# How to use the Gamify App

> Gamify lives in the Top bar the small games-console icon next to the search button. Everything below is in its dropdown. (Apps: Gamify)

- Page: https://dashboard.nizu.io/knowledge_base/view/224-how-to-use-the-gamify-app
- Part of: [Knowledge base](https://dashboard.nizu.io/knowledge_base/llms.txt) on NIZU — https://dashboard.nizu.io/llms.txt
- Updated: 2026-10-25T11:50:03Z

## How to use the Gamify App

### 1. The Arcade your own hub

Gamify lives in the **top bar** the small games-console icon next to the search button. Everything below is in its dropdown.

Open **Gamify → Arcade**. This page shows:

- Your level, title and a segmented XP bar with how much XP remains to the next level.
- Your season stats: net XP, XP earned, penalties (if any), current and best streak, trophies unlocked and your rank.
- Your recent XP activity, each line showing what earned or cost the XP and when.
- The top of the high-score board.

### 2. Earning XP

You do not do anything special to earn XP you do your work in NIZU as normal. Out of the box, XP is awarded for:

| Action | Default XP |
| --- | --- |
| Task completed | 10 × the task's story points |
| Task completed before its deadline | +5 bonus |
| Project completed | 60 to each project member |
| Support ticket closed | 15 |
| Estimate or proposal accepted | 50 |
| Lead converted to a client | 40 |
| Invoice paid | 30 |
| Comment posted | 2, up to 10 per day |
| File uploaded to a project | 3, up to 5 per day |
| Time logged | 5, once per day |
| Signing in | 2, once per day |

Every value, daily cap and cooldown can be changed by an administrator.

### 3. The leaderboard

Open **Gamify → Leaderboard**. Use the tabs across the top to change what is being ranked:

- **This season / This week / This month / All time** the scoring window.
- **Most improved** the biggest week-on-week gains. A second way to be visible if you are not going to out-score the top performer.
- **Individuals / Teams** team standings sum the XP of each team's members and also show the per-member average, so a small team is not automatically beaten by a large one.

Your own row is highlighted and marked **1UP**.

### 4. Trophies

Open **Gamify → Trophies**. Unlocked trophies show the date you earned them. Locked trophies show your progress towards them ("7 / 10 tasks"), so you always know what is within reach. Secret trophies show as **???** until unlocked.

### 4b. Documentation trophies

Writing for the knowledge base earns trophies of its own. There are two sets, and they reward different things.

**How much you write** every published article counts:

| Trophy | Articles published |
| --- | --- |
| First Draft | 1 |
| Documentarian | 10 |
| Librarian | 50 |
| Archivist | 100 |
| Loremaster | 500 |

**How much it is read** based on your *most-read single article*, not the total across everything you have written:

| Trophy | Views on one article |
| --- | --- |
| Somebody Read It | 50 |
| Well Thumbed | 250 |
| Required Reading | 1,000 |
| The Manual | 5,000 |

A few things worth knowing:

- Articles you wrote **before** Gamify was installed count. Your progress is worked out from the knowledge base itself, so a long back catalogue is recognised straight away.
- Only published (active) articles count. An article that is unpublished or deleted stops counting towards the *next* trophy but any trophy you have already earned is yours to keep.
- Writing an article earns **no XP**. That is deliberate: paying per article would be far too easy to game, and it would make the leaderboard meaningless. The recognition is the trophy.
- View trophies can take a little while to appear views are counted up by the scheduled job rather than the instant somebody opens a page.

### 5. Streaks

A streak counts consecutive working days on which you earned XP. Weekends and approved leave do not break a streak they are skipped. Your current and best streak appear on the Arcade page and on the leaderboard.

### 6. If you lose XP

If penalties are enabled, XP can be subtracted most commonly for repeatedly extending a task deadline. When that happens:

- You get a notification straight away explaining exactly what caused it.
- The entry appears in your Arcade activity feed with its reason.
- If you think it is wrong, click **Appeal** next to it and explain why. An administrator reviews it and can void the entry.

Penalties are private. The public leaderboard shows net totals only never an itemised list of what anybody lost.

### 7. Hiding from the leaderboard

Open your own profile, go to **My preferences**, and tick **Hide me from the Gamify leaderboard**. You disappear from the public board entirely while keeping your own XP, trophies and streak.

