Introduction

A badge is like a medal your users will gain every time they complete a particular action in the platform. Badges usually have points that are given to the user along with the badge, and points can be turned into coins to use in the Rewards shop.

You can organize your badges in collections. With collections, you can define which users can earn a badge within your company, and you can differentiate the badges available to users according to branches or groups. Each collection has its own availability, and the badges within the collection will be achievable only by the people to whom the collection is available.

In the Default collection of badges, you will find all the badges currently present in your platform, but you can create new ones and associate badges to them.

Use case scenarios

For learners, showcasing their achievements (such as certificates and certifications) on LinkedIn and other social media is highly rewarding, and having the possibility to do it from their learning platform can increase their involvement.

If you are managing courses awarding certificates or certifications, you can achieve this result using badges by following these steps:

• Design badges to show the certificate or the certification name, they will have a great impact on posts.
• Configure badge automatic assignment when users complete a course awarding a certificate or a certification and make sure that the badge can be shared on social media.
  
• When users obtain the badge, they will be able to share it as described by the article in the learner guide on sharing badges.

Collections of badges can be useful in different scenarios, such as when you want different sets of badges for different branches or user groups.

As an example, you may want to award badges to:

• the  employees completing the “Company Guideline” course
• the users sharing an asset, and 
• the users completing the “Safety Course”. 

For this purpose, you can create three sets of badges, and manage their availability:

• a Default collection available to the whole company that you can associate with the "Corporate Guidelines" course completion rule, so that anyone in the company can obtain the "Corporate Guidelines" badge upon completing the course.
• a "Europe Branch" collection available only to the European branch that you can associate with the “Security Course” and “Contributor” rules, so that employees of the European branch can get  badges upon completing the "Security Course" or sharing an asset.
• a “USA Branch” collection  available only to the USA branch that you can associate with the “Security Course”, so that employees of the American branch can get the badge upon completing the "Security Course".

Badge management page

Once you have configured the Gamification settings, you can start creating and managing badges and badge collections in your platform. Access the Admin menu, find the Gamification section, and click on the Badges subitem. On the Badge management page, you will find two tabs: Collections of badges and badges.

The Badges tab lists all the badges available in your platform. You can search for specific badges by typing in the search box. 

The Collections of badges tab lists the collections available in your platform. You can search for specific collections of badges by typing in the search box. 

Please note! If you are using Community hub and you have created a collection of badges, it will be listed on the Collection of badges tab under the name Community Collection - [Name of community] with the Built-in type. The name of this collection is not editable from this Gamification area and the collection cannot be deleted. However, if you edit the name of the community from the Community hub area, the updates will automatically be reflected in the Gamification area.

Creating and managing badges

To create a new badge, click on the plus icon in the top right corner of the Badge management page, then select New badge. In the right panel that opens, set a name for the badge. It should be a quick and easily readable reason for why the user is earning the badge. 

In the Badge eligibility field, type a description to be displayed to users before they have earned the badge, encouraging them to get engaged to earn it. 

In the Badge achievement field, type a description to be displayed to the users who have already earned the badge. When you are done filling in the fields, click on Create and edit.

Then, on the badge editing page, Properties tab, define the details of the new badge. Start from the General vertical tab.

You can create content in various languages, depending on your needs. By default, the same content will be assigned to all languages, but you can change this option by clicking on Select fields language and then choosing the language you need to edit, so that content in that language will be shown to users who selected the language. Use the Badge code field to assign a code to your badge.

Next, you can choose a badge image. Press the Select image button. Then, choose between a default icon from the provided options, or upload a customized icon from your device (it is advisable to upload an image of about 600x600px for your badge so that the shared badge has optimal resolution). 

You can also assign a point value to the badge. You can choose to assign zero points to the badge, so the user gets the badge, but their overall score does not increase. You can also add a positive score (the user gets the badge and the score increases) or a negative score (the user gets the badge and the score decreases). Please note that score assignments are limited to values of 4 digits or less and must be a whole number.

In the User visibility section, choose how the users will see the badge:

• Points and badge means that users will see the badge and earn the associated points, if any

• Points only means that users will earn the points related to the badge, but will not view the badge in their Gamification area.

In the Community visibility section, choose if community members will be able to view this badge in other members' community profile (only available if Communities are activated on your platform).

Switch to the Availability vertical tab to associate your badge to one or more collections, remove assignments, and manage social sharing options. You can enable or disable social sharing, and optionally enable direct share buttons for LinkedIn and Facebook.

Users who obtain a badge for which this option has been activated will be able to share it directly on social networks such as Linkedin or via email or in a chat message by copying its link.

Please note! If you disable this option and the badge has already been shared on a social network, the post will remain on the page where the badge was shared but if you click on the link this will not work as the badge will be disabled. 

If you have activated a public catalog, when you share the badge on Linkedin, the login button also appears.

Learners using the mobile app can share their badges on any social network or via any compatible application installed on their device. The badge will be shared with a link to a public page of Docebo platform (accessible by anyone, no need to have an account on Docebo), where all of the details of the achievement are displayed.

In the Automatic assignment vertical tab, you can enable the automatic assignment for the badge by flagging the corresponding checkbox. If this option is not selected, the badge will only be assigned manually.

If you choose to automatically assign badges to users, they will automatically be awarded badges upon completing certain actions or meeting certain goals in the platform. Refer to the next sections to learn more about automatic assignment.

Choose the event for which the badge will automatically be assigned and set the criteria for the assignment. When you’re done, press Save changes. 

