Engagement Points in your community

Engagement Points are integral to the gamification program in every community site that rewards its members for their engagement and participation.

Various community-related activities can be assigned point values so that, when users perform those activities, they earn the associated number of points. Your community users can earn points for many of the actions they perform, such as when they:

• create a discussion thread,
• answer a question,
• vote for an idea, and
• upload a file.

Engagement Points are designed as an incentive for users to engage with the community and to stay engaged.

Engagement Activities and Point Types

The activities that users perform are called Engagement Activities.

NOTE: Not all Engagement Activities necessarily result in a user earning points. Point assignments are managed, per community site, by a Super Admin. So, whether an activity awards points, and how many, is entirely at the discretion of the Super Admin. (Refer to the following example.)

EXAMPLE: User-Tess starts a thread by posting a question; she earns 3 points. User-Stephanie earns 1 point for reading the thread. She then answers the question but does not earn points for doing so (i.e., the activity has not been assigned a point value). User-Tess eventually marks User-Stephanie's answer as the "best answer" which earns User-Stephanie 10 points because the best-answer activity has a value of 10 points.

Each Engagement Activity is individually configured to have a point value -- or not. Those that do award points are categorized as one (or more) of the following Point Types:

• Contribution - points are awarded when a user creates content.
• Reputation - points are awarded when a user's content is recommended or marked as the "best answer".

An Engagement Activity (for example, Best Answer) could have both types of points. This might warrant it carrying a sizeable point value.

Volunteer points

Volunteer points are another type of points. However, these points are applicable only if you license our optional Volunteer Manager module. The points are awarded for volunteer activities only; they are completely separate of and distinct from these standard Engagement Points.

• Volunteer points are configured on the Programs > Volunteer > Settings page.

To learn about Volunteer points, visit the Volunteer Manager section of our knowledge base.

Engagement Points on a user Profile

The points that each user earns are logged on the My Contributions > My Summary tab of their Profile.

To learn about the Contributions tab, see View your Contributions.

Rewarding users for their engagement

So, what happens as users accumulate points? How are users "rewarded" for their engagement? This is where we learn the importance of:

• Automation Rules and
• Ribbons and Badges.

Automation Rules: the mechanism

You can create Automation Rules that automatically give ribbons and badges to users based on the Rule's criteria and the user's points.

Learn how to create Automation Rules that automatically assign ribbons and badges.

Ribbons and Badges: the reward

The "payoff" for engaged users are the ribbons and/or badges that they earn as a result of their participation in the community. The ribbons and badges that users earn display on the My Contributions > My Achievements tab of their Profile.

Learn how to create and manage Ribbons and Badges as part of your community gamification program.

Summary of gamification program elements

There are several interconnected elements in a gamification program.

• Engagement Activities are the "tracked" user activities that are logged in user Profiles.
• Engagement Points are the "scores" that are assigned to engagement activities.
• Automation Rules are the "mechanisms" that query the point totals in user Profiles and check them against the rule's configured criteria.
• Ribbons and Badges are the visible "rewards" that users earn for their community engagement.

Access the Engagement Points list

The Engagement Points list page is where you manage the point assignments for the engagement activities that you want rewarded.

To access the list:

1. In the Admin Toolbar, click Admin.

2. Navigate to Engagement > User Engagement > Engagement Points.

The Engagement Points page lists all of the engagement activities:

• in alphabetical order (by name, A–Z), with
• a description,
• the point type, and
• the number of points.

Manage the list display

On the list page, you can:

• Click any column heading to sort on that column; click again to reverse the sort order. An up arrow or down arrow indicates which column is sorted on and the sort order, as shown in the Name column below.
• Click the columns count below the list to add and remove columns in the current view.
• Click the "entries" dropdown below the list to set how many entries to display per page.
• Click the page navigation at the bottom right to access additional pages of the current list.

Manage point assignments

You can manage (assign, change, remove) the number of points that are assigned to the engagement activities.

NOTE: The Points field will not accept no value. If you want an activity to not have a point value, you must specify 0.

TIP: Use the search feature or the page navigation to quickly find an activity that you want to manage.

To manage point assignments:

1. Click an activity in the list to select it.
2. In the configuration panel that flies in on the right, specify a value (or 0) in the Points field.

• In the image below, the points value for Blog Comments is increased from 4 to 7.

3. Click Save at the bottom of the panel.
4. Repeat these steps for any other activities that you want to manage.

TIP: Be sure to review the list to verify your changes.

Search and Export

At the top right of the page, you can use:

• the search feature to quickly find engagement activities and
• the export feature to download a customizable copy of the list.

Search

Click the magnifying glass icon to expand the search field.

• The search field is not case sensitive.
• The list automatically updates with each typed character and displays all matching records, even those of hidden columns.
• The search queries all of the columns.
• Click the X to clear the search field and restore the original list.

Export

Click the down-arrow icon at the top right to export the list of activities to a .CSV file. The exported file:

• includes the complete list, in the default left-to-right column order.
• includes all of the default columns, irrespective of whether they are hidden at the time of the export.
• does not honor any search results or column sorting that have been applied to the list.
• is named EngagementActivities.csv.
• can be customized (e.g., delete columns or rows; add bold, italic, shading, borders) in a spreadsheet application.

Related articles

• Learn how to create Automation Rules to automate awarding ribbons and badges.
• Learn how to create ribbons and badges for your community.