Creating a spinner is the first step to running recognition spins in Slack. A spinner is the prize wheel your team interacts with — it holds all your prize slices and controls how recognition moments play out in your channels.

Steps

1

Open the Spinners menu

From the dropdown menu at the top of the Swivel app, click Spinners.

2

Click Create Spinner

Hit the Create Spinner button to open the setup guide.

3

Complete the setup guide

The setup guide walks you through three choices: how many slices the wheel should have, which emoji theme to use, and how to attach prizes to each slice with win ratios.

After creating your spinner, you'll be taken to the spinner's dedicated page where you can edit it, rename it, and set its access level at any time.

Slices & themes

Each slice is one prize slot on the wheel. Think of slices as the compartments the wheel can land on. When setting up, you choose how many slices the wheel will have:

  • Free plan — up to 6 slices
  • Premium plan — up to 12 slices

The emoji theme controls the visual style of the spinner. You can choose all happy emojis for a purely celebratory feel, or mix in some sad-face emojis to create an element of surprise and humor. The theme is cosmetic — it doesn't affect prize probabilities.

Tip

Start with 6 slices if you're just getting started. You can always add more slices later as you expand your prize catalog.

Attaching prizes

Each slice needs a prize and a win ratio. Here's how to configure them:

  1. Click Edit Slice on any slice
  2. Select an existing prize from the list, or click Create New Prize to make one on the spot
  3. Set the win ratio % for that slice
  4. Repeat for each slice until all ratios add up to 100%

Important

All win ratios across your slices must add up to exactly 100%. Swivel will flag any configuration where the total doesn't equal 100% and prevent activation until it's corrected.

A slice with a 0% win ratio will still appear visually on the wheel but can never be landed on. This is useful for prizes you haven't stocked yet but want to show as coming soon.

Tip

If you create a new prize from within the slice editing modal, click Refresh Prizes after saving it so the new prize appears in the dropdown.

Activating

Once all your slices are configured and ratios add to 100%, click Activate. Your spinner is now live and ready to use.

You can still edit a spinner after it's activated — any changes take effect immediately on the next spin. The Trigger Spinner button appears at the top of the spinner's dedicated page once it's active.

Note

You can have multiple spinners, each configured differently. For example, one spinner for sales wins and another for engineering milestones, each with their own prize sets and win ratios.