This article will outline how to create Pacer for Teams (P4T) Enterprise virtual challenges. Follow the simple steps below to set up your own P4T customized challenges in your P4T Organization.
Why Pacer for Teams?
✔️ Engage and inspire your organization and colleagues
Pacer’s virtual challenges engage organizations and motivate them to be more active together, either for common fitness, for a cause, and/or for a little friendly team competition.
✔️ Create lasting experiences customized for your organization
Enjoy a wide range of challenge types and built-in customization options to make challenges look and feel like your brand, organization, or department.
✔️ Easy to set up and onboard participants
Set up takes just minutes, and you'll get a unique, shareable link, QR code, or Org Key for inviting challenge participants to your P4T Org and any challenges you create during your Enterprise subscription.
Note: You must purchase a Pacer for Teams Enterprise subscription or be undergoing a 1-week free Enterprise trial to have access to the features below. Contact a P4T Representative for more subscription information.
Table of Contents
1. Get Started
1.1 Challenge Type
1.4 Customize with Advanced Rules
2. Customize Your Challenge Experience
2.3 Add a Challenge Description (optional)
2.4 Add a Cause or Charity & Website (optional)
2.5 Add Reward Descriptions (optional)
3.3 Challenges Set for a Future Date
3.5 Editing an Existing or Future Challenge
Get Started
Create a challenge by logging into your P4T web-based Admin account and clicking the Manage Challenges button in the Admin Control Bar. Next, click the Create button.
Choose Your Challenge Type
P4T offers a number of different individual and team challenge types:
- Step Challenge - participants and teams compete for who can take the most steps.
- Distance Challenge - participants and teams compete to see who can go the farthest.
- Pace Challenge - participants and teams must use the Pacer GPS feature to complete a qualifying activity (like a 5K or a 10K), and they are ranked by their best pace.
- Daily Step Goal - participants and teams must reach a daily step goal (like 10,000 steps) to score a point, and they are ranked by the number of points accumulated in the challenge period.
- Adventure Challenge - curated virtual fitness challenges that take participants all around the world in a first-to-finish format. Supports individual-based participation - no teams.
Set Start & End Dates
Every challenge requires a start and end date.
- The start date can be today or up to 14 days in the future. Challenges are inclusive of end dates, so challenges end at 11:59:59 PM on the end date.
- Challenges can be 1-60 days in duration. Contact your Pacer Representative if you have special needs.
- You cannot create a challenge with a start date before today's date.
Handling timezones - The Pacer App and P4T Admin system takes into account a user's specific geographic location and time zone to determine which calendar day the fitness activity will be recorded. The system also gives an additional 12 hours after a challenge ends for participants to sync their data one last time. For example, if a challenge ends on March 31, a participant will have until noon (12:00) on April 1 in their current time zone to sync. See the P4T Global Challenge guide for more details.
Allow Late Joiners
Select whether to allow participants the ability to join your challenges after the official start date/day, or close the opportunity to join the challenge after the official start date/day. The default setting is "Yes, participants can join this challenge at any time."
If you chose No, then the participant will be able to join your P4T Org, but will not be in this specific challenge with the rule. They will be allowed in any subsequent challenges you create.
Customize with Advanced Rules
Each challenge type may have advanced settings that allow you to further customize your participants’ experiences. Click one of the challenge types below to jump to Advanced Options.
- Step Challenge Advanced Options
- Distance Challenge Advanced Options
- Pace Challenge Advanced Options
- Daily Step Goal Challenge Advanced Options
Customize your Challenge Appearance
Set a Challenge Title
You’ll need to give your challenge a title. This can be anything you want as long as it fits within the 50 character limit and abides by our Community Guidelines.
Choose Branding Options
- You can add your own 400 x 400-pixel Challenge Icon from your smartphone photos, use your smartphone camera to take a photo, or use the default icon.
- You can add your own 1440 x 708-pixel Cover Image from your smartphone photos, use your smartphone camera to take a photo, or use the default image. There is a 10 MB max file size limit.
