The next release of our Challenge software is now available – multiple activities. This blog will use a Triathlon as an example, but think creative. Gyms will be able to use this to track multiple challenge activities – maybe pushups, sit-ups and pull-ups. Yoga studios might want to have challenges based on the amount of time for different poses and time meditating. Libraries can do reading challenges – maybe # of fiction and non-fiction books read over the summer. Nonprofits like CASA are talking about having “Good Deeds” challenges. This release helps support all of those examples.
Let’s use the Triathlon example for this blog. For this example, we let people signup on the website (yes, you can try it – it is free although it is on a test server):
Once participants are signed up, they can submit their results:
They have the option to pick which activity they want to log:
One of the nice features is that the overall tally can be distance in miles or yards or laps. There is an automatic conversion. So Swims are entered as yards, but we convert that to miles to accumulate to a total (at a future release we will give the ability to have multipliers).
You can keep adding activities, and we automatically keep track in the upper right of total distance and time. (Note that you can choose any combination of only having a tally like # of books read, total time like number of hours of yoga, or a combination like we have here for the triathlon).
We provide a complete view of the results. Note that each column is sortable so anyone can sort on the total of swim distance or time or pace if they want. (Note you can easily edit which columns show by clicking the edit icon next to the search results box):
Clicking on an participant will show an individual view that shows each activity, the type of activity, the time and distance as well as comments:
Also note at the bottom we have a quick view of total time and pace:
We also have a customizable finisher certificate (as well as virtual pre-race bib if you set that up as well!:
This view will incrementally improve over the coming weeks with a live map view for distance challenges that have uploaded a map of their course, as well as milestones. It will eventually look closer to this:
Activity Setup
You will see a new option in your Enhanced Virtual Race dashboard page for Activity Types:
There are a wide number of options to cover the many use cases we are seeing requests for from customers:
This shows how we set up this enhanced Triathlon – we will walk thru each of the options below:
Activity Type – We have default activities as well asa Custom option. The custom option is where you would enter things like yoga time or books read:
Data Entry Type – Set none for custom options like # of pushups. For distance oriented, choose one of the following:
Max Entry – This is useful when you want to have a hard goal cap. For example, you might enable people to do a multi-part Ironman distance where someone might run 3 miles a day until they get to 26.2 miles. They will not be able to log over that amount, although they will be able to change past entries (this is not a real Ironman – relax!). This is also useful if you are also measuring time as the order of placement will be based on time. Don’t set this if you want people to do as many as possible:
Show Filed in Total – This will display this activity in the results as an individual tally.
Time Entry – Times make sense for some challenges like this Triathlon challenge, but might not make sense for things like pushup challenges. On the other hand, time might be the only thing required for things like plank challenges or amount of time doing meditation.
Splits – This will show the results for each activity – for example the results above showed the distance and time and pace for each activity type – swim, bike and run.
Required Activity – This option gives your challenge the capability to require participants to enter all activities at once in the first option. So a participant would not be able to only enter a swim – they would need to enter the bike and run as well. The second option limits how many activities they can record. In the above example, if set, it would require a person to run the whole 26.2 at once and enter only one activity. By setting both of them like shown below, it would require they enter all three activities and only enter one entry (although participants can edit their own results).
Remember, you can go into the Goal page to set the overall goal that the individual activities will accumulate to:
The big projects left on the Challenge are:
- Maps
- Teams
- Milestones
- User Experience cleanup
We are expecting the release of these over the next couple of weeks. It is exciting to see that Challenges have become very popular. You can set them up now and the other items will be easy to set up and add on to your challenge – so there is no reason to wait.
For Teams, just define your rules as you normally would in our Groups/Teams dashboard pages. For example teams with a 5 person limit or requirement. Those people will be able to add their activities today, and then when the team feature is available you will be able to set up the goals and rules much like above to have all of the individual activities rolled up to the team level.
