If you're setting up the CultureBot app for Microsoft Teams for the first time, you're in the right place. A great place to start is watching the video below. In it we cover the entire platform from a high level in under 10 minutes. From here, we break out into more specific parts of how to use the application below. If you have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to reach out to our team by emailing support(at)getculturebot.com!

Basic Setup Options

When you first install the app, know that you can install it at the 'personal' level, as well as the 'team' level. What does this mean? Well, 'personal' apps hang out in the bottom left of your Teams toolbar, meaning you can access them from anywhere inside of the Teams app, no matter where you are. On the flip side of this, when you install CultureBot to a 'team' (or channel), it will appear as a tab on the channel itself, for example, see the #General channel shown below.

What's the benefit of doing one or the other (or both)? Well, mostly it's just a personal preference thing. If you do intend to use recognition/shoutouts, however, you will be forced to add the bot to a team/channel of your choice.

Adding Admins

There are two kinds of admins in CultureBot - full admins, and partial. Full admins can do the full range of things available to you in CultureBot, all configuration options and settings will be shown. To add a full admin, visit the 'user permissions' page in the bottom left of the CultureBot app and click on the tab 'full admins'.

On the other hand, 'partial admins' are simply users who are given individual rights to do differnet things in the application. For example, adding a partial admin for the 'water cooler' feature will give them the ability to add and view water cooler channels (but only their own, not all of the ones created across the entire workspace). Similarly, adding a partial admins for 'birthdays' will allow that user to collect birthdays from their team/channels on their own, without having to need a full admin to do it for them. Partial admin rights are also available for work anniversaries, as well as custom celebrations.

Configuring Birthdays & Work Anniversaries

Celebrating birthdays and work anniversaries is an integral part of making sure your employees feel recognized and not forgotten about. CultureBot helps you do a few things with respect to these special days:

• Automatically collect birthdays & start dates from your employees
• Automatically celebrate them on their special days at the right time (and, example, skipping weekends)
• Send customized gifts/messages that look hyper-personalized so that they feel even more special when the celebration day finally comes

To get started, click 'celebrations' from the side menu on the left (shown below), and then fill out the channel(s), time to celebrate, when to send, etc. (all seen below).  

Finally, click the 'collecting birthdays' option (above), and that will present you with a modal that permits you to collect in a few ways:

• via CSV upload
• by having the bot send a message to specific user(s) or channel(s) of users
• adding the birthdays/work anniversaries manually (not our recommended option, but possible, and helpful for when you may have missed just a few of them).

Our recommended approach is to start with the CSV upload, and to then check the box near the bottom of the page that allows the bot to automatically message anyone new seen in your workspace moving forward (for their birthday and/or start date).

In terms of work anniversaries, the setup is nearly identical to birthdays, so we will skip this set up process and move right along to custom celebrations next!

Adding Custom Celebrations (Holidays, Awareness Days, etc.)

Setting up custom celebrations is handy for loading up all of the holidays and awareness days you'd like to celebrate for the year ahead. To do so, click the 'celebrations' page shown below, and then choose 'add celebration'.

From here, all you need to do is fill out the form shown – we do provide a number (about 30) of holidays and awareness days to choose from, but you are more than welcome to start from scratch, too. If you do use one of our templates, it will come pre-loaded with a nice visual/animated graphic, although you can also upload your own graphics by clicking the 'graphics library' option shown below.

Setting up Water Cooler Channels

Water cooler is a way to stir up conversations in shared interest/shared hobby channels with your colleagues. To create one, choose 'water cooler' from the left side menu, and then shoose from either of 'classic' or 'AI' versions (below).

The classic version will give you prompt packs to choose from that we've created – ranging from lighter topics like 'photo challenge' and 'this or that' to heavier topics such as 'DEI' or 'vulnerability' – try to not mix and match lighter and heavier topic packs, you want to make sure the conversation starters that come out make sense from one week to the next!

After saving your preferences above, you can click 'view/edit upcoming prompts' to see the conversation starters that are about to come out. From here, you can move them up and down if you want them to come out sooner or later, or even swap them out for a new one entirely

If you choose the AI version of water cooler, the main difference here is that you'll be adding topics in on your own – the bot will then generate the conversation starters from here for you. If you have specific social channels that exist today this is a great way to get hyper-specific and to increase engagement/activity in these existing channels. If you don't, we suggest creating 2-3 new social channels that you then share with your team internally, and if they like those topics they will then join the channel and begin receiving thought-provoking conversation starters about topics they care about (since they joined the channel) alongside their teammates (helping build better bonds between their them and their colleagues).

Lastly, if you'd like to, you can also add in your own packs of conversation starters. To do this, click the 'view/add custom prompt packs' (shown below). To choose a pack that you've made, you can do so by editing any of your existing water cooler instances.

How to use Shoutouts & Recognition

Shoutouts are a way to share public praise/recognition with your teammates. Sending one is easy – just click the "+" button from the compose menu inside a Teams channel (shown below).

Once you click 'CultureBot' you'll be presented with a modal that allows you to choose your shoutout type, who to send to, any amount of points you'd like to include as a reward, as well as the message itself. When you're ready with your shoutout, click 'send shoutout' below.

