Contests App Overview

Contests

1. What it is

Contests lets you run time-boxed competitions with a real start date, end date, winner, and prize. Competitions can score automatically from platform activity, accept manually entered numbers, judge photo or story submissions, or run pick’em prediction pools. Contests supports both individual and team structures, with prizes paid as Company Store points, badges, or bragging rights.

• Enablement: Contests requires a license. An admin enables it from Admin → Apps → All Apps, and it is off by default.
• What it is not: Contests is the episodic, time-boxed layer of engagement. Ongoing XP and badge earning lives in Levels & Badges. Contests scores from that ledger (metric mode) but is a separate app with its own lifecycle.

2. Standing it up

1. Go to Admin → Apps → All Apps and enable Contests. This requires a license.
2. Open Contests → Admin → Settings. Set Who can create contests — the default is Admins only. If you choose Managers and above or Everyone, those creators’ contests wait for approval before going live. Who can review contest approvals? on the same page decides who clears them — app admins by default, or managers or a named group.
3. If you use metric-scored contests, confirm that Levels & Badges is enabled. Metric contests score from the Levels & Badges activity ledger, so without it a metric contest scores 0. Also turn on the apps whose actions you want to score on — each action comes from its own app (shift pickups from Shift Marketplace, courses from Training), and the form offers only the actions whose app is on.
4. For points prizes, go to Admin → Prize budgets and create a budget for each manager who will fund prizes. Without a budget, non-admin creators cannot offer points prizes.
5. Confirm it worked: open the Contests tab in the app sidebar. You should see the contest dashboard with sections for live, upcoming, and finished contests, plus a template gallery if you can create contests.

What metric scoring needs: Levels & Badges must be on — while it is off, the contest form warns “Automatic scoring needs the Levels & Badges app” when you pick automatic scoring, because such a contest would score 0. The scoring-action picker lists only actions whose own app is on. A template whose scoring needs an app that is off names that app on its card, and Create is refused with the app’s name when none of its actions can be offered.

3. How it fits together

Scoring modes — Every contest uses exactly one scoring mode, chosen at creation and locked when the contest goes live:

• Metric scores automatically from the Levels & Badges activity ledger (XP points or event count). The creator picks which platform actions count — for example, “open shifts picked up” or “training courses completed.”
• Manual tracks numbers entered by hand or CSV — anything the platform doesn’t measure automatically, like sales calls or pallets moved.
• Submission collects photo or story entries (a single image, a before-and-after pair, or a gallery of photos and short videos) decided by community votes, a designated judge panel, or This or that: voters see two entries at a time and pick the one they like more, again and again, and the order is fitted from every pick. A photo contest, however it is decided, can be between location or department teams — each team gets one entry when the contest starts, its own members add the photos while entries are open, and the organizer can fill every team’s entry at once by uploading one folder with a sub-folder per team, named like the team. Entries close at the end date, and a window follows — three days unless you change it: a judge panel scores in it, community votes (open since the contest started) carry on through it, and This or that voting runs only in it. While This or that voting runs, only the organizer and Contests admins who aren’t competing see the order. Its places come from who beat whom, so beating a strong entry counts for more than beating a weak one, and a confidence check labels each place — Clear finish, Strong finish or Close call — by how sure it is to stay ahead of the next place.
• Prediction runs pick’em pools: the organizer posts questions with options, participants pick, and correct picks earn points. Brackets advance automatically from round results.
• Business metric (site-metric race) scores location teams on the improvement of a registered business metric compared to the same-length period before the contest window.

Which vote to use — A News Feed poll is for one quick question with a few text answers. Ballots are for a formal, attributable vote — approving a document or electing up to ten people. Recognition award cycles honor a person for what they did. In Contests, community votes suit a small photo contest people can browse whole, a judge panel suits work scored against a standard, and This or that suits many photo entries where you want a fair order and voting that is fun to do.

