Sutra can generate a completion certificate as a PDF and email it to a member automatically. You design the certificate once — style, colour, logo, and wording — and it goes out whenever the automation step it belongs to runs.
Requires the Gold plan.
Add the certificate step
Certificates are an automation step, so you add one inside an automation rather than in a settings panel.
Open your space and go to Manage → Automation.
Create an automation, or open an existing one, and choose the trigger you want.
Add a step and choose Issue certificate. The certificate designer opens full screen.
Four triggers can issue a certificate:
Space marked complete — the most common one. The member finishes the course or program and gets their certificate.
Survey or Quiz Completed — useful for assessments. Pair it with a condition on correct responses if the certificate should only go to people who pass.
Participation milestone reached — for attendance or engagement-based recognition.
Member added — for cases where joining is itself the qualifying event.
Design the certificate
The designer has your settings on the left and a live preview on the right, updating as you type.
Style — Classic, Minimal, Modern, or Botanical.
Accent colour — Default, Brand, Teal, Navy, Terra, Rose, or a custom colour you pick.
Logo — upload a PNG, JPG, SVG, or WebP. It sits at the top of the certificate.
Every line of wording is editable:
Issued by — your organization's name, shown in small caps at the top.
Heading — defaults to "Certificate of Completion".
Presented-to line — defaults to "This certificate is proudly presented to".
Completion line — defaults to "for successfully completing".
Program name — leave it blank to use the space name.
Description — an optional line under the program name, for hours completed or a short summary.
Signature name and Position — Position defaults to "Facilitator".
The recipient's name and the completion date are filled in automatically for each person — you don't set those.
Click Save step when the preview looks right.
Delivery
Under Delivery you choose who receives it:
Email to the member — on by default. The participant gets an email with the certificate PDF attached.
Also email a copy to the manager — off by default. Sends the same PDF to the space's managers, which is handy if you keep completion records.
The email comes from Sutra's notification address rather than your own sending domain, with the subject "Your certificate" followed by your space name.
One certificate per person, per space
Sutra records a certificate against the member and the space the first time it issues one. If the automation runs again for the same person in the same space, no second certificate is sent. This is deliberate — it means a retried or re-triggered automation can't spam someone with duplicates.
The practical consequence: if you edit the design after someone has already received theirs, they keep the version they were sent. Get the wording and logo right before you switch the automation on.
Troubleshooting
Issue certificate isn't in the step list — certificates need the Gold plan, and the step is only offered on the four triggers listed above. Check which trigger your automation starts with.
A member didn't receive theirs — the most common cause is that the member has no email address on their account, which happens with manually added members. Sutra skips those rather than failing the whole automation. Check the email on their member record, then re-run the qualifying action.
You want to re-send an existing certificate — there's no re-send button, and re-running the automation won't produce a second one. Ask the member to search their inbox for the original, or download the PDF from the manager copy if you enabled it.
The preview looks squashed or off-centre — the preview scales to fit your screen. Resize the window or reopen the designer and it re-centres.
Everyone gets a certificate, including people who failed the quiz — add a condition step before the certificate step, testing correct responses on the survey, so only people who meet your threshold continue down that path.
What's next
Certificates usually sit at the end of a longer flow. A typical course automation runs: space marked complete → issue certificate → add the member to the next module → send a next-step email. See the automation triggers and actions article for the full set of steps you can chain together.