or qualified electronic seal, thus ensuring the verifiability of the issued credentials’ origin and authenticity. (Read more about how to acquire an electronic seal here – or consult the Mandated Issue section to find out how a third party can issue credentials, with your authorisation, on your organisation’s behalf). Once sealed, credentials can be sent directly to learners’ wallets and/or email addresses. This brings us to the next functionality, storing. 

EDCs can be securely stored in Europass, and/or other EDC standard compliant wallets, from which recipients can open their credentials with a single click. Credential holders, however, are not required to have a wallet, EDCs received via email can also be uploaded directly in the EDC Viewer to verify their authenticity and validity, and visualise the whole data content.

Credential holders can also allow third-parties to check their credentials’ authenticity, validity and content via share links that they can customise to expire on a chosen date. This option is however only available if credentials are stored within a Europass or another wallet that would provide such a functionality.

Below, we will provide you with an overview of how to build and issue credentials. To check how to store, verify and share, please refer to these pages.

European Digital Credentials for Learning (EDC) are electronically sealed, EU standard-compliant digital records issued by a legally registered organisation to a person. They contain a claim, or a group of claims, about the learning the credential holder has undertaken. EDCs can be awarded for formal education and training, non-formal learning, online courses, volunteering experiences, learning mobility experiences, and more, and take the form of degrees, diplomas, certificates of participation or other credentials. Learners are empowered to share their multilingual tamper-evident Verifiable Credentials with chosen third-parties, e.g. prospective employers, to demonstrate their knowledge, skills, competences and qualifications, irrespective of the source of their acquisition. EDCs can be sent to learners by email or by direct deposit into their standard-compliant wallets (e.g. Europass).

EDC summary and the instant and automatic authentication and verification checks

EDCs are composed of two layers: the content or metadata of the credential, which includes all the information the issuing organisation wishes to include (credential title, details of learning achievements, assessments, learning outcomes, etc.) as shown in the picture below, and the signed ‘envelope’, covering the area of authenticity, origin, and validity of credentials. A digital signature is added to the metadata at the time of signing the credential with an eIDAS compliant electronic seal (read here for further information about eIDAS). After a credential is sealed, the seal’s integrity is instantly and automatically checked every time a credential is viewed – see the full list of “Authentication” and “Verification” checks in the picture above and/or in this sample credential. EDCs cannot be issued without first sealing them, so while we encourage you to start your process by building credential templates, if you are interested in how to acquire an electronic seal, you can skip to that section and read more about the process. 

EDCs contain rich data that is structured based on the European Learning Model (ELM). Below you can see how that structured data can be navigated in the EDC Viewer. Start by clicking on the claim, in this instance a learning achievement titled "Digital micro-credential creation". When you click on the arrow to expand the tab, you will be able to explore other related claims associated with the achievement. In our example, these claims include the entitlement "Right to enrol in the training course 'Advanced use of EDC'" (see point 2 in figure below), the activity, i.e. "EDC building training course" (see point 3) that led to the achievement ‘Digital micro-credential creation’ (see point 1), and a "Digital artifact assessment" (see point 4) that proved the acquisition of the learning outcomes linked to the achievement.

Details of the achievement claim included in the credential

Navigation between linked claims

If you want to learn more about the technical standards for European Digital Credentials for Learning, visit our code.europa pages to access sample credentials and technical standards. 

Access the Online Credential Builder by logging in with your EU Login ID. If you do not have an EU Login account, click on ‘Create an account’ and follow the procedure (this should not take you longer than 5 minutes).

Important: We encourage you to read through the full guide once prior to starting the creation of your credentials, as this may avoid some mistakes that would occur along the way. 

Note: An EU Login account is personal and must not  be shared within your organisation. The person creating the credential templates does not need to be the same person as the person issuing the credentials.  The information layer about the credential-issuing organisation will only be added at the subsequent sealing stage, after the templates have been supplemented with the credential recipients’ personal and achievement data and converted into standard compliant JSON files. Therefore, as the information on the issuing organisation is retrieved from the electronic seal, you do not need to have an organisational account for creating the credentials.

Once you have logged in to the Online Credential Builder, in the ‘Credential Template’ section you will be able to create, assemble and save EDC templates, that you can edit or clone later. From the main OCB screen, you can access two tabs: Credentials and Elements. 

Besides the main Credential templates, there are 8 Element templates to support you in systematically recording your credential data: Achievements, Learning Outcomes, Activity, Assessments, Organisations, HTML information and Accreditations Essentially, these are the building blocks that you can create to compile your credentials. In each tab, the mandatory data fields are marked with a red asterisk (*). You can create as many templates as you like under each element, and then link them to other templates by selecting from a custom drop-down menu. For example, once you created and saved one or more organisation templates under the Organisations tab, you can choose any of them as an awarding organisation in an achievement or activity template under the Achievements and Activities tabs. Please note that you can only save your templates once you filled in all the required information fields. 

The credential templates are divided into distinct sections

EDCs can be multilingual, but every credential must have one primary language, i.e. the default language in which the credential content is displayed in the EDC Viewer. Before you start building your credential template, select the language you wish to make primary from the top right corner of the EDC Issuer page. The platform offers a multilingual option that allows users to choose any of the 29 Europass available languages. The system automatically sets the template's primary language to match the navigation language of the Issuer portal. It is essential to choose the primary language carefully at the beginning because it cannot be changed once the credential is created. Once the primary language is set, additional languages can be added and removed. 