Structure — A contest is either individual (each person competes alone) or team (grouped by department or location). Individual metric and submission contests are opt-in — nobody is publicly ranked without enrolling. Team contests and individual manual contests auto-enroll the entire audience when the contest goes live. Team contests support per-capita scoring, so a six-person store can compete fairly against a forty-person one.

Goal types determine how a winner is decided:

• Highest score — top of the leaderboard wins.
• First to target — first to reach a number wins.
• Everyone who reaches the target wins — every team member must hit the target for the team to win (on an individual contest, everyone who hits it wins). A cooperative goal, allowed under works-council mode.
• Share of team reaches the target — a configurable percentage of team members must hit the target, optionally with a secondary qualifying activity gate.
• Most improved — scored on the difference between the contest window and a baseline of equal length immediately before it.
• Raffle — individual only; participation earns tickets, and winners are drawn from the pool. The draw is seeded and audited.

Example: A “Safety Sprint” contest uses metric scoring on the “safety checklist completed” action, team structure grouped by location, with a “first to target” goal of 50 events. Per-capita scoring is on, so a small crew has the same shot as a large one. The prize is 500 Company Store points for the winning team, funded from the safety manager’s delegated prize budget.

Prizes — Three types: Company Store points (deposited into the winner’s rewards balance), badge (minted onto the winner’s Badges page in Levels & Badges), or bragging rights (no tangible prize). Prediction contests, raffles and the two shared-goal formats (everyone who reaches the target wins, share of team reaches the target) are restricted to badges or bragging rights — their payout can’t be bounded in advance, so points prizes are not available on them. Under works-council mode every team contest but a photo contest or a site-metric race must use a shared-goal format, so it offers badges or bragging rights only; a photo contest between teams or a site-metric race can still offer points. Employee-created contests can only offer bragging rights.

Rule lock — When a contest goes live, its scoring contract freezes: structure, scoring mode, goal type, target value, audience, prize type, and time window all become immutable. Corrections after that point go through admin override tools (score adjustments, disqualification, early end), never edits to the locked rules.

Programs and seasons — A season (e.g. “Monthly Pickup Challenge”) generates a new round every week, every two weeks or every 30 days from a chosen round format, and shows roll-up standings across its rounds, using either placement-points or summed-scores rollup. A season ends on its end date, once its last round has finished — no round runs past it — and its creator is told. Only a season creates contests — there is no way to add a contest to a plain program. A season’s round format has to be able to score — a format whose scoring apps (or Levels & Badges) are off is refused when you create the season, and if those apps are switched off later, the nightly rollover skips the round, tells the season’s owner, and notes why on the season’s page; the next round opens once the apps are back on. Ending a season stops new rounds; contests already running finish on their own schedule.

Duels — Any member can challenge a coworker to a 1v1 duel from the Duels tab. Accepting spins up a real two-person contest that rides the full scoring engine. Duels always award bragging rights. Pending duel invitations expire automatically after 14 days if the opponent does not respond. If your organization restricts contests to team mode (works-council setting), duels are disabled; if it restricts only some locations, people who work at those locations can’t start or accept a duel.

Approval flow — Non-admin creators always go through approval. When a manager or employee creates a contest, it enters Pending approval and appears in the approval queue of whoever Who can review contest approvals? names (app admins can always review). Approving moves it to Scheduled (and, for points prizes, locks the budget hold at that moment). Rejecting sends it back to the creator as a draft with the reviewer’s reason, so they can revise and resubmit. Nobody can approve a contest they created.

Integrations — Contests appear on the Comms Hub calendar alongside posts, surveys, and broadcasts, so an engagement campaign reads as one coordinated plan. Standings of contests open to the whole company are shown on Digital Signage screens unless switched off. Winners earn participation XP through the Levels & Badges economy, and the Contests Agent in Ask AI lets users check standings, join contests, and make predictions conversationally.

