PocketPlatform Gamification

Last Updated: Apr 9, 2020 @ 3:15 pm

What better way to engage your congregation than to give them an incentive to complete certain challenges with regards to involvement in your church? With PocketPlatform’s Gamification Process you will be able to reward users with badges and progress bars as they find new ways to engage with community, develop their spiritual journey, and find more areas of spiritual and Kingdom growth in their lives.

PocketPlatform Gamification

Enabling a Journey for Gamification

Simply navigate to the Journey you wish to enable for gamification, and:

  • Check the box “Gamify” and set “Active” to yes
  • Include a link to the Journey’s badge icon in the “Badge” field. 
  • The “Finish Message” is what is displayed to the user once they have completed a Journey in the Journey screen – this could be anything from “You did it!” to instructions on how to get started on the next journey.

Heads up!  Badge icons should be 1024 x 1024 px PNG files with transparent backgrounds. See more.

Be sure to enable at least one Milestone for Gamification for this journey!

You can also attach an image to the journey as well, and it will be used as the header image on the Journey’s display in the app. If you don’t supply an image, the header area will be black.

Enabling Gamification on Journeys

To enable a Milestone for Gamification

Simply open the Milestone you wish to enable and set the “Gamify” field to “Yes.”  If you’d like to enable a call to action button in the Milestone’s Detail window, you can do so here as well by filling out the Call To Action Text and Call To Action Link fields.  Full in-app linking is supported, as well as external links.

You can also add a milestone-specific badge to the milestone via the “attach file” feature of Ministry Platform.  If you don’t supply a badge image, the Journey’s badge will be used instead.

Heads up!  Badge icons should be 1024 x 1024 px PNG files with transparent backgrounds.

Enabling Gamification on Milestone

A Note on Badges

When a Journey or Milestone has not yet been completed, the badge is tinted grey and masked, to show the general shape of the award that the user is moving toward. This is why it’s important to use an image with a transparent background!  If you were to use an image without a transparent background, such as a jpg, an un-earned badge will appear to be a blank square.

Badge Examples - Transparent vs. Opaque

Gamification Logic – Triggering Milestones Automatically

When Gamification is initially enabled for your organization, you have a completely blank slate! You can choose what Journeys and Milestones you would like to use and gamify. Initially, however, badges and milestones will only be marked as complete as those related tasks are marked complete within MinistryPlatform.  If you would like to automate these tasks, you can do so with database Triggers, Stored Procedures, and in some cases, Processes in MinistryPlatform.

PocketPlatform Professional services is available to assist you with building these triggers should you need assistance.