Challenges

A Challenge is a head-to-head competition between Users or Groups of Users; Ambition's solution for the common "SPIFF"
Select multiple Metrics, assign points, choose competitors, determine a time frame, and go. Simple and great for driving specific behavior.

 

We recommend walking through the entire article if this is the first Challenge you've created. If you need to navigate to a specific step of Challenge creation, select the appropriate step:

How do I access the Create Challenge form?

Step 1. Name and Time Frame

Step 2. Competitors

Step 3. Scoring

Step 4. Prizes

Step 5. Add to TV

Why do I see "Hidden Mode" next to the Challenge's name?

 

Create a Challenge

1. Create a challenge through the quick actions button, Motivate and Recognize > Competition, or through the left navigation, Competitions > Create.

 

2. Click the Create button on the Challenge tile.

 

3. Complete the Create New Competition Form.

1. Name & Time Frame

Be mindful that a single-day or power hour Challenge won't be very impactful if your metric data is pushed to Ambition once a day, every night at midnight, etc. Only data that Ambition receives during the competition's time frame will contribute toward's the competition's score.

Competition Name: We recommend a name which explicitly includes metrics and time frame.

Live <> Hidden Mode: "Hidden Mode" allows you to test drive a competition's setup and scoring configurations without notifying users that a competition has been created. Learn more about "hidden mode" here.

 

Challenges can either take place once, or on a recurring basis. In this article, we'll discuss One-Off Challenges.

For Recurring Challenges, check out How do I create a Recurring Challenge?

 

For One-Off Challenges, leave the selector in the One-Off position

Start Date, Start Time and Time Zone

Running a global competition? Check out best practices for selecting start dates and determining the duration of global competitions here.

One-off Challenges cannot be shorter than 30 minutes, and cannot exceed a time frame of 365 continuous days.

Set the Start Date, Start Time and Time Zone, establishing the start of the Challenge

If your competitors span multiple time zones, we recommend selecting the start date, start time, and timezone of the most western players (ex. 5 pm PST).

Note: Retroactive, or Challenges with a Start Date in the past, will default to have a Start Time of 12:00AM

End Date and End Time

Set the End Date and End Time for the Challenge, establishing the Challenge duration. The same Time Zone will be used.

 

2. Competitors

Hierarchy Level:

What style of competition do you want to create?

• User vs User? --> Select User as the Hierarchy Level
• Team vs Team? --> Select Team or corresponding Group Type within your instance (Manager Team, Location, Pods, etc)

Learn more about Ambition's Hierarchy Levels and see challenge hierarchy examples here.

 

Competitor Selection:

Select whether all of the chosen hierarchy or just specific user or group members will compete in the challenge.

If a Custom or Within grouping is selected, pick specific users / groups to compete in the challenge.

In the example below, the Columbus office will be competing against the San Diego office. Not a User vs User competition, but rather the Columbus Location as a whole vs the San Diego Location as a whole.

User > Custom Logic

When "User" is the selected Hierarchy Level, there will be an additional Competitor Selection option of "Custom Logic".

If Custom Logic is selected, you can incorporate AND, OR, and NOT logic to correctly segment competition participants based on multiple group memberships, ex. Location = “Atlanta” OR Location = “Nashville” AND Role = “Account Executive”, instead of having to create bespoke competition group, ex. Southeast Account Executives.

To incorporate custom logic:

1. Select the appropriate Group Type.

Any Group Type that's visible in your organization's group manager will be available.

2. Select the appropriate Group.

3. Click Add Filter to continue selecting group types and groups as appropriate

4. Construct the appropriate filter logic, using AND, OR, and NOT based on the desired participants.

5. Verify the competitors are matching your expectation through the "View Competitors" button. Adjust filters and filter logic as needed.

 

Custom Logic Examples:

Example of Filter Logic and Competitors using the user directory example export below.

 

Desired competition is to only include users who are in the Boston Location AND are either in the Account Executives OR Sr. Account Executives Roles.

Filters: 1. Location = Boston, MA, 2. Role = Account Executives, 3. Role = Sr. Account Executives.

Filter Logic Statement: 1 AND (2 OR 3)

Five Account Executives in the Boston location + four Sr. Account Executives in the Boston location = nine competitors.

