How it works
The ROK catalog and your agency's copies
Why catalog badges, tracks and the default level ladder appear in every agency, and the difference between switching a catalog badge on and duplicating it.
Almost everything in ROK belongs to exactly one agency. The recognition catalog is the deliberate exception: badges, badge tracks and a level ladder that ROK maintains once for everyone. By the end of this page you'll know why those appear in your agency without anyone creating them, and what really changes when you switch a catalog badge on, duplicate it, or customise the ladder.
Rows that belong to no agency
Every badge, track and level is stored with the agency that owns it. Catalog rows are stored with no owning agency, and the database lets every signed-in person read the active ones. That is the whole trick: there is one catalog badge, and every agency is looking at the same row.
Only ROK can change catalog rows. Your agency can read them, decide how to use them, and copy them — it can't edit them in place.
Switching on: use it as-is
A catalog badge does nothing in your agency until someone with Manage badges selects Switch on on Badges. That doesn't copy anything. It records a single setting for your agency — "this catalog badge is on here" — and the badge engine then awards ROK's badge, with ROK's criteria and artwork, to your members as they qualify.
Because it is still ROK's badge, it follows ROK's edits. If ROK improves the wording, redraws the artwork or retires the badge, your agency gets that change too; a retired catalog badge stops being awarded everywhere at once. Switching it off again stops new awards and removes it from your tracks, but the awards your members already earned are kept.
Duplicating: make it yours
Duplicate creates a brand-new badge owned by your agency, filled in from the catalog badge: its name, description, criteria, steps and design. From that moment it is independent. Edit it however you like; ROK's later changes to the original never reach it, and your changes never reach anyone else. The copy remembers which badge it came from, but nothing syncs in either direction.
Three details are deliberate:
- The copy starts inactive, so it can't begin awarding itself before you have checked the criteria. Activate it when it's ready.
- It isn't placed in any track. Add it to the tracks you want in the group editor.
- The original is untouched. If the catalog badge is also switched on, both can be awarded — switch the original off when your copy replaces it.
Tracks are inherited, not copied
Active catalog tracks appear in your agency automatically, and there is no switch for them. What a track contains for your agency is worked out on the fly: the badges ROK placed in it, plus any of your own badges you added with Add our badges, minus anything you can't award — your inactive badges, and catalog badges you haven't switched on. Your additions are visible only to your agency.
That makes switching a catalog badge off the way to trim a catalog track you only half want: it leaves the track's count for your agency. See Badge groups.
The level ladder: default until you customise
Until you change it, your agency climbs the ROK default ladder. Customise the ladder on Levels copies its rungs into a draft; once you save, your ladder replaces the default outright — the two are never merged. A rung's badge requirements can only name your own badges and catalog badges you have switched on.
Use the ROK ladder goes the other way: it deletes your ladder and re-levels everyone against the default.
What this means in practice
- Switch on when the catalog badge already says what you mean. You get ROK's maintenance for free, at the cost of not controlling the wording.
- Duplicate when you need different criteria or artwork. You take on its upkeep.
- Duplicating doesn't move anyone's awards. Members who earned the catalog badge keep it; the copy is a different badge, earned afresh.
- Nothing is re-checked on the spot. Switching a badge on or activating a copy takes effect at each member's next qualifying activity — see how recognition works.
- The ROK Library works on the same "shared source" idea, except that content is only ever copied — there is no "use as-is" for library guides.
See also
- ReferenceBadgesYour agency's own badges and the ROK catalog side by side — switch catalog badges on, duplicate one to customise it, and see how many people hold each.
- ReferenceBadge groupsTracks that turn a wall of badges into progress — your own and the ROK catalog's, with how many members have finished each one.
- ReferenceLevelsThe ladder members climb — the points each rung needs and the badges it can require — and how to customise it or go back to the ROK default.
- How it worksHow recognition worksHow training activity turns into points, streaks, badges and levels — what earns points, who decides a badge has been earned, and why reading never pays.
- How it worksHow the ROK Library worksWhat the ROK Library is, why importing makes your own independent copy as drafts, what the copy leaves behind, and what the Imported and Updated badges are tracking.