Every award you create on Vome is one of two things: a quantitative award that the system grants automatically when someone hits a number, or a qualitative award that a human decides to give. You choose which when you create the award, using the Award Method setting.

Most organizations end up running both. The numbers recognize consistency, and the manual awards recognize everything a number cannot see.

Plan required: the Recognition module is available on the Enterprise and Ultimate plans.

1. What is the difference, in one line each?

• Quantitative (Rule-based). You define a measurable target. Vome watches the data and grants the award the moment somebody reaches it. No one has to remember.
• Qualitative (Manual). There is no rule. You decide who deserves it and grant it yourself, one person or a hundred at a time.

Reliability, tenure and volume are quantitative. Kindness, initiative, leading a team through a bad day, staying late when nobody asked, all of that is qualitative. Do not try to force the second kind into a milestone.

2. What can a quantitative award actually measure?

Two metrics. When you add an eligibility milestone, the question is What should be measured? and the answer is either:

• Hours logged
• Shifts completed

Then you set a Target amount, for example 50 hours or 20 shifts.

That is the full list. There is no metric for courses passed, forms submitted, sequences finished or years since joining. If you need to recognize something outside those two, you need either a manual award or, for courses specifically, a course automation. See Can I grant an award when someone completes a course?

3. What time windows can I choose?

Each milestone carries a Time window, which decides how the target is counted. There are five, and picking the right one matters more than picking the right number.

• All time. Counted across the person's entire history, with no limit. Use for lifetime milestones: 100 hours, 500 hours.
• Calendar year. Resets every January 1st, tracked per year. Use for annual recognition you want to repeat each year.
• Specific date range. Only activity between the start and end dates you set counts. Use for a campaign, a season or a single summer program.
• Rolling window. A moving window that always looks back a set number of days, weeks or months from today. You set a Period unit and a Number of periods. Use for recognizing people who are active now, rather than people who were busy three years ago.
• Consecutive periods. The person must hit a Target per period in each of several periods in a row, for example 30 hours in each of 3 consecutive months. Use for consistency, which is the one thing the other four windows cannot measure.

The distinction people miss is between Rolling window and Consecutive periods. Rolling asks for a total across the whole window, so a single heavy week can carry it. Consecutive asks for the target in every period separately, so it genuinely rewards showing up month after month.

4. How does the auto-awarding actually fire?

As soon as the data says someone qualifies, including data that already exists.

Publishing a rule-based award grants it retroactively. Vome evaluates your milestones against history, so an award of "All time, 50 hours" published this morning lands in the account of everybody who has ever passed 50 hours, along with any notification you configured. That is usually what you want, and it is a genuine shock if you expected to recognize future effort only.

Three settings to line up before you publish:

• Award Cap. Limits how many people can earn it. If the retroactive group could be larger than you intend, set a cap first, not after.
• Window choice. If you mean "from now on", use a Specific date range starting today, or a Rolling window. All time will reach back forever.
• Repeatable. Only available on recurring windows, meaning Calendar year, Rolling window or Consecutive periods. All time and Specific date range cannot repeat, because there is no next period for them to repeat into.

After you edit an existing award's milestones, or after you backfill or correct hours, use Recalculate on the People tab to re-run eligibility for everyone. Edits do not re-evaluate the whole roster on their own.

Several milestones on one award combine with OR, not AND. A person earns the award by reaching any one of them. So milestones of "50 hours" and "20 shifts" will award anyone who reaches either total, not only those who reach both. There is no way to express "both" with multiple milestones. If you need both, that is two separate awards.

5. How do I build a qualitative award?

Create the award as usual, and set the Award Method to Award manually only. Vome shows a banner confirming what that means: only admins can give this award, users will not see progress, and the badge appears once you give it to someone.

Because there are no milestones, the Show Progress to Users setting has nothing to track and does nothing here. Everything else, the icon or custom image, the folder, the description, the visibility policy and the notifications, works exactly as it does on a rule-based award.

6. Where can I grant a manual award from?

Four places, so you can award from wherever you already are.

From the award itself. Go to Recognition, open the award card, and use the People view:

• Award manually opens a Give this award panel where you search for a user and add an optional note.
• In the Eligible sub-tab, click Award now next to a name.
• Tick several people and choose Award selected.

From your Database. This is the strongest option, because you can filter first. Narrow your people down with any filter you like, tick the rows you want, then choose Give an award from the bulk actions. The popup lets you pick one or more awards at once, search them by name, and attach an optional note that shows on the award. This is how you recognize a whole cohort in one pass.

From an Opportunity's roster. The same bulk Give an award action is available when you have people selected on an Opportunity, which is the quickest route when the award is about one program rather than the whole organization.

From a single profile. Open the expanded profile, go to the Awards section, and click Give an award.

All four routes create the same award record. The only difference is how many people you are handling at once.

7. Can one award be both quantitative and qualitative?

No. The Award Method is a single choice, so an award is one or the other.

You can still grant a rule-based award by hand to someone who has not met the milestone, including past the Award Cap, so "rule-based" does not lock you out of a judgement call. But an award cannot carry milestones and also present itself as a purely manual honor. If you want both stories told, create two awards.

8. Is there a third type?

Sort of, and it is worth knowing about because it shows up in your dashboard filter. Alongside Manual and Rule-based, the Type filter on the Recognition page has Course award.

That is not a fourth Award Method you can pick when creating an award. It is a label Vome applies to an award that a course automation grants on completion, so you can tell your training credentials apart from your service milestones at a glance. You still create it as a manual award. Wiring it to a course is what earns it the label.

Summary

• Two award methods: Rule-based for quantitative, Award manually only for qualitative.
• Quantitative measures exactly two things, Hours logged and Shifts completed, against a Target amount.
• Five time windows: All time, Calendar year, Specific date range, Rolling window, Consecutive periods. Consecutive is the only one that measures consistency.
• Publishing a rule-based award grants it retroactively to everyone who already qualifies. Set the Award Cap and the window before you publish, not after.
• Multiple milestones combine with OR. Reaching any one of them earns the award.
• Grant manual awards from the award's People view, from your Database after filtering, from an Opportunity roster, or from a single expanded profile.
• Course award is a label, not a method. It marks awards granted by a course automation.

For every setting on an award, see Custom Awards & Recognition on Vome. To check who holds what, see Where do I see who has what awards?