Service awards are a key part of employee recognition. Each anniversary is a chance to celebrate achievements and inspire continued success. With MemoryBooks, colleagues, friends, and managers can share messages, photos, and memories to honor each employee’s milestone.
To begin using MemoryBooks, ensure that service award automation is enabled on your platform. MemoryBooks might initially appear as “disabled” in your settings, indicating that it's not yet fully activated but is still customizable.
Note: You can start customizing MemoryBooks while it’s disabled in settings. Enable and edit it separately in advanced settings. For detailed help, contact the Technical Client Success Manager (TCSM) Team.
This article explains the digital MemoryBook. Your organization may also offer a Printed MemoryBook as a physical keepsake. Contact your Awardco representative for details.
MemoryBooks
Overview
MemoryBooks provides a digital platform where employees can view congratulatory messages from managers, peers, and coworkers for their anniversaries through the Teammate Participation feature. This modern, elegant design lets employees easily revisit well wishes and shared memories. Administrators can access settings via the Admin Queues tab.
User Experience
On their anniversary, when the celebrating employee logs into their account, they will see a post in their feed congratulating them for their service and displaying the comments submitted by their colleagues. The employee can view the full content by clicking "View MemoryBook".
MemoryBooks compiles the teammate comments into a personalized digital experience that celebrates the award recipient's anniversary. As part of MemoryBooks, you can design standard pages to be included in each employee's individual MemoryBook. These standard pages could feature messages from organizational leadership, company values, the history of your organization, and more. The screenshots below illustrate a sample title card, a sample congratulatory message from the CEO, and a sample comment from a teammate. Each of these pages is customizable and can be tailored to match your organization's branding, emphasize company values, and highlight your program goals. Users also have the option to export their MemoryBook as a PDF.
Design and Setup
Enable service award automation to proceed. To start:
- Log into your Awardco account.
- Select the Admin button at the bottom of the left navigation menu.
- From the left navigation menu, select “Recognition,” "Programs," then "MemoryBook Settings."
- Toggle the “MemoryBook” option to the on position.
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Click Programs, then MemoryBook Settings from the left navigation menu.
The setup for MemoryBooks is divided into three steps:
- Configuring the general settings, such as branding and the templates you'll use for displaying teammate comments.
- Configuring the books themselves.
- Modifying the notification schedule.
To begin with step one, click "Settings" to access the configuration page. While the system will automatically incorporate your general platform branding and create a custom background based on the colors defined in your branding tab, you have the option to choose alternative branding colors, a logo that will appear only in the MemoryBook, and upload a custom background image.
Next on this page is the Memory Templates section. Here, you can individually select the template types that will be displayed within the MemoryBook experience. These templates are used by the system to integrate the comments and images uploaded by the recipient's teammates into the digital experience. Some template types are text-only, while others support images. On this page, you can also upload custom background images for the templates. This will help you establish a consistent theme across your MemoryBooks and tailor the look and feel of the experience to your specific organization.
Click on the 'Media' tab to decide whether you want to allow users to upload media, such as images and videos, to their MemoryBook comments.
Now, you're ready to begin step two and customize the individual book experiences. Click the "Add Book" button. Enter a name for the MemoryBook Title and click "Save". Next, review the Settings Tab. The template name is what will be displayed in the settings; make it descriptive to easily differentiate between different types of MemoryBooks. The display name is what employees will see throughout the platform. This will appear in the Upcoming Milestones Widget, on the comment page, and in the feed. Determine if this MemoryBook will also include a monetary award. Select the award amount, budget, and award network. All recipients who receive a MemoryBook with this template will receive the same award amount.
Next, review the settings on the Events tab. If the MemoryBook is associated with service awards, attach the relevant events here. The service award automation rules will override any award settings shown in the previous section. If the MemoryBook is for one-off celebrations, leave this page blank.
The Pages tab allows you to design your header and footer pages. These are the pages that will appear at the beginning and end of each MemoryBook. The design of the comment pages is determined in the General Settings.
Toggle the "Add Past Recognitions" option in the User Comments page section to allow users submitting comments to a MemoryBook to include past recognitions.
Logic for Past Recognition Inclusion
When this feature is enabled, the system will pull in a recipient's past recognitions, regardless of how many new comments are submitted (e.g., whether there are zero new comments or 99 new comments). The system is designed to pull in up to 20 past recognitions, but only those that meet the following criteria will be included:
- Recognition Length: The recognition note must be less than 598 characters.
- Content Exclusion: The recognition note must not contain the word "birthday".
