> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.hr-easy.nlead.ch/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Work certificates

> Arbeitszeugnis, Zwischenzeugnis and Arbeitsbestätigung — assessment, tone, generation and approval.

Swiss employers must issue a work certificate on request (OR Art. 330a). The
certificates module manages the whole lifecycle: what is being assessed, how it is
phrased, who approves it, and how the employee gets it.

## The three types

| Type                   | What it is                                                                        |
| ---------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Arbeitszeugnis**     | The full qualified certificate — tasks, performance, conduct, reason for leaving. |
| **Zwischenzeugnis**    | The same, issued during ongoing employment.                                       |
| **Arbeitsbestätigung** | A simple confirmation: function and dates, no assessment.                         |

## Assessment

Before wording comes substance. An assessment is recorded in sections — the tasks
performed, the quality of the work, the way of working, conduct towards colleagues and
external parties — with a rating per section.

Assessment content is supplied by the people who actually worked with the person. The
platform's job is to make sure it is complete and consistent before it becomes prose.

## Tone and the Grundton

Swiss certificate language is a convention with real legal weight: the phrase chosen
for the overall verdict is understood by every reader in the country. The module makes
that convention explicit instead of leaving it to whoever is drafting.

A 1–10 **Grundton** maps onto the standard German formulations:

| Level        | Score | Gesamturteil                              |
| ------------ | :---: | ----------------------------------------- |
| Hervorragend |   10  | *stets zu unserer vollsten Zufriedenheit* |
| Sehr gut     |  8–9  | *zu unserer vollsten Zufriedenheit*       |
| Gut          |  6–7  | *zu unserer Zufriedenheit*                |
| Befriedigend |  4–5  | *zu unserer überwiegenden Zufriedenheit*  |
| Ausreichend  |  ≤ 3  | *(correspondingly weaker formulation)*    |

Choosing a Grundton means choosing what every Swiss reader will understand you to have
said. Making the mapping visible is the point: it prevents both accidental damage and
accidental over-praise.

<Note>
  The certificate must be **truthful and benevolent** — both at once. That is the Swiss standard,
  and it is why the module pairs an honest assessment with a deliberate, explicit choice of wording
  rather than a free-text box.
</Note>

## Templates and variables

Certificates are generated from DOCX templates with placeholder variables, mapped from
the employee record and the assessment: identity, the sequence of functions and dates
drawn from the employment periods, the tasks, and the assessment prose.

**Role templates** provide a starting point per function — the standard task
description for a primary teacher, an administrator, a caretaker — so each certificate
starts from something accurate rather than from a blank page.

## The lifecycle

A certificate moves through an explicit status machine, so at any moment it is clear
whose turn it is:

| Status                 | Whose move                                            |
| ---------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------- |
| `DRAFT`                | HR — set up the request, type, template and signer.   |
| `ASSESSMENT_PENDING`   | The supervisor — complete the assessment sections.    |
| `ASSESSMENT_SUBMITTED` | HR — the substance is in.                             |
| `GENERATING`           | The platform — render the DOCX and convert it to PDF. |
| `HR_REVIEW`            | HR — read the generated prose.                        |
| `SUPERVISOR_REVIEW`    | The supervisor — confirm it says what they meant.     |
| `APPROVED`             | Approved, with the approver and timestamp recorded.   |
| `SIGNING`              | Out for signature.                                    |
| `ISSUED`               | Issued to the employee, with the issue date recorded. |
| `ARCHIVED`             | Closed out.                                           |

Two review stages rather than one is deliberate: HR checks the wording against
convention, and the supervisor checks that the wording still matches their assessment.

The certificate also records the **signer name and title** — configurable, because the
person who signs an Arbeitszeugnis is often the school principal rather than whoever
operated the system — and, where relevant, an **exit category** that drives the closing
sentence (the Schlusssatz), which Swiss readers weigh as carefully as the Gesamturteil.

Employees can raise a request themselves through the portal, with a reason. Versions are
kept, so a corrected certificate does not overwrite the record of what was issued.

Delivery is through the portal. Access is checked per request against the certificate's
own access tokens — a certificate URL is never a shared secret. The employee is notified
when theirs is ready, and per-certificate notification preferences control which of
those notifications fire.

## Permissions

Certificates carry an assessment of a person, so access is narrower than general
employee data. `SYSTEM_ADMIN` has no certificate access at all — it is a technical
operations role, and a certificate is about as far from technical operations as a
record gets.