In the ever-evolving landscape of community building, Nas.io stands as a beacon of innovation, constantly striving to provide cutting-edge tools for community managers (CMs) to foster engagement and growth within their communities. Today, we're thrilled to unveil our latest feature: Challenges.

Challenges are time-bound experiences where participants can complete some activities or assignments over one or more sub-periods of time called checkpoints, to reach a shared goal, all designed by the community host.

However, more than just tasks or activities; challenges are dynamic opportunities for community host to ignite excitement, encourage participation, and cultivate a sense of camaraderie among their community members. With Challenges, community host can take their community engagement to new heights by offering structured, gamified and rewarding experiences tailored to their unique audience.

It is our unwavering commitment to empowering CMs with the tools they need to succeed. Challenges on Nas.io are designed to seamlessly integrate into existing community structures, allowing CMs to effortlessly create, manage, and track progress within their challenges.

1. Foster Community Connection: Challenges spark meaningful connection among community members with a shared goal. Whether it's a fitness challenge, book reading marathon, or mindfulness journey, participants connect, support each other, and achieve together.

2. Drive Engagement: Challenges make community activities fun by turning them into gamified experiences. This encourages members to actively participate and stay involved in the community's goals, earning rewards along the way.

3. Promote Accountability: CMs can track participants' progress and offer feedback and encouragement, fostering a sense of responsibility and commitment among members.

4. Encourage Growth: Challenges aren't just about finishing tasks; they're about personal growth. CMs can create challenges that align with their community's values, offering opportunities for learning, exploration, and development.

Dive into this guide to know how to create these experiences for your community

1 - Login to your Nas.io portal as a manager.

2 - Select Challenges [new]

3 - On the Challenge List page, create a challenge from scratch by clicking Create Challenge, or click on any templates that you find suitable. This will open up the Challenge Creation sidesheet

Creating a challenge from template will auto generate the challenge schedule and checkpoint structure based on checkpoint duration (day, week, month) and challenge duration. The start date of the challenge will be one day from now.

4 - On Challenge Creation sidesheet, you would need to fill out the following:

Once you filled out the relevant information to create your challenge, click on Create Challenge at the bottom of the page.

A challenge will be created with Draft status and you will be redirected to Challenge Overview page

5 - On Challenge Overview page, you can see various clickable information that will open up the corresponding sidesheet where you can edit the information

6 - In Setting up a schedule & checkpoint dates

Fill out Start & End date/time of the challenge

Select Checkpoint duration for the challenge

Specify whether the checkpoints are step-by-step unlocking

7 - Click on Create Checkpoints. Checkpoints and their schedule will be automatically generated

You will see the Checkpoint Edit modal where you can edit your checkpoint details.

8 - On Checkpoint Edit modal, you can optionally add more content, instructions or submission requirements to each checkpoint.

For more information about this modal, go to How to edit your checkpoint details

9 - After these steps, your challenge has had a time-bound structure and is ready to be published, where people can start signing up for your challenge.

10 - If you want to make the sales page more attractive, continue to the next section.

Otherwise, go to How to publish your challenge right away.

The sales page of a challenge has the following structure

These can be edited via clicking on the gear icon at the top of the navigation bar

1 - To edit the Description, expand the Overview section

2 - You can add a cover video in the same section

While cover image is mandatory, cover video is optional. If cover video is available, it will be auto-played at the same position of the cover image. While the video is being loaded, the cover image will be displayed.

3 - To edit the Instructions or Rewards, expand the More options section

Having an external group chat is great for your participants to interact with each other.

1 - Click on Connect a group chat on Challenge Overview page

2 - You can also expand the Challenge chat group section after clicking the gear icon

3 - Specify the group chat link and click Save.

If you are ready to invite people to join the challenge, it's time to publish it.

Before publishing the challenge, it's better to review the access of the challenge

1 - Click on the gear icon at the top of the navigation bar.

2 - Expand Pricing & Access section and edit the information.

3 - Edit the access (free / paid) and add any discount codes if necessary.

Additionally you can choose to allow participants to join after the challenge starts or not. By default, this setting is set to false.

4 - Click Save

5 - On Challenge Overview page, click on Publish.

Broadcast to your audiences the Challenge public page link or Challenge checkout link (for faster checkout experience).

You can edit the challenge schedule and checkpoint structure when the challenge hasn't started.

1 - On Challenge Overview page, click on Setup schedule & checkpoint

2 - This will open up the same Set up schedule & checkpoints sidesheet that you use to setup the challenge structure for the first time.

Upon any schedule change, the checkpoint list will be updated where checkpoints will be added to or removed from the end of the existing checkpoint lists, depending on the new checkpoint count.

1 - On Checkpoint Edit modal, click on Collect Submissions

2 - Add one or more questions as requirements for participants to complete the checkpoint.

