Autocrat for bulk certificate generation

Autocrat is a multi-purpose document merge tool works with Google Drive. It allows you to take data from a spreadsheet and merge it into a document via a template.  Tell Autocrat which fields to merge via <<merge tags>> and then let Autocrat mass-generate personalized documents.  Users can also send the documents as email attachments. Autocrat is useful to generate certificates when conducting, seminar, webinar, competitions, quiz etc. It's possible to reuse the template for further use.

Here I am going to discuss how to create and send event certificates in large numbers using Google Drive and Autocrat.

Prepare a certificate template

First, create a folder for the certificate making purpose inside Google Drive. All files regarding the certificate save here.

Prepare a certificate from Google Slide available at Google Drive. Select a good template from there. Here First Name and Last Name put inside <<merge tags>>. Here values will load from the user's details from a spreadsheet.

Add metadata to LibreOffice Writer document

Metadata in document files helpful to search and find the document in computer and World Wide Web. When the author export the document to PDF format, the metadata will also with the document. Here are the steps to add metadata to a LibreOffice Writer document.

Add author details

Visit Tools > Option > LibreOffice > User Data

Enter the details of the author.

Join/merge pdf files using pdfunite tool

Split PDF files can be merged into a single file using the command line. Here we use a utility called pdfunite, it contains in a bunch of package, poppler-utils. First, install the poppler-utils using the following command. It can work with both Debian and Ubuntu.

sudo apt install poppler-utils

 Usage

Put all your pdf files in a single place. And apply the following command in a terminal. Enter the pdf file names without any mistakes.

pdfunite 1.pdf 2.pdf 3.pdf output.pdf

Syntax

pdfunite source1.pdf source2.pdf source3.pdf destination.pdf

Last file name will be output file.

pdfunite command

PDF source files and output files.

Add metadata to PDF files

Master PDF Editor is a PDF editor application and can act as metadata editor. The user can add metadata to an existing PDF files (book, articles etc.) Metadata can give more document visibility while others searching in World Wide Web.

Installation of Master PDF Editor
Download the application
Download the DEB file from following link.
https://code-industry.net/free-pdf-editor/#get

Installation of DEB package
Apply the following command to install the package,

dpkg -i master-pdf-editor*

The application will open from Applications > Office > Master PDF Editor

Adding metadata to PDF file
Open the PDF file with Master PDF Editor

Editing mode of a PDF file.

Open File > Properties to add the metadata.

Save and close the document after adding the metadata.

Right click on the PDF file from file manager and select properties. Newly added metadata visible.