A Rise “Board” is the atomic unit of Rise.global.

You can “follow” a board, “join” a board to become a player on it and you can of course create and manage your own board.

But what is a board really?

The term “board” originates as a way of combining the facets of:

• a leaderboard (a list of players ranked by score)
• a scoreboard (a place to see the score)
• a dashboard (a place to see your current stats)

A Rise Board is a combination of all of these but at its core it is a shared way of calculating, keeping and sharing the score.

On each board everyone is scored in the same way. Each board can only have one Score Algorithm – the scoring rules applied to make a score for each player.

We cannot do otherwise, you cannot meaningfully compare two players who are scored using different rules.

So, if the score algorithm is fixed, what is flexible?

• a Rise Board can have multiple inputs – called Data Sources. For example, a Rise Board could collect data from Twitter, Facebook and Salesforce, and combine the results into one score for each player.
• a Rise Board can have multiple outputs – called Output Channels. Rise results can be distributed across Twitter, Email, or embedded on a Web page.
• a Rise Board can have multiple Players. As long as all the players are being scored in the same way, they can all appear on the same Rise Board.
• you can store results for different time periods on the same board (e.g. weekly and month releases)
• a Rise board can be subdivided into different leagues and divisions (so generating multiple leaderboards)

When you log in to Rise you’ll see the term “Board” everywhere – a list of boards in the public gallery, your list of boards that you are playing in and a list of boards you are managing. That’s because boards are what the Rise user interface lets you manage.

It’s also how Rise is priced – per board. Not per player or per manager, per board.

Each board on Rise is logically separate from any other board.  Inside each board we have:

• the list of players on that board (whether included or excluded)
• current data entries for those players
• all “releases” of the board (calculated scores for a specific period)
• the board settings that determine how the board is released and viewed

So now when you are asked the question “what is a Rise Board” hopefully you have the answer – a shared way of calculating, keeping and sharing the score.