Levels & Badges
1. What it is
Levels & Badges is a gamification app that awards experience points (XP) when employees complete everyday work — finishing a shift on time, passing a quiz, submitting an idea, completing a task, and more. XP accumulates into levels and unlocks badges, and leaderboards let people and teams see where they stand.
XP — shown in the app as points — is a progress score, not money; it is never spent. Company Store points are separate.
- Enablement: Levels & Badges requires a license and is disabled by default. A company admin enables it from Admin → Apps → All Apps, then publishes it to users. Until it is published, only admins (and anyone given an app role for it) can open it.
- What it is not: Levels & Badges does not create its own activity stream. It reads completion records that other apps already produce (Time & Attendance, Training, Tasks, Inspections, and others). There is nothing to connect or import.
2. Standing it up
- Go to Admin → Apps → All Apps, find Levels & Badges, and enable it.
- Open Apps → Levels & Badges → Settings (the Admin dropdown in the sidebar). Review the default settings — all ten badge categories are active and leaderboards are on. Adjust any you want to change before employees start seeing progress.
- Confirm that the apps whose work you want to reward are also enabled. XP is only awarded for actions whose source app is enabled for your business. For example, if Training is not enabled, course completions and quiz passes earn no XP. The tracked apps are: Time & Attendance, Shift Marketplace, Tasks, Inspections, Safety Hub, Training, Surveys, Ideas, Ballots, Recognitions, Contests, and Calendar (checking in at a company event). The Engagement actions — logging in, reading, posting, commenting, reacting, and watching videos — count wherever they happen in the platform.
- Publish it. A newly enabled app is admin-only: employees earn XP from the moment it is enabled, but they cannot open the app or see their progress until a company admin goes to Admin → Apps → All Apps → Levels & Badges and clicks Publish to users. To give it to some people only, publish it to specific groups from the same page. Only company admins can open that page — a Levels & Badges app admin cannot publish the app or change who has it.
- Verify it works: perform a tracked action (complete a task, submit an idea) and open Apps → Levels & Badges. Within a few seconds the My Progress tab should show the XP award and your updated level.
Badge definitions are seeded automatically the first time an admin opens the Manage badges tab. There is nothing to create before employees can start earning.
3. How it fits together
XP and the action catalog
Every XP-worthy action belongs to one of ten badge categories: Reliability, Shift Hero, Execution, Safety, Learner, Quiz Whiz, Voice, Team Player, Contests, and Engagement. Each action awards a fixed number of points. Some examples:
| Action | Points | Category |
|---|---|---|
| Shift completed on time | 20 | Reliability |
| Open shift picked up | 25 | Shift Hero |
| Task completed | 10 | Execution |
| Safety inspection completed | 15 | Safety |
| Training course completed | 30 | Learner |
| Quiz passed | 20 | Quiz Whiz |
| Recognition given | 5 | Team Player |
| Recognition received | 15 | Team Player |
| Idea submitted | 15 | Voice |
| Daily log-in | 5 | Engagement |
Some actions carry daily caps to prevent gaming. Task completions, for instance, award XP for the first 10 per day; recognitions received cap at 10; safety observations at 5; recognition given at 3; company event check-ins at 2. Uncapped actions (shift completions, course completions) award once per source record and can never double-count.
Engagement actions — log-ins, reactions, comments, posts, reading content, watching videos — are deliberately low-value with tight daily caps. They are a tiebreaker on top of real work, not a reason to open the app. The Engagement category is on by default; a company that finds these actions inappropriate can turn the whole category off in settings.
Point values are fixed: every action is worth the same in every company, and they cannot be changed. What admins control is which categories are active (Settings → Active Badge Categories) and each badge’s threshold (Manage badges).
Levels and tiers
XP accumulates into 60 levels. The cost to advance increases in bands — leaving level 1 costs 50 XP, levels 22–25 cost 250 each, and the last level-ups (from level 55 up to 60) cost 425 each, so reaching Level 60 takes 16,075 XP in all. The curve is the same in every company and cannot be changed. Progress is presented as five named tiers; an employee’s own level number appears only as a detail under their tier on My Progress (and on their manager’s Team view), and the leaderboards and weekly digest show other people’s tier and points, never their level number:
| Tier | Levels | XP to reach | Icon |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rookie | 1–9 | 0 | Seedling |
| Contributor | 10–21 | 750 | Person |
| Pro | 22–37 | 2,850 | Star |
| Veteran | 38–53 | 7,450 | Shield |
| Master | 54–60 | 13,550 | Crown |
A new employee starts at Level 1 (Rookie, 0 XP). As an example: after 10 on-time shifts (200 XP), 5 completed tasks (50 XP), and 1 training course (30 XP), they would have 280 XP — Level 5, still in the Rookie tier. At 750 cumulative XP they reach Level 10 and become a Contributor.
Notifications fire on tier promotions, not on every level-up — employees are told “You reached Contributor!”, not “You reached Level 10.” The one exception is money: if your company pays Company Store points for level-ups, a level-up that pays sends a Company Store notice (“You earned 50 points!”) to employees who can open the store.
Badges
Badges are earned when a running counter crosses a threshold. The built-in catalog has 45 badges across the ten categories, each line with escalating tiers. Six of them are earned only through the Contests app: the four Contests badges, plus Show & Tell and Documentarian, which count photos submitted to contests. For example, the Reliability badge line awards Punctual at 10 on-time shifts, Dependable at 50, Always-On at 100, and Ironclad at 250. The Learner line awards Apprentice at 1 course completed, Trainee at 5, Star Student at 10, and Scholar at 20.