Selecting the EDC Issuer’s navigation language also determines 
the primary language of the credentials created in the OCB

Adding another language

To add another language, select it from the drop-down menu from the top of the credential or other element template as shown below. Once selected, a new template window will appear next to the primary language tab. Please note that the credential content in additional languages will be automatically populated with all the data that is either language independent (i.e. dates and numbers) or that comes from a multilingual controlled vocabulary (i.e. credential, activity and assessment types, names of countries and languages, etc.), but you will need to provide the translated content for all other fields you wish to include in your credential template in the additional languages. 

Creating multilingual credential content

NOTE: Even if you do not make your content multilingual, the issued credentials will always be navigable in all 29 Europass languages. By changing the navigation language, all template titles and field labels will automatically be available in the selected language, aiding the interpretation of the credential content even without full translation.

Start by creating the supporting organisation(s) template(s). Organisations can play the role of awarding claims contained in the credential, conducting learning activities, assessing the acquisition of learning outcomes, or acknowledging the credential holders' entitlements.

To create an organisation, you must provide the following information:

• The legal name, full official name of the organisation, as registered with national authorities; 

• The legal identifier, the official registration number of the organisation, as awarded by the relevant national authority (e.g. a company registration number, PIC, VAT number, or other relevant identifier);

• The legal address of the organisation, at minimum the country in which the organisation is legally registered.

You are free to provide as many additional organisation details as you wish, e.g. homepage, contact details or a logo.

Once you have saved your organisation template, it will appear in the tab menu where you can see all the organisation templates you created. You can edit, delete, or duplicate them at any time.

Note: Most probably, you only need to create one template to describe the organisation that will be the awarding body of all the claims your credentials will ever contain. However, in some cases you may need to reference several organisations in your credential, for instance to account for mobility experiences at a different institution, or to indicate that certain achievements can be recognised for credit by other organisations. You can indicate these roles in the various other templates (see picture below). 

In a digital credential different roles may be played by different organisations

The EDC infrastructure makes a distinction between the Awarding Body of a credential and the issuing (also known as signing) organisation of a credential. In your credential templates, you can only supply information related to awarding bodies. The information about the issuing/signing organisation will be automatically retrieved from the electronic seal, i.e. the digital equivalent of the organisation’s rubber stamp, that is used for sealing and issuing a credential. For further information on this aspect, skip to the section on Issuing credentials. 

To create a complete credential template, click on the “Credentials” tab and select the new credential template. This will be the basis of your credential. Here you will need to specify the credential title, the valid from date of your to-be-issued credential, the type of credential and include one or more claim(s) by linking one or more Achievement, Activity, Entitlement or Assessment templates. 

When starting to build your credential you will see that there are a lot of different fields available with only few of them mandatory (these fields are marked with a red asterisk). For the various types of credentials you can build, such as diplomas, micro-credentials, letters of recommendation, certificates of participation, etc., different sets of these fields are applicable and meaningful. Therefore, you will always need to judge for yourself what overall data suits your unique use case best. While the mandatory fields are limited, we encourage you to make your credentials as data rich as possible, thinking beyond your traditional credentialing practices, and considering your learners’ interests, e.g. how they can utilise these credentials to prove their suitability for job vacancies or further studies. Conversely, if a field is not relevant to your credential or otherwise does not apply to your use-case, feel free to leave it blank. 

Note: Keep in mind that when issuing the credentials, you will be able to choose which parts of the template you want to customise for each recipient: for instance, you will be able to select from a full list of courses the specific subset in which a learner participated, or to adjust the validity dates of each individual course. Therefore, your template can be quite general, and the customisation can happen at the level of the recipient.

Valid from date

The valid from date is specified in the template and can be the same or different from the date when the credential will be actually issued (this date will be set the moment the credential is sealed and sent). You may also choose to provide an expiration date for the credential. However, this expiry date is not mandatory.

Choosing the Credential Type

Choosing the Credential type

The Generic template is the basic template for creating a credential. You can issue any credential as a generic type credential, including attendance certificates, transcripts of records, employer recommendations, etc.

An Accredited credential is distinguished by an additional layer of validation that checks if the issuing organisation is authorised to grant the qualification according to specific (usually national) accreditation standards. If your institution or the programme for which you are issuing a credential is accredited, you can link this specific accreditation record to the credential, contingent upon the record being published in the Accreditation database, that forms part of the Qualification Dataset Register (QDR). Currently, accreditation records available in the Database of External Quality Assurance Results (DEQAR) can be referenced in the OCB, and, consequently, in EDCs. 

While we encourage the use of Accredited type credentials if possible, please note that it is not a requirement for issuing qualifications nor for other types of credentials that may be accredited and for which there is currently no accreditation record available.

To create an Accredited credential, select the ‘Accredited’ option. Then under the heading ‘Accreditation’, you will need to link your accreditation. You will not be able to create an Accredited credential without providing a valid accreditation identifier. 

To find your Accreditation Identifier, access the DEQAR database.

