Understanding Badges

Your Influitive Hub comes with a default configuration of levels and badges. Customizing these badges is a great way to add an element of fun and personalization to your hub, especially if you're looking to build out a hub-wide theme. Customized levels can increase the competitiveness of your hub by motivating advocates to achieve a higher level. The purpose of this article is to provide a thorough understanding of how badges work and how you can use them to increase the overall awesomeness of your hub. To learn more about levels, check out this article on  How to Configure Levels.

Viewing Badges and Badge progress

Let's start by exploring how members experience levels and badges. There are two places where they can view level and badge information - on the Challenges page and their Profile.

Challenges Page

On the Challenges page, if you scroll down below the Leaderboard on the right side, you will see the "Achievements" section. Here, members can see their current level and explore the badge structure of the program.

Clicking on the "See Available Badges" link will present a pop-up showing the Levels and the Badges required to enter those levels. The "See Earned Badges" link directs members to their profile page where they could see the badges they earned.

Earned badges are presented in full-colour, whereas unearned badges appear faded. Take note of those badges that are partially filled. As a member makes progress toward a badge, the colour will appear to fill up the badge icon. Naturally, if a badge is awarded manually or through a single event, the badge icon will not display progress.

As seen above, the levels that a member has reached will display " Unlocked"  next to the Level.

Additionally, clicking each badge will show the details on how to get the badge.

If a Badge is awarded for completing a specific Challenge a link is now included to that Challenge. The member can click the Badge, then the link, and be taken directly to the Challenge to complete it.

Profile Page

Members will also see a library of their badges as well as their current level and leaderboard position on their profile page. A member can access their profile from any page, by clicking on your avatar image in the top right corner and clicking on their name.

From here, members will see the following page with all of their earned badges and current level. The members could change the display of the badges on their profile by selecting the Order By Dropdown menu.

Creating a Badge

Navigating to the Levels & Badges Settings

1. Click on the gear icon in the top right of Admin View and click on Settings

   

2. Click on Scoring & Achievements to expand the underlying options, then choose Levels & Badges

   

On this page, you will see some pre-existing Levels and Badges and some configuration options. Here are the different things you can do with badges on this page:

1. Badge Displays

In the area of the blue outline below, you will see the option “Show badges by” followed by a dropdown menu of options. This allows you to show the default order in which badges appear on members’ profiles.

2. Delete a badge

Hover over a badge for the option to edit or delete that badge.

3. Assign badges to levels

Drag and drop badges to move them from one level box to another.

4. Add a badge and configure its rules for fulfilment. 

Let’s try to add some badges to our program now.

1. Start by clicking on the blue Add Badge button, highlighted in the green-outlined area in the above image. This will open the badge creation wizard.
2. Give your badge a name, and describe how the badge is earned. It’s important to be clear because members will be able to see this description when viewing the program’s set of badges.

3. Choose the Level that this badge should live in. This will make this badge part of the criteria to reach the level, but a member does not have to be in the level to earn the badge.

   

4. Next, scroll down to choose an icon for the badge or upload your own. See this article to Customize Badge Icons.

   

5. Be careful to not click that “Create Badge” button yet, because we still need to make the rules for this badge. At the top of the badge creation window, click on 2. Rules. This is where you specify the criteria that must be met in order for members to be awarded the badge.

Rules

You can choose to give out badges for several reasons. Examples of how you could use each rule feature include:

1. Completed a specific challenge: This rule will award the badge to a member who has completed the specified challenge once. As in the example above, this is often used to award a badge when the final Challenge in a sequence has been completed. This sequence of Challenges is generally a campaign or group of theme-specific activities such as training, re-branding, or new product promotion.
   

   

2. Completed a type challenge: This rule allows you to award a badge when a member completes a type of Challenge multiple times. This is most often used to recognize members who have an affinity for a particular type of activity such as social sharing, writing reviews, providing product feedback, and so on.
   

   

3. Logged a certain type of event a specific number of times: This is similar to the above rule but does not require the completion of a challenge. This rule is triggered when a member completes the specified event, even if this event was not part of a particular challenge type. This rule can be used for awarding badges based on more generic activities. For example, if you want to award a badge to active members of the Discussions forums, but don’t want to have a challenge tied to every topic, you can utilize the “Replied to topic” event type. Additionally, there are options for awarding badges based on sharing on a particular social media platform using the “Tweeted”, “Link shared on LinkedIn”, or “Link shared on Facebook” events.
   
   Adding multiple Events Type will result in an "or" rule. For example, if you select "Replied to a topic", "Posted a topic", "Commented on a reply" and Number of times = 10, this means that the badge will get triggered when the user has a total of 10 events logs for  a combination of reply, posting and commenting.
   
   

   

4. Reached a lifetime points target: A common way you can recognize and promote members for their progress over time is to award badges for certain point targets. This type of badge allows members to show the community how much they have contributed. This type of badge is often used as a way for members to be promoted to higher levels. Common milestones for points earned are 5000, 10,000, 25,000, 50,000, and 100,000.
   

   

5. Manual awarding: The final option allows you to only use a badge as a manually awarded reward. This type of badge is not recommended. While you may consider this to be a good option for members who have done something special outside of the program. In these situations, it is better to log activities (read more here) on the member profile. This will allow you to both provide points and report on this activity in the future.
   

   

To manually reward an advocate, go to their profile page and click on the gear box to the right of their profile information. From the drop-down menu that appears, select "Award a Badge". Then select a badge from the list of available badges - regardless of level category. 

Retroactive awarding and Badge Visibility

In this section, you can choose whether you would like to award this badge retroactively as well or not. Mark the box to award the badge to users who have fulfilled the criteria before the creation of the badge.

Additionally, you can choose the visibility of the badges:

• Hide badge from Member until it’s been earned: This option makes the badge invisible until the member matches the criteria. This could be used for a nice “surprise and delight” moment.
• Award badge only to members from specific groups: This will add additional criteria that a member must be a member of a specific group to earn the badge.

When you are done making your choices, click on the  Create Badge button. In the section below, we will learn how to add badges to levels.

If you have questions about any of this, please feel free to contact us at support@influitive.com