Overview
Any Count.It challenge can include teams. On Count.It, group admins create teams, and can add challengers to teams. Challenge participants can also add themselves to, or remove themselves from, teams.
Just like individuals, teams are displayed on the challenge path. As the team members accumulate points, their team progresses from the challenge start toward the finish. While individuals have circular avatars, teams are represented by wider, curved rectangles:
Team Score
A team's score in a challenge is equal to the average of the scores of its members. Because teams progress based on the average of member scores, teams of different sizes can compete fairly against each other. Also, teams can strive for, and complete, the same challenge as individuals. For example, to complete a 10,000 step challenge, a team must collectively average 10,000 steps per day, i.e. across all team members.
Teams scores are updated dynamically any time any team member syncs new activity data.
Team Profile
Users can tap on a team icon to see the team stats as well as an "internal" leaderboard of its members—and each member's contribution to the team score.
(NB: Being on a team does not prevent a user from also showing up on their own on the challenge page.)
Team Chat
Every team in a challenge gets its own chat channel, which team members can use to share activity ideas, motivate each other, and generally bond over their shared challenge experience. To access their team chat, a user can tap the chat icon on the main challenge page, and then tap the button with their team name at the top of the chat screen.
Creating Teams
Admins can add teams to a challenge when they create a challenge, or any time thereafter. To add or edit teams, tap on the "edit challenge" icon at the top of your challenge screen:
On the edit challenge screen, tap the "Teams" card to go to the teams manager screen.
The Teams screen lists all current teams with a member count. Tap a team card to update that team's membership or name. Tap the "Add a team" button to create a new team.
On the Add Team screen, give your team a name, and tap the "Add Members" button to assign challengers to the team.
To place a person on a team, select the checkbox next to their name. To remove them, remove the checkbox. NB: In order to add a person to a team, they must have already joined the challenge!
To save your changes, be sure to tap the "Update" button, and then the "Save" button on the "Edit Challenge" screen.
Team Size
There is no default limit to the number of members on a team, but admins have the option of setting a maximum team member limit. Since team scores are based on an average, teams don't have to have the exact same number of members. However, as a general rule, smaller teams will drive more accountability.
To set a team size limit, go to the challenge settings screen, and tap on the "Teams" option. On the Team Settings screen, tap on the Team Size Limit option:
Create Team Goals & Rewards
Admins create team goals and rewards just as they goals and rewards for individuals or the group as a whole.
For all the details on adding goals and rewards for teams, please see: How do I create goals and rewards for my challenge?
Users Joining Teams
While admins can assign people to teams, challenge participants can also very easily join their team. If a challenge has teams, all users will be prompted to join a team when they join a challenge. They can also join a team at any time thereafter via the Challenge Info screen.
Groups often create teams that mirror existing parts of their organization, i.e. office locations, divisions, job junctions, etc. In this case, users will know what team they are on by default.
For all the details on how a user joins their team, please see: How do I join my challenge team?
Randomly Generating Teams
Sometimes admins want to create teams from scratch, i.e. teams that are not based on existing things like office location, department, job function, etc. While admins can not actually construct the teams in the app, they can get to the same place fairly easily. It just takes a bit of sequencing and communication, especially as you may not know in advance how many people will sign up for the challenge.
Here is a basic process:
Create your challenge, and invite people to join it. Set a deadine for joining prior to the actual start of the challenge. Advise your participants that they should join the challenge by the deadline to be included on a team.
Once you have people in the challenge, create your teams. (See above.) You can create as many teams as you like, but note that the number of teams will determine you team size. (Again, smaller teams drive greater accountability.) Once you have your teams, assign a number to each of them. For example, if you have 8 teams, assign the numbers 1-8. You'll use this later. The number is not the name. You can name your teams however you like.
Once your challenge has teams, your challenge members will be able to easily join them, BUT they need to know which team they're on. To give them this information, you need to know! This means you will assign your challenge members to teams "behind the scenes," and then tell them which team they're on so they can join.
The best way to do this assigning of team membership is using a spreadsheet. Sign in to your Count.It Admin dashboard, click over to Reports, and download the challenge report. This will give you the list of members, and you can open this in Excel or Google Sheets or other spreadsheet program.
Create a column next to each user's name. You will now add a team number for each member in that column. You can do this manually, or you can use the random number feature in Excel or Google Sheets. (Here's a useful Help article on random number generating.)
Once you have assigned your users to teams, you need to let your team members know which team they're on, so they can join. Either send them a message, or post the list where everyone can see it. Nice job, you're done!