- You will see the reflected changes in the real-time Challenge Page Preview. If you notice your uploaded image quality or formatting is off, you can make the necessary changes and upload them.
- You can change/update your challenge leaderboard icon and background photo during the challenge.
Short Description (Optional)
Add a brief message to participants. Up to 255 characters long.
Cause / Charity (Optional)
If you are creating a virtual challenge in conjunction with a cause or charity, feel free to tell participants about it here. You have up to 255 characters to describe your cause, and you can add a link to your cause's website if it has one.
Cause or Charity Web Site (Optional)
Add a 3rd party fundraising/awareness page, or your challenge HQ webpage, if you have one.
Reward (Optional)
If you plan on offering a reward of some kind to your participants or teams, you can tell them about it here.
Publish Your Challenge
What Administrators See
Once you tap the Publish button from the challenge preview page, the challenge will load in the system, and it will appear in the Manage Challenges tab.
- Any challenges set to start 1-14 days in the future are in countdown mode (Not Yet Started) until the start date. The leaderboard is inactive so there will be no data export option in the Actions column. They can be edited or deleted.
- "In Progress" challenges are live challenges. Admins can export data up to that point in the challenge period. This is identical to what participants see in the app leaderboard. See below for editing/deleting challenges.
- Challenge data in a Finished challenge is stored and can be exported in the P4T Org. It is always accessible.
What Participants See
Your virtual challenge's leaderboard will be visible and accessible on the Pacer app home screen, as well as your P4T Org's Challenges Tab. Participants who have successfully entered the P4T Org will be able to view it immediately and will automatically join the challenge.
The Data Center tab is the default leaderboard if there are no active Enterprise challenges. Participants can view steps or distance for today or yesterday. They can also view the average daily steps for this calendar month. They can also access a participant's bio by tapping on their name/photo. If your Enterprise Org has no current or future challenges, then the Data Center will be the default tab.
Challenges Set for a Future Date
If you create a challenge that is set for 1-14 days in the future, participants who have joined the P4T Org will see a challenge page with an inactive leaderboard and a daily countdown. Once the start date is reached and participants begin syncing their data, the leaderboard will become active. You are not able to create a challenge that starts 14 days later.
In Progress Challenges
Once the challenge has reached the start date, the leaderboard(s) will be live and participant data will populate based on your challenge type and any data restrictions.
Editing an Existing or Future Challenge
If you find a mistake/typo in your published challenge, or you want to adjust one of the advanced challenge settings, you can access it in the Manage Challenge Menu. Click the Edit icon in the Actions column.
After publishing, however, some aspects of your challenge cannot be edited, meaning you will have to delete the challenge in its entirety and create a new one.
Things that *cannot* be changed after publishing:
- Challenge type
- Start and end dates
- Total step goal (step challenge)
- Total distance goal (distance challenge)
- Allowing GPS activity only (distance challenge)
- Minimum qualifying distance (pace challenge)
- Daily step goal (step goal challenge)
Things that *can* be changed after publishing:
- Challenge title
- Daily limits (step and distance challenges)
- Cover image
- Icon
- Short description
- Cause or Charity
- Rewards
Inviting Participants to the Challenge/Org
Any participants who have already joined the P4T Org will be automatically entered into any challenges you create. If you need help with inviting participants to your P4T Org and subsequent challenges, please review the step-by-step invitation guide.
Step Challenge Advanced Options
Team vs Team Ranking Rules (optional) - If you plan on creating any number of teams to compete against one another, you can choose how the system will rank the team leaderboard:
- Total Team Steps will display the sum of each team member’s total steps. This is ideal if all teams have a similar number of active participants.
- Average Steps per Team Member will display the average of each team member's total steps for the entire challenge period (total team steps divided by the number of team members). Since the final score is based on an average, this can be a fairer way to score if teams have different numbers of participants.
Set a Total Step Goal (optional) -The step goal is for the entire challenge duration from the start date to the end date. If you set an individual total step goal, each participant will see a goal progress bar added to their leaderboard. The bar will fill as each individual accumulates steps.
