Frequently Asked Questions: Badge Issuers

1. General Questions

 

1. What is EXIN?

EXIN is the global independent certification institute for professionals in the ICT domain. With more than 30 years of experience in certifying the competences of more than 2 million ICT-professionals worldwide, EXIN is the leading and trusted authority in the ICT-market. With over 1.000 accredited partners EXIN facilitates exams in more than 165 countries and 20 languages.

2. What is EXeed?

EXeed is a secure, online open badges platform that allows badge recipients to store, publish and share their open badges, and that allows third parties to define, issue, manage and analyze their badges.

3. What are Open Badges?

Open badges are validated, digital indicators of accomplishments, skills, qualities or interests that can be earned by meeting the criteria as defined by badge issuers. Open badges comply with the Open Badge Infrastructure (OBI) developed by Mozilla.

4. How do I sign up to start issuing badges?

At EXeed.pro you find the log in to the EXeed platform. Towards the bottom you find a link allowing you to sign up as an issuer. The first step is to provide us an email address. We will subsequently send you an email to verify your email.

After entering your email address and clicking the sign up button, you will receive an email. 

Confirming your email address will forward you to the page below.

Filling out this form is the last step towards finalizing your account with EXeed. Except for your password, the data you submit through this form cannot be changed at a later stage.

Please pay attention to the name you submit as your domain. This subdomain will be added to all badges you issue.

After clicking Activate you will be forwarded to your company’s portal at EXeed. You are ready to start using EXeed.

5. How do subscriptions work? 

To start issuing badges you require a subscription for EXeed. On the subscription tab, you find all the subscriptions that we offer. Subscriptions can have a tial period, a fixed fee per month and an additional fee per issued badge. Once you select a subscription you will be prompted to provide your credit card details. Without a confirmed credit card, you will not be able to finalize your subscription.

Subscriptions are on a monthly billing cycle. Your credit card will only be charged after your trial period. This charge may include any badges you have issued above the trial quota. You can change or end your subscription at any time. Changes will go into effect for the next billing cycle. 

6. How do payments work?

At the start of every billing cycle, you will receive an invoice for the new cycle. This invoice will be provided to you by email, and will also be accessible in the EXeed portal. The invoice will consist of the fixed fee for the month. Also, any badges issued during the previous cycle will be added to this invoice. Your credit card will automatically be charged shortly after the invoice is created. You will receive a confirmation that the charge was successful by email.

Under ‘Payment method’ you can find your credit card details. If required, you can add additional credit cards.

Under ‘Payment history’ you can find an overview of your invoices and payments.

7. How can I create badge templates? 

Badge templates are created and administered under the ‘Badge template’ tab. You can create as many badge templates as you wish. There are no additional charges for doing so. The validity period is specified in years. The valid period starts on the date the badge was issued.

The image you select for the badge should be a square PNG or SVG file. The size of the image file should not exceed 256kb and should be at least 90px square7

8. How can I issue badges? 

To issue badges it is required that you have an active subscription and that you have at least one badge template defined. Once these prerequisites are in order, there are three possibilities to issue badges:

  • Issue individual badges manually;
  • As a batch by uploading a CSV file;
  • Fully automated through EXeed’s API.

9. How can I change my password?

Under ‘Settings’ you can change your password at the ‘Change password’ menu item.

10. How can I add other users to my organization?

Under ‘Settings’ and the menu item ‘User accounts’ you can add additional user accounts for your organization. Just enter the email address of the additional user and they will be sent a verification link.

After the new user has verified their email address and provided a password they will be added as a ‘regular’ user.

A ‘regular’ user cannot add other user accounts or make any changes to subscriptions or payment details. Only ‘privileged’ users can change those items.

Multiple roles can be linked to a single user account. A user can thus be both a badge holder and a badge issuer. When the user gets invited to add a second role to their already existing account, they are not required to provide a new password. They can use the password already linked to their account.

11. How do I enable 2-factor authentication?

Go to your ‘Account’ settings and tick the 2-factor authentication option. A QR code will appear on your screen. Use the Google Authenticator app to read the code. Type in to EXeed. the secret key that appears on your app screen.

2. Account

 

1. Where can I find my profile settings? 

Your profile settings can be found under the header ‘Settings‘.

2. What can I do in ‘Settings’? 

In ‘Settings‘ you can manage both your Basic Information and your Account Settings.

3. What can I find in ‘Basic Information’?

On this page you can do the following:

  • Add/remove an image to your profile.
  • Add/remove/edit a summary of yourself which will be added to your profile.
  • Add/remove/edit links to your social media profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Wechat. These links will be visible on your EXeed public profile when you set the respective toggle to ‘Visible‘.

4. What can I find in ‘Account Settings’? 

In account settings, you find information on your registered e-mail address. It is not yet possible to change the e-mail address associated with your account. Account Settings also allows you the option to change your password.

5. How can I change my password?

You have two options to change your password. Either through Account Settings or by clicking on the ‘Reset Password’ link on the log in screen. The latter option will provide you an e-mail with a new password.

3. API Reference

 

1. Remote badge issuing 

You have a possibility to remote issue badge. You can call https://exeed.pro/api/Issue/remote POST with the following request format:

{ “issuerIntegrationId”: Guid, “externalTemplateId”: “string”, “passedExamDate”: UnixDateTime, “holderEmail”: “string”, “holderFirstName”: “string”, “holderLastName”: “string”, “holderLastNamePrefix”: “string”, “isHolderIndividual”: boolean}

2. Where:

issuerIntegrationId: your integration ID (mandatory)

externalTemplateId: external ID of the badge template (mandatory),

passedExamDate: exam date in unix datetime format (mandatory),

holderEmail: badge holder email address (mandatory),

holderFirstName: holder first name,

holderLastName: holder last name (mandatory),

holderLastNamePrefix: holder last name prefix,

isHolderIndividual: flag that indicates, if the holder is individual. If this flag is false, the holderLastName field must contain organization name.

 

You must sign the request it sends to our endpoint. You can do so by including a signature in the IssuerIntegration request header. This allows us to validate that the events were sent by your system, not by a third party. To create the signature you must concatinate your domain name in our system and several fields from request. Use the following formula to create a string that has to be signed.

stringToBeSigned = <issuerIntegrationId> + <DomainName> + <externalTemplateId> + <holderEmail> + <holderLastName> + <isHolderIndividual>.ToString()

Note: the statement must return ‘True’ or ‘False’ (the first symbol is in the upper case).

You can use the following .NET code to create the string as well:

var valuesList = new List<string> { issuerIntegrationId, DomainName, externalTemplateId, holderEmail, holderLastName, isHolderIndividual.ToString() };string stringToBeSigned = string.Join(string.Empty, valuesList);

After that you must create hash of this string by SHA256 algorithm, encode it by your private key and put the encoded data into request header in the Base64String format. Use Unicode char encoding to create the hash. You can use the following .NET code to produce this operations.

public string Sign(string stringToBeSigned, string privateKey) { var keyProvider = new RSACryptoServiceProvider(); var encoding = Encoding.Unicode; keyProvider.KeyFromXmlString(privateKey); var rsaFormatter = new RSAPKCS1SignatureFormatter(keyProvider); rsaFormatter.SetHashAlgorithm(“SHA256”); var sHhashManager = new SHA256Managed(); byte[] encodedData = encoding.GetBytes(stringToBeSigned); byte[] hash = sHhashManager.ComputeHash(encodedData); byte[] signedHashValue = rsaFormatter.CreateSignature(hash); string signature = Convert.ToBase64String(signedHashValue); return signature; }