Employee challenges
Competitions scored on your own metrics
A challenge is built around a measurable metric from the system that already counts it: kilometres from a tracker, closed deals from a CRM, courses completed in TeamEvo. An administrator assembles it in the builder without a developer, and participants watch a results table that updates for everyone at once.
Kate EllisAdministratorChallenge · until September 30
Team kilometres
the metric arrives from your tracker over the API, not from a self-report
Leaderboard
The table updates for everyone at once · anyone can opt out of the ranking
How a challenge runs
- 1
Assemble it in the builder
One full-screen page: what is measured, where the data comes from, the target, who takes part, and the reward. The draft saves itself as you go, and before publication the portal checks readiness and names what is missing.
- 2
Send a test event
Without leaving the settings, an administrator sends a trial event and sees whether the portal recognised the employee and the metric. The integration is checked before publication rather than on live participants.
- 3
Results arrive from the source
An external system pushes events with its own API key, an administrator uploads a CSV, or four portal events move progress by themselves: an approved idea, a completed course, a recognition received, a survey completed.
- 4
Everyone watches the same table
The challenge page holds an open connection to the portal, so a new result appears in every open tab without a reload. Personal and team leaderboards show the top of the list and the places directly around you.
- 5
The result is frozen at the finish
Completion arrives on the finish date. Before it the administrator previews who wins and which rewards go out. The final standing is stored as a snapshot and is never recalculated afterwards.
What already works
Challenge builder without a developer
A dedicated full-screen page covers the metric, the data source, the target, the participants and the reward. The draft saves itself, and a readiness check runs before publication.
Set up in one sitting, with no development ticket and no config edits
Open API for an external system
A third-party service pushes results with a dedicated key, one event at a time or in batches, including historical data. Keys carry separate rights: read progress, write results, or backfill.
A contractor can hold a write-only key that reaches challenges and nothing else
CSV upload with a row-by-row preview
An administrator uploads a file and sees the parse before it is applied: which rows were recognised, which employee was not found, where the error is. Only complete rows are applied, and re-uploading the same file does not double a result.
The portal shows what it understood before anything changes
Progress from portal events
Four events move a challenge on their own: an approved idea, a completed course, a recognition received, a survey completed. The set is fixed in code; an arbitrary event cannot be wired in, and that is deliberate.
A 'three courses this month' challenge needs no check-ins and no exports
Manual entry for offline activity
When there is no source system at all, an administrator enters a participant's result directly from the panel. The entry is marked as manual and appears in the history alongside the rest.
Offline activity still counts, and the record shows a human entered it
Team competitions built from departments
Teams are assembled from the organization structure: an administrator groups departments into teams and immediately sees how many people are in each.
Membership comes from the org structure and follows its changes
The organizer chooses the scoring rule
A team result is combined in one of three ways: sum, average, or the share of participants who reached the target. The win goes either to the best result at the finish or to whoever reaches the target first.
Average or share of finishers keeps a large department from winning on headcount
Personal and team leaderboards
Two tables, one for participants and one for teams. Beyond the top of the list, a participant also sees their own neighbourhood: the places directly above and below.
Everyone sees who is within reach, not only an unreachable top ten
Progress history for each participant
Every participant's record shows which results arrived and when, through which channel, and with what delay relative to the event itself. When an external system lags, the portal states the delay.
Where a result came from and when it landed is on the record
Reward: an achievement, points or nothing
A winner receives an achievement, points, or nothing at all. The award moves through calculated, queued and issued, and the participant sees which stage it is at. A recalculation does not duplicate it.
The same person cannot be rewarded twice for one challenge
Retry for a failed award
If an award does not go through it stays marked as not issued, with the error text, and an administrator repeats it from the participants panel.
A failed award is visible and repeated from the panel
Intake health for each challenge
An administrator sees how many events were accepted, how many were not recognised and how many errored. Unrecognised rows, usually an employee mismatch, are listed separately.
Bad data from an external system surfaces the same day, not at the finish
Mobile app and the AI assistant
The app carries the whole section: the list, a card with progress and the results table, and joining a challenge from the phone. The assistant lists current challenges as cards in chat.
Joining works on the phone; the assistant reads only and cannot enter results
Frequently asked questions
Related TeamEvo capabilities
Set up a challenge on your own metric
Pick the metric, the source and the target in the builder, then send a test event before you publish.