Step goals can be set in 1,000 step increments. You can add or edit a step goal during the challenge. If a participant reaches the step goal before the challenge ends, their steps will continue to accumulate in the leaderboards.
Set a Daily Step Limit (required) - This is the maximum number of steps a participant can add to their challenge score each day. This limit is to prevent overexertion and potential cheating. The default setting is 30,000 steps per day, which is equal to a half marathon: 21K/13 miles. You may wish to adjust this up or down depending on your audience.
You can change the limit before or during the challenge to make corrections. The change will affect all challenge data - not just from today on.
If a participant exceeds the daily step limit, their Pacer home screen will continue to accumulate steps for the rest of the person's day. The challenge leaderboard filters out the excess steps.
If the daily step limit is too low, a large number of participants will have equal values and the system will use tiebreaker rules:
Tiebreaker 1 - Participants with more GPS activity session data will be ranked higher because the data is considered more reliable.
Tiebreaker 2 - If there is still a tie, the participant who has “liked” more leaderboard activities will be ranked higher
If the daily limit is set too high, a small number of participants might attempt to cheat by adding extra steps to their daily log.
Allow Manual Inputted Activities (required) - The Pacer app allows users to manually add fitness activities to their account whenever they'd like. This is useful for alternative activities such as cycling, swimming, yoga, stationary running or biking, etc.
You can allow or disallow manual activities for each challenge. Not allowing manual activities reduces allowed activity types and relies on participants walking/running/hiking more. Allowing manual activities is more inclusive to different types of activities.
You can change the limit before or during the challenge to make corrections. The change will affect all challenge data - not just from today on.
Distance Challenge Advanced Options
Team vs Team Ranking Rules (optional) - If you plan on creating any number of teams to compete against one another, you can choose how the system will rank the team leaderboard:
- Total Team Distance will display the sum of each team member’s total distance. This is ideal if all teams have a similar number of active participants.
- Average Distance per Team Member will display the average of each team member's total distance. Since the final score is based on an average, this can be a fairer way to score if teams have different numbers of participants.
Set a Total Distance Goal (optional) - If you set a total distance goal, each participant will see a progress bar showing their progress toward the goal. Participants will see the goal in their preferred distance unit (miles or kilometers). Pacer will automatically handle unit conversion. Cannot be changed after the challenge is published.
Set a Daily Distance Limit (required) - This is the maximum distance a participant can add to their challenge score each day. This setting is to prevent overexertion and cheating. The default setting is 20 kilometers per day (~12.4 miles), but you may wish to adjust this up or down depending on your audience. It can be changed after the challenge is published.
Choose to only allow GPS-tracked activities (optional) - This option allows you to require participants to record their challenge activities using Pacer's GPS tracking feature. Enabling this feature would ensure that challenge activities are from purposeful outdoor activities, and would not include data recorded by Pacer's 24/7 pedometer feature (i.e., normal daily activity). This option is disabled by default.
Pace Challenge Advanced Options
Team vs Team Ranking Rules (required) - If you plan on creating any number of teams to compete against one another, the leaderboard will display the average qualifying pace for each team's top qualifiers. The default is the average of the top 5 qualifiers for each team, but this is adjustable to a total of 10 qualifiers. If a team does not have enough qualifiers, it will not receive a score.
Set a Minimum Qualifying Distance (required) - Pace challenges require participants to record at least one outdoor activity of a minimum distance using GPS tracking (excluding cycling). The default distance is 5 kilometers (~3.1 miles), but this can be changed to a higher or lower value depending on your challenge requirements and audience capability. This cannot be changed after the challenge has been published.
Daily Step Goal Challenge Advanced Options
Team vs Team Ranking Rules (required) - If you plan on creating any number of teams to compete against one another, you can choose how the system will rank the team leaderboard:
- Total Team Score will display the sum of each team member’s score (number of days achieving the goal). This is ideal if all teams have a similar number of active members.
- Average Score per Team Member will display the average of each team member’s score (number of days achieving the goal). Since the final score is based on an average, this can be a fairer way to score if teams have different numbers of participants.