Reader Experience FAQs

Beanstack has four different log types—books, days, minutes, and pages—that can make up a reading session. Certain log types are required depending on the challenges you are enrolled in; for instance, if you are participating in your library’s summer reading challenge, which tracks and rewards minutes read, you must input the minutes you spend reading during that challenge’s duration. This helps make sure you earn the correct challenge badges and are in the running for any prizes or drawings!

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What are streaks like on the mobile app?

With Beanstack’s streaks features, readers can track and grow their daily reading habit, as well as receive motivating messages to maintain their streak.

Each consecutive day that a reader logs reading—whether they log minutes, pages, books, or days—adds a day to their reading streak. There is no minimum that must be met for a day’s reading to count toward a streak; even 5 minutes a day helps keep a reading streak alive! 

Streaks also account for backdated reading, as long as the log dates are uninterrupted. That means that if a reader cracks open a book for 20 minutes on Monday but forgets to log it, they can sign in on Tuesday and log those 20 minutes on Monday’s date to save their streak. But a day when a reader writes reviews or completes activities does not add to their streak, as streaks only count logged reading. 

When using the mobile app, readers can see information about their streaks in their “Log,” under the “Streaks” tab. They can interact with the calendar to view their past streaks and click through the reading highlights to see statistics about their current streak, longest streak, longest title completed, most pages read in a session, and longest reading session.

As a reading streak grows, readers receive encouraging messages on their home screen to motivate them to keep reading. And if a reader loses their streak, they receive a message reminding them to log their reading to get back on track.

There are millions of books out there! While Beanstack uses a comprehensive database of titles, sometimes a few don’t get added, which means they won’t show up when you scan their ISBN or search their title, author, or ISBN when you go to log reading for that new title. 

If that happens, you can always manually enter the title info by tapping the “...” icon on your logging screen next to “Select A Title.” Select the “Manually Enter Title Info” option to add the title, author, page numbers, and even take a picture of the cover. And feel free to reach out to us at Beanstack Support so that we can make sure to add that book to our database!

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What are friends and leaderboards like on the app?

Through the “Community” section on the mobile app, readers can add other readers on their organization’s Beanstack site as friends. Friends can then view each other’s reading logs and statistics, challenge histories, and recent reading progress, as well as compete with each other on their leaderboards.

Note: Each reader in an account adds and manages their own set of friends. Account creators under the age of 13 are not able to add friends or generate a share code. 

For Libraries:

Before adding friends or sharing a friend code for the first time, readers will see a privacy notice pop up. This informs them that anyone at their organization whom they add as a friend or with whom they share their friend code can see their reading activity, like the titles they log and the badges they earned. If the notice is not accepted, readers will not be able to proceed to add friends or share a friend code. If the privacy notice is accepted, readers can always remove friends at any time. To learn more about how to use Friends and Leaderboards on the mobile app at your library, check out this article.

For Schools

Students and teachers can only invite other students and teachers from their school site. On the “Leaderboards” tab, students can see how their reading ranks within their school. They can view leaderboards based on their friends, their grade, or their school as compared to other schools in their district (if applicable). To learn more about how to use Friends and Leaderboards on the mobile app at your school, check out this article.