4. Running it

Creating a contest

1. Open Contests and click the New contest button, or pick a template from the gallery. Templates pre-fill structure, scoring mode, goal, and suggested duration.
2. Fill in the name, time window, audience (company-wide, specific locations, or specific departments), and prize.
3. If you are not an admin, the contest goes to the Approvals queue. Admin-created contests go straight to Scheduled.
4. Once scheduled, the contest activates automatically at its start time. For team contests, teams are snapshotted from the org structure at activation and membership is frozen for the duration.

Reviewing approvals

Go to Admin → Approvals. Each pending contest shows who created it, the prize, and — for points prizes — the creator’s remaining budget. Approve to schedule it (the budget hold is taken at this moment) or reject with a reason, which sends it back to the creator as a draft.

Admin overrides on a live contest

Open the contest detail page. Admin tools are in its More actions (⋮) menu while a contest is live:

• Adjust score — adds or subtracts points as an audited overlay. The original score is never changed. Not on a This or that contest, whose order comes only from the picks.
• Disqualify / Reinstate — removes or restores an entrant — or, on a photo contest between teams, a team’s whole entry. Disqualification is immediate; the standings refresh.
• Extend voting — while voting is open, moves its deadline later, by up to 30 days at a time.
• End early — freezes the contest at the current moment. Activity, manual and prediction contests go straight to the normal completion path (payout, winner announcement); a photo/story contest still taking entries closes them and moves on to the window after entries close — judging for a judge panel, voting for community votes and This or that — and finishes when that window does (or when it is ended early again).
• Cancel — terminates the contest. Any budget hold is released.

Every override requires a reason, which is recorded on the audit trail. An admin who is competing in a contest someone else created can’t adjust a score, disqualify an entrant, extend voting, end it early or enter manual scores — another Contests admin who isn’t competing has to (the contest’s creator can enter manual scores too).

Managing prize budgets

Go to Admin → Prize budgets. Create a budget by naming a grantee (the manager who will fund prizes), setting an allocated-points amount, and optionally an expiration date. When the grantee’s contest is approved, the prize total is reserved from their budget; when a team contest starts, the hold grows to cover every member of the teams that could win, as far as the budget allows. When the contest completes, at most what is held is deducted and any remainder is released; a payout above the hold is still paid and recorded on the contest’s audit trail.

Announcing a contest and featuring its winners

From a contest’s page, the creator or an admin can:

• Announce to audience — while an opt-in contest is upcoming or live, sends one notification to the audience members who haven’t joined yet but still could. On a This or that contest it can be sent a second time, once voting opens, to tell the whole audience voting has started. Each can be sent once.
• Feature winners on the feed — after a contest completes, publishes the winners to the company’s Communications feed as a post (idempotent — safe to click twice). Offered only when Announce winners to the company feed is on in settings, which is off by default.
• Winners automatically receive an in-app notification and an email with their shareable win card.

Rerunning a finished contest

When a completed contest declared a business goal and Loop measured its result, the creator or an admin can launch a rerun from the business-goal panel on its page (Run it again). The rerun pre-fills the same format, scoring mode, goal, and declared business goal, but with a fresh time window and no pre-approved budget — the creator reviews everything before saving, and the rerun goes through the normal approval and budget flow.

Saving a custom template

On any contest’s detail page, the creator or an admin can click Save as template. This captures the contest’s format (scoring mode, structure, goal, prize type) as a tenant-scoped custom template in the gallery. The time window, audience, and live state are not copied.

5. Settings

All settings are under Contests → Admin → Settings.