 

Desired competition is to only include users who are in the Boston Location BUT exclude those in the Account Managers AND Customer Success Manager Roles as it's a busy time for renewals. 

Filters: 1. Location = Boston, MA, 2. Role = Account Managers, 3. Role = Customer Success Managers.

Filter Logic Statement: 1 AND NOT (2 OR 3).

Forty total users in Boston location - 5 Account Managers - 5 Customer Success Managers = 30 competitors.

 

User > Within > Group(s) or Users > Custom Logic

If the hierarchy level of a challenge is "Users > Within > a group" or "Users > Custom Logic", you will be given the option to keep the challenge competitors up to date with group membership changes or lock in the competitor list for the duration of the challenge.

If new group members should be added to the competition and any group members who were removed from the group should be removed from the competition, select "Keep competitor list updated". If you wish to exclude new group members from being added to the competition or prevent removed group members from being removed from the challenge, select "Do not keep competitor list updated".

↳ Use case for "Do not keep competitor list updated": If you are running a month long competition for SDRs and you know a new hire class will join the SDR role the last week of the month, you may wish to exclude them from being added into the challenge with only a few days left to complete + don't want to interfere with their onboarding/ramping plan.

 

3. Scoring

This is the KPI or Metrics that will be used to calculate "points" for this Challenge. It's important to keep in mind the frequency with which your data is pushed to Ambition (hopefully real-time), in relation to the competition.

Be mindful that a single-day or power hour Challenge won't be very impactful if your Metric data is pushed to Ambition once a day, every night at midnight, etc.

For summed metrics (calls for example) only data that Ambition receives during the competition's time frame will contribute toward's the competition's score. This supports an hour-long competition for individual users or teams.

If the scoring configuration is set to use a daily average, the competition may contribute data received outside of the competition's time frame. For example, if the competition begins mid day, but it is built off of an averaged metric like Activity Score, the competition score will include the entire day's data for the daily average calculation.

 

Competitions can be both multi-metric and points-based.

Note:

Multi-Metric Competitions cannot exceed combining 5 metrics.

The same Metric cannot be used more than once in a single Challenge. ie. Cannot use both points and value scoring for the same metric.

If you wish to compete over Objective Score, ensure the Challenge's time frame matches your Objective Score time frame.

Ex. Weekly Objective Score = Challenge starts on Monday @12am. Monthly Objective Score = Challenge starts on the 1st of the month @12am.

 

 

Click the Add Score Parameter button to begin compiling your competition Metrics.

 

Select a Metric from the Metric drop down.

 

Select the Scoring Type.

 

If Points is selected as the Scoring Type, complete adjust the Points Per Value selections to fit your needs.

At this time, points are required to be whole numbers.

Example above showcases where 5 points will be given per 1 Appointment Set

 

 

Determine and set options for the Scoring Parameter.

