Rewards & Tremendous Setup

How Rewards Work

With rewards enabled, someone giving recognition can attach a cash reward to it. The amount is entered per person — recognize five people at $10 each and $50 is drawn from the giver's pool. Each recipient's reward balance grows as they receive rewards, and they can redeem any part of it whenever they like. At redemption, Recognition Hub creates a Tremendous order and hands the recipient a redemption link where they choose their gift card brand, cash-out (PayPal, Venmo, and more, where available), or charity.

Money is real and it moves through Tremendous. Recognition Hub keeps an internal ledger — pools and user balances — that always stays within your funded Tremendous balance; funds only actually leave Tremendous the moment a recipient redeems. This keeps the app out of money-movement scope while giving you full pool/limit control.

What You'll Need

• A Tremendous account — sign up free at tremendous.com. Use their sandbox (testflight.tremendous.com) to trial the flow with no real money.
• A Tremendous API key (from the dashboard — see below).
• At least one campaign in Tremendous, which defines the catalog of gift cards / payout options recipients can pick from.
• Funds in your Tremendous balance (added in the Tremendous dashboard) before anyone can redeem.
• Recognition Hub admin access (Settings > Recognition Hub).

Step 1 — Get Your Tremendous API Key

1. Sign in to app.tremendous.com (or testflight.tremendous.com for sandbox).
2. Open Team Settings → Developers → API keys (sometimes shown as Settings → API).
3. Click Create API key, give it a name (e.g. Recognition Hub), and copy the key.
4. Store it somewhere safe for a moment — you'll paste it into Recognition Hub once. It is shown only at creation time.

Step 2 — Create a Campaign (Reward Catalog)

A campaign tells Tremendous which brands and payout options a recipient may choose from on the redemption page. Every reward order must reference one, so you need at least one campaign before rewards can be issued.

1. In the Tremendous dashboard, open Campaigns (under Rewards or Catalog, depending on your account).
2. Click New campaign, name it (e.g. Recognition Rewards), and select the products you want available — specific gift-card brands, "recipient's choice", cash-out options, charity, and so on.
3. Save. Most accounts already ship with a default campaign you can use as-is.

You don't need to copy the campaign ID by hand — Recognition Hub fetches your campaigns automatically when you test the connection, and lets you pick one from a dropdown.

Step 3 — Connect Tremendous in Recognition Hub

1. Open Settings > Recognition Hub > Rewards (Confluence or Jira).
2. Paste your API key.
3. Set the Sandbox mode toggle to match your key — on for a testflight key, off for a production key.
4. Click Save key. The key is write-only: it's stored encrypted and never shown again or sent to the browser.
5. Click Test connection. This verifies the key, shows your live Tremendous balance, registers the status webhook, and loads your campaigns.
6. Under Reward catalog, pick the campaign recipients should redeem against. Recognition Hub auto-selects one if only a default exists; change it any time.

Step 4 — Fund Your Tremendous Balance

Recognition Hub allocates from your real Tremendous balance — it doesn't add money to Tremendous for you. Add funds once in the Tremendous dashboard:

1. In Tremendous, go to Billing → Payment methods and link a bank account or card (a one-time setup Tremendous requires on their side).
2. Add funds to your balance. Bank transfers may take a few business days to fully settle; cards clear faster.
3. Back in Recognition Hub, the Reward Pools tab shows your live Tremendous balance so you know how much is available to allocate.

Step 5 — Create Pools, Load Money, Assign Givers

Pools are how you budget and control who can give rewards. Open Settings > Recognition Hub > Reward Pools.

• Create a pool — name it for a team, budget, or quarter (e.g. Engineering Q3).
• Load money — allocate an amount from your Tremendous balance into the pool. Recognition Hub only lets you allocate what's actually unallocated (Tremendous balance minus everything already committed to pools and unredeemed user balances), so you can never over-promise.
• Assign givers — add the people (or Atlassian groups) allowed to give rewards from this pool. A direct user assignment wins; otherwise the first matching group assignment applies. Each person or group belongs to one pool at a time.

Only someone assigned to a pool with a positive balance sees the reward option in the composer. Everyone else gives recognition exactly as before.

Step 6 — Give a Reward

An eligible giver opens the composer, adds recipients, and ticks Attach a reward. They enter an amount per person; the composer shows the live math — what each recipient gets, the total drawn from the pool, and the pool balance afterward — and blocks the post if it would overdraw the pool. On post, each recipient's balance is credited and the reward chip appears on the card (visible only to the giver and recipients, never broadcast).

Step 7 — How Recipients Redeem

Anyone with a balance opens My rewards from their profile menu in the hub. They see their balance, redeem any amount (down to a $5 minimum), and get a redemption link to open right away — Tremendous also emails them the same link. On the Tremendous page they pick their gift card, cash-out option, or charity. The panel also shows their reward history, past redemptions with re-openable links, and lifetime achievements (totals plus Bronze/Silver/Gold badges).

Auditing & Control

Every money-adjacent action — pool creation, loading funds, assignments, reward grants, redemptions, refunds, and provider events — is written to an immutable Audit Log under Settings > Recognition Hub > Audit Log, filterable by action type. Pool and user balances are always reconcilable from their underlying ledgers.

Troubleshooting

• "No reward catalogs found" — your Tremendous account has no campaign. Create one (Step 2), then run Test connection again.
• Redemption fails immediately — usually a key/environment mismatch (sandbox key with sandbox off, or vice versa) or an unselected campaign. Re-check Step 3; the recipient's balance is refunded automatically.
• Giver doesn't see the reward option — they aren't assigned to a pool, or their pool balance is zero. Assign them and load the pool (Step 5).
• Balance looks low right after funding — bank transfers to Tremendous can take a few business days to fully settle. The Reward Pools tab reflects the live Tremendous balance.