Admin Quickstart
How to get started on Village in record time.
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How to get started on Village in record time.
Last updated
Was this helpful?
This quick-start guide is for Village Administrators, and introduces you to the key concepts of the Village Admin Dashboard.
Here you will learn:
and why you should use it
How to create a , the representation of your business on Village
How to to your network
How to your network
How to create your first
How to make your first to Village
The purpose of this guide is to get you set up in Village as quickly as possible.
We also recommend reading , and other sections of this the to understand Village in more depth.
To learn about Village through different use cases, you can also check out our Guides.
Village is the brain of your business.
We turn any user on your platform into a power user by driving the right behavior at the right time.
Create and automate cash and non-monetary awards, credits, promos, referrals, goals, milestones, status, points, benefits, revenue share, and more — as well as powering the segmentation, comms and distribution of these incentives in the most efficient and effective way possible.
Village means more revenue, fewer costs, and, most importantly, a much stronger long-term relationship with your users.
Village is invite-only. If you'd like an invitation to use Village, reach out to our team at hello@villagelabs.co
You will receive an email invite to Village:
Click the link to accept the invite. You can log in through a third party or create an account with an email/password pair.
You must use the email that received the invitation, otherwise you will not be authorized to create an account and Village Network.
A Village Network is the representation of a business, organization, or platform within Village.
Your first step should be to create a Network.
You can only create one Network within Village by default. If you have any issues creating a network, or require additional networks, please reach out to support@villagelabs.co.
To create a Network, click on "Launch a Network."
Enter the required info:
Important: You cannot change your Unique Name once it's created. Although this is only used by your development team, please take care when creating it!
1
Display Name
This is the user-facing name for your network, typically the name of your platform or company, e.g. "Nike."
2
Unique Name
This is a non-editable, unique identifier for your network. This will not be seen by users or customers, but will be used by your developer team to access the Village APIs. You cannot change this once your network is launched.
3
Description
This is a user-facing description, often the company description or tagline. It may be user-facing in some instances.
Review the information you've entered and click "I Want to Launch" when ready.
There are two distinct user roles within your Village Network: 'Admin' and 'User.'
These are your team members. Admins have the ability to create and manage incentive structures, send comms, invite users, or configure your Network settings.
These are the end-users of your platform or business. Users could include customers, suppliers, workers, contractors, freelancers, etc. They can only access the End User Dashboard, which admins control the contents of.
Let's start by inviting your team members – your fellow admins.
Navigate to Side Menu -> Users -> Invites -> Add (+).
You can only add users of one type at a time. Select the Role you want to give (Admin for your team members), and enter as many emails as you like.
Once they're invited, they'll go through the same account creation process you did. But instead of creating a Network, they'll already have the option to "Manage Network" for the Network you invited them to.
Bulk invites: Want to add a lot of users?
If you need to bulk invite tens, hundreds, or thousands of users at once, reach out to our team at support@villagelabs.co. We'll work with you to backfill your existing user base.
To invite your end-users (suppliers, customers, partners, etc.), you can go through the same process, just make sure to set the role to "Member" instead of admin.
Bring your company's brand to Village! You can:
Change the color scheme of the end-user dashboard
Edit your user-facing Network name
Add a company logo that will appear on the admin and end-user dashboards
We recommend a logo with a white background. Logo must be 2:1 (e.g. 250 px by 500 px) for best results.
Click the pencil icon on the Network Manager title widget to access Network customization features.
To get started, we will create a test Program. This program will create incentives for our team to have more fun. Here's the order of what we're going to do:
Before we can create an incentive, we need something to award. First, navigate to Side Menu -> Incentives -> Awards -> Non-Monetary Awards -> New Non-Monetary Award. Don't worry - we can hide or delete these later.
Next, we need a user Activity that we want to award with Fun Points. Once we've set this up, we can use this Activity to trigger our Rule, and issue an Award (Fun Points).
Navigate to Side Menu -> Incentives -> Triggers -> Activities -> New Activity Trigger.
Rules are the backbone of your Village automations. They execute output operations – like issuing Awards or adding/removing users from segments – based on business logic.
But first, all Rules need to be grouped by Programs. Navigate to Side Menu -> Incentives -> Programs -> Create New Program.
Now that we have a Program, I can navigate to Programs -> Draft Programs -> Manage Team Fun Initiative -> Create New Rule.
Now selecting from the dropdowns:
Name: Dance Award
Trigger Type: Action
Trigger: Dance Completed
Award: Fun Points
Amount: 1
Recipient: Primary Dancer
Village can automatically create personalized comms that explain how programs and/or rules work in a simple and engaging way your end users. These can be sent by Village on behalf of your platform, or through your existing 3rd-party CRM provider.
Here's an example of an email automatically generated based on the program and rule above:
Suggested Next Steps:
Visit our Guides to learn about Village through examples ->
Our RESTful API listens for events and activity on your platform and enables real-time Rule execution.
Only events and activity that have been configured as Triggers within Village will be securely passed to Village through the API. These Triggers are in turn used to start the evaluation of your rules logic within Village. To read more about setting up, configuring, and using the API, refer to our Engineering Documentation, or read more about Triggers here.
You can use our quick and dirty Python, Airtable, and Google Apps Scripts. These are ideal if you're initially testing an integration, if your data is not stored in a centralized database, or if you're just getting started.
Data Connections
Village also has many one-click data connections for securely sharing events based data to be linked to triggers within the platform. These can be accessed in Village's production environment through the Data Connections tab.
In most cases, these connections are the easiest way to pass data to Village using common data sources and platforms
We currently support the following data connections with many more being added - please ping support@villagelabs.co if you don't see your data source listed.
Productivity Tools
Google Sheets
Airtable
Zapier
Github
Slack
Payments
Stripe
Paypal
Databases & Warehousing
Bigquery
MySQL
PostgresSQL
Snowflake
Amazon Redshift
Cloud Storage
Amazon S3
Google Cloud
MongoDB
CRM & Sales
SendGrid
Hubspot
Intercom
Pipedrive
Salesforce
Mailchimp
You'll be redirected to the , your home base within Village, where you can invite users, create incentives, send communications, and manage the ongoing analytics of your network.
For all non-admin users, you can skip manual invites and use the . This allows you to automatically invite your users to the Village Network.
: Fun Points
: Dance Completed
: Team Fun Initiative
: 1 Fun Point for per Dance Completed
Then click the launch button on the Rule. Finally, launch the Program (note: Programs are held in draft mode until they have at least one Rule ready to go live).
This feature is in beta right now, please if you'd like access.