Integrations · Google Forms

Submit a form, receive a certificate

Every answer to a Google Form lands as a new row in a Google Sheet. With the Certrust Google Sheets connector on that sheet, each person who submits the form is issued a certificate, usually within a minute.

Attendance

Show a QR code to the form at the end of a session. Everyone who fills it in gets their certificate of attendance.

Course completion

Make the form the last step of a course, for example a final quiz or feedback form.

Registration lists

Collect names with a form before an event, then issue to everyone who came once it is over.

Before you start you need a Certrust Pro or Enterprise plan, an achievement created in Certrust, an API key with the Read and Issue permissions, and a Google account.

1. Build the form

  1. In Google Forms, create your form.
  2. Add a short-answer question titled Name and mark it as required. This is the name printed on the certificate.
  3. Collect the email address in one of two ways:
    • in Settings → Responses, turn on Collect email addresses, or
    • add a short-answer question titled Email and mark it as required.
  4. Add any other questions you like. Certrust ignores them.

If your organisation uses custom attributes on its certificates, such as Training Date, add a question with exactly that attribute's name and its answer is printed on the certificate.

2. Send the answers to a Google Sheet

  1. In your form, open the Responses tab.
  2. Select Link to Sheets and create a new spreadsheet.
  3. The spreadsheet opens with a tab called "Form Responses 1". Each submission becomes a new row there.

3. Connect that sheet to Certrust

Follow steps 2 and 3 of the Google Sheets guide in the spreadsheet you just created: add the Certrust script, then choose Certrust → Connect this tab… while the "Form Responses 1" tab is open, and pick the achievement.

Certrust adds two columns at the end of the tab, "Certrust status" and "Certificate link", and leaves the form's own columns as they are.

4. Choose when certificates go out

Straight away

Choose Certrust → Turn on automatic issuing. From then on, each submission is issued as soon as it arrives, and the sheet is checked again every 5 minutes for anything that was missed.

After you have checked the list

Leave automatic issuing off. When you have looked through the answers, removed any that should not get a certificate, and are ready, choose Certrust → Issue new rows now.

Who gets a certificate

With automatic issuing on, everyone who submits the form gets a certificate. Keep that in mind when you share the link:

  • Share the form only with the people who should receive the certificate, for example on a slide in the room.
  • Stop accepting answers when the event is over: in the form's Responses tab, switch off Accepting responses.
  • If attendance needs checking first, use "After you have checked the list" above.
  • Someone who submits twice gets one certificate. The second row says "Already issued".
  • A mistyped email address sends the certificate to the wrong inbox or nowhere. Turning on Collect email addresses with verified addresses avoids typing mistakes.

If something doesn't work

  • A row says "Waiting: add a name": the form has no question titled Name, or the person left it empty. Type the name into the row and it is issued on the next run.
  • Nothing happens after a submission: check that automatic issuing is on, and that you connected the "Form Responses 1" tab, not another tab.
  • A row says "… is required": your organisation has a required custom attribute. Add a question with that attribute's name to the form, fill in the missing value in the row, and choose Certrust → Retry rows with errors.

More in the Google Sheets guide, which covers the columns, the status messages and the Google permission screen.