### 9. Getting notified

Gamify can tell you what is happening without you opening it.

#### Through Marvin (private)

If your workspace uses the Marvin app and you have linked your own Telegram DM with Marvin, Marvin messages you privately when:

- you **level up**,
- you **unlock a trophy**,
- your **XP changes noticeably** (small everyday gains are skipped),
- you **lose XP** including a confirmed test regression. That message always says what caused it and reminds you that you can appeal it.

If you have not linked a DM with Marvin, Gamify stays quiet. It will never put your penalty anywhere other people can see it.

#### In the notification bell

Duel challenges and duel results also arrive as ordinary NIZU notifications, in the bell at the top of the screen, so you see a challenge even if you do not use Marvin or Telegram. A challenge is the one thing Gamify sends that you have to answer, so it does not rely on an optional app being installed.

Administrators can turn these on or off, or add email, under **Settings → Notifications** look for *Duel challenge received* and *Duel finished*. Email is off by default because a challenge lapses after five minutes, so the mail would usually arrive after the challenge had already gone.

#### To the team channel

If the Telegram Notification app is set up, Gamify can also announce **levels, trophies and duels** to the workspace channel the good news only. Penalties are never announced there. Anybody who has hidden themselves from the leaderboard is never named in the channel either, including when they play a duel.

#### For administrators

Both channels are switched on or off under **Settings → Gamify**, along with the XP threshold that decides how big a change is worth a message (set it to 0 to switch XP messages off and keep only levels, trophies and penalties).

Messages are queued and sent by the scheduled cron job rather than immediately, so a slow Telegram can never slow the platform down. Make sure your workspace cron is running. **Settings → Gamify → Backfill history** shows the queue and has a **Send queued now** button for testing a setup.

### 9b. Arcade Duels 3-minute 1v1

Open **Gamify → Duels** to challenge a colleague to a three-minute game of Tanks. It is meant as a coffee-break ritual, which is why the match clock is fixed and cannot be extended.

#### Where duels are played

Duels happen in the **games room** a real room on your workspace's office floor plan, with four walls, a door, screens on the wall and sofas to hide behind. You can see it in **Gamify → Office**.

You are looking at your own games room the same floor, screens and furniture your administrator drew with the two tanks standing in it at the same level, facing each other, and one object placed between them.

The room is the arena. Its width is how far apart you are and its height is the ceiling you have to lob under, so a long low games room plays completely differently from a short tall one.

#### Playing a match

1. Pick a colleague, optionally set a **coin stake**, and send the challenge. They have five minutes to accept before it lapses.
2. The moment they accept, **you are both taken into the games room together** you do not have to watch for it. This matters, because the clock starts on acceptance and the challenger shoots first.
3. You then take alternating turns. You have about **12 seconds per turn**; miss it and the turn passes to your opponent, so stalling never helps.
4. **Tanks do not move.** Wherever you start is where you fight from, so the whole game is in the shot.
5. **Set the elevation and the power** on the two sliders, then Fire. You always shoot towards your opponent the only question is how steeply and how hard. The dashed line shows the direction the shell leaves the barrel.
6. The **first direct hit wins**. If the three minutes run out, whoever got closest wins; a genuine tie is a draw and both stakes come back.

#### Watching other people play

Duels are meant to be watched. Anyone in the workspace can follow a match live, and there are three ways to find one:

- The **Live now** panel at the top of **Gamify → Duels**, which fills itself in as matches start you do not need to reload.
- In **Gamify → Office**, both players move into the games room while they play and are marked with a red badge. Click either of them to watch.
- Any link to a match you are sent.

As a spectator you see exactly what the players see the room, both tanks, the object between them and every shot as it happens with no controls. You cannot fire, and you cannot affect the match in any way.

There is nothing private in a duel: it is two people who both opted in, playing for cosmetic coins, on a board that is already public. If you would rather not be challenged at all, turn off **Allow duel challenges** in My preferences.

#### Sound

The turret ratchets as you turn the gun, and the cannon fires when you shoot and you hear your opponent's shots too, whether you are playing or just watching.

Use the speaker button next to Fire to mute it. That is remembered on your own machine, so you only have to do it once. Administrators can turn duel sound off for the whole workspace with **Sound effects** under **Settings → Gamify**.