Option	Recommended Use	Behavior
Use Per-User Average (Value Method)	Recommended for when competing groups are not the same size, and the challenge time frame is at least 1 day. If an hour long or half-day challenge is utilizing averages, the full day's average will be used in the score calculation.   Since Activity and Objective Scores are inherently averaged, they will already use a Per-User Average. This toggle will have no additional impact towards either Activity or Objective Score.	If toggled off, the metric Value will be used: This setting will use the value of the metric associated with an entity to generate the score. Example: If a user/team creates 10 new leads every day for 1 work week, their value is 50.   If toggled on, the Average value will be used: If the entity being scored is a super entity (or team) use the average metric value of each sub entity (users) to generate the score.  Example: Team A has two team members. Respectively, they each have activity scores of 80 and 100 for the week, so their average score is 90 [(80+100)/2].
Sum Daily Averages (Aggregation Method)	Recommended for long durations where affecting the average becomes increasingly difficult.	For competitions that last longer than a day and contain more than one metric value (Monday's value, Tuesday's values, etc) we must determine how to aggregate these values together, for example, summing or averaging:   If toggled off, Default scoring applies = This will depend on the metric being scored. If the metric is an average metric, the value will be averaged across the time span of the competition. If the value is summed, the value will be summed. Note: Activity Score and Objective Score are Average metrics   If toggled on, Sum scoring applies = Ignore the metric type and always sum the daily values together
Exclude Weekends	Do not include weekends in the scoring calculation. Only applicable for Competitions spanning over the weekend days, Saturday or Sunday.	If toggled on = all weekend values will be ignored. If the user generates metrics over the weekend, they will not be counted towards the competition’s score. If you are utilizing a Monthly Objective Score scoring parameter and desire the competition score to match the Groups's Dashboard, ensure this is toggled Off.
Bench Out-of-Office Players	Do not include users who are out for sick days, PTO, etc from bringing down a team's score.	If toggled on =  metric values generated on days where the user is marked Out of Office will be ignored.
Min Value*	A "pay to play" setup. One must cross a threshold before generating a score.	The floor that must be reached before score contribution is made.   Note: After the threshold is crossed, a user's score will be representative of the threshold's value and not starting from 0. Ex. A User crosses a min value of $10,000 Revenue, and their score will reflect their $10,500 metric value. NOT from starting $0 once the threshold is crossed.
Max Value*	A "cap" on the amount of contribution a user can receive from a single metric. Prevent inflation of score from a single metric.	The ceiling at which no additional score contribution is made.   Value Scoring Ex. If value scoring (1:1) is being used and a max value of 20 is set for Calls, the max points you could receive in the competition for Calls is 20. Points Scoring Ex. If Calls are worth 2 points a piece and a max value of 20 is set, the max points you could receive in the competition for Calls is 40.

* Note about Thresholds and Multi-day Challenges

A minimum or maximum threshold will be applicable to the Challenge's duration as a whole.

 

Repeat the above steps for each desired Score Parameter.

Multi-Metric Competitions can combine up to 5 different metrics.

 

4. Prizes (optional)

Prizes are not required, but if appropriate can be granted based on Rank (1st, 2nd, 3rd...up to 10th) and/or based on Threshold (everyone at or above x Score gets y prize)

Note: Threshold applies to the overall score. If multiple metrics or average scoring is being used, we would advise careful projections before stating the thresholds.

A combination of Rank and Threshold prizes can be used!

 

To include a Rank based Prize:

1. Click "Add Prize" or "Add Another Prize" if a prize type has already been added.

2. Select Rank from the Type dropdown.

3. Select which Rank (options for 1st-10th) you'd like to input a prize for in the Place dropdown.

You cannot set Prizes for ranks greater than the number of competitors. Ex. If you have 3 teams competing, you can't set a 10th place prize.

 

4. Fill in the prize that will be awarded in the prize field.

 

 

To include a Threshold based prize:

1. Click "Add Prize" or "Add Another Prize" if a prize type has already been added.

 

2. Select Threshold from the Type dropdown.

 

3. Input the respective threshold value to be reached.

Again, note that thresholds are for the overall score. If utilizing a multi-metric challenge or averages, we would advise careful projections before stating the thresholds.

 

4. Fill in the prize that will be awarded in the prize field.

Learn more about prize thresholds here.

 

 

5. Add to TV (optional)

If you have "Edit: TVs" permission, you can optionally display your challenge on an Ambition TV.

A countdown timer will be displayed on the slide if the competition has not yet started.

 

To Add Challenge to TV:

1. Select the respective TV(s) you'd like your challenge to appear on from the "Available" list.

2. Optionally select a Start and End Date from the respective dropdown if you'd like the slide to be added and/or removed from the TV at a specific point in time.

 

Finishing up

4. Once you've completed the challenge form, click the Create Challenge button.

Participants will be notified via email before the challenge begins, and can track progress via dashboards. Don't forget to include this challenge on a TV slide for added visibility and competition.

 

 

Hidden Mode

If at any time you notice a "Hidden Mode" label listed alongside a challenge's name in the Manage Competitions interface, that challenge has "hidden mode" enabled.

"Hidden Mode" allows you to test drive a competition's setup and scoring configurations without notifying users that a competition has been created.

The challenge can be viewed, edited, and deleted by users with "Competitions: All Access" permissions, but it is hidden from any user without "Competitions: All Access" permission in Ambition.

Once you've perfected the competition's setup, you can toggle the competition to "Live" and the competition will be visible across Ambition.

Learn more about "Hidden Mode" here.