Contests
Run time-boxed competitions — metric-driven, manual/external scores, photo/story submissions, or bracket and pick'em predictions — launched from 32 ready-made templates, with team or individual standings, prizes from the rewards store, and manager-created contests under admin governance.
MangoApps
Overview
Contests turns the engagement stack into an event engine. Admins — and, when enabled, managers and employees — launch time-boxed competitions with a real start, finish, winner, and prize: most open shifts picked up this month, first location to 50 completed safety inspections, best holiday storefront photo, a March Madness office bracket. A template gallery ships 32 ready-to-run contests across engagement, safety, learning, culture, operations, and seasonal events — seasonal templates surface in season, one click prefills the create form, and any contest can be saved as a reusable template. Metric contests score automatically from the same verified activity ledger that powers Levels & Badges, so there is nothing to enter and nothing to game; manual contests track external numbers — sales, steps, fundraising dollars — entered one at a time or by CSV. Submission contests collect photo or story entries decided by community voting or a judge panel, with built-in moderation. Prediction contests run pick'em pools and single-elimination brackets: picks lock at event time, rounds generate themselves as results come in, and prizes are capped at badges and bragging rights so office pools stay compliant. Any employee can also challenge a coworker to a private 1v1 duel that spins up a real head-to-head contest on accept. Individual contests are always opt-in; team contests pit departments or locations against each other with per-capita scoring so a six-person store can beat a forty-person one. Prizes pay out as redeemable Recognitions points, badges, or pure bragging rights — with manager-created contests funded from admin-delegated prize budgets and locked rules once a contest goes live. Corporate programs fan out district-vs-district with roll-up standings, seasons auto-generate the next round from any gallery template, and live leaderboards broadcast to dashboards, mobile, and break-room digital signage. Frontline staff play entirely from their phones — one-tap join, camera-first photo entries, one-tap voting, and prediction picks — and every win lands in a personal trophy case with a shareable win card.
Highlights
Capabilities
Contest Types & Scoring
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Metric contests scored automatically from verified workforce activity (shifts, safety, training, recognition)
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Manual score entry for external metrics (sales, steps, fundraising) — one at a time or by CSV import
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Photo and story contests decided by community votes or a judge panel
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Prediction contests — pick'em pools and single-elimination brackets
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1v1 challenges — duel a coworker head-to-head on the actions you both do
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Individual or team competitions (teams by department or location)
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Cooperative team goals and most-improved scoring against each entrant's own pre-contest baseline
Predictions & Brackets
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Pick'em contests: organizers post events, entrants pick, correct picks earn each event's points
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Brackets auto-generate the next round the moment both matchups in a pair have results
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Picks changeable until each event locks, frozen the moment it does
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Crowd consensus revealed only after picks lock — no anchoring before
Templates, Programs & Seasons
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In-app template gallery with category filters and featured picks
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Seasonal templates (March Madness Bracket, Holiday Display Showdown) badged and boosted in season
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Save any contest as a reusable custom template for your organization
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Recurring seasons auto-generate the next round from any metric template in the gallery
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Corporate programs fan out child contests (district vs district) with roll-up standings by podium points or totals
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End and archive a program or season when the campaign wraps — seasons stop generating rounds
Fairness & Integrity
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Individual contests are always opt-in, and the Join button explains exactly why you can't enter
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Per-capita team scoring so small teams compete fairly with large ones
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Conflict-of-interest guards — managers excluded from ranking their own reports; creators can't win from budgets they control
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Rules lock when a contest goes live — the scoring contract can't change mid-race
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Voting integrity (one vote per person, no self-votes) plus flagging into the central moderation queue
Prizes, Budgets & Governance
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Rank-based prize tables paid as redeemable rewards-store points
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Winner badges minted straight onto the Levels & Badges wall
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Closing ceremony with the podium, the most-active entrant who didn't place, and a shareable win card
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Admin-configurable creator tiers (admins only, managers and up, or everyone) with an approval queue — managers scoped to their own team, employees to bragging-rights prizes