1. Find the accreditation record that you want to reference on the EQAR homepage under the database menu. You can search either by institution or report;

2. Expand the report details, then scroll and select the permalink. Copy the URL provided and paste it into the “Accreditation” field within the credential template.

3. The accreditation field should turn green if there are no errors after pasting (please be cautious while typing and ensure that you do not leave extra spaces unintentionally).

Referencing accreditation records from DEQAR

If your accreditation record is not available in the DEQAR database, you can add your accreditation information manually. To do so, in your Organisation template, you can click on the blue ‘Create new’ button next to the Accreditation field and fill in the template’s data fields as shown on the figure above 2. 

Creating an organisation specific accreditation template manually

Selecting the Diploma Supplement (temporarily unavailable) as your credential type, you will be able to issue a Diploma Supplement as an EDC, meaning that your credential will be ELM standard-compliant and also previewed in the familiar Diploma Supplement visual form (please note that you will not be able to further customise look and feel of these credentials). Furthermore, credentials of this type will automatically be subject to an accreditation check every time they are viewed by their owners or authorised third parties (e.g. prospective employers or admission officers). The procedure to create this type of credential is otherwise the same as that of an Accredited credential.

Claims

To create a valid credential template, you will need to link at least one claim to it. A claim is a documented statement about a person’s learning, e.g. activity participation, the passing of an exam, eligibility for jobs or further studies, which is the core content of your credential. The ELM distinguishes between four types of claims, all of which have custom template forms in the OCB.

• Achievements: recognised and/or awarded sets of learning outcomes of an individual, describing the acquisition of knowledge, skills or competences. Example: Ana Andromeda completed the course ‘Applied Mathematics’ with a grade ‘5 – excellent’, proven by a written test, as part of her degree in Civil Engineering awarded in 2025.

• Activities: learning processes which can lead to gaining knowledge, skills, or competences. Example: Ana Andromeda received a credential for her participation in the “Workshop Sustainability in Digital Transitions” 30/05-03/06 2023 organised and provided by the Institution of Sustainability in Brussels.

• Entitlements: rights, e.g. to practise a profession, to take part in a learning opportunity or to join an organisation, as a result of the acquisition of knowledge, skills or competences. Example: Ana Andromeda completed her bachelor in European Studies in the University of XXX. As a result of the completion of her degree, she received an entitlement to enrol in the Master’s programme of European Studies in the University XXX.

• Assessments: processes that evaluate a learner’s knowledge, skills, and competences against specific criteria such as learning outcomes or competence standards. Example: Ana Andromeda received the grade 90% - Excellent in the Multiple-Choice Test on Digital Skills of 23 May 2023 and this is shown in her transcript of records issued as a credential by the Public Employment Service Centre.

In many use cases the main claim would be an Achievement, eg taking the form of a full qualification or micro-credential that can be linked to participation in Learning activities.  The achievement might also be proven by Assessments . However, there are specific examples where a credential only contains Activity claims (e.g. in certificates of participation) or Assessments (e.g. in the case of a Transcript of Records).

Quite often a credential may contain more than one claims. Also, there are different ways to structure a credential, depending on how you wish to emphasise the links between the different claims. We invite you to first familiarise yourself with the different types of claims to understand which would be relevant to you. Once you have completed this exercise, you may decide whether you wish to have several independent claims at the highest level (for instance achievements and assessments) or prefer to demonstrate, for example, that an achievement is proven by a specific assessment – linking this assessment to the achievement. To better understand the links between the different elements on the data level, you can consult this sample credential, or the European Learning Model browser. 

Structuring your credential

You can either start by creating a single credential template and add new elements to it directly as you go along the building process (see figure below) or create each of these elements individually and assemble them into a credential subsequently (see figure below). Should you wish to first create the individual elements, you can do so by clicking on the element in question in the ‘elements’ tab. As each element is self-standing, they can be used in multiple credentials (i.e. once you have created your organisation in the OCB, you will not need to re-enter its details for each credential template you wish to create. Similarly, if a specific learning activity is included in different credentials, you can reuse the existing template). 

Creating and linking new templates to a credential template

Linking existing templates to a credential template

Tip: at the bottom of each template form, you will have the option to populate the ‘Tag’ field. If you are creating many different credential templates, use the tag to help you easily link existing templates to your credential by allowing you to search for the tag instead of the full title of the claim or other element. 

The illustration below shows an example of how you can link various existing templates together. The screenshot on the far left shows how you can link various Claims (i.e. Achievements, Activities, Entitlements and Assessments) to your base credential templates. The screen shot in the centre shows a snippet of the additional data fields that you can fill in to give a detailed description of a learning activity claim. Then the final screen on the right-hand side shows some of the data fields you can fill in to describe the organisation that awards the activity claim. 

Credential structure established in OCB

Once the credential template is complete and all linked element templates are also sufficiently detailed, the issued credential will mirror this data structure in the EDC Viewer as well, as shown below.

Credential structure displayed in the EDC Viewer

Achievements

Learning Achievements are recognised and/or awarded sets of Learning Outcomes of an individual, describing the acquisition of knowledge, skills or competences. Overall, there are more than 30 data fields in the achievement template, therefore, to make the form more accessible, the information is divided into the following sections: ‘Achievement Information’, ‘Further Details’, ‘Links to other elements’, ‘Qualification’ and ‘More Information’. 