#### The clock

The match clock is on the wall of the games room, above the playfield. It counts down from **3:00**, and turns red and blinks under thirty seconds so you know to take the shot rather than line up the perfect one.

#### Gravity, and the thing in your way

Shells fly a real arc under real gravity, so a shot rises and then falls. They **do not bounce**: whatever a shell touches first the object, a wall, the floor or a tank is where it stops. Only hitting a tank counts.

Between you and your opponent there is one **indestructible object**, different every match and never in the same place: a filing cabinet, a palm tree, a hospital vending machine. You cannot destroy it or shoot through it. You have to get around it.

The one piece of real physics worth knowing, because it decides how you play:

- If the object is **close to you**, more power will not help close to the barrel the shell's path is set by the angle. Aim higher and lob over it.
- If the object is **further away, in the middle**, more power does help: a faster shell is still climbing when it gets there.

Spent shots stay on screen as faint arcs. Reading them is the whole skill land one short, land one long, and the third usually connects.

#### When you hit

The tank you hit blows apart into pieces that fly up, fall and fade, with an explosion to match. That ends the match.

#### What is at stake

Only **coins**. Duels are scored on their own separate board and **never touch your XP, your level, your trophies or the season leaderboard**. Winning at Tanks cannot make you look more productive than a colleague who was working, and losing cannot damage your work record.

Coins are only staked once your opponent accepts. Declining or letting a challenge lapse costs nothing.

#### If you do not want to be challenged

Turn off **Allow duel challenges** in **My preferences** and you disappear from everybody's opponent list. There is no notification when you do this and no way for anybody to tell.

**Declining is silent.** The person who challenged you is never told that you declined only that the challenge was not taken up. That is deliberate: a visible refusal would give declining a social cost and turn an invitation into pressure.

#### Limits

- A maximum stake per duel (50 coins by default).
- A daily limit on how many duels you can play (10 by default).
- A cooldown before you can rematch the *same* person (60 minutes by default), so a willing friend cannot be farmed for coins all afternoon.
- One duel at a time.

If both players close the tab mid-match, the duel is settled automatically by the nightly job and any staked coins are released nothing is left hanging.

Administrators can switch duels off entirely, or change any of these limits, under **Settings → Gamify**.

#### For administrators: the games room

Duels need a games room on the floor plan. One is added automatically the first time the office is opened, below the rest of the building. You can move or resize it in **Gamify → Office → Edit floor plan** exactly like the beach or the clinic.

Three things will stop duels working, and all three say so plainly when somebody tries to accept a challenge:

- **No games room** on the plan.
- **Too small.** The minimum is 12 × 9 tiles; below that a there is not enough room to arc a shell over the object.
- **Overlapping another area.** The editor will not let you place or drag one area on top of another moving an area carries the tiles underneath it away, which would strip the games room of its walls. If an older floor plan already has an overlap, duels are refused until you separate them.

Anything you place inside the room becomes part of the game furniture is cover, and the walls are what shells bounce off. Redecorating it genuinely changes how the game plays, and a match already in progress keeps the floor it started on.

### 9b1. Blackjack

When you send a challenge you can pick the game: **Tanks** or **Blackjack**. Blackjack is played at the table in the games room, best of three hands.

**If you have never played:** you and your opponent each get two cards, and so does the dealer one of the dealer's is face down. The aim is to get closer to 21 than the dealer without going over.

- Number cards are worth their number. Jacks, queens and kings are worth ten. An ace is worth eleven or one, whichever helps you.
- **Hit** takes another card. **Stand** keeps what you have and ends your turn.
- Go over 21 and you are **bust** you lose that hand even if the dealer goes bust too.
- Once you have both finished, the dealer turns over the hidden card and draws until reaching 17.
- Whoever did better against the dealer takes the hand. First to two hands wins the match.

You are both playing against the dealer, not against each other you simply see who did better. Your cards are face up to everybody, including anyone watching; the dealer's hidden card is hidden from all of you until the end.

Tasks and tickets **cannot** be wagered on Blackjack. It comes down to the cards, and real work should not. Use Tanks if you want to wager.