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Delegated prize budgets — managers spend only what an admin granted, revocable and expirable at any time
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Works-council mode: restrict a region or the whole business to team contests with cooperative goals
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Admin overrides on a live contest — append-only score corrections, disqualify or reinstate, end early, or cancel, each with a written reason and an audit entry
AI Agent
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Contests Agent in Ask AI: what's running, who's winning, your rank, and who you're chasing
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Join or leave a contest, or launch one from a gallery template, by asking the agent — same eligibility rules as the web app
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Make bracket and pick'em picks, and review your picks, in chat
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Admin agent tools: approval queue, prize budgets, and engagement analytics
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Describe-to-fill AI assistance on the contest creation form
Leaderboards, Mobile & Analytics
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Live leaderboard shows the top entrants plus your own rank and the entrant you're chasing
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Momentum chart plots your cumulative score against the leader's, day by day
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Leaderboards everywhere — home-dashboard widget, mobile view, and break-room digital signage slides
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Mobile play surface — one-tap join, camera-first photo entry, one-tap voting, and prediction picks
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Personal trophy case of every contest you've placed in, plus a full finished-contest history
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In-app alerts for contest start, rank changes, the final hour, judging deadlines, pick locks, and results
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Participation rate, daily-active engagement lift vs a non-enrolled control group, and a four-week post-contest retention curve — exportable as CSV alongside full standings
Limits & Specs
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Out-of-the-box templates: 32
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Scoring modes: Metric, manual/external, submission (votes or judges), prediction
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Goal types: Highest score, first to target, cooperative, most improved
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Prize types: Points, badge, or bragging rights
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Standings refresh: Every 5 minutes
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Email notifications: Winner award (with win card) + opt-in weekly standings digest
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Pricing: License required (opt-in per tenant)
Use cases
FAQ
Metric contests score automatically from the same verified activity ledger that powers Levels & Badges — shifts completed, inspections done, courses finished — with no manual score entry, and standings refresh every five minutes. Submission contests are decided by community votes or a judge panel, and prediction contests award each event's points for correct picks once the organizer enters the real-world result.
Yes. Manual contests let an admin or the contest's creator post external figures while the contest is live, one participant at a time or by uploading a CSV of identifier and value, with an optional unit label like "$" or "steps". Only enrolled participants are accepted and every entry re-snapshots the leaderboard.
No. The template gallery ships 32 out-of-the-box contests across culture, engagement, operations, learning, safety, and seasonal events — seasonal ones like the March Madness Bracket get boosted in season — and one click prefills the create form. You can also save any contest you've run as a reusable template for your organization.
Yes — prediction is a first-class scoring mode. Everyone makes picks that lock at event time, brackets generate the next round automatically as results come in, later rounds carry more points, and the crowd's consensus is revealed only after picks lock. Prediction prizes are limited to badges and bragging rights — never points or cash — so office pools stay compliant.
Yes. Any member can challenge a coworker to a 1v1 duel: pick the actions that count and a duration, and if they accept, a real two-person contest starts immediately and rides the normal scoring and standings engine. Duels are private to the two participants, and they're disabled automatically in works-council mode.
That's an admin setting: admins only, managers and up, or everyone. Non-admin contests always pass through an admin approval queue first, managers can only target their own team or location, and employee-created contests are limited to bragging-rights prizes.
Managers can only fund prizes from a points budget an admin explicitly granted them. The prize table is reserved against the budget at approval, only what's actually paid is deducted, the rest is released, and admins can revoke a budget with a reason or set it to expire.
Four goal types spread the wins: most-improved scores each person against their own pre-contest baseline, cooperative goals make the whole team win together, first-to-target rewards speed over volume, and per-capita team scoring lets small teams beat big ones.
Individual contests are strictly opt-in — nobody appears on a public leaderboard without joining, and entrants can withdraw while the contest is running. Team contests enroll the whole team automatically since only the team is ranked, and a works-council mode can restrict specific locations or the whole business to team contests with cooperative goals so no individual is ever ranked. The policy is enforced at creation time on every path, including the AI agent.
Contests is a licensed marketplace app in the suite tier. Like every MangoApps app it ships disabled by default — admins opt in per tenant from the Apps Marketplace.