Note that the status of the newly created badge will be by default Unpublished. You can switch it to Published before you save your changes, or publish it by clicking on the checkbox in the Status column of the badge list. If the checkbox is green, the badge will be published. Note that the publication status will affect automatic assignment: learn more in the next chapter.

Once the badge has been created, you can see it in the list with the following details: thumbnail, name, code, user visibility (points only or points and badge), number of collections associated with the badge, points, and status (published/unpublished).

You can edit, preview, delete the badge or associate it to collections at any time using the ellipsis icon in the badge's row. To perform the same action for multiple badges at a time, flag the checkboxes next to their names, then click on Choose action in the bottom right corner, and select the corresponding option.

When you delete a badge associated with points (except for negative points), you can choose to keep or remove the points related to the badge from the users who had earned it. If you choose to keep the points earned with the badge, the points will remain in users’ profiles, but they will be removed from any leaderboards, potentially causing a misalignment between the points displayed on leaderboards and those in users' profiles. If you are using the Rewards shop, you can also choose to keep or remove the related coins. Note that coins will be deducted from a user until their balance reaches zero, ensuring they never fall into negative coin amounts. 

Assigning badges to users

You can decide to automatically assign a badge to a user when a certain event occurs. To do so, move to the Automatic assignment vertical tab while on the Properties tab of the badge editing page, and click on the corresponding option, then set the criteria for the automatic assignment of badges.

Please note! Badges are not retroactive, so when you create a rule for the automatic assignment, the badge will only be assigned to users fulfilling the criteria (e.g. completing a course) after the configuration of the automatic assignment. However, one exception to this rule is the Learner Communities badges. These badges are retroactive so the automatic assignment rule will take into consideration the events that occurred before the creation of the rule.

Otherwise, you can assign the badge manually. Note that you can manually assign also badges for which you have set automatic assignment. To do so, move to the Assigned users tab in the badge editing page, and click on the Assign users button in the top right corner. 

In the right panel, select the users, groups or branches that you want to manually assign to the badge. Your selections in the lists will be saved if you navigate between tabs. When finished, press Next, review the user details, and press Confirm. 

If the New badge awarded notification has been configured in your platform, users will be notified when a badge is manually or automatically assigned to them.

All assigned users will appear on the page. To unassign the badge, click on the ellipsis button at the end of the user’s row and then press Unassign, or select more users, then click on Choose action and select Unassign users.

When you unassign a badge associated with points (except for negative points), you can choose to keep or remove the points related to the badge from the users who had earned it. If you choose to keep the points earned with the badge, the points will remain in users’ profiles, but they will be removed from any leaderboards, potentially causing a misalignment between the points displayed on leaderboards and those in users' profiles. If you are using the Rewards shop, you can also choose to keep or remove the related coins. Note that coins will be deducted from a user until their balance reaches zero, ensuring they never fall into negative coin amounts. 

Click on the symbol in the Issued Badges column to open a detail of the occurrences of the badge assignment to the user. Here you can also unassign them specifically, by clicking on the ellipsis button at the end of the user’s row, or selecting more than one row, clicking on Choose action and then pressing Unassign.

Please note! When you switch a badge to Unpublished, you will still be able to manually assign it to users. However, the badge will not be automatically assigned. The badges already earned will still be visible in the users’ Gamification page. Unpublished badges will remain in your platform and can always be republished later.

Creating and managing collections of badges

To create a new collection of badges, click on the plus button in the top right corner of the Badge management page and select New collection of badges. Select a name and a description for your new collection, then press Create and edit.

In the collection editing page, start from the General vertical tab. As for badges, you can create content in various languages, depending on your needs. By default, the same content will be assigned to all languages, but you can change this option by clicking on Select fields language and then choosing the language you need to edit, so that content in that language will be shown to users who selected the language.

Switch to the Availability vertical tab to define who can earn the badges of your collection. The badges will either be available to all groups and branches or only to a custom selection of them. Note that if the availability conditions change, for example, because a user switches to another branch or group, the user will no longer be able to earn badges from that collection, but the badges earned when the collection was available to them will not be removed from their Gamification area.

Move to the Badges tab to associate badges to your new collection. In the right panel, select one or more badges and click on Associate to confirm.

The associated badges will be visible on the Badges tab. Click on the ellipsis button at the end of a badge’s row to remove it from the collection, or select multiple badges by flagging the checkboxes next to their names, then click on Choose action in the bottom right corner of the page, and press Remove.

When you’re done, move back to the Properties tab and click on Save changes. Note that the status of the newly created badge collection will be by default Unpublished. You can switch it to Published before you save your changes, or publish it by clicking on the checkbox in the Status column of the collection list. If the checkbox is green, the badge will be published.

Once the collection has been created, you can see it in the list with the following details: name, availability (what groups and branches can see and earn the associated badges), number of badges associated with the collection, and status (published/unpublished).

You can edit the collection, delete it, or associate it to badges at any time using the ellipsis icon in the collection’s row. To perform the same action for multiple collections at a time, flag the checkboxes next to their names, then click on Choose action in the bottom right corner, and select the corresponding option.

Please note! You cannot delete the Default collection nor change its availability, but you can edit it, changing its name and description and adding or removing associated badges.

Power Users and badges

As a Superadmin, you can enable Power Users to manually assign or unassign badges to users by assigning them the Gamification / Manage badges assigned to users permission. With this permission, Power Users

• can see the badges included in the collections available for the groups and branches they manage
• can manually assign or unassign badges to the users they manage
• cannot edit the badges’ details, availability, or automatic assignment rules.