The contents of this article are as follows:
Overview
Badges are a wonderful feature to help you reward and recognise the achievements of your volunteers. You can create and award badges manually or if you prefer, you can create automation rules. In this article, we cover how to set up the automation.
If you'd like more information on how to create a badge and assign it manually, see this article.
Start by either creating or opening the badge you wish to create an automation rule for. Badges can be found by opening the "Volunteers" page and then the "Badges" tab at the top.
Create automation rule
When you have a badge open, you will see a toggle labelled "Automation rule", toggle this option on and you will see a new panel expand with several additional options. See below.
Select metric type
"Count of reports" means just the number of reports a volunteer submits. This may be helpful to recognise general app engagement e.g. "Top Reporter" or "amount of missions/shifts"
"Aggregation of report answers" means the rule will be based on a calculation of the answers from a specific report question. This can cater to delivering badges for volunteering time, shifts completed, funds raised and much more.
"Length of service" is based of the start date on the volunteer's profile. Please note, that scope and award interval is not relevant here. This set up is easy, just enter the amount of years.
Please note that for all metrics types for the automation to work a report has to be submitted. All automations are awarded after completing a report. This way when a volunteer first logs in they won't get all badge notification immediately. They will get it after their first report. |
For the Count of reports and Aggregation of report answers metric types some more set up is needed, see below.
Restrict scope to reports from a mission template
Here you have to think, is the badge based on a specific activity type or across the board. For example, you may have 2 badges:
Unrestricted - all mission templates: e.g. 10 hours/ 10 total reports
Select "Unrestricted". when you want the badge to cover all activities that a volunteer may participate in. Meaning that when a volunteer hits 10 hours volunteering time or 10 reports in total they are awarded the badge.
Restricted - a specific mission template: e.g. 10 hours volunteering /10 reports as a befriender
This example could be specific for time or reports submitted for a specific activity, such as befriending missions so you'd search the list for your mission template and link this. Here the volunteer will only be awarded this badge when they reach 10 hours of volunteering time / 10 reports for befriending activities.
Award Interval (Time period)
Does this badge depend on reaching a milestone within a specific time period?
If the milestone can be achieved at any pace (e.g., a volunteer can earn it whether it takes them one week or three years), set the time period to “Indefinite.”
If the milestone must be reached within a set timeframe (e.g., completing 10 hours in a single month), select the appropriate time period.
Please note: Some badges are unique, meaning they can only be earned once. If you set a badge to “Indefinite,” it will default to 'unique', otherwise volunteers could continue earning the badge unlimited times.
Answer Aggregation (Sum or Average)
This is only relevant to the Aggregation of report answers metric type.
In this section, you’ll choose the question that will serve as the basis for your automation rule. The drop-down menu displays all available questions from your custom reports.
Before selecting, review the questions in your report templates. It’s best practice to standardise and reuse questions across different templates whenever they measure the same data point (e.g., volunteer hours, number of people helped, funds raised).
If you create multiple variations of essentially the same question (e.g., “Volunteering time?” vs. “How long did you volunteer?”), the system will treat them as separate questions. As a result, badges may not calculate the total submitted value correctly, since responses would be split across different versions.
In short: identify the exact question volunteers are answering that should trigger a badge, and select that question here.
You then also need to select a calculation option to the right of the question field. Here you are deciding what type of calculation would you like to make on the answers that volunteers submit to the question you have selected. You can pick a Sum or an Average.
In most instances we have come across this will be SUM because it is after a certain milestone is exceeded that a badge is delivered e.g. Hits 10 hours of Volunteering time or hits £5000 in funds raised. However you could choose for an average, if you want to award the volunteers for their monthly averages for example.
Award threshold
Here is where you set the number that needs to be hit or exceeded before the badge is delivered. For example, 20 hours, £5000, or 3 actionable reports.
Click Apply Changes and that's it, you have set up your badges automation!
Troubleshooting
You must review your questions across your custom reports because this will be important for badges going forward.
If you have two different questions set up to capture volunteering time for example, this may cause issues when creating badge automation rules for total volunteering time. Some hours will be logged under one question and the rest under another, preventing the system from calculating the full total correctly.
If you need assistance resolving this, please reach out to the support team using the Support button or email support@volunteero.org.
Video Tutorial
As always we'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback about this feature development so please do get in touch through the support button on your dashboard or email support@volunteero.org