Achievement Information

In this section of the template, you can supply high level information about the achievement, such as its title and description, you can specify the date when it was awarded and the organisation(s) that awarded the claim, and provide an array of linked Learning Outcomes, as well as an overall learning outcome summary. For advice on how to write short learning outcomes, you can refer to these Guidelines.

Only the Achievement title and the specification of (at least one) Awarding Body are mandatory fields. The other fields can be populated as applicable to your use case.

Further Details

In this section of the Achievement template, you can specify a variety of fields according to your needs and references. These include the specification of the achievement’s thematic area (according to the International Standard Classification of Education - ISCED-F ), the language and mode of learning, the type of achievement, volume of learning (estimated number of hours spent engaged in learning), maximum duration in months, number of credit points (from within the ECTS or other frameworks), target group, learning setting (formal or informal), and a narrative description of entry requirements (i.e. the criteria to be met in order to start the learning opportunity leading to the achievement). 

Links to other elements

In this section of the OCB, you can connect other templates to your Achievement. You can either add these by clicking on the blue ‘Create new’ button or selecting from existing templates by typing their titles in the data field. Each linked item will appear as blue tags underneath the corresponding fields, as shown on the screen shot below.

Very often learning achievements are influenced by learning activities (the learner has to take a course), proven by learning assessments (e.g. written exams or project work), and they can indicate entitlements that allow the credential holder to practice a profession or enroll in further studies. Achievements (e.g. a Master’s degree, as shown on the illustration below) may also have sub-components, in our example case the individual subjects of the degree programme.

High level structure of a credential

Qualification

In the ‘Qualification’ section, if applicable to your credential, you can specify whether the achievement is a qualification or a partial qualification, and you can specify an achievement’s European Qualifications Framework level and/or National Qualifications Framework level where applicable.

More information

If the data fields in the previous sections did not allow you to document everything about a learning achievement, in this final part of the template you will be able to enter information about educational or qualification levels outside of the EQF and NQF frameworks, specify the subject area from your chosen external classification, provide a detailed description of the national education system, and add more information and links to external web pages and other relevant documents.

To add this custom information that is not covered by the ‘standard’ fields, you will need to add a title for your field, as well as its content. For instance, if you wish to be able to specify the academic year, you would add ‘Academic Year’ as the topic title and ‘2024’ as the content.

Should you be uncertain whether there may be a field corresponding to the information you would like to display, you can contact the EDC Support Team for assistance.

Learning Outcomes

The OCB allows you to create detailed Learning Outcome templates that can contain specific knowledge, skill and competence references from the multilingual ESCO (European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations) classification and/or any frameworks of your choice, as long as it is published in a linked open data format. Note that Learning Outcomes can only be included in your credential data via linking them to achievements – other types of claims cannot be associated with learning outcomes. 

Including references to multilingual skill concepts can greatly improve the quality and usefulness of your credentials by allowing credential recipient to clearly showcase their acquired skills, but this might be an endeavour you are encountering for the first time. If you are not sure of the skills to add to your learning outcome, consult the multilingual ESCO portal (please note that the OCB currently references ESCO 1.1.2) where almost 14,000 skills concepts are presented in an easily browsable tree structure. While OCB supports the ESCO classification by default, as mentioned above, you can also make use of other published skills frameworks (for example the DigComp framework). Please note that the type and reusability level of your learning outcomes is also described in ESCO terms, and specifying these optional properties can further enhance the quality of your credentials. 

You can link as many learning outcomes as you want to your learning achievement. If you are adding these by clicking on the blue “Create new” button in your Achievement template, a pop-up window will appear, where you can fill in the data fields as shown in the screenshot below.

• Type: choose either skill or knowledge – please note that the ESCO definition of the term skill also covers competences and attitudes; 

• Reusability level: if applicable, select one option from the drop-down list (cross sector / occupation specific / sector specific / transversal);

• Related ESCO Skills: add one or more items from the drop-down menu – you can narrow down the range of available concepts by starting to type words or fragments of the knowledge/skill name you are looking for;

• Related skills: to reference a skill concept from another framework, specify the URIs of both the framework and the skill concept and provide the name of the skill; 

• Click Save to return to your Achievement template, where you can either add more learning outcomes, or continue editing the achievement template.

Note that if you do not want to describe your learning outcomes in so much detail, you do not have to create and link individual learning outcomes to your achievement claim. There is a custom field in the Achievement template where you can add a textual learning outcome summary.

Activities

Under this tab, you will be able to describe learning activities, such as courses, conferences and workshops, volunteering, work-based activities, etc., that may (or may not) influence learning achievements. These two claim types might seem difficult to differentiate. On the one hand, learning achievements are describing what a person can/did learn independently and where, when and how the learning took place. On the other hand, learning activities have distinct start and end dates, a (physical or virtual) location, and modes of delivery. Therefore, a learning activity, can be an autonomous claim in a credential, for example in a Certificate of participation, or a linked process influencing a learning achievement. 

There are different types of learning activities, including apprenticeship, research, e-learning coursework, volunteering, workshop, and internship, that can be delivered face to face, online or in a hybrid mode. The template presents these options in drop-down menus, to make the choice easier and quicker.

