If you run a Recognition topic with levels, you've probably wished you could give participants a gentle push right when they're almost at their next one. That's exactly what Close to Level Notifications does: it detects when someone is nearing their next level and fires an event you can use to trigger an encouraging email, an automation, or a Journey goal.

Here's how to set it up.

What is the Close to Level notification?

When enabled, Kademi watches each participant's progress toward their next level. Once they cross a threshold you set (for example, 90% of the way there), the system waits briefly — the settle period — before actually firing the notification. This short delay avoids alerting someone who was about to reach the level anyway.

After the settle period, Kademi re-checks the participant:

• If they've already reached the level, the notification is cancelled — no alert needed.
• If they've crossed several levels quickly, only the final (highest) close-to-level notification is sent, not one per level.
• If they've already been notified recently, a re-notify window suppresses repeat alerts for the same level.

The result: participants get a well-timed nudge, without being spammed.

Prerequisites

• You'll need admin permissions for Recognition topics, plus access to Automations and Journey Builder if you want to act on the notification.
• Make sure your Recognition, Automations, and Journey apps are updated to a recent version — this feature depends on updated modules, and outdated apps are a common reason a feature "isn't showing up" even though it's been released. If you're not sure how updates work in Kademi, see our guide on managing app updates: account vs website level.

How to set it up

Step 1 — Open your Recognition topic

Go to Recognition in the admin menu and open the topic you want to configure.

Step 2 — Enable notifications in Levels and leaderboards

Click into the Levels and leaderboards tab. 

Check Close to level notifications, then fill in:

• Notify at threshold (%) — how close to the next level triggers detection. Example: 90
• Settle period (minutes) — how long to wait before firing, to avoid notifying someone who's about to reach the level anyway. Example: 30 (if left blank, Kademi defaults to 30 minutes)
• Re-notify window (hours) — how long to suppress repeat alerts for the same participant and level. Example: 168 (7 days; if left blank, Kademi defaults to 24 hours)

Click Save.

Note — testing your setup: Use Process due notifications now to manually trigger any due notifications right away, instead of waiting for the next scheduled scan.

Step 3 — Connect it to a Journey

If you're using Journey Builder to guide participants through a sequence of steps, you can use the close-to-level event as a goal:

1. In your Journey, add a new goal node.
2. Choose Close To Level as the goal type.
3. Select the topic and level.

The Journey goal completes the moment the close-to-level event actually fires.

Step 4 — Or connect it to an Automation

To actually do something when a participant gets close to a level — like sending an encouraging email — set up an Automation:

1. Within your Journey, go to the Automations tab and click Create automation.
2. Enter an Automation ID — a descriptive name so it's easy to identify later, e.g. loyalty-close-to-bronze-email.
3. For the Trigger event, choose Recognition close to level.
4. For the Trigger action, select the action to run, e.g. Send email.
5. Click Create to save the automation.

A few things to keep in mind

• Reaching the level cancels the alert. If a participant hits the actual level during the settle period, no notification is sent for that level.
• Multiple levels at once = one notification. If someone jumps through several levels quickly, only the highest one triggers a notification.
• Org-level topics fan out to members. If your topic is set to organizational (not individual), the event fans out to each resolved member profile, the same way level-achieved awards do.

Wrapping up

Close to Level Notifications gives you a simple way to catch participants right at the moment they're most likely to act — without extra manual tracking. Enable it on your topic, decide how you want to respond (email, automation, or Journey goal), and you're set.

Have questions about setting this up for your program? Get in touch with our team.