### 9b2. Wagering a task or ticket on a duel

If your administrator has switched it on, two colleagues can each put up one of their own open tasks or support tickets. **Whoever loses takes on the winner's item** and keeps their own. A draw changes nothing.

**Pick the player first.** What you can put up depends on who you are challenging you can only wager something they could actually be given:

- a **task**, only if you are both on the same project;
- a **ticket**, only if their role lets them be assigned that kind of ticket.

So the list is empty until you choose someone, and it changes when you pick a different colleague. If it says you have nothing to put up, it means you share no project with that person and they cannot take your tickets try somebody you work alongside. The list is searchable, which helps when your backlog is long.

Nothing happens until **both** of you have seen the exact task you might have to take on and agreed to it:

1. You pick one of your open tasks and accept the terms.
2. Your opponent sees your task named on the challenge, picks one of theirs, and accepts the terms with both tasks side by side.
3. You are then shown *their* task and confirm. Only then does the match start. If you close that dialog, the wager is called off and nothing changes hands.

Points worth knowing:

- It is **just for fun** a bit of camaraderie in the team, nothing more.
- **No money, coins, prizes or anything of value** are involved, and taking part has no bearing on pay, evaluation or standing at work.
- Taking part is entirely voluntary. You can decline, withdraw before the match starts, or switch duels off completely in your profile preferences. Declining is always silent the other person is never told.
- You can only put up something that is **yours and still open**, and the same item cannot be wagered on two duels at once.
- If a wagered item is finished, closed, reassigned or deleted while the match is running, it does not move.
- A reassigned task shows up in the normal task history like any other change, so your manager can see it and undo it.
- Both acceptances are recorded with the date and the items involved, and either of you can read that record afterwards: open **Gamify → Duels** and click **Wager record** next to the match in your history. It shows who agreed to what, when, and what changed hands. Whoever manages gamification can open it too.
- If you change your mind while waiting for your opponent to confirm, use **Call it off** next to the challenge. Nothing changes hands.

### 9c. Your pixel avatar

Open **Gamify → My avatar** to build a little pixel character of yourself. It is used **inside Gamify** NIZU Office, the arcade player card, the leaderboard and the duel board.

Your workspace profile picture is **never changed**. Everywhere else in NIZU the team list, tasks, comments, chat and email your colleagues still see your real photo.

- Pick a **build** and a **skin tone**, then work through the tabs: head, hair, top, legs, shoes and hat.
- Every option is previewed *on your own avatar*, so what you see in the grid is what you get.
- Each category has its own **colour strip** 24 clothing colours, 26 hair colours.
- **Surprise me** rolls everything. **Reroll clothes** and **Reroll colours** change only that. Tick **Lock** on a category to leave it alone while you reroll the rest.
- Use the direction buttons and **Walk** to see your character from all four sides and in motion.

**Use my photo instead** removes the avatar, so Gamify goes back to showing your photo too. Nothing is lost you can build a new one whenever you like.

The artwork comes from the Universal LPC Spritesheet Character Generator and is used under licences that require crediting the artists. The **Artwork credits** link on the avatar page lists all 46 of them.

### 9d. Walking around the office

Open **Gamify → Office** and use the **arrow keys** or **WASD** to walk your character around the floor. You can walk through doors, into the games room, and over to a colleague's desk.

- Walls, windows and furniture block you doors do not.
- You cannot walk through a colleague. If somebody has been standing still for a while you can step past them, so nobody can block a doorway.
- Anyone else with the office open sees you move within a couple of seconds.
- If you have built a pixel avatar it is the one that walks; otherwise your photo circle moves instead.

You do not have to put yourself back. A few minutes after you stop, your character returns to where your working day says you are your desk, the clinic if you are on medical leave, the beach if you are on holiday, or the lounge if you have no timer running.

### 10. NIZU Office

Open **Gamify → NIZU Office**. The office is a 2D floor plan of your workspace: a room per team, a desk per person, and each person shown as their real profile photo seated in a chair.

- A **green ring** around somebody means they scored XP today; grey means idle.
- **Hover** anyone to see their level, season XP, streak and the last thing they actually did, with the project it belonged to.
- **Click** to jump to that project, or to their profile.
- Drag to pan, scroll to zoom, **Fit** to frame the whole floor, **Find me** to jump to your own desk.
- Plants grow as the team keeps its streaks.

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