Skip to content
OuterSpatial Help Center home
InboxAsk a human

Creating a Challenge

Overview

Challenges give visitors a structured way to complete tasks, earn badges, submit responses, and participate in community programs.

Open Challenges in Manager to view existing challenges, participant counts, start and end dates, and report access.

Challenge Types

Manager supports these challenge types:

  • Check-in: visitors complete tasks by checking in at selected areas, trails, points of interest, or outings.
  • QR: visitors complete tasks by scanning QR codes tied to challenge tasks.
  • Photo: visitors submit photos for one or more configured categories.
  • Questionnaire: visitors complete survey-style prompts. For deeper survey planning, use the dedicated Creating a Survey Challenge article.

The challenge type is set when you create the challenge. After a challenge is created, the edit tabs adapt to the selected type.

Create a Challenge

Select New Challenge from the Challenges list.

If Manager opens a type-specific challenge creation flow, choose the type that matches the visitor action you want people to take. For example, use a check-in challenge for location visits, a QR challenge for signs or printed materials, a photo challenge for submitted images, and a questionnaire challenge for survey-style responses.

Fill in Challenge Info

The challenge info form includes:

  • Badge image: the square image visitors earn or see with the challenge.
  • Banner image: the wide image used on challenge surfaces.
  • Name: the public challenge name.
  • Email sharing: whether visitors must share their email address to participate.
  • Location validation: whether check-ins should validate visitor location.
  • Employee submission restrictions: available for photo challenges when staff submissions should be limited.
  • People's Choice Award: available for photo challenges when public voting is part of the program.
  • Custom requirements: extra requirements visitors should understand before participating.
  • Description: the public challenge description.
  • Prize packs: optional prize details, images, and ordering.
  • Start and end times: optional timing for when the challenge is active.
  • Rules: required participation rules.
  • FAQs: optional questions and answers.
  • Visibility: public or private.

Save the challenge to create it. Manager then opens the challenge detail tabs.

The active Manager organization directly owns the challenge. Edit the challenge from that owning organization's workspace. Opening a child-owned challenge from a parent organization does not grant inherited editing access.

Manage Tasks and Categories

Use the Tasks tab to manage completion requirements for check-in, QR, and questionnaire challenges.

For standard tasks, you can add or edit the location, task message, badge image, and QR/deep-link details when available. QR tasks include a QR code option from the task menu so you can download the code for signs, handouts, or other campaign materials.

For photo challenges, the task area becomes Categories. Each category can have a badge image, title, subtitle, per-user submission limit, and allowed locations. Categories with no allowed locations do not contribute toward completion until locations are added.

Task locations are also the explicit distribution scope for organization hierarchies. A parent organization can intentionally attach a location owned by one of its child organizations. A child-owned challenge cannot use a parent-only location; switch to the correct owning organization or choose a location available to the child.

Use the completion selector to decide how many tasks or approved photo responses a participant must complete to earn the challenge badge.

Manage Visibility, Timing, and Settings

Use the Info tab to update public challenge content and supplemental sections.

The Info tab also includes a Sponsors card. Add up to 10 reusable sponsors, choose one featured sponsor, change their order, and save the assignments. Create or edit reusable sponsors under Organization Settings > Sponsors. When you link a sponsor to an OuterSpatial organization, its name and logo stay synchronized by default; use Override beside either field to manage that value independently.

Each OuterSpatial organization can be linked to one reusable sponsor in your organization's sponsor list. If it is already linked, edit the existing sponsor or select it from the Sponsors card.

Use the Settings tab for challenge-level settings that should be managed separately from the main content flow.

Visibility controls whether the challenge is public or private. Start and end times control when the challenge should be active for visitors. Times use your organization's time zone.

Review Submissions and Reports

The Challenges list includes a Reports button for each challenge. Challenge detail pages also include a Reports tab.

Reports show participant and response totals, trends over time, and downloadable report tables. The report columns adapt to the challenge type so check-in, QR, photo, and questionnaire challenges show the most relevant response details.

Photo challenges also include a Submissions tab for reviewing submitted photos and category-specific response activity.

Review Photo Submissions

Use Settings > Moderators to assign your review team after creating at least one category. Open Submissions to review entries, approve or reject them, and cast moderator votes.

For step-by-step instructions, rank explanations, qualifying People's Choice counts, and troubleshooting, see Moderating and Judging Photo Challenges.

Check Participant Eligibility

Use Participant Lookup or Check Eligibility to review a participant's eligibility. Names and email addresses require the challenge's email-sharing setting; only organization admins can change exclusions and employee domains.

See Check Participant Eligibility for the procedure and publication restrictions.

Publish Photo Winners

After the challenge ends, manually select Final Award for approved, eligible entries. Awards remain drafts until you review and publish them. Likes and moderator votes do not automatically select winners.

See Select and Publish Winners for publishing, correcting results, and handling unavailable winning photos.

Visitor Experience

Visitors can complete challenge tasks from the mobile apps. Offline responses can be saved on the device and synchronized when the visitor has a network connection again.

Visitors see challenge details, rules, prizes, FAQs, tasks or categories, progress, and earned badges based on the challenge configuration in Manager.