Just like readers can collect paper tickets for a drawing at your library, readers can collect tickets to virtually deposit toward specific ticket prize options in Beanstack. Adding tickets to badges within a challenge gives participating readers the opportunity to deposit those earned tickets to a ticket prize option of their choice.
You only need to use tickets and ticket drawings if your library offers multiple prize options and you want your readers to be able to select the prize drawings (sometimes thought of as raffles or baskets) into which they are entered. If that isn't the case for you, and you have something like weekly drawings or a grand prize drawing, you should skip tickets and instead go straight to Challenges > Drawings to set up a traditional drawing.
Reader experience with tickets
From the reader side, challenge participants can see the number of tickets they have and the ticket prize options available to them by accessing the "Ticket Drawings" tab in a specific challenge. If your challenge doesn't include ticket drawings, readers won't see the "Ticket Drawings" tab at all.
Upon earning a badge with tickets attached, readers are prompted to enter tickets toward the prize options. The reader can choose how many tickets to enter into each ticket prize option. For example, one reader may choose to put two virtual tickets into one drawing for an iPad and four virtual tickets into one drawing for seats at a sports game, while another may choose to put all their tickets toward the iPad. The more tickets a reader assigns to a prize, the better their odds are of winning that prize.
Readers can change their ticket allotments toward each prize option up until the ticket end date, when they can no longer deposit tickets or change their selections. After that end date, the library picks and notify winners for each prize option; they are not automatically notified within Beanstack.
Administrator experience with ticket drawings
From the administrator side, you as a library administrator can edit a draft challenge and navigate to the "Tickets" tab to set up your tickets. You can attach as many or as few tickets to any type of badge as you like. Then, add multiple ticket prize options to the challenge (up to 50), generally with all the end dates set to be the challenge end date or the day after. For more detailed information about setting up tickets within a challenge, check out this article.
Once the challenge is published, you then set up a ticket drawing for each prize option within Challenges > Drawings in order to pick a winner from all the tickets submitted toward a specific prize. Once you pick the final winners, it's up to you to notify them individually. For step-by-step instructions about setting up your ticket drawings, check out this article.