Create Recurring Challenge

Recurring challenges happen again and again on a predictable schedule. They are ideal for weekly, monthly, or daily competitions.

 

We recommend walking through the entire article if this is the first recurring challenge you've created. If you need to navigate to a specific step of recurring 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 Recurring Challenge

1. Create a recurring 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 Challenge 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.

 

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

For one time challenges, check out How do I create a Challenge?

 

For recurring challenges, move the selector to Recurring

Like to see some examples of Recurring Challenges?

 

Establish the Initial Event

Start Date, Start Time and Time Zone

Set the Start Date, Start Time and Time Zone, establishing the start of the initial challenge.

Available start time selections include the top of the hour and half hour intervals, ex. 4:00pm, 4:30pm.

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).

End Date and End Time

Set the End Date and End Time of the first challenge, establishing the challenge duration. The same time zone selected with the start date will be used.

Available end time selections include the top of the hour and half hour intervals, ex. 4:00pm, 4:30pm.

The duration, or period between Start Date/Time and End Date/Time of this competition will be used for all future recurrences of this challenge

 

 

Establish Frequency of Each Recurring Event

The frequency of recurrence determines how often this challenge will repeat. In the example above, we've configured the challenge to repeat once a month, starting on the 1st day of the month and ending on the last day of the month.

The flexibility of this interface enables recurring schedules such as:

• Every Day or Week
• Once per Month
• 2nd Monday of Every Quarter
• First Day of the Month to the Last Day of the Month (Note: this selection picks the first and final day of the month, not the first and final business day.)

 

Establish When The Recurrence Ends

Recurring events will continue on forever, unless an end is defined. Recurring challenges can end after a certain # of occurrences or on a specific date.

 

2. Competitors

Hierarchy Level:

What style of competition do you want to create?

• User vs User? --> Select Employee 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 employees / group members will compete in the challenge.

If a specific or within grouping is selected, pick specific employees / 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.

Employee > Select employees Based on custom filters

When "employee" is the selected Hierarchy Level, there will be an additional Competitor Selection option of "select employees based on custom filters".

If custom filters 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 created in your organization's group manager will be available.

2. Select the appropriate Group.

3. 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" 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 employees 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 employees 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 "Employees > within a specific group" or "select employees based on custom filters", you will be given the option to include or exclude new users who are added to a group after the start of the competition.

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 "Add/Remove Competitors". 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 "Maintain Original Competitors".

↳ Use case for "Maintain Original Competitors": 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:

Challenges can combine up to 5 metrics.

The same metric cannot be used more than once in a single challenge. ie. Cannot incorporate the same metric with different point values into a single challenge.

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 Add Metric to begin compiling your competition metrics.

  

Select a Metric.

 

Adjust the "points per value" selections to fit your needs.

A 1 point per metric value will award a point for every point increase in the metric, ex. Metric = Revenue, 1 Point per Metric Value is selected, a $75,000 deal would result in 75,000 points.

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 using averages, the full day's average will be used in the score calculation.   Since Activity and Objective Scores are inherently averaged, they will already be calculated based on 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 the user/team to generate the score. Example: If a user/team creates 10 new leads every day for 1 work week, their weekly value is 50.   If toggled on, the Average value will be used: If the competitors being scored are a group (team, role, location, etc), use the average metric value of each group member 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 using a Monthly Objective Score scoring parameter and desire the competition score to match the Groups's Dashboard, ensure this is toggled Off.
Out of Office Competitors Do Not Earn Points	Employees who are out for sick days, PTO, etc will not be calculated into a team's score.	If toggled on =  metric values generated on days where employees are 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. An employee 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.   1 point per value example: If a max value of 20 is set for Calls, the max points you could receive in the competition for Calls is 20. Multiple points per value example: 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 min/max values 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 metric.

A challenge can include 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 "TVs: Edit" 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.

For recurring challenges, a countdown timer will displayed only before the first occurrence. For subsequent occurrences, the results of the previous competition will be displayed on the slide until the next competition begins.

To Add Recurring Challenge to TV:

1. Select the respective TV(s) you'd like your recurring 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 being being displayed and/or stop being displayed at a specific point in time.

 

 

Finishing up

4. If the challenge is ready for competitor to view and interact with, Click the Create Challenge > Create Challenge.

If you'd like to preview/test the challenge's setup and view the competition before competitors are notified, click Create Challenge > Create Hidden Challenge.

↳ A hidden challenge 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 the competition creator and 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.