A badge is awarded once and never revoked. If an admin later raises the threshold, people who already earned it keep it.
Admins can customize every built-in badge — rename it, change its icon, raise or lower the threshold, or disable it — from the Manage badges tab. When a threshold is lowered or a badge is re-enabled, everyone who already qualifies is awarded automatically via a background backfill. Admins can also create entirely custom badges within any category, choosing which tracked metric the badge evaluates against.
Built-in badges can be disabled but not deleted. Custom badges can be deleted. Use Reset to restore a built-in badge to its original name, icon, threshold, and unlock message.
Streaks
Two categories track consecutive streaks alongside their cumulative counters. An on-time attendance streak increments with each on-time shift and resets to zero on a late arrival. A login streak increments each day the employee opens the app and resets overnight if they miss a day. Streak badges — such as Perfect Week (5 on-time shifts in a row) and Five in a Row (5 consecutive active days) — reward consistency rather than volume.
Leaderboards
Leaderboards rank employees by XP across several scopes:
- Company-wide — everyone in the business.
- Location — the employee’s assigned site(s).
- District / Region / Market — a roll-up of every site beneath a parent node in the location tree.
- Job title — employees with the same role (e.g. painters ranked against other painters).
Each scope has a monthly board (current calendar month) and an all-time board. Boards refresh every night at 00:20 UTC; a newly enabled company shows live data until the first refresh runs. Departed employees are removed from boards automatically.
Every employee sees a top-10 list, a “catch them” indicator showing the person directly ahead, and their own rank once they have earned XP in that period — someone with no XP in the period has no row on that board yet. Boards name everyone who has earned XP in the period; there is no per-person opt-out.
Integrations with other apps
Company Store bridge (optional). By default, XP is a status signal only — it has no monetary value. Admins can opt in to convert level-ups into Company Store points by setting both Company Store Points per Level-Up and Monthly Store-Points Budget from Level-Ups to values above zero in Settings. Both must be funded for the bridge to activate. A hard monthly cap prevents runaway spend. The Company Store app must also be enabled.
Contests. The Contests app scores metric-based competitions directly from the Levels & Badges activity ledger. A contest whose prize is a badge puts that badge on the winner’s badge wall, alongside their regular earned badges, while the Contests badge category is active.
4. Running it
Reviewing analytics
Go to Apps → Levels & Badges → Admin → Analytics. The page shows total participants, total XP awarded, badges earned, a tier distribution chart, and the top-10 leaderboard. All figures count only currently active employees.
Managing badges
Go to Apps → Levels & Badges → Admin → Manage badges. Badges are grouped by category. Select a badge to edit its name, icon, threshold, or unlock message. Use Reset to restore a built-in badge to its shipped default (reset does not re-enable a disabled badge). Use the Add badge button within a category to create a custom badge.
Viewing the Team tab (managers)
Any employee with direct reports sees a Team tab. It shows a roster of their reports with each person’s level, total XP, this-month XP, and badge count, plus the same tier-distribution chart the admin analytics page shows — scoped to their team.
Reviewing the weekly digest
When the Send Weekly Leaderboard Digest setting is turned on, company administrators receive a weekly email, every Monday at 14:00 UTC, showing the month’s top performers. The digest is off by default.
Who sees what
- Everyone the app is published to sees the My Progress tab (their own XP, level, tier, recent badges, recent activity) and the Badges catalog.
- Everyone the app is published to sees the Leaderboard tab when leaderboards are enabled.
- Managers (anyone with direct reports) additionally see a Team tab with their reports’ progress.
- Admins and app admins additionally see Analytics, Manage badges, and Settings under the Admin dropdown.
5. Settings
All settings are at Apps → Levels & Badges → Settings (admin only).
| Setting | Default | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Enable Leaderboards | On | Shows or hides the Leaderboard tab for all employees. |
| Leaderboard Scope | All | Which board types appear: Company-wide, Location, Job title, or all of them. |
| Send badge and tier-promotion notifications | On | Sends an in-app notification when an employee who can open the app reaches a new tier or earns a badge. It also goes to their phone only if they have turned on push for Recognition in their notification settings. These notices are never emailed. |
| Send Weekly Leaderboard Digest | Off | Emails this month’s top 10 to company administrators every Monday at 14:00 UTC. |
| Active Badge Categories | All ten on | Controls which categories award XP and badges. Disabling a category stops all awards for its actions — the hooks still fire but XP is not recorded. At least one category must remain active. |
| Site engagement target (%) | 80 | Threshold below which a manager is alerted that a site’s trailing 30-day participation has dropped. Set to 0 to disable. |
| Show individual activity in the Engagement report | Off | When on, the Engagement report includes per-person activity alongside the site and role totals. Off by default for privacy reasons. The Engagement report is open to admins and Engagement Champions only. |
| Company Store Points per Level-Up | 0 (off) | Points granted to the employee’s Company Store balance on each level-up. Both this and the monthly budget must be above zero. |
| Monthly Store-Points Budget from Level-Ups | 0 (unfunded) | Hard monthly cap on the total store points the level-up bridge can issue across all employees. |
6. More help
- Levels & Badges FAQ — specific setup and operating questions, limits, and troubleshooting.
- Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about Levels & Badges from these articles.