Engage your employees using the Incentives App in Teams
Published Apr 27 2020 08:00 AM 74.2K Views
Microsoft

Are you looking to incentivize behaviors you want to encourage as part of organizational change management strategy? Incentives App template for Teams lets you gamify Adoption & Change management activities.

 

You might be asking why we are talking about gamification with regards to organizational change management. When rolled out properly, gamification could provide a structure to your users for the new skills they need to learn. Any new process or system rollout requires employees to unlearn some old behaviors and learn new behaviors and skills, but the traditional rollout and training activities gives them the perception that a change is being forced upon them. Gamification gives them the control to make those behavior changes at their pace. A sense of “competition” with their peers keeps them engaged and motivated.


The ability to be recognized for their achievements (however big or small) is universal. The recognition may be a position on the leaderboard, small monetary rewards (gift cards, free coffee, etc.), or perhaps lunch with a dynamic leader of the organization. Incentives Power App can be used for rewarding employees for learning new skills to be more productive, which ultimately impacts the entire organization.


We are happy to share that we have rolled out an Incentives Power Apps based template that allows management and tracking of incentives to encourage employee participation in desired activities. As with all the other app templates, this is an open-source production-ready app template that can be deployed quickly to complement your adoption and change management activities.


Using the Incentives app template in Microsoft Teams, admins can establish adoption activities with points, assign points for completion, create rewards, and specify required eligibility point levels for rewards. 

1_Incentives_CreateNewIncentiveCode.gif

 

Employees can use the app to view their accumulated points, track their position on a leaderboard, and upon reaching eligibility, request and claim rewards.

2_Incentives_CollectPoints.gif

 

As an example, let’s say you use this for rolling out Microsoft Teams within your organization. You can create activities like “Attend a local roadshow”, “Join a live event (townhall) about the upcoming changes”, “Attend a training session on effective meetings in Teams” and so on… On completion of each activity users can collect points and compete for a position on the leaderboard.


I used MS Teams rollout as an example but as you have envisioned by now, the same app could be leveraged for coordinating any other system or process change like a new HR system, switching to new project management templates or perhaps as part of your go-green initiatives. Key is to remember this is a tool that can be used to setup the activities and behaviors you want to encourage. Don’t forget to provide the right level of motivation (leaderboard, physical gifts, recognition amongst executives etc.) for your employees.


The app is built using Power App with SharePoint as the backend. All ofAll the activity and rewards configuration is stored in SharePoint lists. The “Admin” view within the app provides the ability for program owners to setup the activities and rewards directly from within the App. Since this is built using our no-code/low-code Power Platform, it lends itself really well to branding or functional changes.

 

The App draws its inspiration from the Engagement App built to support the transformation program and get employees excited about the changes at Europe’s largest managed medicine services provider. A big shoutout to Phil Barnett (Account Technology Strategist) for building the initial prototype of this app for Nova Healthcare.


“The NOVA Engagement PowerApp is one of the first fruits of that partnership and has proved very popular with colleagues. It’s a great tool to help increase engagement at an exciting time for our business.”
- Darryn Gibson, Chief Executive Officer of Healthcare at Home

 

Test drive the app template here and check out the full catalog of production ready app templates here.


We would love to hear how you plan to leverage this App within your organization and look forward to your feedback!

 

Also read: Create and award digital publicly verifiable badges in Teams

8 Comments
Copper Contributor

Awesome App, I am looking forward to use it to foster a culture of knowledge sharing, learning and collaboration in my organisation.

I will be implementing it for employees to track their attendance, participation and learning. 

Iron Contributor

Would this require all users in our organization to have a Power Apps license?  (We have E3 licensing.)

Microsoft

@LucidBike1140  - The Incentives App template uses SharePoint lists to store data and leverages standard connectors. Most Office 365 and Dynamics 365 licenses have seeded Power Platform licenses which includes use of these standard connectors so no additional Power Apps licenses are needed. Please refer to Licensing guide for Microsoft Power Apps and Power Automate use rights for Office 365 applications. Additionally, check out this FAQ for connector classification and service limits. 

Iron Contributor

I tried setting up this app, but for some reason the "Activities" shows random characters instead of the actual text. Not sure how to fix it

 

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/635458/82550100-112c1c00-9b6f-11ea-842e-ef2a686f0bcc.png 

Brass Contributor

@Pawan Gulati The last step in the deployment guide mentions uploading the app package to Teams. However most large organizations don't let users upload custom apps to Teams but will rather have a company app store. Our admins can publish this to the company app store but the question is - can access to it be restricted to a specific group of individuals? So not everyone in the organization can see/install it?

Copper Contributor

@Pawan Gulati Are there any best practices, helpful hints, or FAQs that users have come up with after using the MS Incentives App?

Copper Contributor

I already added the app to teams , also followed and uploaded it after checking if it was working correctly with no error or red x icon and checked the incentives_admins was correct , however after adding the app to the Site and Teams , when it charges or loads, constanly getting these kind of errors. , and doesn't work correctly.

 

I appreacite any help to fix this error.

Thanks, Screenshot 2023-06-27 at 11.25.19 AM.pngScreenshot 2023-06-27 at 11.31.43 AM.png

 

 

 

and inclusive testing it in Power Apps 

 

Screenshot 2023-06-27 at 11.39.34 AM.png

also the admin tool doesn't show up if I play the app from opening directly or in Teams , but if I checked and go to edit and play the apps it works correctly

Screenshot 2023-06-27 at 12.06.13 PM.png

 

Copper Contributor

@PilyM Did you have any success in resolving these issues? I also just deployed it and it seems we both ran into the same errors.

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‎Jan 26 2021 12:42 PM
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