Badges
Badges are permanent markers of achievement. Points give immediate feedback after every action. Badges mark the moments worth remembering: a challenge completed, a milestone reached, a level of performance others have not hit.
Awarded badges cannot be revoked. They stay on the recipient’s profile permanently.
How badges are awarded
Automatic
When a challenge has a Completion Badge set, completing the challenge awards the badge. This happens as part of the same transaction: no delay, no admin action required.
Manual
Admins can award any badge directly from the Badge record page using the “Award Badge” button. Search for a user, select, confirm. Useful for one-off recognition not tied to a challenge.
Badge icons and shapes
Every badge has an icon color and a shape. Both are set globally in Badge Style settings, but the color is selected per badge.
Available icon colors: gold, silver, bronze, ruby, emerald
Available shapes: hexagon (default), circle, shield
The Badge Builder shows a live preview with the current global shape and the selected color. A badge icon is the combination of both. A gold hexagon looks different from a gold circle.
Deduplication
Badges use the same dedup pattern as ledger entries. A user can only earn the same badge once per challenge context. A global badge (not linked to any challenge) can only be awarded once per user, full stop.
If a challenge completes twice somehow, the second badge award is silently skipped. This is automatic: admins do not need to configure anything.
When to use badges
Badges work best for achievements that stand out. A few honest guidelines:
- Tie badges to challenge completion or genuinely hard milestones
- Do not create a badge for every action: it dilutes all of them
- Less is more; a badge shelf with three hard-earned badges is more motivating than one with twenty
- Match the badge level to the difficulty (gold for top performers, bronze for first completions)
Common pitfalls
- Too many badges makes each one feel meaningless
- Badges for actions that do not reflect real business value feel hollow
- If users cannot easily see their own badges or their peers’, the social proof is lost
Related
- Create your first challenge: see how badges connect to challenge completion
- Badges builder reference: all fields for creating and managing badges
- Badge style settings: configure shape and gradient defaults
- Challenges, Rules, Progress tracking