Setting	Default	What it changes
Who can create contests	Admins only	Controls who sees the “New contest” button. Managers and above adds anyone with the Manager role or direct reports (with approval); Everyone adds all members (with approval; employees without the Manager role or direct reports offer bragging-rights prizes only — managers keep points prizes from their budgets).
Restrict to team contests	Off	When on, individual contests, 1-on-1 challenges and individual ranking are off organization-wide. A contest must be a photo contest between teams, a site-metric race between locations, or a team contest with a cooperative goal (everyone or a share of the team reaches the target). Designed for regions where publicly ranking employees requires works-council consultation.
Or restrict specific locations only	None	Per-location restriction: contests whose audience includes any of these locations, or anyone who works at one, are held to the same rule, even when the organization-wide switch is off.
Who can review contest approvals?	App admins	Who clears manager- and employee-created contests before they go live: app admins, managers or people with direct reports, or a named group. App admins can always review.
Who can see Contests analytics?	App admins	Who sees participation, engagement lift (participants’ daily activity against their own pre-contest baseline), how active the people who didn’t join were, and retention.
Who can grant prize budgets?	App admins	Who may grant managers a points budget for prizes: app admins or a named group. App admins can always grant.
Who can create programs and seasons?	Contests admins	Fixed: a season starts a new round on a schedule with no approval step and no prize budget, so it can’t be delegated.
Who can read the audit trail?	App admins	Who may read every score adjustment, disqualification, approval, payout and budget change, with its reason: app admins or a named group, never all managers.
Send weekly contests digest email	Off	An email every Monday at 14:00 UTC with current standings and contests still open to join. It reaches everyone entered in a live contest and anyone who could still join an individual contest that’s live or starts within 30 days, invited to each at most 3 times — not entrants only. A short summary also lands in each person’s Inbox, so members with no work email get it too.
Send rank nudges	On	Notifies entrants when they take the lead, move into or out of a prize place, and in the contest’s final hour. Turning it off also stops the final-hour notice.
Announce winners to the company feed	Off	When a contest ends, posts the winners to everyone’s Communications feed and the daily celebrations, and offers Feature winners on the feed on finished contests. Sample contests, 1-on-1 challenges and individual contests a works-council restriction covers are never posted.
Allow announcing a contest to its whole audience	On	Keeps the one-time Announce to audience action, which notifies the audience members who haven’t joined yet but still could, and on a This or that contest Announce voting to the audience, which tells the whole audience while its voting is open. Off removes both.
Allow public results links	On	Lets the organizer of a This or that contest share its results with a link anyone can open, without signing in. Turning this off turns every contest’s results link off; turning it on again doesn’t bring them back — organizers make a new link.
Route contest admin alerts to this group	Blank	Sends the four admin escalations — a blocked prize payout, a payout that failed after winners were ranked, a contest started with less prize budget than its table promises, and a judge panel with no scores by its judging deadline — to a group instead; the contest’s creator gets them too. Blank sends them to the Contests app admins, then to all business admins.
Show contest leaderboards on digital signage	On	Break-room screens show the leaderboard of each running contest open to the whole company, naming the top three entrants or teams — never a contest for specific locations or departments, a duel, or sample data. A This or that contest stays on screen while its voting is open, with a Scan to vote code, and names nobody until voting closes. A judge-panel contest, and an individual contest a works-council restriction covers, name nobody either. Every screen shows them once Digital Signage is enabled, unless someone switches contest leaderboards off for that screen.
Screen contest entries and names for offensive content	On	Checks an entry’s title and story, a contest’s name and description, and a 1-on-1 challenge’s message against your organization’s content moderation settings before they save. A refusal shows on the form with the author’s words kept. Company admins, and anyone your moderation settings exempt, are never screened.
Enable the Contests Agent in Ask AI	On	Lets users check standings, join contests, and launch templates conversationally through the Ask AI sidebar, and post a contest win to a chat room, a Teams or Slack channel, or a colleague — after they confirm, and only a win they can see.
Shared moments	On once Contests is enabled	One company-wide switch, also on the Recognition and Training settings pages: people can share their own contest wins outside the company as a card and a link showing their name, what they won and the company.

Viewing contest history

The main dashboard shows the 3 most recently completed contests under Recently finished. For the full archive, click View all beside it. Completed and archived contests remain viewable there indefinitely, alongside the cancelled contests you can see — every cancelled contest for a Contests admin; for anyone else, those that went live and those they created or were entered in.

6. More help

• Contests FAQ — specific setup and operating questions, limits, and troubleshooting.
• Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about Contests from these articles.