Help and FAQ

Change email address

If your email address changes, please follow this procedure:
‐ log into OWAD for Business with your old email address and password
‐ visit the Settings page
‐ change your email in that form, enter your current password and submit
‐ wait until you receive a confirmation email at your new mail account (check your Trash/Spam folder if it does not arrive within a few minutes)
‐ click the confirmation link in that email and the change is complete.

Going on holiday?

In the old system it was possible to switch off the daily quiz email for the period of your holidays. We have not yet implemented this feature in the new system and maybe never will. In order to avoid getting the daily emails from us, just unsubscribe from the daily email and subscribe again when you are back.

Getting too many emails?

If you do not wish to receive our daily quiz via email, you can simply unsubscribe from this service.
You will still receive occasional promotion emails from us and of course you can still visit this website and do quizzes to your heart's content.
If you receive more than one quiz email per day then you are probably registered for OWAD with two different email addresses. In this case please check which email address you usually log in with and then cancel the other account (log in with the account that you want to cancel, go to Settings , Cancel).

Emails look funny?

When you have a closer look at the links in our emails you may notice that they point to odd-looking, sometimes very long addresses like "http://go.sparkpostmail.com/f/a/ir6e6bCID.....".
You do not need to worry that something is wrong there. The links are supposed to look like that because we use a special email provider to send our emails. The long addresses come from the provider and contain handling of mailing errors, spam complaints and similar things. So, no worries, the addresses are as they should be.

Seeing a broken image in your email? Chances are you are checking your emails in the Google Webmailer. It does not display our logo image properly. Also, many mobiles will not automatically download images in emails.

General styling of your email is off? We do try to support as many devices and formats as possible. But we cannot serve all equally well. Please let us know how you are reading your emails (device, mailing program) and if possible send us a screenshot. We will then try to improve the email formatting accordingly.

Links in email do not work? Or no email at all?

Chances are that you (wish to) read our email at work with a computer/email address that uses the company network. Unfortunately, we are experiencing difficulties with some security settings in stricter networks. It just happens that users who are tired of OWAD prefer to mark us as spam or malware instead of just cancelling their account. Our reputation suffers from such actions and high-security networks will not allow our email links to be followed or will not even allow us to send email to them.

In such cases we suggest you use a private email address to work with OWAD for Business. You can then do the quiz on your private computer or mobile device.
Alternatively, you can simply visit the OWAD for Business page in your browser and do the quiz there after logging in. This usually also works on any company computer. Make sure you have cookies activated so you can return every day without having to log in again.

Creating a group

OWAD for Business offers you the possibility to create learning groups. They are meant to motivate you and others when learning English. You can see the ranking of the invidivual group members on the quiz page whenever you have solved it correctly. You must be a registered OWAD for Business member to use the Groups function.

In order to create a new group, visit the Groups page. If you are not yet a member of a group the page will display some general information to you. You can click on the "Create Group" link then and give the group a name.

Inviting people to a group

Once you have created the group you can start inviting people to it. On your Groups page simply follow the link to 'invite a friend', provide the email address of the person you want to invite and submit this information. The invitation will show up in the box right next to the invite. There you can see all invitations that have gone out to potential group members. When an invitee joins the group the invitation will disappear from the list and instead the new group member will show up in the ranking in the first row on the groups page.

When you invite a person to join a group OWAD for Business automatically sends out an email to this person. We mention your name in the invitation so that the recipient knows who this invitation came from. People need to register with OWAD for Business in order to join the group. And they need to use the same email address as you have provided in your invitation.

If someone chooses not to join a group they can safely ignore the group invitation email. We do, however, occasionally remind people of pending invitations before we remove them altogether. If you hear from people that they do not wish to join a group that you are a member of, you can remove their invitation from the list of invited people in the Groups page. This will prevent those people from getting any more reminders of their group invitation.

Joining a group

In order to join a group you must receive an invitation from one of the group members. All members of a group are allowed to invite other people to join it. Please make sure that invitations go out to the correct email address of a user. Many people use several email addresses. In case of doubt, make sure that people are registered/registering to OWAD for Business with the email address you are using for invitations.

When you have received a group invitation you need to visit the Groups page in order to join the group.
On that page you should see the invitation and a button to join the group. If there is no such option please make sure that your invitation went out to the email address you are using for OWAD for Business. If that is not so, simply ask a member of the group to delete the invitation and invite you with the correct email address.

Changing group memberships

If you are already a member of a group you cannot join another. Currently, you can only be a member of one group. In order to switch groups, leave your current group and then accept the invitation to the other group that should present itself as soon as you are no longer a group member.