NOTE: if you are missing a value in a dropdown menu, get in touch with the EDC Support team who can eventually broaden the controlled list if relevant. 

Assessments

In these templates, you can describe the details and conditions of processes that help evaluate the extent to which a learner attained specific knowledge or skills. Assessments result in grades within a grading scheme, providing a transparent and comparable record of achievement. Similarly to other elements, you can choose the amount of detail you provide, but in general the more information you supply the easier it becomes to understand and recognise learners’ accomplishments for employers and education and training providers or recognition bodies.

An assessment can often serve as proof of an achievement, and you can reflect this association in your credential template. To create a link from a learning achievement to the assessment(s), select an existing assessment template in the “Assessed via” field of the achievement template, or click on the blue “Create new” button to add a new item.

An assessment can also be an independent claim in a credential, for example in transcripts of records. 

Entitlements

Here you will be able to describe the rights of a credential holder typically obtained as a result of a learning achievement. An Entitlement is principally a right, e.g. to practice a profession, take part in a  a learning opportunity or join an organisation.

In these templates you can provide a detailed description of these rights, following a similar structure to the Achievement, Activity and Assessment templates. You can define the issue date and expiry date, the type (learning opportunity, membership or occupation), the status (actual or prospective), the country or countries where the entitlement is valid, link it to occupations and work entitlements, and specify related sub-entitlements, if necessary. Similarly to the other claim templates, this form is also separated into categories, in this case: 'Entitlement information', 'Further details', 'Links to other elements' and 'More information'. 

After creating an entitlement, you can associate it with an achievement by selecting it in the “Rights earned” field of the achievement template. You can also create and link a new entitlement by clicking on “Create new”. In either case, a blue tag will appear under the “Rights earned” field with the title of the entitlement for each linked item.

The default European Digital Credential for Learning (EDC) appearance, with its neutral white background and minimal display of credential data, should be sufficient to visualise the core content of any credential. However, it is possible to customise the look and feel of your EDCs by creating and applying custom HTML templates. In these templates you have the option to upload a distinctive background image, apply wildcards, some basic formatting, and customise the overall dataset referenced on a potentially multi-page, summary image. 

The HTML code allows you to reference specific properties from the credential metadata (e.g. activity titles, individual grades, credit points earned, etc.), use multilingual wildcards to contextualise this data content (e.g. "certifies that", "has achieved", credential footnotes, etc.), and apply some basic content formatting, e.g. change font size, colour or text alignment. 

Note that even if you only want to apply a custom background image you will still need to provide code in the compulsory HTML content box – feel free to copy the default code from here. 

Follow these steps to customise the background and choose what information you want to display on your credential:

1. Create a new template by

   a) clicking on the “Create Custom HTML” under the HTML information tab, or 

   b) clicking on “Create new” next to the HTML information field at the bottom of your credential template.

2. Add your custom HTML code (click here for examples).

3. Upload a custom background image to your credential. The image must have a portrait orientation and should not exceed 1 MB in size. In case you are creating a multi-page preview, note that the same background image will be applied to all pages.

4. Introduce your wildcards (that should be properly referenced in the custom HTML code above). If you are creating multilingual credentials, make sure that all label content fields are informed in all used languages.

5. Give a tag to your custom HTML template. This helps you easily identify and manage your templates, and link them to your credential templates.

6. Save.

If you started the flow with point 1.a, go to the credential template where you want to apply the customisation, and type your HTML template’s tag name in the HTML information field at the bottom of the form.

For advanced customisation, you can find here a list of frequently referenced data model variables with corresponding Thymeleaf paths.

Note: Should you encounter difficulties in customising the credential, you can contact the EDC Support Team. However, please note that due to security considerations, there are limitations to the extent of customisability. 

Sample HTML code: 

<div style="font-style: normal; padding-bottom: 2rem; padding-top: 10rem;"> <div style="flex: 0 0 100%; max-width: 100%; display: block; text-align: center;" > <img style="max-height: 4.5rem; width: auto;" th:if="${credential.credentialSubject.hasClaim[0].awardedBy.awardingBody[0].logo != null}" th:src="${credential.credentialSubject.hasClaim[0].awardedBy.awardingBody[0].logo}" /> <br/> <p style="margin-top: 6rem; text-align: center !important; font-weight: 700; font-family: sans-serif; color: #404040 !important; font-size: 36px;" th:text="${credential.displayParameter.title}"></p><br> <p style="text-align: center !important; font-weight: 300; font-family: sans-serif; color: #404040 !important; font-size: 20px;" th:text="#{awardedTo}"></p><br> <p style="margin-bottom:0; text-align: center !important; font-weight: 300; font-style: italic; color: #004494 !important; font-size: 36px;" th:with=" caseFullName = ${credential.credentialSubject.fullName != null and !#strings.isEmpty(credential.credentialSubject.fullName)}, caseGivenName = ${credential.credentialSubject.givenName != null and !#strings.isEmpty(credential.credentialSubject.givenName)}, caseBirthName = ${credential.credentialSubject.birthName != null and !#strings.isEmpty(credential.credentialSubject.birthName)}, caseFamilyName = ${credential.credentialSubject.familyName != null and !#strings.isEmpty(credential.credentialSubject.familyName)}, caseNationalID = ${credential.credentialSubject.nationalID != null and !#strings.isEmpty(credential.credentialSubject.nationalID)}" th:text="${ caseFullName ? credential.credentialSubject.fullName : caseGivenName ? #strings.concatReplaceNulls('', credential.credentialSubject.givenName, ' ', credential.credentialSubject.patronymicName, ' ', credential.credentialSubject.familyName) : caseBirthName ? credential.credentialSubject.birthName : caseFamilyName ? credential.credentialSubject.familyName : caseNationalID ? credential.credentialSubject.nationalID : 'Anonymous' }"></p> <p style="margin-top:0; height:0; margin-left: 15%; width: 70%; border-bottom:1px solid #cdcdcd;"/></p><br> <p style="margin-bottom:0; text-align: center !important; font-weight: 300; font-family: sans-serif; color: #404040 !important; font-size: 20px;" th:text="#{for}"></p> <p style="margin-top:0; text-align: center !important; font-weight: 300; font-family: sans-serif; color: #404040 !important; font-size: 20px;" th:text="${credential.displayParameter.description}"></p> </div> </div> 

