A certification notice is a reusable email template that staff can send from a certification record. A billing run can also send the same notice automatically as a renewal reminder or drop notice. When you set up the notice once, future sends use the same wording and merge fields, whether staff send it manually or Rhythm sends it through billing.
What It Controls
This setting defines the certification email templates your Rhythm account can send. Each notice includes a subject, body, optional program restrictions, and an active or inactive status for new use.
Rhythm sends a certification notice only when the notice exists and someone or a billing run sends it. Completing a workflow task, or a holder becoming certified another way, does not email anyone by itself. If you want people notified automatically for an outcome, configure a notice and set it up to send for that outcome.
Certification Notices are separate from the Certification Activation Email on an application process, which sends automatically when an application activates into a certification. Configure that email on the application process, not here.
A certification notice can only reach people who exist as contacts. You cannot send an ongoing notice to someone whose only email address is stored in a custom application field instead of on a contact record.
Where to Find It
Go to Setup › Certifications › Notices to see all certification notices in your Rhythm account. Select Create Certification Notice to add a notice, or use a row's Edit or Clone action to change or copy one.
The Settings
| Setting | Options | Default | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Any text | Blank | The name staff see when they choose a notice to send |
| ID | Letters, digits, underscores, dashes, and vertical bars | Suggested from the name | The notice's permanent identifier. You can edit it only while you create or clone the notice; after you save, it is locked |
| Status | Active, Inactive | Active | Controls the notice's default visibility on the Setup list only. An inactive notice can still be found, selected, and sent from a certification |
| Email — Subject, Body | Text and HTML, with a merge-field picker for contact, organization, certification, and membership data | Blank | The email content sent when staff use the notice manually or a billing run sends it automatically. A certification custom field merges only when you use that field's actual merge token, not a guess based on its label; confirm it with Preview. The Program field available here resolves to the program's identifier, not its display name, and there is no separate merge field for the program's name. It has also been reported not to output a value in a sent test email, so check it with Preview before relying on it |
| Email — From name, From address, Cc, Bcc | Optional sender details | Your Rhythm account's default sender | Overrides who the notice appears to come from and who receives a copy |
| Restrict to certain programs | On/off, then a multi-select of programs | Off | When this is on, the notice appears in the Send Notice dialog only for certifications in the selected programs. If you turn it on and leave the program list empty, the notice saves successfully but never appears in the Send Notice dialog for any certification |
Users with Rhythm system access also see a Deletion Protection switch on the form. This prevents the notice from being edited or deleted from the list.
Dependencies and Precedence
- Program restriction applies at manual send time. The Send Notice dialog on a certification's 360 page hides a restricted notice unless the certification's program is in the notice's allowed list. This restriction does not apply when a notice is sent another way, such as an integration calling the send operation directly.
- A deleted program leaves a dead reference. If a program named in a notice's restriction is later deleted, the notice disappears from the Send Notice dialog for every certification. Rhythm does not warn you when this happens.
- Preview uses your unsaved draft. When you select Preview on the notice form, Rhythm uses the subject and body currently on the form, including changes you have not saved yet. It does not use the last saved version of the notice.
- Preview does not guarantee the final rendered output. Preview and the merge-field picker's own display do not always exactly match what a live send renders. When the final wording matters, confirm with an actual sent email instead of relying on preview alone.
- A date merge field, such as an application's expiration date, can be reformatted with the
momenthelper, for example{{moment application.expiration_date format="dddd, DD MMMM YYYY"}}. Course date merge fields render as a raw ISO-style timestamp unless you format them this way. If amomentexpression you pasted does not render, check for smart or curly quotes around the format value. A copied template can carry HTML quote characters that break the helper, so replace them with plain double quotes. Some formatted date fields have also been reported to come through blank in a sent notice even though the same expression rendered correctly in testing, so verify a date field with Preview and a real test send before relying on it. Addinglocal=trueto the helper does not reliably correct a mismatched time, because email rendering does not always have the same local time zone context that a browser page does. - Course Registration fields are not available here. Merge fields come from contact, organization, certification, and membership data. Fields that belong to Course Registrations use a different field set and cannot be mapped into a certification notice. For example, if you need a value equivalent to a course registration's departure date, use the certification date merge field instead.
Change Impact and How to Revert
Changes to a notice's subject, body, or program restriction take effect immediately for every future send, whether staff send it manually or a billing run sends it automatically. Those changes do not affect notices that were already sent. To make a notice less visible for new use, mark it Inactive. Today, that only changes the notice's default visibility on the Setup list; staff can still find and send the notice.
Warning
Cc and Bcc addresses added while testing a notice can stay in place afterward. If you forget to remove them, those addresses keep receiving a copy of every future send. Review these fields before relying on a notice for live communications.
Permissions
To open Setup › Certifications › Notices and create, edit, or delete notices there, you need administrator-level access to Certifications Setup. Staff who only send notices from a certification's 360 page use a different day-to-day permission and usually cannot open Notices setup.
Validation and Errors
- Name, ID, and the email's Subject and Body are required before you can save. If a required field is missing, the form shows it in the error panel, such as "You haven't entered a valid value for Name."
- To preview a notice, enter an existing certification's identifier and a destination email address. You can copy that identifier from the certification's 360 page by opening the options menu and choosing Copy ID to Clipboard. Send Preview sends one real email to that address only, using your current draft. It does not update the certification's notice history. If the identifier does not match an existing certification, the preview fails with "Unable to preview email." You can also use Send Preview against a specific certification as a quick way to check whether one merge field resolves the way you expect, not only to check overall formatting.
- Delete is refused once the notice appears in any certification's sent-notice history. Rhythm shows "Unable to delete Certification Notice" with more detail from the server. Deactivating the notice does not work around this, because deactivation does not prevent the notice from being sent again. If you need to retire a notice for good, stop using it everywhere it is referenced before you delete it.
Related Tasks
For how a billing run uses these same notices automatically as reminders and drop notices, see Billing Templates and Recurring Billing Runs. For the general mechanics of how Rhythm sends account email, including sender addresses, see Email Settings. Staff use configured notices from a certification's own record, as described in Send a Certification Notice to a Holder; status reasons that pair with a notice at send time are defined in Define Certification Status Reasons.