Skip to content
Kudos

Guide for Admins

Admins set up the Tenant, manage Members and approve Redemptions, and they see everything. Everything Members and Managers can do, Admins can do too; see the Members and Managers guides. Setting up a new Tenant? Start with Getting started.

The Admin pages sit in three menus: People, Setup and Security and privacy. Almost every change on them is recorded in the Audit log.

Members

The Members page lists everyone in the Tenant. Filter by name, email or Resource, and by status: active, never signed in, no Resource, deactivated.

Invite a person with email, name and role (Member, Manager or Admin). Kudos links them to the active Autotask Resource with the same email and emails them the sign-in link. If the email fails, the Member is still created; resend the invite from the list. Invites can be resent until the Member first signs in.

Allowed email domains: on their first sign-in, people with an email at these domains join automatically as Members. So does anyone whose email belongs to an active Autotask Resource. For GitHub sign-ins only the Resource match counts.

Import from Autotask creates Members from your active Autotask Resources in one go. Load the Resources, pick people and a role for each, and import. Kudos leaves out existing Members, API users and Resources without an email or sharing one, and says how many. No invitation emails are sent; people simply sign in. Each imported Member counts as an active seat. If anything changed since you loaded the list, nothing is imported; load it again.

Role: a change takes effect on the Member's next click. The Tenant always keeps at least one active Admin.

Resource: each Member is linked to at most one Autotask Resource, which is how Ratings are credited to them. Match by email or search Autotask and pick one. Moving a link moves the Resource's Rating Points with it.

Deactivate a Member who leaves. They are signed out and can no longer sign in; their Ratings, Recognitions and Points stay. The list shows their open Points balance, which you settle outside Kudos. A deactivated Member earns no Points from Ratings, not even after reactivation, and does not count as a seat.

Anonymise a deactivated Member to remove their name, email and sign-in for good (GDPR Art. 17). Their Recognitions, Points and Redemptions stay and show as "Former member". This cannot be undone, and it needs all of their Redemptions decided first.

Teams and visibility

Teams are optional groups of Members. They decide what Managers see:

  • Without Teams, Managers see the whole Tenant.
  • With Teams, a Manager sees the Members who share a Team with them. A Manager in no Team sees only their own Ratings.

Teams also decide which Managers get alerts for Negative Ratings. Deleting a Team keeps its Members and Ratings.

Visibility settings on the same page:

  • Hide Contact names from Members. Managers and Admins still see them.
  • Show the leaderboard. Off by default; check with your works council before turning it on.

Points and Grants

Points for Positive Ratings: how many Points the credited Member earns per Positive Rating, 0 to 1000 (0 turns it off). Changes apply to Ratings from then on. Neutral and Negative Ratings never earn or cost Points.

Grant Points to a Member with an amount and a reason. The reason shows in the Member's Point Ledger.

Grant from a CSV, for example opening balances when moving from CrewHu: a column with the amount (Balance, Amount or CrewHu's Current Balance) and a column with Email or Name. Kudos shows the matches first; the Grants are then made all at once, or not at all.

The page also lists every Member's balance, with a CSV download. Open a Member to see their full Point Ledger.

Redemptions

When a Member redeems a Reward, its Points are held and the Redemption waits here, oldest first.

  1. Approve it, then get the Reward.
  2. Fulfil it with a code or note (e.g. a gift card code). The Member gets it by email and the Points are spent.

Or reject it with an optional reason; the Points go back to the Member, who is told by email.

If a Redemption would take the Member over the monthly payroll threshold, Kudos warns you. It never blocks you.

Payroll

Per month, the € value of the Rewards each Member received, flagged above your threshold (default €50, the German non-cash benefit allowance). Download it as CSV for payroll. Months follow the time zone set under Badges. The tax treatment is up to you.

Single sign-on

Members sign in through your company's identity provider:

  • Microsoft Entra ID: enter the Directory (tenant) ID, Application (client) ID and a client secret. Register the redirect URI shown on the page in your app registration. Kudos matches people by their sign-in name; to match by email, add the optional ID-token claims email and xms_edov.
  • Other OpenID Connect providers (Google Workspace, Keycloak, …): issuer URL, client ID and secret. The provider must confirm the email address as verified.
  • GitHub (or GitHub Enterprise Server): register an OAuth app with the redirect URI as its callback. Kudos uses the primary, verified email.

Kudos checks the settings when you save. Sign out and sign in again with single sign-on to try it. Leave the secret empty to keep the stored one.