The electronic seal is the issuing organisation’s eIDAS compliant seal that will certify the origin of the issued credential. The information included in the seal is added to the credential data at the moment of signing and will be displayed under the “Signed by” section of the Issuer content in the EDC Viewer. 

The mandatory application of an eIDAS compliant electronic seal ensures that the credential origin can always be trusted. The seal also adds a layer of security to the credential, meaning that if the file is tampered with, the seal breaks, and this is immediately visible in the credential verification checks. Any legally registered organisation, institution or company can obtain an electronic seal. When an organisation uses it to seal a credential, it certifies the credential authenticity and takes legal responsibility for the correctness of origin of each claim within the credential.

Acquiring an electronic seal 

If your organisation does not yet have an advanced or qualified electronic seal, you can visit this web page to find a Trust Service Provider (TSP) in your country. The main prerequisite to acquire an electronic seal is for your organisation to be registered as a legal entity. If there are no TSPs offering the service you need in your own country, you may wish to extend your search to neighbouring countries or contact an international service provider.

When you start the acquisition process, please make sure that you identify a Trust Service Provider who can deliver a Certificate for electronic seal or Qualified certificate for electronic seal (you can filter these by seeing who offers a QCert for ESeal on the webpage referenced above). 

Important: to seal your credentials, you will need an advanced or qualified electronic seal. Other types of certificates, such as electronic signatures, are not accepted by the EDC Issuer. Please also ensure that the service you select provides you with the certificate itself (whether as a token or an installed certificate, depending on the type of seal), and not a service for remote sealing. To be able to seal the credentials, you will need to be in possession and control of the seal.

Note: the information contained in the electronic seal is often structured as follows 

G = e-seal
SN = Example name of an institution
CN = e-seal Example Institution
OU = e-seal certificates
2.5.4.97 = VATBE 00000000
1.3.6.1.4.1.5939.2.3 = 123456789
O = Example Institution Inc.
C = BE

The fields in bold are the minimum mandatory fields that are required for the seal to be accepted by the EDC Issuer, and we recommend you to forward this information to the Trusted Service Provider and ask them to confirm that these fields are included in your seal prior to acquiring it. 

Note: If your organisation is not registered as a legal entity (or is otherwise not in a position to acquire an electronic seal), you can ask another organisation to seal and issue credentials on your behalf. For further information, see the section on Mandated Issue.

Using your seal in the EDC Issuer

To be able to apply your seal in the EDC Issuer, you will need to have NexU installed and running on your device. NexU is a remote signature tool that allows the EDC Issuer to access your electronic seal for the sealing process (note that it is only supported on Windows operating systems). To install it, download and unzip the nexu-bundle-1.22.zip file, then double click on the NexU Startup file. The installation process should not take longer than 5 minutes. Note that the installation does not require any further action than double clicking on the start-up file. To see whether it was successful and that NexU is running, open up your toolbar to check whether a gold key icon (as shown below) has appeared. If yes, you are ready to use your seal in the EDC Issuer . 

For further information, please refer to code.europa.

There are two ways to issue credentials: 

• Directly from templates in OCB. Click on the issue icon next to the credential template you wish to issue, enter the personal information via an online browser form or a recipient spreadsheet, seal and send. 

• Via upload. Upload credentials that have been formerly downloaded as unsigned credentials from the EDC Issuer or received from another user or entity (in case of Mandated Issue), proceed to sealing and issue without having to enter any additional information. 

Typically, if you are creating and issuing your own credentials, you will make use of the first option. In some cases however, the credential building and issuing roles may be divided. Whether these two roles are done by people from the same organisation, or not - in case of Mandated Issue – the person responsible for the credential building can prepare and download the unsigned credentials (you will learn how below) and transfer the files to the authorised person with an access to the electronic seal to complete the issuing process.

We will guide you through the steps to take to issue directly from the Online Credential Builder template. For information on how to issue via upload – please refer to the section on Mandated issue.

Start the issuing process from the Online Credential Builder Template

In order to seal and issue your digital credential, click on the “issue” arrow.

First you need to choose which aspects of the credential components (e.g. overall credential or specific claim related titles, dates, etc.) will be customised for each individual credential, and which pieces of personal information you wish to supply to identify your credential recipients (e.g. date and/or place of birth, national ID number, etc.). 

