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Leaderboards

Leaderboards are used to create friendly competition amongst your users or teams of users. Leaderboards can be designed as a black hat or white hat technique. They can bring either satisfaction or frustration. This means you really need to understand your audience to make sure leaderboards are the right tool for the occasion.

Purpose and best practices​

Keeping your leaderboards small (fewer users) and focused (segmenting groups of users) will generate more motivation than long general leaderboards. Remember that leaderboards are generally only motivating for the top users.

Leaderboards are available in different time periods:

  • Daily
  • Weekly
  • Monthly
  • All time

We always recommend focusing on the daily, weekly or monthly leaderboards rather than all time as this gives your users an opportunity to engage when the leaderboard refreshes.

Ranking system​

Ranked leaderboards will also provide you with the previous period's ranking for each user (if one is available). The previous rankings are available for daily, weekly and monthly time periods. The previous ranking reflects the last known ranking for that user, for example, if the user ranked in week 1 and didn't earn points in week 2, then in week 3 the previous rank will be that of week 1 (the last known ranking).

User segmentation with tags​

Leaderboards can be filtered by tags allowing you to keep them focused on specific groups of users. This means you can have shorter leaderboards with more opportunities for those involved to participate and win.

Here are a few examples of how you could use tags to segment your leaderboards:

  • Geographically: break down leaderboards by users based in the same location. This could be an office location, a city or even a country.
  • Teams: break down leaderboards by users who belong to a specific team and have team members compete against each other. Alternatively you can also create leaderboards where teams compete against each other rather than individual users.
  • Experience or Role: break down leaderboards based on the users experience or role in order to compare like with like.
  • Department: break down leaderboards based on the departments to which the users belong.

Display options​

Leaderboards can be displayed to your users in two ways:

Top N view​

The Top N view allows you to show your users the Top 10 users in the leaderboard. The actual number of users can be configured, so you could show Top 15, Top 20 and so on. You can also place the user currently viewing the leaderboard on the list so that they can compare themselves to the Top 10 (if they aren't already in the Top 10).

My Ranking view​

The My Ranking view allows you to place the user currently viewing the leaderboard at the center of the leaderboard with other users above and below their current position. For example, if the current user is in position 25, they will see the users from position 20 until position 30 with themselves in the middle. The number of users shown above and below the current user can also be configured.

Points configuration​

Leaderboards can be based on either:

  1. Any specific points earned in the system
  2. Specific points earned by completing specific behaviours

In the first case, you can specify one or more points which will be added together to calculate the user's score in the leaderboard. The points earned can come from any mechanic you've defined in the platform, behaviours, rewards, KPIs or even point increment activities.

In the second case, you can specify one or more points coming from a specific behaviour. If the behaviour is a simple behaviour, then you will be given the choice to include the points coming from flexible behaviours built on top of it.

Creative uses​

Keep in mind that leaderboards don't necessarily need to be used to compare users. For example, you could compare content that people interact with, or popular training courses based on up votes. You can really get creative with what you compare and you could end up generating more motivation than comparing individuals themselves.

Important configuration fields​

There are a number of fields for leaderboards which are important to understand:

Points​

Select which points will be added together to form the leaderboard score.

With Ranking​

Decide whether you want the leaderboard to include rank positions or not.

  • Enabled: Periodically calculates a rank position number for each user (e.g., "You are in 45th position")
  • Disabled: Users are ordered by points, but no position numbers are shown

Reverse Order​

Order the leaderboards from smaller to larger numbers.

  • Useful for metrics where lower is better (e.g., customer hold time for call center agents)

Stop at Zero​

Prevents leaderboard scores from going below zero.

  • Helpful when removing points from users or when points expire
  • Prevents negative scores from appearing on leaderboards

Filter by Tags​

Determines whether a particular leaderboard can be filtered by tags.

  • Allows global leaderboards to be filtered by department, location, etc.
  • Creates more focused and motivating competition groups

Auto Filter by Tag​

Automatically displays the leaderboard filtered by a single selected tag.

  • Creates dedicated leaderboards without manual filtering
  • Example: Automatically shows Finance Department or HR Department leaderboards

Excluded Tags​

Any user with one of these tags will not appear in the leaderboard.

Tag exclusion behaviour:

  • When a user is no longer excluded (tags are removed):

    • Activities are tracked from that point forward
    • User appears after next relevant activity
    • If leaderboard is regenerated, all historical activities are included

  • When a user becomes excluded (tags are added):

    • Immediately removed from relevant leaderboards
    • Ranking information erased
    • Same applies when excluded tags are added to a leaderboard