This article explains how to give a badge to one or more employees with a message, how to approve or reject awards that need approval and how to revoke an award given by mistake. A badge given to a person is called an award.

Who	To whom	Which badges
The company admin or a user with the Badge Management Permission or the Performance Management Administrator Permission (badge admin)	Anyone in the company	Every active badge that can be given by hand
A manager (the person set as the employee's manager on their assignment)	Only their direct reports	Badges whose Who can give it is Managers too or Everyone
Every employee, while peer recognition is on	One colleague at a time, within their monthly recognitions	Badges whose Who can give it is Everyone (Recognising a colleague)

A manager with a team switches between Give a badge to my team and Recognise a colleague at the top of the window while peer recognition is on; a badge given to the team does not use the monthly recognitions. Nobody can give a badge to themselves. A badge cannot be given to someone who left the company or is inactive. The server applies the same rules: if a manager tries to give a badge to someone outside their team, nothing is given.

Before you start

The Performance module and the Badges feature on Configuration > Company settings > Modules are on.
The badge is active in the Growth and hiring > Badge management catalog and its Award mode is Manual or Both (Badge catalog and badge settings). Automatic badges cannot be given by hand.
Giving as a manager: Managers can give badges to their team is on, on the Badge management > Settings tab.

Step by step: giving a badge

Open the Give a badge window:
- Badge admin: click Give a badge at the top right of Growth and hiring > Badge management. To give a specific badge, click the three dots at the bottom right of its card in the catalog and choose Give a badge; the badge comes selected.
- Badge admin or manager: click Give a badge at the top right of Mine > My badges. On the My Team tab a manager opens it from Give a badge on a team member's row, with the person selected (Recognition Wall, My Badges and badges on the profile).
- Badge admin or manager: open the employee's card (for example, click their name in the employee list) and click Give a badge in the card header under the name; the person comes selected. The button shows only if you can give that person a badge.
- From the home page: click Give a badge at the top of the Recognition card on the Home page, Give a badge under Quick add, or Give a badge in the Create menu of the left menu. These three show only when there is a badge you can give (Using the home page).
In the Badge section, choose the badge. The list holds only the badges you can give; the card shows the description and the tier. When a manager gives a badge marked HR approval required, the award first goes to a badge admin for approval.
In the People section, choose who gets the badge. A badge admin chooses a Branch, Department and Position and ticks one or more people in the Employee list; Search by name finds a person by name. A manager sees only their team. The chosen people are listed under Selected people; remove one with the cross. One award goes to at most 500 people at once.
In Message, write why you are recognising them. If Message required is on for the badge, the message needs at least 10 characters; up to 500 characters are allowed.
In Visibility, choose Share on the Recognition Wall (colleagues in the company see it) or Only the person and their manager. If you choose neither, the badge's default visibility is used.
Optionally choose the performance period the award is about in Related goal period.
Click Give a badge. With more than one person, the button shows how many.
The window shows the result: the people who got the badge and those who did not, with the reason, are listed separately. One person hitting a limit does not stop the others.

Without approval the award is Active at once. With approval the result says "Sent for HR approval" and the award stays Awaiting Approval; until it is approved it does not show on the person's profile or the Recognition Wall. An award a badge admin gives counts as approved even if the badge needs approval, so it is active at once. To give another badge, click Give another badge.

Approving or rejecting awards waiting for approval

A badge admin sees the awards waiting for approval in two places: the Pending Approval tab on Growth and hiring > Badge management (the number on the tab is how many are waiting) and the Recognition approval rows in the inbox on the home page, where Approve or the cross on the row approves or rejects the award.

Click the Pending Approval tab. The oldest award is at the top; each row shows the person, the badge, the message, the giver and the date. Search with the Search person, badge, message box above the list and sort by date, person, badge or giver with Sort.
To approve the award, click Approve. It becomes Active and leaves the list.
To reject it, click Reject, write the Reason for rejection in the window (required, up to 500 characters) and confirm with Reject. A rejected award is never shown to the person; the giver sees the reason.
Clicking the row itself opens the award details; Approve and Reject are there too.

If two badge admins decide on the same award at the same time, the second one sees "This award is no longer waiting for approval." and the window shows the current status.

Revoking an award given by mistake

On Growth and hiring > Badge management, click the Awards tab. All awards of the company are listed, newest first. The All, Awaiting Approval, Active, Rejected and Revoked tabs above the list show how many awards are in each status and filter the list to it. In the row under them the Badge and Person filters narrow the results and Clear all removes them; the search box looks for a person, badge or message among the awards on the open page. The right end of the row shows the number of awards and Points of active awards; when you choose a person, the points are that person's total. Pick how many awards a page shows and move between pages at the bottom of the list. The filters, the page and the page size are kept in the address, so a shared link opens the same list.
Click the award you want to revoke. The award details open.
Click Revoke and write the Reason for revoking (required, up to 500 characters).
Confirm with Revoke at the bottom of the window.