Personal data

Select how you want to identify your credential recipients by ticking the boxes next to the individual properties. The default identifiers, that you cannot deselect are: 

• Given name

• Family name

• Delivery (Email or Wallet) Address

We encourage you to include additional information, so that when the credential holders use these credentials to apply for jobs or further studies, there can be no ambiguity that they are, indeed, the owners of their credentials.

Note: If your credential includes an assessment claim, it will also be mandatory to specify the grade of said assessment (based on the applied grading scheme). 

Additional data

You will also see the option to customise the Credential, Achievement, Assessment, Activity and Entitlement data. These check boxes allow you to inform which properties from the template will differ from recipient to recipient. For instance, you may wish to specify different sub-achievements for different recipients, enter different valid from dates for the credential, or even different titles. If you have already entered the data in the template itself, and the same value applies to all recipients, do not select the fields here.

To choose which data you wish to customise, simply select the box in question, as shown on the screen shot above.

Entering the recipient data

Once you have selected the data that you wish to specify for each recipient, you can provide the recipient data by: 

• Entering the recipient data in your web browser

• Downloading the XLS or CSV template

If you only issue a small number of credentials with just the default recipient data fields, you may prefer to use the browser form. Otherwise, you might find the data provision process faster via the XLS or CSV template. To make the issuing process run faster, optimally you should provide details for no more than 50 credential recipients per batch.

Notes

From the above-mentioned default recipient data fields, you will only need to provide the person’s given and family names and one delivery address, that can be the person’s email or wallet address. If possible as per your data protection rules, please consider using personal email addresses that are more likely to remain in use beyond your credential recipients’ formal affiliation with your institution. Europass account holders have a digital credential wallet provided by default, and the person’s unique wallet address can be found in the Europass ‘My Library’, under the section titled ‘Certificates and Diplomas’. For further details, please see the page on ‘Using EDCs’. 

Depending on your credential’s composition, you may see mandatory Grade fields. This applies if your credential includes one or more Assessment claims. 

Please be prepared that when uploading the filled-in XLS or CSV file, or upon completing the browser form, you will be asked to confirm that your organisation’s data protection policy allows you to share this data for the duration of the session and for the purpose of creating and issuing credentials. Note, however, that the EDC Issuer does not store any personal data of recipients. The information you provide is only used to generate the credentials and only during the time of the issuing process.

Please also observe that if you choose to use the Excel template, it is specific to each credential template and to the customisation choices you made. We recommend to always download a new version of the spreadsheet if you edited the credential template. 

The Excel template contains 2 rows of hidden credential template references, a (gray) row of credential property labels and in row 4 you find usability guidelines on the expected data format and highlights (in orange) if data provision for the given field is mandatory. These rows should not be modified and you should start entering your recipient data starting in row 5.

Review credential data

After providing the personal details for all credentials, you will be able to review the credentials prior to sealing. Please note that from this point on, for any changes to the credential, you will need to re-enter the credential recipient data after editing. On this screen, you will see each individual credential. Prior to sealing, you can: 

1. See that the format of all your credentials is valid. On the screen, you will normally see a ‘VALID’ check sign. If this appears as red, there is an issue with the formatting of your credential. Check the error message by hovering the mouse over the icon, and if it remains unclear, contact the EDC Support Team for further assistance. 

2. Preview your credentials. By clicking on the ‘eye’ icon, you will be able to see what your credential will look like once issued. Note that this preview will be missing the “Signed by” information on the Issuer tab, as this is only added to the credential data in the next step when you seal the credential. The preview also does not include the authentication and verification checks and will not allow you to share or download the credential. 

3. Download your unsigned credentials. At the bottom left, you will see a ‘Download’ option. This allows you to save your credentials, that already include the personal data layer. This option is useful if you have to share the credentials with another person for sealing (either within your own organisation or another entity who is mandated to issue on your organisation’s behalf – read more about it in the next section). 

4. Choose to opt out from the temporary wallet creation. By default, when you are issuing credentials to an email address that does not have a Europass account linked to it, a temporary wallet is created for the email address in question. This allows the credential recipient to claim their wallet, and the credential that was deposited there, within 6 months of the issuing date by creating a Europass account. By ticking this opt-out box, recipients will only receive their credential via email, allowing them to choose which wallet (if any) they upload their credential to. 

5. Choose to certify the authenticity of the credentials on behalf of another organisation. If you are sealing and issuing credentials on behalf of another organisation (Mandated Issue), you need to tick this box. This allows you to upload a mandating agreement and/or specify a mandating disclaimer before you proceed to sealing. For the mandating disclaimer, a default text is already available. This text can be customised, replaced with your own custom disclaimer, or used as it is. For further information about mandated issue, see below. 

Seal and send your credentials

Once you are satisfied with the preview of your credentials, you can move to the sealing step. Past this stage, you will no longer be able to modify the content of your credentials. 

First make sure that you have your seal available, and that you have NexU running on your device (visible as a little golden key icon on your toolbar).

To proceed to issue your credentials, click on ‘Seal’.

You will then see a pop-up window appear from NexU, allowing you to select your signature to be used for sealing.

