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daniel.boon
Helper ⭐️⭐️⭐️
February 10, 2020

How To Set Up The Points-Based Leaderboard

  • February 10, 2020
  • 26 replies
  • 1854 views

A points-based leaderboard is a great way to identify, highlight and motivate active users. In this article, you can learn how to configure your own point values, configure the dedicated leaderboard page, and set up leaderboard widgets on the homepage for different user roles (e.g. one for your customers, another for your employees).

 

How to set up a points-based leaderboard

Setting up the point values & select the time zone

  1. Log in to Control and navigate to Gamification → Point system
  2. Configure the point values you want to award for each activity on the community and make sure the toggles are enabled.
  3. Set the timezone for your leaderboard. The weekly leaderboard will always reset at midnight (in the selected timezone) on Sunday/Monday.
  4. Press save changes, and you’re done!

 

Configure the users shown on the dedicated leaderboard page
The leaderboard page is available by default at yourcommunity.com/leaderboard. Both a weekly and all-time view are available. Up to 1000 users can be shown on both the weekly and all-time leaderboards. 

You can also configure user roles to exclude from the leaderboard page.

  1. Log in to Control and navigate to Gamification → Point system
  2. Under Leaderboard page setting, select any user roles you want to exclude from the leaderboard page (both primary and custom roles are supported).
  3. Press save changes, and you’re done!

 

Add a leaderboard widget to the homepage
See this article for more information about homepage widgets.

  1. Go to the homepage and enable customization mode.
  2. Add a Container 2:1 widget. Press the + button in the sidebar panel and add the Leaderboard widget
  3. Choose a title, the max amount of users to show, the time ranges you want to display, and any user roles you want to exclude from the leaderboard.
  4. Add an empty status that will show when the leaderboard resets each week. This message will only be shown until there are > 3 users on the leaderboard. (Example below)
  5. Choose whether you want to show the current logged-in user’s ranking and points for this leaderboard (example below)
  6. Choose whether you want to show a link to the leaderboard page, and customise the text of the link. We recommend aligning the user roles you exclude from the widget and the leaderboard page, to avoid confusion.
  7. Press Done
  8. Press Publish - your leaderboard will now be visible on the homepage!
An example of a leaderboard configured with the ‘current-logged in user’ setting checked.
How to configure a link to the leaderboard page

 

Example end result for the empty state of the leaderboard, and some starting HTML to build your own!

When there are less than three users listed on the leaderboard, the leaderboard will show something different. You can either add text or, even better, an image which you can add via HTML. Below you can find an example as well as some code to get you started.

 

Add the code below to the empty status HTML field on the leaderboard widget configuration
<div style="padding: 0em !important; text-align:center;"> <div><img src="https://i.ibb.co/938sZLz/leaderboard-image-inspired.png" alt="trophy" style="max-width: 100%; padding:1em 2em" /> <p>The weekly leaderboard resets at midnight CET on Sundays. Now's your chance to take the lead!</p></div></div>

 

FAQ


How can users earn points?

Users can earn points based on the following community activities

  • Reply marked as best answer (points awarded based on when the best answer is marked, not when the reply was created)
  • Reply created
  • Topic created
  • Like received (or idea vote received)
  • Like given (or idea vote given)

What’s the time range of the weekly leaderboard?

  • ‘This week’ is a fixed 7 day time period (Monday-Sunday), rather than a rolling 7 day period.
  • This creates a weekly competition/race to the top

Other things that are good to keep in mind:

26 replies

Rudi
Contributor ⭐️⭐️⭐️
March 21, 2020

Hi there @daniel.boon 

Sorry if this was covered somewhere else, but I have a question: if in my leaderboard, users get points for creating topics - do they keep these if we merge their topics with other ones?

Stay safe, man.

Love,

Rudi

daniel.boon
Helper ⭐️⭐️⭐️
March 23, 2020

Sorry if this was covered somewhere else, but I have a question: if in my leaderboard, users get points for creating topics - do they keep these if we merge their topics with other ones?

Hey @Rudi! Thanks for your question - currently, users will keep their points for topics they created, no matter what happens subsequently to the topic (e.g. trash/merge).

inSided product alumnus
JessEs
Helper ⭐️
April 8, 2020

Hi @daniel.boon - aside from manually assigning points via API (not sure if I’m ready for that) is there any way to recover the true “ALL TIME” points for activity before this feature was implemented? We’ve got brand new users who are way above our longtime users in the “All time” side, which may be a bit disheartening...

Community Manager | AIMMS
daniel.boon
Helper ⭐️⭐️⭐️
April 9, 2020

Hey @JessEs - unfortunately, we don’t currently have a way to retrieve this and we don’t have any concrete plans to tackle that problem at the moment.

One suggestion (I know it’s not ideal) - you could also consider leaving the points system on for a while before enabling the all-time leaderboard, so that by the time you enable all-time your superusers have had a chance to build up their points.

inSided product alumnus
Hiewwaiy
Contributor ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
April 29, 2020

Hi @daniel.boon

Could you explain how the points are calculated for the '’all time'’ section?
In other words, what does '’All time'’ actually mean? 

Thanks! 
 

Gr Hiewwaiy
daniel.boon
Helper ⭐️⭐️⭐️
April 29, 2020

Hey @Hiewwaiy - all-time means ‘all-time since turning on the points system in Control’. Let me know if that’s still unclear!

inSided product alumnus
Hiewwaiy
Contributor ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
April 29, 2020

Hi @daniel.boon 

Thanks! I guess it's not possible to choose a different start date? 
 

Gr Hiewwaiy
daniel.boon
Helper ⭐️⭐️⭐️
April 29, 2020

That’s right @Hiewwaiy - it’s not possible to choose a different start date, although we do offer an API endpoint to manually award points to a user, so technically it is possibly to give users a starting points total before enabling the leaderboard.

inSided product alumnus
Suvi Lehtovaara
Helper ⭐️⭐️
October 6, 2020

We have a member on our leaderboard with 0 points:
 

Is this approriate behaviour for a leaderboard? @daniel.boon 

https://yhteiso.elisa.fi/
bjoern_schulze
Helper ⭐️⭐️⭐️
October 6, 2020

Hey @Hiewwaiy - all-time means ‘all-time since turning on the points system in Control’. Let me know if that’s still unclear!

I have a follow-up question: Is it possible to reset this, e.g. by turning the points system off and restarting it?

Background: I’ve been running tests with the points system in Control (changing awarded points for the actions and monitoring the numbers for the users) without actually letting users know about it in the frontend. When I feel confident to have the right setup I would like to reset the whole thing and start from zero for everyone.

Erik_
Contributor ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
August 25, 2026

I see there was never a reply to this question. I have the same, now: can the points system be reset?

And also: can it be fully turned off? We set all the switches to ‘off’, and the leaderboard is empty. But the points total is still visible on profiles. 

The shortest answer is doing -George Herbert