I’ll gladly admit it – I’m a Confluence fan and power user! I use Confluence for documentation, planning as well as the organization of my team and my projects in marketing. It’s hard to say if that is the reason why I scored second place in Communardo’s Karma-ranking (eternal) or if I became acquainted 
with Confluence so quickly because of Karma. In any case, I got up to speed with this add on really fast and I just love it. The new version 1.5 now comes with a set of brand new features that some might know from the Social Media world and I am really happy about their implementation.
Karma stands for Gamification
To underestimate gamification would be wrong. Gamification means motivation, incentive, onboarding and having a consistent connection to colleagues, even if they’re not sitting in the same room (see my webinar on gamification 30.07.2015 in German).
So gamification is really useful in many ways and areas, … but, and here comes the but … only if you know how gamification actually works and if you use it focused and purposely. And that’s exactly where Karma has almost no limits in its configuration possibilities. How many points I get for which activities in Confluence, what badges and medals there are, that’s up to the system admin in coordination with management, the corporate communication or the works council.
When adjusted correctly Karma brings success. The wiki gardeners (that’s how we lovingly call the Confluence users) create pages, link them to one another, use labels or make comments directly on the page. That is how using and structuring content in Confluence can be optimized and new users can quickly learn how to use wiki.
Karma 1.5 offers new Features
And up until now I’ve been missing those new features, especially as they are all on social communities and forums.
Ranking within a set time frame
Karma naturally ranks those employees in the lead who have been working with the system for a longer period of time. That’s because it takes time to collect points. So in order to give every employee the equal opportunity and the motivation to head out front and be in the lead, to really get things exciting and make it more competitive, it is now possible to set a time frame for ranking. This could be weekly, daily or monthly and winners can be selected based on the chosen period.
That way newbies can finally enjoy that sweet taste of leading the ranking too.
Karma Leader Trophy
The new version now enables employees who earned the most Karma-Points in a certain time frame through activities in Confluence to be awarded. They are automatically rewarded with a virtual challenge cup, which then has to be passed to the new winner who earns more points in the same time frame.
The effects of the new features are clear:
- motivation boost through a rewards system
- understanding and using Confluence better
- Taking advantage and exploring more of Confluence’s potential
We get a lot of feedback from Karma users with interesting ideas which we integrate into every new release. So watch this space for what the next update will have in store!
>> Test Karma for free for 30 days! What are you waiting for?
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