This functionality is helpful for routine-based challenges, where the details of several checkpoints need to be the same. The following information will be populated from a source checkpoint to all destination checkpoints

1 - On Checkpoint Edit modal, navigate to the source checkpoint

2 - Click Duplicate

3 - Select the destination checkpoints and click Duplicate

Leaderboard is an effective way to gamify the experience even more.

Currently, we provide a simple point-earning and ranking mechanism where the faster participants complete a checkpoint, the more points they will earn. Participants will be ranked by the accumulated points from all checkpoints.

Maximum points to earn is 1000 per checkpoints.

Minimum points to earn for completing a checkpoint on time is 500.

Late completions earn 250 points.

1 - Go to Checkpoints tab

2 - Click on Leaderboard, then click Turn on

3- Once turned on, on member portal, Participant tab will become Leaderboard tab

You can configure a dedicated feed for your challenge. Challenge feed will be generated from the checkpoint completions and submissions of participants. Every time a participant completes a checkpoint, a feed entry will be posted on the challenge feed. Participants can optionally include a caption and also the submission answers in the feed entry.

At the minimum state, the challenge feed is a checkpoint completion activity log, which adds strong gamification and togetherness elements into the challenge.

With caption, submission answers, reaction and comments, the challenge feed can provide many opportunities for everyone in the challenge to support, celebrate and interact with each other.

1 - Click on the Gear icon

2 - Expand Challenge Feed section and toggle on the Enable Challenge Feed toggle

3 - Once toggled on, a new tab on the nas.io all will be available

As a Community Manager, you can

The caption and submission items will be hidden from the feed entry

The author of the feed entry will be able to see the reason on the feed itself

Challenge participants can also edit their feed entry anytime to update the caption or hide or show their submission answers.

After a challenge has been published, it's time for your participants to join the challenge

Any public user can register your challenge via the Public page link or the Checkout link of the challenge.

Public users can only join a challenge in this way if it hasn't started.

1 - On Web or App, on Member Portal (MP), click on Challenges, which will open up Challenge List page

2 - Click on the challenge card you want to join, which will open up the Public page of the challenge on a new tab, where the member can go through the standard registration process.

Community members can only join a challenge in this way if it hasn't started.

A community manager can add any existing community member (including himself/herself) to a challenge.

1 - On Challenge Overview, clicks on Participant tab

2 - Click on the Add Participant icon on the right-hand side

3 - Search for community members using email or name

4 - Click Confirm to add them to the challenge directly.

Participant can participate via web browser or via the nas.io app.

There are 3 ways a participant can access a challenge

1 - After checkout out successfully

1 - On Member Portal (MP), click on Challenges, which will open up Challenge List page.

2 - Click on any challenge that you have joined to start participating.

1- In challenge welcome email, click on either Participate on App or Participate on Browser to access the challenge

1 - On member portal My Progress tab, a participant will always see the current checkpoint

If the challenge is not step-by-step unlocking, the current checkpoint will always be the ongoing checkpoint.

If the challenge is step-by-step unlocking, the current checkpoint is the first checkpoint that the participant has not completed.

2 - Click on Continue now to go to the checkpoint details and complete it.

3 - If leaderboard is turned on, participant will be able to see the points earned and the new rank achieved

1 - Click on Participants tab, then click on Join Chat

To track participations, on CMP, click on Participants tab.

In the Participants tab, you should see the following details:

There are 3 different statuses of a checkpoint

A column corresponds to the completion status of a checkpoint.

1 - To filter completion status by checkpoints, click on Filters

2 - Select the checkpoints and status to filter by

3 - Click Show results

4 - If leaderboard is turned on, columns indicating participants' rank and points will be available

Clicking on any member will bring up the Participant Activities sidesheet showing the details of his/her participation, where you can view submission of each checkpoint.

If leaderboard is turned on, points earned by each checkpoint will also be available.

If a participant fails to meet the criteria of the challenge, you have an option to mark his/her as failed.

1 - On Participant Activities sidesheet, click on the three-dot menu

2 - Click on Mark as Failed

3 - Specify the reason and click Confirm

Certain challenges might have winners with attractive prizes, which can boost participation significantly.

You can declare participants as winner after the challenge has ended

1 - Once the challenge has ended, click on Participants tab, you will see the summary of the challenge

2 - Click on Declare winners

3 - Search by email or name and add participants as winner, then click Confirm

4 - Email will be sent out to winners

After a challenge ends, participants can share their results to the world.

1 - As a participant, access the ended challenge on nas.io App

2 - You will be able to see your result of the challenge

There are 3 possible results

3 - Click on Share your achievement, and share the result (as an image) to the world.

Your challenge is a success, and there are many more potential people might want to join such experience. Duplicate a challenge to save 99% of your effort to regenerate 100% of the success

1 - On Challenge Overview page, click on the three-dot menu

2 - Click Duplicate

3 - A new challenge will be created and you will be redirected to it

New challenge will have the following information

To know more about the participant's experience with Challenges, you may click on this link for reference.