- Privacy Match: The recognition's privacy setting must match or be more inclusive than the service award's privacy setting:
- If the service award is Public, only Public recognitions will be pulled in.
- If the service award is Private, both Public and Private recognitions will be pulled in.
- Timeframe: The recognition must have occurred between the current date and the date of the recipient's last MemoryBook.
- Order: The recognitions that meet all other criteria are ordered from longest to shortest notes before the top 20 are selected.
The Notifications tab allows you to control when supervisors, peers, and direct reports are notified and which email template they will receive regarding MemoryBook contributions.
You have the following options for colleague notifications:
- Peers: Check this box to send invitation emails to employees who share the same supervisor as the award recipient.
- Direct Reports: Check this box to send invitation emails to employees who report directly to the award recipient.
You can select either, both, or neither of these options to customize who among the recipient's colleagues will be invited to contribute.
You can also configure a reminder notification to be sent to those who haven't yet submitted their comments. Additionally, you can enable an email notification to be sent to the award recipient to inform them about their MemoryBook.
Note: If colleague notifications (both Peers and Direct Reports) are disabled, One-off MemoryBooks will not automatically send any invitation emails for colleagues to comment. At least one of these options must be enabled if you want automatic colleague invitations for One-off MemoryBooks.
Finally, you can decide whether to allow those who have been invited to comment to further invite additional people to contribute to the MemoryBook.
Scheduling
Overview
This feature enables managers, peers, and workplace friends to submit comments for an employee's anniversary. In most service award programs, the certificate or letter sent to the awarded employee is generally the same for each employee across the company. When teammate participation is enabled, the system will utilize the organizational hierarchy loaded into your platform through your user file and automatically invite team members to submit comments for the award recipient. While the MemoryBooks experience still accommodates standardized messages from your organization's leadership, teammate participation adds a personalized touch and individual polish to the award given to your dedicated employee.
Employee Experience
When enabled, this feature automatically invites the award recipient's team to submit comments and images for their anniversary. The team includes the recipient's manager, peers with the same manager, direct reports, and anyone in the recipient’s My Circle. A few days before the anniversary, these users receive an email invitation to contribute. You can set how early this email is sent in the platform settings.
After clicking the "Recognize" button in the email, the user will be directed to your platform's login page. Once logged in, they will see a three-step form.
- The first step requires the user to submit a comment in the text box. The comment is limited to 600 characters and is a mandatory field.
- The second step involves the optional memory image upload. If the user chooses to include a memory image, the system will verify that the image meets the size requirements (800px by 800px). After selecting a photo to upload, the system will prompt the user to crop the image to a square format within the interface.
- Once the form is complete, the user will click "Submit." The system will schedule the comment and any provided images to be published to the recipient's feed on their anniversary date.
After submitting their comment, the user will be taken to a confirmation page. On this page, they can preview their comment, return to the form to make edits, and invite others to participate in the anniversary celebration. This "Invite Others" function can be disabled in the settings, but we recommend enabling it so that workplace friends who may not be on the recipient's direct team can also comment and participate in the anniversary celebration. From this page, the teammate who submitted the comment can navigate away from the submission confirmation page by clicking "Back to Feed" or by using the tabs at the top of the page.
MemoryBooks and Slack
We've integrated this feature to enhance the visibility of your team members' celebrations. If your Service Awards are set to public and your Slack integration is complete, Memory Books will automatically appear in the designated Slack channel. If your Service Awards are not set to public, they will not appear in the Slack channel.
While this article covers a significant amount of information, the configuration of notifications and MemoryBooks is quite straightforward, especially with the support of your Awardco team. Reach out to the team to get started today.
One-Off MemoryBooks
Super Admins and users with the One-time MemoryBooks Creation permission can create one-off MemoryBooks via the button on the MemoryBook queue page.
Select the recipient of the MemoryBook, the template you wish to use, the date the book should be given to the recipient, and the visibility settings. If the teammate invite lead time has already passed, the invitation emails will be sent out at the top of the next hour.
After clicking Next, a summary will display the details of the MemoryBook you've configured.
After creating a MemoryBook, the creator can share the link for others to comment. Note: If MemoryBook notifications are off, One-off MemoryBooks won’t automatically invite team members. To enable automatic invites, turn on notifications in the MemoryBook’s settings under the Notifications tab.
The one-off MemoryBook will now function like any other MemoryBook. It will appear in the queues and in the Upcoming Milestones widget.
Additional Attachments
MemoryBooks Are As Easy as 1-2-3
MemoryBook Walkthrough
MemoryBook Key Features
If you have any questions, please contact Awardco Admin Support.