How to Configure a Challenge
A complete walkthrough of every setting in the Challenge configuration screen — what each one does, when to change it, and what to leave alone.
How to Configure a Challenge
Challenges are configured at app.nestegghealth.com. Open your Challenge and select Edit Challenge. The configuration is split across two tabs: Details for Challenge and Settings.
Most settings have sensible defaults. This guide explains what each one does so you can make informed decisions — not just leave everything at zero and hope for the best.
Tab 1 — Details for Challenge
Challenge Name
The name Eggs see on the challenge card in the app. Keep it short, memorable, and specific to your organization or event.
Good: “The Spring Kickoff”, “Artisant Lane — Round 2”, “Easter Egg March” Avoid: “NestEgg Challenge” — every challenge is a NestEgg challenge. Say something that means something to your Flock.
What’s This Challenge About?
A short description (up to 300 characters) that appears on the challenge card. Use it to set context — who it’s for, what the theme is, or what you’re competing for.
Main Challenge Image
A photo that appears on the challenge card. Use something that captures the energy of your company or event — a team photo, your workplace, a branded graphic. It’s the first thing Eggs see when they’re invited.
Tab 2 — Settings
Timing
Starts — the date and time the challenge begins. Eggs can register before this date, but no workouts are scored until the start time.
Duration — shown as the number of periods and days per period (standard: 4 periods × 7 days = 28 days). The end date is calculated automatically.
Time zone — critical. The weekly scoring reset happens at the end of each period, and this is anchored to your selected time zone. Set it to the primary time zone of your workforce. A misconfigured time zone means periods reset at unexpected times for your Eggs.
If your Flock spans multiple time zones: use the time zone where the majority of participants are located, or where your operations team is based.
Health Pause
Default: On
Health Pause allows individual Eggs to pause their scoring for a week during illness, injury, travel, or life disruption — without penalizing their Nest. When an Egg is on Health Pause, they’re excluded from the Nest Score average for that period.
Leave this On for almost every challenge. Turning it off means Eggs who get sick or injured have no option but to drag their Nest Score down — which creates exactly the kind of pressure NestEgg is designed to avoid.
The only scenario where you might turn this Off: a very short pilot challenge where you want every participant counted every week, and you’ve pre-screened participants for availability.
Level Promotion / Demotion Method
Default: Raw EP
This controls which EP figure is used at the end of each week to determine whether an Egg gets promoted or demoted.
| Option | What it does |
|---|---|
| Raw EP (default) | Uses the full, uncompressed EP total. An Egg who earns enough EP for Level 7 gets promoted to Level 7 — even if they started the week at Level 2. Misleveling corrects in one week. |
| Effective EP | Uses tapered EP. Promotion jumps are capped at approximately 2 levels per week. Correction takes a few weeks, but progression is smoother. |
Use Raw EP for most challenges — especially shorter ones (4 weeks) where fast correction matters. If an Egg starts at the wrong level, you want them at the right level by Week 2, not Week 4.
Consider Effective EP for longer challenges, or if you expect many participants to underestimate their fitness in onboarding and you’d rather see gradual level progression than one big jump.
See Understanding Your Level for how promotion and demotion work in detail.
Exercise Points Scoring System
This section has two distinct functions: the taper band rates (which control how Level Score is calculated) and the demotion threshold.
Taper Band Rates
| Setting | Default | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Band 1 rate (Base → +1 Level) | 100% | Full credit — all EP earned up to the next Level’s target scores at full value. This is the promotion zone. |
| Band 2 rate (+1 Level → +2 Level) | 50% | Half credit |
| Band 3 rate (+2 Level → +3 Level) | 20% | Steep discount |
| Band 4 rate (Beyond +3 Level) | 10% | Minimal credit |
The taper only applies when an Egg earns EP above their weekly target. Its purpose is to compress the leaderboard impact of misleveled Eggs without removing their contribution to the Nest.
Key property: Band 1 is always full credit — everything an Egg earns on the path to a promotion qualifies at 100%. The discount only begins after they’ve already qualified for promotion.
Leave these at their defaults unless you have a specific data-driven reason to adjust. The defaults are well-calibrated across real challenge data. Tightening the upper bands (e.g. reducing Band 2 below 50%) compresses the leaderboard further but reduces the reward for strong performers. Loosening them (e.g. raising Band 2 to 75%) gives more credit to misleveled Eggs and can widen the gap between the top and bottom of the leaderboard.
Demotion Threshold
Default: 50%
Eggs who score below this threshold are demoted by one Level at the end of the week. The 50% default means an Egg needs to earn at least half their weekly target to stay at their current Level.
Lower this (e.g. to 40%) for a more forgiving challenge — fewer demotions, better for beginner-heavy or lower-fitness Flocks.