The shoutout itself will look like this:

From here, you can also configure many things about the way shoutouts can be used. Click 'shoutouts' from the side menu of the CultureBot app and you'll see options to create custom shoutout types 'manage custom types', as well as an option to set up a shoutout reminder message ('shoutout day') to encourage more praise sharing, and finally, various options below this to permit anonymity, notify users when shoutouts are sent, and also whether or not to hide the default shoutout types provided.

For 'shoutout day' – this is basically a reminder that comes out on a regular basis reminding folks to share praise with one another. It can be one message a month, or multiple (see all options below).

This is what a shoutout day reminder will look like. All your employees will need to do is click 'send shoutout' to then send feedback to their teammates.

Lastly, we have the custom shoutout configuration. Most companies will create a few of these custom types to align with/match their company values. Create these by visiting the 'custom shoutouts' page and the click on 'add custom shoutouts' – from here you now have the option to name your type, describe it (which users will see when they go to send a shoutout), as well as select an icon (which could be one from our library, or a custom logo/graphic of your own, so long as it is square in dimensions), and color. Once you've created your own custom shoutout or two, go back into Teams to try sending them to see what they look like!

Shoutout Reporting

Click 'shoutout reports' frmo the side navigation to view aggregate metrics and reports on your team's use of shoutouts with CultureBot. Pick your date range to focus in on (e.g. the past month or quarter) at the top, and you'll soon see who the top senders/receivers are, as well as the top shoutout types/values, point leaders, and more. In the table at the bottom you can see each individual shoutout sent during this time period, as well as an option to download this table of results.

Another very useful option to showcase the activity (and to nominate/highlight/recongize top praise givers) is to setup a public report to go out once a month by clicking the 'configure public report' option (shown below). This will then share a report of the top senders/receivers of shoutouts, points, or both, as well as the top shoutout types/values (if you'd like). This is a great way to stir up more recognition activity.

Configuring Peer Rewards & Gift Catalogs

There are a few things to consider when setting up your incentives program for shoutouts. The first is how many points do you want each employee to have on a monthly basis to give out to other teammates? The second is if you want eGift Cards as rewards, custom gifts (like swag or employee perks), or both. If you do want to incentivize your employees to send more shoutouts by providing them with a points allowance, clicking 'points rules' from the shoutouts page (shown below) will allow you to set up your rules as you would like. From here, click the 'view/add rewards' button - this will take you to the gift catalog setup. Lastly, before moving on, note that at the bottom of this set up section you can configure rules for giving out points on employee's birthdays, work anniversaries, or ad-hoc for any reason at all ('give points' – only available to full admins).

If points are turned on, when shoutouts are sent they will have a 'gift catalog' button at the bottom of them (to hide this button, just make all the input fields for 'points rules' 0 again).

When setting up the gift catalog, you have the option to show the gift cards, prepaid cards, and custom gifts (or none of them at all). To configure which parts of the catalog will appear, visit the 'settings' part of the peer rewards page shown below. To fund your account, click 'add/modify card' or 'fund via ACH'. Lastly, you can also add additional gift approvers ('approval rights') who are not full admins if you'd like (this is often used by larger teams to spread out the manual effort if you do choose to manually approve gifts after each redemption).

To add custom gifts, click the 'custom rewards' section of the peer rewards page. Here you simply choose 'add custom reward' – these can be employee perks that are non-monetary in nature (e.g. time off work for 50 pts, or lunch with the CEO for 100 pts), likewise they can also be company swag (shirts, hats, backpacks, etc.) that you add in links for.

The redemptions tab is used to approve/deny any gift card or custom gift claims from employees. This process can be skipped by turning on 'auto approval' from the settings page, but if you keep it, know that you or another 'approver' will need to come in here to approve/deny any claims on a regular basis (note: admins/approvers will also receive notifications anytime a claim is requested).  

Redeeming actual gifts couldn't be any simpler for the employee. After clicking the 'gift catalog' button (a few paragraphs above) on a shoutout, they are taken to a page that looks like what you see below. Here they can view their current amount of redeemable points, can enter the value of the gift card they'd like (if it's a gift card), and can then fully redeem the gift by clicking 'redeem'.

Using Team Games

There are two team games available - DoodleDash, and Fishbowl. These are meant to be played in real-time with your team, normally on a video conferencing call. To utilize these features click the 'team games' page from the left side navigation. Doodledash is a fun game of live pictionary (everyone out to win it for themselves by guessing the most drawings correctly of their teammates), and Fishbowl is a team vs. team guessing game (where you add individual words/phrases to a collective 'bowl', and teams take turns guessing what the words/phrases are in different ways).

Upgrading

If you're using the app as a team of fewer than 25 employees/users, then CultureBot is free forever for your team. If you're 25 employees/users or more, click on the 'upgrade' page in the bottom left of the app to continue using the platform beyond your 2-week free trial period. The prices shown are based on your team's workspace size. Today we offer a 'basic' and a 'standard' plan (in increments of 25 to 50 users at a time).