Changing the issuer or client ID disconnects every Member's sign-in; each Member reconnects on their next sign-in. Once single sign-on works and an Admin has used it, the one-time sign-in link for the first Admin no longer works.

Autotask

Kudos reads Tickets, Resources and Customers from Autotask and writes Ratings back.

Connection: create an API-only user with an integration code (tracking identifier) in Autotask, then enter its username, secret and integration code. Kudos finds your zone and checks the credentials. The page shows the zone and how many API calls Kudos made this hour. Test connection looks up a Ticket by its number.

Write-backs: about five minutes after a Rating, Kudos can add an internal note to the Ticket and set the Ticket field Latest Rating. Create that field in Autotask first, as a text Ticket UDF.

Callback Requests: pick a queue and a priority. Contacts who rate Negative can then ask to be contacted, which opens a new Ticket for them in that queue. Their comment goes on it as an internal note, not in the description, which Autotask may email to the Contact. Without a queue and priority, they are not offered this.

Negative alerts need no setup: Kudos emails every Negative Rating to all Admins and to the credited Member's Managers.

The page also shows the nightly sync of resolved Tickets (used for the response rate) and any write-backs or alert emails that failed.

Rating Snippet

The Rating Snippet is the block of smiley links your Contacts click in Ticket emails. Kudos offers four: English and German, each for "Ticket updated" and "Ticket resolved" notifications.

  1. Copy the snippet with its button.
  2. In Autotask, open the notification template, switch to its HTML and paste the snippet where it should appear.

The snippet uses Autotask variables in the language of your Kudos, because Autotask only fills them in its own UI language. If your Autotask is in German, switch Kudos to German before copying. The snippet sits between BEGIN Kudos Rating Snippet and END Kudos Rating Snippet comments, so you can find it later. The preview links show what Contacts see, without recording a Rating.

Branding, on the same page, styles the page Contacts see after clicking: logo, colour, link to your privacy policy and the language for Contacts whose link has none.

Rating tags

Rating tags are aspects Contacts can pick on the rating page, such as Knowledge or Timeliness; picking is optional for them. Every Tenant starts with five. Each tag has a name in English and/or German and the Scores it is shown for. At most 12 can be active. Drag the rows or use ↑ and ↓ to set their order. Renaming a tag changes its name on past Ratings too; for a different aspect, deactivate the tag and add a new one. Deactivated tags are no longer shown; past Ratings keep them.

Badges and Giving Budget

Badges are the kinds of Recognition Members give each other. Each has a name and description in English and/or German, an icon and a Points value. Mark a Badge Admin-only to keep it for Admins. Archive Badges you no longer use; past Recognitions keep them.

You can import Badges from a CrewHu CSV export; Kudos shows a preview first.

Giving Budget: how many Recognitions each Member may give per month (default 10). A Recognition to three people uses three. A Member can recognise the same colleague at most twice a month. The time zone set here decides when a month starts, also for Payroll.

Rewards

The catalogue of Rewards Members can buy with Points: name and description in English and/or German, price in Points, an optional € value for payroll and an optional image (PNG, JPEG or WebP, up to 256 KB). Archive a Reward to take it out of the catalogue.

Contests

Contests are off by default. They rank Members on their ticket work, which is performance monitoring: agree on them with your works council before turning them on. Turning them off cancels every scheduled, running and ended Contest and deletes its standings; drafts stay.

A Contest has a name, a period (starting today at the earliest), one metric, a kind and Participants. The metrics:

  • Tickets resolved, credited to the primary resource at resolution. Higher wins.
  • Positive Ratings, counted as for Points: only by the Ticket's own Contact, at most one per Ticket. Higher wins.
  • Billable ticket hours per day worked: billable time entries on Tickets divided by the days with any time entry other than leave. Higher wins; a Participant without a day worked is listed, unranked.
  • Hours per resolved Ticket: billable ticket hours divided by Tickets resolved, at or below your target. Shared target only, so no one gains alone by logging less time.
  • Average first response time, credited to the Resource who gave the first response, and average resolution time, credited to the primary resource at resolution: the business hours from a Ticket's creation to its first response or resolution, in the business hours and holidays of your default Autotask internal location, read in your Kudos time zone. Keep that location's holiday set up to date for every year a Contest on an average has run in so far: while it has no holidays for such a year, standings show as not current. Tickets created in earlier years use the holidays the set has for them. Lower wins. You set a minimum of Tickets per Participant (10 by default); below it a Participant is listed but unranked and wins no prize, also in a Shared target, where all Tickets still count toward the average.

