How To Set Up The Points-Based Leaderboard

  • 10 February 2020
  • 22 replies
  • 1217 views

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A points-based leaderboard is a great way to identify, highlight and motivate active users. In this article, you can learn how to configure your own point values, configure the dedicated leaderboard page, and set up leaderboard widgets on the homepage for different user roles (e.g. one for your customers, another for your employees).

 

How to set up a points-based leaderboard

Setting up the point values & select the time zone

  1. Log in to Control and navigate to Gamification → Point system
  2. Configure the point values you want to award for each activity on the community and make sure the toggles are enabled.
  3. Set the timezone for your leaderboard. The weekly leaderboard will always reset at midnight (in the selected timezone) on Sunday/Monday.
  4. Press save changes, and you’re done!

 

Configure the users shown on the dedicated leaderboard page
The leaderboard page is available by default at yourcommunity.com/leaderboard. Both a weekly and all-time view are available. Up to 1000 users can be shown on both the weekly and all-time leaderboards. 

You can also configure user roles to exclude from the leaderboard page.

  1. Log in to Control and navigate to Gamification → Point system
  2. Under Leaderboard page setting, select any user roles you want to exclude from the leaderboard page (both primary and custom roles are supported).
  3. Press save changes, and you’re done!

 

Add a leaderboard widget to the homepage
See this article for more information about homepage widgets.

  1. Go to the homepage and enable customization mode.
  2. Add a Container 2:1 widget. Press the + button in the sidebar panel and add the Leaderboard widget
  3. Choose a title, the max amount of users to show, the time ranges you want to display, and any user roles you want to exclude from the leaderboard.
  4. Add an empty status that will show when the leaderboard resets each week. This message will only be shown until there are > 3 users on the leaderboard. (Example below)
  5. Choose whether you want to show the current logged-in user’s ranking and points for this leaderboard (example below)
  6. Choose whether you want to show a link to the leaderboard page, and customise the text of the link. We recommend aligning the user roles you exclude from the widget and the leaderboard page, to avoid confusion.
  7. Press Done
  8. Press Publish - your leaderboard will now be visible on the homepage!
An example of a leaderboard configured with the ‘current-logged in user’ setting checked.
How to configure a link to the leaderboard page

 

Example end result for the empty state of the leaderboard, and some starting HTML to build your own!

When there are less than three users listed on the leaderboard, the leaderboard will show something different. You can either add text or, even better, an image which you can add via HTML. Below you can find an example as well as some code to get you started.

 

Add the code below to the empty status HTML field on the leaderboard widget configuration
<div style="padding: 0em !important; text-align:center;"> <div><img src="https://i.ibb.co/938sZLz/leaderboard-image-inspired.png" alt="trophy" style="max-width: 100%; padding:1em 2em" /> <p>The weekly leaderboard resets at midnight CET on Sundays. Now's your chance to take the lead!</p></div></div>

 

FAQ


How can users earn points?

Users can earn points based on the following community activities

  • Reply marked as best answer (points awarded based on when the best answer is marked, not when the reply was created)
  • Reply created
  • Topic created
  • Like received (or idea vote received)
  • Like given (or idea vote given)

What’s the time range of the weekly leaderboard?

  • ‘This week’ is a fixed 7 day time period (Monday-Sunday), rather than a rolling 7 day period.
  • This creates a weekly competition/race to the top

Other things that are good to keep in mind:


22 replies

Hi there! Nice job!

One question: Can I set up the Leaderboard monthly rather than weekly ? 

Thx

Hi @daniel.boon,

I like this new feature, it has sparked quite a bit of commotion with our users (good and bad :grin:), so that's always fun! 

I was wondering if there is a way to check the statistics of the leaderboard? We’d like to check the scores and stats over the next weeks, to make sure that we have assigned the right amount of points to every action. We’re also a bit fearful that this one user will always be at the top the board, every single week… So we'd like to check that as well, to make sure that its not going to be counterproductive in terms of motivation and competition. 

Thanks!

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Hey David!

Good that you’re having fun 😉.

There’s an idea for point system enhancements on inSpired which I think covers your request, so make sure you give that a vote!

What data do you need to see to make sure you’ve assigned the right amount of points to every action?

Hi @daniel.boon,

Thanks for the reply! 

In regards to the data, today is quite a good example. We can't see who came in first (or second, third...), since the leaderboard has been refreshed last night. This would mean that we manually should check all the actions a user took and add the points manually as well, seems like a lot of hassle for the previous leaderboard(s). 

So a dashboard in which we can see who came in first the previous weeks and how they earned their points would be really helpful. 

We'd like to reward users for their contributions by giving them some sort of reward, like a badge or rank, but also vouchers, gifts, whatever. However, if we would simply choose the #1 every week, we’d probably end up with the same user 90% of the time, which beats the entire purpose.. 

Hope you can help! :slight_smile:

Userlevel 1
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Hi folks, 

 

I have added this feature to our sidebar homepage, following the advice above, by doing it on the front end. 

 

It’s not showing up in the backend ‘Customization > Side section, not as a live widget or as a widget to add. Is this always going to be the case?

 

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In regards to the data, today is quite a good example. We can't see who came in first (or second, third...), since the leaderboard has been refreshed last night. This would mean that we manually should check all the actions a user took and add the points manually as well, seems like a lot of hassle for the previous leaderboard(s). 