A revoked award leaves the Recognition Wall and the person's profile, and its points no longer count. It stays in the awards list as Revoked; revoking cannot be undone. The person can get the same badge again: a revoked award does not count towards Maximum per person.

Giving badges from an assistant or an external system

A badge can also be given in two ways outside the screen. In both, the giver is the owner of the personal access token, and every rule of the screen applies the same way: who may give which badge to whom, the Maximum per person limit, Days before the same person can get it again, approval and the monthly peer quota.

AI assistant (MCP): Write "Give Ayşe the Team Player badge" to your assistant connected to Teamso. The assistant finds the person, lists the badges you can give, asks you to confirm the badge, the person and the message, and gives it. It can also list the badges you received (Tools and ready-made prompts). An award given through the assistant has the same source as on the screen (e.g. HR / badge admin).
External system (exam, learning platform, your own script): Your developers call the same giving endpoint with a personal access token (tms_pat_...) created on the MCP connection screen (left menu, creating a token) and name the integration as the source: "sourceType": "INTEGRATION" in the POST /badge-award body. Put the id of the event in the external system in the optional "sourceRef" field (e.g. the number of an exam result, at most 179 characters): a request that comes again with the same id does not give the same person the badge a second time. Only an access token may ask for this source; a request sent with a browser session is refused.

{
  "badgeId": "<badge id>",
  "recipientUserIds": ["<employee id>"],
  "message": "Completed the sales training successfully.",
  "sourceType": "INTEGRATION",
  "sourceRef": "training-2026-118"
}

In the Award details window of an award given by an external system, Source shows Integration and External system reference shows the id that was sent. A peer recognition given as a colleague keeps the Colleague source so that it counts in the monthly quota. To forward awarded badges to your own systems (e.g. a Slack or Teams channel), use the Badge awarded webhook event (Integrations and webhooks).

Result

Once active, the award is added to the person's badges. Every award, approval, rejection and revoke is written to the audit log under the name of the person who did it. For the award statuses, see Performance module overview.

Notifications

Badge actions reach the people involved as system notifications (bell) and push notifications. Everyone chooses where each badge notification reaches them in the Performance group of the Notification settings window (Following and setting up your notifications).

When	To whom	Channel
An award becomes active (at once or when approved)	The person who got the badge: the badge name, the giver and a short preview of the message	Notification and push; e-mail when Send badge e-mails is on
At the same time	The recipient's manager (when Tell the recipient's manager is on). Not sent when the manager gave or approved the badge. For an award shared Only the person and their manager the message is not shown in the notification. When several people of the team get a badge at once, the manager gets one notification	Notification and push
A manager gives a badge that needs approval	The badge admins (not the giver); one notification per giving, however many people it names	Notification and push; e-mail when Send badge e-mails is on
An award is approved or rejected	The person who gave it; with the reason when rejected	Notification and push
An award is revoked	The person who got the badge, with the reason	Notification and push
Someone congratulates an award on the Recognition Wall	The person who got the badge. Congratulations on the same award make at most one notification an hour; an unread one is updated to "Ayşe and 2 more ..." and the unread count does not grow	Notification and push

Badge notifications in the Notifications window

When the recipient clicks the notification, Mine > My badges opens with the award. The first time they open it, a short New badge! celebration plays; it closes by itself after 4.5 seconds, on a click or with Esc. If the device asks for reduced motion, the celebration shows without movement.
An approval request opens the Pending Approval tab of Badge management; for a single person the award is selected.
Colleagues get no "got a badge" notification; recognitions show on the Recognition Wall.
In a company where the Performance module or the Badges feature is off, no badge notifications are created and older ones do not show in the list or the unread count.

Mobile differences

On a phone, the main way in is Create > Give a badge in the left menu; Give a badge on the home page Recognition card opens the same window. On a phone the Give a badge window opens full screen. The people section is a list with a search box: type the person's name and tap their row to choose them; you can choose several people too. A badge admin can switch to the selector with Choose by branch, department and position. The Awards and Pending Approval tabs show as single-column cards on a phone.

Common problems

Symptom: The result says "Has reached this badge's limit of 1 per person."
Cause: The badge has a Maximum per person limit and the person's active or waiting awards reached it.
Fix: Choose another badge, or ask the badge admin to change the limit in the Badge management catalog.

Symptom: "Can get this badge again from ..." warning.
Cause: The badge has Days before the same person can get it again set and not enough days have passed since the last award.
Fix: Give it again after the date shown.

Symptom: "You can give badges only to your direct reports." warning.
Cause: As a manager you tried to give a badge to someone outside your team. In that case none of the chosen people gets the badge.
Fix: Choose only people in your team; ask a badge admin to give it to anyone else.

Symptom: "You are not allowed to give this badge." warning, or there is no Give a badge button on the profile.
Cause: You are not a badge admin and have no direct reports, the badge is for HR and badge admins only, or Managers can give badges to their team is off.
Fix: Talk to your badge admin.

Symptom: "The award cannot be approved because the person left the company." warning when approving.
Cause: The person left the company while the award was waiting.
Fix: Close the award with Reject.

Giving, approving and revoking badges