It is not possible to kick people out of a group. Not even if you have created the group and have invited the people yourself. People can only leave a group on their own account.

Ranking in a group

When you are a member of a group you will see the ranking of the individual group members whenever you have solved a quiz correctly or visit the Groups page. The ranking is determined by each user's score. Please see the explanation on Scores in the Quizzes section below.

The members of your group may be in different levels. In such cases the group ranking box will display a level name abbreviation behind the person's name. "Int" stands for Intermediate, "Pro" for Professional, "Id" for Idioms. Check out the section on Levels for more information.

Available Levels

Depending on your language settings you can have a choice of different levels, sorted by degree of difficulty. At the time of writing this we are preparing four levels: Basic, Intermediate, Professional (default), and Idioms. Not all levels are available for all interface languages.

Changing Levels

Per default you start in the standard level 'Professional'. You may change into another level by editing your Settings any time.
If you find the quizzes too difficult, change into the level "Intermediate" or "Basic" (if available).
If you change your level, the graphic showing your statistics of the last ten days will show a lot of missed quizzes (Nr of clicks needed with value 5). This is because the quizzes you did in the old level are not considered anymore. You can do the past quizzes in the new level by following the "skipped quizzes" link.
For determining your rank, all quizzes done by you in the last 40 days are considered. So, while you may have a lot of skipped quizzes after a level change, doing them may not actually improve your rank.

If you happen to be in a group, please consider the following things when changing your level:
The quizzes you have done previously are no longer considered when calculating your score. We suggest you do all skipped quizzes in your new level. That should set the record straight. Furthermore, other members of your group may still be in the old level and will therefore see other daily quizzes than you. This allows you to compete with people whose English skills are different from your own.
The ranking of the group members will display a level indicator behind the member names. "Int" stands for Intermediate, "Pro" stands for Professional, "Id" for Idioms.

Costs, Benefits

OWAD for Business is entirely free! There are no costs whatsoever attached to your registration to OWAD for Business.
The only thing we ask from you in exchange for all the fabulous things on OWAD for Business is the permission to occasionally send you a promotion email related to learning Business English.

You can solve the daily quiz on OWAD for Business without registering with us. Via the Archive you can also solve a number of past quizzes without a membership.

When you sign up with OWAD for Business you can receive the daily quiz in an email. You can furthermore track your progress in learning English and see your performance. You can invite other people to join OWAD or start your own training group together with others. In a group you can compare your scores and see a ranking of all members - a great motivation to keep learning!

A registration at OWAD for Business also allows you to enter battles. A battle gives you 5 words that you need to pick the right English translation for as fast as possible. You can do that by yourself or challenge other people to compete with you in a battle.

Login Requirements

In order to become a member at OWAD for Business you need to give us a valid email address. We verify the email address by writing to it and sending a verification link that you need to click in order to activate your account.

Please make sure you accept cookies in the browser that you regularly use when working with OWAD for Business. The daily quiz emails contain a token that will allow you to run the quiz no matter whether you are logged in or not. For all other actions like Group statistics, Settings or Battles (upcoming) you must be logged in. With the help of cookies you can avoid having to log in again and again.

Settings

In your Settings you can modify your account configuration. You can switch off automatic sounds for instance or unsubscribe to the daily quiz emails. You can also change your mother tongue or your level.

In the Settings you can also change your email address. After providing the new address there and entering your current password you will receive an email to the new address. Please follow the confirmation link in that email to complete the change.
Please note that our online Support cannot change your email address for you.

Quit using OWAD for Business

We are sorry to see you go! Please let us know what we can do to improve OWAD for Business by writing to us at servisome morece@owad-for-business.de
Maybe you are merely tired of receiving our daily quiz emails? You can unsubscribe from these emails and simply solve the quizzes via our website whenever you find the time. Your group membership and all other things stay as they are, you just won't get the daily reminder from OWAD.

If you really want to leave us, follow the Cancel Account link in your Settings

All quizzes

A list of all currently available quizzes can be found in the Archive. There you can see all the quizzes and the correct answers for all quizzes that you have already done.

Missed quizzes

If you have missed quizzes, you can always do them later on. Whenever you have solved a quiz correctly you will see a link to your missed quizzes in the bottom left box of the page. It will also give you the number of missed quizzes. Simply follow this link to solve any open quizzes.

Repeating quizzes

You can always repeat quizzes. Visit your Training section to do missed quizzes or redo difficult ones. This page also provides a link to the Archive which lists all available quizzes in a timeline.