The kinds:

  • Ranked contest: Participants are ranked individually. Prizes in Points go to the winner alone or to places 1 to 3; tied Participants share a rank and each get its full prize.
  • Shared target: the Participants' results are added up (for hours: all their hours over all their days or Tickets; for averages: all their Tickets together) and compared to your target; if they reach it, every Participant gets the prize.

Pick everyone, Teams or Members. Only active Members linked to an Autotask Resource take part; the page shows who is skipped. Create a Contest as a draft, then Schedule it: from then on it cannot change, only be cancelled (it then pays nothing) or copied as a new draft. It starts on its start day, when its Participants are fixed. Standings are computed nightly; Tickets resolved, hours and averages rely on the nightly Autotask syncs and show as not current while one fails. Only while a Contest on hours runs or awaits its results does Kudos read the Participants' time entries from Autotask; it keeps billable ticket hours and whether a day was worked per Resource and day, never the entries or their descriptions, and deletes them once no such Contest needs them. Likewise, only while a Contest on an average runs or awaits its results does it read the Participants' Tickets and your business hours and holidays; it keeps per Ticket only when it was answered or resolved, by whom, and the business hours elapsed, nothing else. Your Autotask API user needs read rights on time entries, Tickets, internal locations and holidays. Every change is in the audit log.

Results are final a number of grace days after a Contest's end (3 by default, 0 to 30, set on the Contest setup page), so late Tickets and Ratings still count. Then the standings are computed one last time and frozen, and the Contest prizes are paid as Points automatically. A ranked Participant with a result of 0 wins nothing (except on an average, where lower wins), and no one deactivated by then is paid. While the standings are not current, the Contest waits and stays ended: no prize is ever paid on stale data.

A Contest can repeat monthly or quarterly if it ends before its next round would start. Each round is a Contest of its own with the same settings and picks, scheduled when the previous round starts; its Participants are fixed at its own start, so Team changes count from the next round on. To stop repeating, cancel the scheduled next round.

TV dashboard

A live wall of Positive comments and Recognitions for a screen in the office, opened without signing in. Create a link and open it on the screen. The link is shown only once; anyone who has it can watch, so replacing it stops the old one at once. Contact names are left out when they are hidden from Members.

Billing

Hosted Tenants start with a free 7-day Trial without a card. After that, Kudos costs €1 per active Member per month. The page shows your status, Trial days left, seats and the monthly total.

  • Add card before the Trial ends. Without a card, the subscription pauses at the end of the Trial and Kudos is locked until you add one.
  • Manage billing opens Stripe for card, invoices, billing address, VAT ID and cancellation.
  • If a payment fails, Kudos shows a banner and, if it stays unpaid, announces a lock date.
  • Refer Kudos: share your Referral link. A company that signs up through it gets a month added to its Trial; once it has paid, you get a seat free for a month: a month added to your Trial, or one seat's monthly price off your next invoice, never more than the company paid. You earn up to 12 a year, given one per invoice; a refund to the company before yours is given takes it back. If Kudos is billed manually for you, the link still gives the company its longer Trial, but you get no reward.

While Kudos is locked, Admins can only open Billing and Privacy; Members see that the subscription is inactive, and rating links, the TV dashboard and MCP stop working. After a contract ends you have 30 days to export your data on the Privacy page.

Contract

Your accepted terms (AGB) and data processing agreement (AVV), with the history of acceptances. When the terms change, Admins see a banner until one of them accepts the new version; until then the old terms apply. You can also allow or withdraw a reference here.

Audit log

The append-only record of Admin actions: settings, Members and Teams, Grants, Redemption decisions, revoked Recognitions, exports, Contact data requests, support access, API tokens and connected apps, billing and contract. Each entry shows who, when, and what changed. Filter by date, action and person; the newest 500 matches are shown.

Support access

The Platform Operator (Erwins Enkel for getkudos.eu) cannot see your data. If you need help, grant support access for 1 hour, 1 day, 3 days or 7 days. Support then gets a read-only Admin view. Every page support opens is recorded in the Audit log. Revoke now ends access at once.

Privacy

Retention: set how many months Ratings keep personal data (1–120). Preview how many Ratings the next run would affect, then confirm. Each night, older Ratings lose the Contact and comment; Score, Ticket, Member, Customer and date stay for statistics.

Contact data requests: find a Contact by email (through Autotask) to export their data as JSON or erase it. Erasing removes the Contact and their comments from all their Ratings, whatever their age, and cannot be undone.

Full export: download all your Tenant's data as a ZIP of JSON and CSV files.