Please note that although your seal may appear directly on the NexU pop-up screen as a signature option, you should always select ‘Windows Keystore’. On the next screen, you can either confirm to proceed with the sealing (if you only have one applicable digital signature in your certificate store) or select the seal you wish to use (if you have more than one). In some cases, you may be asked to enter a seal password as well – if this applies to you, you will have received this password from the Trust Service Provider together with the seal itself.

Once you have selected and confirmed your seal, the sealing process will begin. Depending on the number and complexity of the credentials you are sealing, this may take a few minutes.

By the time the sealing process is completed, the “Signed by” fields on the Issuer tab of your credential will be populated with the information contained within your seal (i.e. the data displayed in the ‘signConfirmationModal’ on the screenshot above), and a green tick icon will appear in the second column of the dialogue window. You can check how this looks by clicking on the eye icons again.

Sending your credentials

After this step, you can click “Send” and your credentials will be on their way to their recipients. The SENT column will indicate safe dispatch of the credential. Any error in the sending process will be indicated by an orange warning symbol (in case you supplied two delivery addresses and only one of them failed) or a red no entry sign (if the credential could not be delivered at all) in the SENT column. Hover over the status icons to see what the issue was with the address(es).

IMPORTANT

Once your credentials have been sent, you can download a CSV report of your credential issuing session (using the export as CSV option on the bottom left). We highly encourage you to make use of this option, as details about your completed issuing sessions (i.e. exact time of issue, UUID of all issued credentials, recipient names, credential titles and delivery statuses) will not be otherwise recorded in the EDC Issuer. 

The UUID of the credential is the unique identifier specific to each issued credential, allowing you to identify each unique credential. 

Note that the export CSV option will no longer be retrievable once you navigate away from this page. 

If you are not in a position to acquire an electronic seal (for instance if your organisation is not registered as a legal entity), you can agree with another organisation to issue credentials on your behalf via the Mandated Issue function. 

The EDC Issuer allows organisations to delegate the sealing role to third parties. Signing a digital credential on behalf of another organisation is called “Mandated Issue”, and this is a familiar practice in cases where, for example, a national body such as a Ministry of Education or a parent organisation of an awarding body, seals a credential on behalf of the institution that formally awards the claims contained in the credential. In other cases, it may be a technology provider that, from within its system, technically seals credentials issued by its client, eg an education and training provider. 

When the awarding and sealing organisations are different, these roles are clearly distinguished in the EDC Viewer, as shown on the illustration above. 

Pre-requisites for Mandated Issue

To issue credentials via Mandated Issue, you will need to have an agreement in place with an organisation that is in possession of an electronic seal. As the illustration shows above, the awarding and the sealing organisations’ information will always be included in the credential in content sections that are clearly distinguished from one another. As a rule, the sealing organisation takes legal responsibility for the authenticity of the issued credentials, and certifies the correctness of origin of each claim, as having been made by the indicated awarding body. While it is not compulsory, you have the possibility to add a customised mandating disclaimer and attach a Mandating Agreement (e.g. a copy of a countersigned PDF) as evidence. For the mandating disclaimer, the EDC Issuer offers a default standard formulation that can serve as a basis. 

There are no further requirements to proceed with Mandated Issue, any additional specific terms will depend on your individual case. 

Please note that only Generic credentials can be issued via mandate. It is not possible to do so for accredited credentials (please see here Issuing your Credentials) for further information on the difference between generic and accredited credentials).

How to issue credentials via Mandated issue

The process for issuing credentials via Mandated Issue is similar to the regular credential issuing process. There are two distinct ways to proceed: 

• If the organisation sealing the credentials via mandated issue is also the organisation creating the credentials, please follow the same steps as above, and simply select the option ‘I am certifying the authenticity of the credential on behalf of another organisation’ – See section on Review Credential Content. 

• The Awarding Body is creating the credential template, and the Issuer organisation will only complete the issuing process. 

In this case, the Awarding Body will need to prepare the credentials and send the unsigned JSON file to the Issuer, who runs the sealing and sending parts of the process (note that the same flow can be followed within an organisation if different departments are in charge of the credential creation and issuing processes). 

1. Create your credential templates according to your needs. 

2. When you are ready to issue the credentials, enter the recipient data as described in the section Issuing your Credentials. 

3. Once you added the recipient information, download your unsigned credentials as described in the Review section. 

4. Send the unsigned credentials to the Issuer organisation.

5. The authorised representative of the Issuer organisation will then upload the credentials directly in the Issuer without having to log in to the Online Credential Builder.

6. Once the unsigned credentials are uploaded, the issuer can check their previews and the correctness of the data structure before proceeding with sealing and sending the credentials, following the steps detailed under Seal and send your credentials.

NOTE: The EDC Issuer tool is built to safeguard against fraud, and in every case will insert institutional data, such as legal name, country of registration and legal identifier (usually the institution’s VAT number) from the sealing organisation’s electronic seal, in order to make the sealing organisation not only accountable, but also traceable.

If an institution wants to issue legally admissible digital credentials that pass the EDC Seal verification check, it must acquire an advanced or qualified electronic seal, and once a credential is sealed with that electronic seal, it cannot be tampered with without detection – the slightest change in the file data will result in a failure of the electronic seal verification check.