Scores

Solving a quiz on the first attempt will give you a score of 1, needing two clicks will result in a score of 2 and so on. Not solving a quiz at all will give you a score of 5 for that quiz.

The group ranking only considers the quizzes of the current month. This gives you a fresh start every month.
Your performance chart when you have finished a quiz and the chart on the Groups page always list the last 10 quizzes by date. They have taken place on the last 10 workdays (excluding Saturday and Sunday). Bank holidays are not considered. Please note that this chart does not show the order in which you have solved the quizzes! It shows the quizzes by date as you would have done them if you do the daily quizz.

In order to have a good score you should always make sure to have solved all available quizzes. Not solving a quiz of the current month will automatically result in a bad score as this quiz is factured in with a score of 5.

We have recently heard from users that the system counted one more click than they actually needed, this way giving them a worse score than it should have. Upon investigating it turned out that some Firewalls of company networks follow single links in the emails that they scan. This is a security measure to ensure that email received in a company network does not link to hazardous content. Such 'random test clicks' can show up as a user click in our system. We currently cannot avoid this problem. If this concerns you the best solution should be to change your account to a private email address.

Rank

When you are logged in you will also get a rank displayed to you. This rank shows your position in the overall user ranking. It considers all past quizzes that we keep in our system. Currently this are the quizzes of the last 8 weeks.
Your rank number tells you how many of our users are better than you at a given moment.

As we have ten thousands of users there are often several users sharing one rank. This is the reason why your rank can improve by a hundred or more when you solve a single quiz. It also explains why your rank can rapidly decrease when you do not solve a quiz for several days.

Training

The Training area offers you details about your performance and the chance to redo quizzes.

The Longest row of correctly solved quizzes gives you the number of quizzes directly following each other that you have ever solved correctly. As we only record a maximum of 40 quizzes this number cannot exceed 40. To calculate this number we consider the order of quizzes by date, not the order in which you may have done the quizzes. The value is kept and only updated if you exceed the current value.

The Current row of quizzes tells you the number of quizzes you have currently solved correctly. To calculate this number we also consider the order of quizzes by date as each quizz belongs to a date within the last eight weeks. If the last quiz you did was not solved correctly upon the first attempt, your current row will be 0. If you solved yesterday's quiz incorrectly but succeeded in today's then your current row will be 1.

The Repeat feature on the Training page shows you all quizzes that you have solved incorrectly upon the first attempt. You can click on this field to repeat the quizzes and test whether you have now committed the correct solution to memory. You can repeat the quizzes as often as you want. They will only be removed from the Repeat list when they are no longer in our records. For today's quiz that means it will be available in the Repeat section for 8 weeks if you solve it incorrectly.

Battles are a way to playfully compete with your fellow English learners. In a battle you are given five random quizzes and need to answer them correctly and as quickly as you can. You will then be given a score between 0 and 100. When viewing the battle you can see a ranking of all battle participants.

Creating a Battle, Challenging people

On the Battles page you find the option to create a new battle. Please fill in a name for your battle and enter it as the first participant. You can invite other people to take part in it by challenging them.

When challening other people you need to provide an email address for the battle challenge to be sent out. If the recipients are already registered at OWAD for Business they can directly enter battle as soon as receiving the invitation. Please try to make sure you are sending the challenge to the email address that they used to register at OWAD for Business. If you should happen to send the challenge to the wrong email address, people cannot do the battle. In such cases you can always send another challenge to the correct address.

A person must be a registered OWAD for Business member in order to take part in a battle. Registration is free and contains no commitment whatsoever, except allowing OWAD for Business to send emails to the user's email address.
A user can participate in as many battles as he/she is challenged to.

Taking part in a battle

If a user has been challenged to a battle this will become visible on the user's Battles page. The battle will appear in orange in the top left box on the Battles page.
A user must have been challenged to a battle in order to do it. Any battle participant can challenge other people to take part. The first person to do a battle is always the battle creator. He/she can then start challenging other people to take part in the battle.

Scoring

Your score is calculated from your quiz answers directly during a battle. It is essential to get as many answers as possible right. Secondly, the time you took to select the correct answer is of importance. The quicker you answer the better the score.
Wrong answers mean a score of 0 for the quiz question, so getting the answer right is more important than being quick.
You can repeat a battle at any time but your initial score will not be updated when doing so.

If you could not find satisfactory answers to your questions or are experiencing problems with using OWAD for Business please let us know. Write to us via our email address servisome morece@owad-for-business.de or by replying to the daily quiz email.