Raise this (e.g. to 60%) for a more competitive challenge where you want Levels to reflect consistent performance more strictly.
Minimum Intensity
Default: 0.0 for both Strength and All Other workouts
Sets a floor on the intensity value a workout must reach to be scored at all. Workouts with an intensity value below the threshold score 0 Exercise Points.
Intensity is calculated from heart rate: a workout where average HR barely exceeds resting HR produces near-zero intensity. With the default of 0.0, these workouts still earn a small amount of EP. Raising the threshold filters them out entirely.
| Setting | Default | When to change |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum intensity for Strength workouts | 0.0 | Raise slightly (e.g. 0.3) if you’re seeing Eggs submit very-low-HR strength sessions that don’t represent real effort |
| Minimum intensity for All Other workouts | 0.0 | Raise slightly (e.g. 0.3) if Eggs are submitting near-resting HR workouts — e.g. passive recovery logged as exercise |
Leave at 0.0 for most challenges. Intensity floors add complexity and can confuse Eggs whose wearables occasionally produce lower-than-expected HR readings. If you’re running a challenge with a low-tech workforce where occupational movement is being submitted as exercise, consider Effort Scaling (below) before touching Minimum Intensity.
HR Sampling Frequency
Default: 0.5 samples per minute
Sets the minimum required HR data density for a workout to be scored. Workouts with HR data sampled less frequently than this threshold may be rejected or scored differently.
0.5 samples per minute is a permissive threshold that accommodates most consumer wearables. Leave this at the default unless you have specific knowledge that your Flock’s devices are producing unreliable sparse HR data and you want to enforce stricter data quality requirements.
Effort Scaling
Default: Duration cliff 180 min, Power curve 0.55
Effort Scaling controls what happens to Exercise Points when a workout runs for a very long time — specifically targeting always-on tracking and occupational activity that gets submitted as exercise.
Duration Cliff
The number of minutes that earn full 1:1 EP before diminishing returns begin. At the default of 180 minutes:
- Minutes 1–180: full EP, calculated normally
- Minutes beyond 180: EP continues to accumulate, but at a progressively reduced rate defined by the power curve
This is not a hard cut-off. Workouts longer than 180 minutes still earn EP — just less per additional minute.
Increase this (e.g. to 300 min) if your Flock contains genuine endurance athletes who regularly complete 3–4 hour training sessions. Leaving a 180-minute cliff in place would unfairly cap their scores.
Leave at 180 for most workforces. The vast majority of legitimate exercise sessions fall well within this window.
Power Curve Parameter
Controls how steeply EP decays after the duration cliff.
| Value | Effect |
|---|---|
| 1.0 | No decay — all minutes score equally regardless of duration |
| 0.55 (default) | Moderate decay — meaningful reduction for very long sessions |
| 0.0 | Maximum decay — EP drops sharply after the cliff |
Lower values = stronger reduction after the cliff. The default of 0.55 is calibrated to reduce the impact of all-day tracking (e.g. a factory floor worker logging a 10-hour shift) without penalizing genuine long-duration exercise.
Leave at 0.55 unless you have a specific workforce profile that requires adjustment. If you’re running a challenge where factory floor or manual labor workers are the majority, you may want to lower this slightly to reduce OPA contamination further.
Quick Reference — Recommended Defaults
| Setting | Default | Change if… |
|---|---|---|
| Challenge name | — | Always set this |
| Start date / time | — | Always set this |
| Time zone | — | Always set — match your workforce |
| Duration | 4 × 7 days | Only change for non-standard challenge lengths |
| Health Pause | On | Only turn off for very short pilots with pre-screened participants |
| Level Promotion Method | Raw EP | Switch to Effective EP for longer challenges with expected heavy misleveling |
| Band 1 rate | 100% | Leave as-is |
| Band 2 rate | 50% | Only adjust with data-driven reason |
| Band 3 rate | 20% | Only adjust with data-driven reason |
| Band 4 rate | 10% | Only adjust with data-driven reason |
| Demotion threshold | 50% | Lower for beginner/forgiving challenges; raise for competitive ones |
| Min intensity (Strength) | 0.0 | Raise to 0.3 if seeing low-HR strength submissions |
| Min intensity (Other) | 0.0 | Raise to 0.3 if seeing near-resting HR submissions |
| HR sampling frequency | 0.5 | Leave as-is |
| Duration cliff | 180 min | Increase for endurance-athlete Flocks |
| Power curve | 0.55 | Lower slightly for high-OPA workforces |
Need Help?
If you’re unsure how to configure a challenge for your specific workforce, contact the NestEgg team before you launch. Getting the settings right before the challenge starts is significantly easier than adjusting them mid-challenge.
Email: fl@nestegghealth.com