bonusly Recognizing your team is one of the highest-impact things a manager can do. This skill helps you do it thoughtfully — making sure nobody is overlooked and every message feels personal.
Start by calling me to establish who you are, then call getDirectReports with your user ID to get your full team roster.
Before drafting any messages, call adminUsersLastRecognized with your direct reports' IDs to see who you've recognized recently and who is overdue. Present this to the manager — something like "You haven't recognized [name] in over 30 days" — so they can make an informed choice about who to prioritize.
Ask: recognize everyone, or focus on those who haven't been recognized recently?
Before sending, always check getPointsBalance to confirm there are enough points to cover the planned recognitions. If not, surface the constraint and let the manager adjust scope.
Call listRecognitionTypes to get valid hashtags if the manager doesn't already know which ones to use.
For each recognition, draft a unique message. Apply the five quality criteria:
- specific — names the concrete action, not just a vague compliment
- contextual — explains why it mattered in context
- values_aligned — connects to company values
- personal — addresses the individual, not a generic team member
- genuine — feels authentic, not copy-pasted
If you don't know what a specific person did to deserve recognition, ask the manager — don't invent reasons. A fabricated recognition does more harm than none.
Present all draft messages to the manager for review and approval before sending anything. Allow edits to individual messages. Only call giveRecognition once the manager has confirmed each message.
Send recognitions one at a time via giveRecognition and report success or failure after each. Finish with a summary: who was recognized, total points spent, and remaining balance.
If a giveRecognition call reports an error, don't blindly retry. A timeout or network error can come back after the recognition already posted, and re-sending risks a duplicate post and a double point charge — costly when recognizing a whole team. First verify whether it took effect — re-fetch with getRecognitionGivenToUsers or getRecognitionGiven — and only re-send to that person if it genuinely didn't go through.
If the caller has no direct reports, let them know and offer to help recognize a specific colleague instead using the standard give-recognition workflow.
If adminUsersLastRecognized fails (access-gated for non-admins), fall back to asking the manager directly: "When did you last recognize each person on your team?" and use that to guide prioritization.