So a dashboard in which we can see who came in first the previous weeks and how they earned their points would be really helpful. 

Thanks for the extra details David!  All makes sense - I can’t confirm a concrete date, but we’d definitely like to add way to report on this data.

We'd like to reward users for their contributions by giving them some sort of reward, like a badge or rank, but also vouchers, gifts, whatever. However, if we would simply choose the #1 every week, we’d probably end up with the same user 90% of the time, which beats the entire purpose..​​​​​​.

Just my two cents - but one thing you could consider some kind of ‘points for swag’ mechanism where you offer end users something in return for ‘cashing in’ their points - you’d have to track points earned (this would have to be in an external sheet), points spent, and the current balance of the user. That way it’s not about being #1 every week, but consistent/cumulative rewards.

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It’s not showing up in the backend ‘Customization > Side section, not as a live widget or as a widget to add. Is this always going to be the case?

 

Hi Tim.

Great that you’ve added the leaderboard!

Widgets added via the frontend customization tool do not have a relation with the customization > side widget. Is there any reason you’re expecting the points leaderboard to show there?

Userlevel 1
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 Is there any reason you’re expecting the points leaderboard to show there?

Hi @daniel.boon 

 

I have just seen the new release topic which showed all the front end customization options. 

 

Nope, there’s no reason I need it to show up. But it seems counter intuitive to have the two seperate. Should I stop using the backend options completely to avoid confusion?

 

 

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Should I stop using the backend options completely to avoid confusion?

My understanding is:

If you want to configure the sidebar for the homepage, you do it with the new frontend configuration tool. If you want to configure the sidebar for all category pages and for all topic pages, you do it in the Control Panel.

Userlevel 2
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Thanks for jumping on this Björn, you are correct;

The recent rollout of the ‘Customization’ mode focuses on making changes to your community; our Homepage knowledge base is filled with more information around this. 

If you want to make changes to the sidebar used in other pages of your community (like topic, category, profile) you can do this in Control > Customization > Sidebar.

Hi there @daniel.boon 

Sorry if this was covered somewhere else, but I have a question: if in my leaderboard, users get points for creating topics - do they keep these if we merge their topics with other ones?

Stay safe, man.

Love,

Rudi

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Sorry if this was covered somewhere else, but I have a question: if in my leaderboard, users get points for creating topics - do they keep these if we merge their topics with other ones?

Hey @Rudi! Thanks for your question - currently, users will keep their points for topics they created, no matter what happens subsequently to the topic (e.g. trash/merge).

Hi @daniel.boon - aside from manually assigning points via API (not sure if I’m ready for that) is there any way to recover the true “ALL TIME” points for activity before this feature was implemented? We’ve got brand new users who are way above our longtime users in the “All time” side, which may be a bit disheartening...

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Hey @JessEs - unfortunately, we don’t currently have a way to retrieve this and we don’t have any concrete plans to tackle that problem at the moment.

One suggestion (I know it’s not ideal) - you could also consider leaving the points system on for a while before enabling the all-time leaderboard, so that by the time you enable all-time your superusers have had a chance to build up their points.

Hi @daniel.boon

Could you explain how the points are calculated for the '’all time'’ section?
In other words, what does '’All time'’ actually mean? 

Thanks! 
 

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Hey @Hiewwaiy - all-time means ‘all-time since turning on the points system in Control’. Let me know if that’s still unclear!

Hi @daniel.boon 

Thanks! I guess it's not possible to choose a different start date? 
 

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That’s right @Hiewwaiy - it’s not possible to choose a different start date, although we do offer an API endpoint to manually award points to a user, so technically it is possibly to give users a starting points total before enabling the leaderboard.

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We have a member on our leaderboard with 0 points:
 

Is this approriate behaviour for a leaderboard? @daniel.boon 

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Hey @Hiewwaiy - all-time means ‘all-time since turning on the points system in Control’. Let me know if that’s still unclear!

I have a follow-up question: Is it possible to reset this, e.g. by turning the points system off and restarting it?

Background: I’ve been running tests with the points system in Control (changing awarded points for the actions and monitoring the numbers for the users) without actually letting users know about it in the frontend. When I feel confident to have the right setup I would like to reset the whole thing and start from zero for everyone.

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We have a member on our leaderboard with 0 points:
 

Is this approriate behaviour for a leaderboard? @daniel.boon 

@Suvi Lehtovaara thanks for the question! It could be that the user liked/unliked a post, or someone liked/unliked a post by this user. In that case, they’ll end up on the leaderboard and it’ll show them as having 0 points, since the points were later retracted.

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Hey @Hiewwaiy - all-time means ‘all-time since turning on the points system in Control’. Let me know if that’s still unclear!

I have a follow-up question: Is it possible to reset this, e.g. by turning the points system off and restarting it?

Background: I’ve been runnings test with the points system in Control (changing awarded points for the actions and monitoring the numbers for the users) without actually letting users know about it in the frontend. When I feel confident to have the right setup I would like to reset the whole thing and start from zero for everyone.

Hey Björn! Thanks for your question - unfortunately, it’s not currently possible to reset the points totals for users. I.e. on the all-time leaderboard, the points users have been gathering cannot be removed.

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