Setting Up an E-Punch Event for Online Management
Whenever e-punch service will be provided by BAOC at a B or C event, it may be a good idea to collect as much participant data as possible for e-punch management and results processing before the event takes place. This is particularly useful when e-punch registration is skipped at the event itself, which is quite typically the situation when the SportIdent "GeBE" printer is used to download e-punch data from each runner's e-stick and print a small tag showing the runner's finish time and split times. Since a runner's split data logged by the printer almost never contains any information identifying that runner, it can sometimes be a daunting task for the volunteer processing results to identify those runners whose identities are not recorded in BAOC's online archive of e-stick owner information. As a matter of fact, this usually means that the volunteer must sift through the runner splits tags (on which runners have written their names, supposedly) to discover the missing identities. If the number of unidentified runners is high, which can be the case when many runners are using BAOC rental e-sticks, then this task can be quite tedious and time-consuming.
E-punch pre-registration, to the extent that event participants do in fact pre-register for an event, can eliminate all or most of this tedium. The BAOC Online Event Management system, using runner splits data downloaded from the GeBE printer, can readily look up runner identities in the pre-registration data just as though it were in the e-stick owner information archive.
The following instructions describe how to set up a B or C event in the Event Management system. This will enable event participants to pre-register and provide all their relevant e-punch data online before the event takes place. This will also make it possible to utilize all the Event Management system's tools for subsequent automated processing of the event results.
In A Nutshell . . .
To set up an e-punch event for online management, perform the following steps in the order listed:
1. Click the Set Up An E-Punch Event link in the Online Event Management section of the menu on the left side of the webpage you're now reading to bring up the Event Pre-Registration page. Type your Event Management system administrative password in the blank at the bottom of this page and hit ENTER to go to the BAOC Event Registration Administrative Tools page.
2. Use the createvent server command on the administrative page to create a new event.
3. If you do not plan to have your participants pre-register for the event, and if the CONDES course data file will be available at the time of the event, then you're done! Otherwise, continue with steps 4 through 7.
4. Return to the Event Pre-Registration page and press the "Reload" button on your browser. Select the name of your new event from the drop-down list of scheduled events, then type your administrative password again, followed by ENTER, to go back to the BAOC Event Registration Administrative Tools page.
5. OPTIONAL BUT HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: Use the Event Summary form to input general information about the event. You do not need to know all that information when you do this.
6. OPTIONAL BUT HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: Use the Courses Offered form to create a list of courses and their statistics. You do not need to know the course lengths, climbs, and control counts when you do this.
7. OPTIONAL: Use any of several other server commands to specify additional "metadata" associated with the event that the Event Management system should know, such as registration deadline, maximum number of entries permitted, etc.
If no pre-registration is involved and all you want to do is set up the event so that automated results processing can be used when the event is over, then you need not create an Event Summary or Courses Offered. If you do want to take advantage of event pre-registration, then you must set up the Courses Offered list, even though the statistics need not specify actual numbers for the course lengths, climbs, and control counts. If you want to use the automated results processing and the CONDES course data file for the event will not be available, then you must create a Courses Offered list with full course statistics.
When pre-registration is set up for an event, any individual or team who needs to rent an e-stick is pre-assigned an e-stick from BAOC's list of available rental e-sticks. The number of the assigned e-stick will appear in a confirmation message displayed when that individual or team registers. When the event's name is selected from the drop-down list of scheduled events on the Event Pre-Registration page, event organizers (or anyone, actually) can press the button labeled Show Rental E-Stick Status to display a couple lists that indicate which e-sticks have been assigned to whom and which e-sticks are still free. These lists can be printed after the pre-registration deadline and handed to Registration table volunteers on the day of the event so they can look up and hand over the appropriate rental e-stick when a pre-registered event participant renting an e-stick pays his fee. Another button labeled Show Registered Participants can be pressed to display the names of all individuals or teams currently pre-registered and which courses they've chosen to run.
The Event Summary and Courses Offered forms are found in the middle of the BAOC Event Registration Administrative Tools webpage in a section entitled Edit Registration Data By Hand (described in greater detail below). Both these forms can be edited any number of times prior to the event to add information as it becomes available. If you plan to utilize event pre-registration, it is strongly recommended that you input this information as soon as possible, since participants will see the Event Summary and Courses Offered (or lack thereof) when they go to the Event Pre-Registration page to pre-register.
Overview of Event Registration Administrative Tools
Once an event is set up for online management via the steps described above, it can be selected from a drop-down list of currently scheduled events on the Event Pre-Registration webpage. The event you select becomes the "currently selected event". If you then type your Event Management administrative password at the bottom of this page to go to the BAOC Event Registration Administrative Tools webpage, all the tools you'll find there that apply to a specific event will refer to this event.
The BAOC Event Registration Administrative Tools webpage provides three classes of tools for setting up and managing an event during the registration phase that takes place prior to the event itself. These tools are divided into three corresponding sections entitled Downloads and Uploads, Edit Registration Data By Hand, and Server Commands.
In the Downloads and Uploads section, you'll find buttons that enable you to download and upload the file of pre-registered entries corresponding to the currently selected event. You'll also find buttons for downloading, uploading, and modifying the Event Management system's archive of e-stick owner information. Both these files are in the format used by Sport Software's OE2003 e-punch event utility, so they can both be used interchangeably with that utility and the Event Management system itself.
The Edit Registration Data By Hand section contains the Event Summary and Courses Offered forms that allow you to input general information or course statistics for the currently selected event. This information shows up in two corresponding tables displayed on the Event Pre-Registration page whenever that event is selected from the drop-down list of currently scheduled avents. You can edit any of the items in either of these forms any number of times before the event takes place.
In the Server Commands section is a blank into which you can type a command directly to the Event Management system on its server. Some of these are general commands that affect all events and others affect only the currently selected event. You'll also find descriptions of the formats of each of the individual commands. A list of these commands and their functions appears below.
Whenever you apply any of the tools on this page by pressing a button or typing a command, the entire page will be redisplayed with a green or red box just above the Downloads and Uploads section. If it's a green box, your action was successful and a message inside the box will tell you what the Event Management server did. If the box is red, your action failed and the message inside the box will tell you what went wrong.
Downloads and Uploads
The 5 buttons you'll find here do the following:
The Download Entries File button is used to download the file of pre-registered entries accumulated for the currently selected event. If you're using OE2003 to handle e-punch at the event, input this file as the initial entries file when you set up the event in that program.
The Download Archive button allows you to download the Event Management system's latest version of the archive that associates SportIdent e-stick numbers with personal information about the owners of those e-sticks. This file is in Sport Software's format and can be used as the runner archive in OE2003.
The Replace Entries File button can be used to replace the existing file of pre-registered entries for the currently selected event with an uploaded file of your own. This may be useful, for instance, when operating on a downloaded copy of the entries file to change a registered runner's name or register an additional runner after the registration deadline has passed. Be careful.
The Replace Archive button is similar to the Replace Entries File button but replaces the Event Management system's latest version of the e-stick owner information archive. This can be quite useful, when operating on a freshly downloaded copy of the archive, if you need to change an e-stick owner's name or add new entries for e-stick owners unknown to the Event Management system, or delete old junk entries in the archive that you know will never be used.
WARNING: Please be careful with this button! After replacing the archive with your edited version, please run a short test to verify that you haven't mangled it. (You can pre-register someone whose e-stick number is in the archive, for instance, then cancel that entry.) Save a copy of your unedited version of the archive so that you can quickly replace your edited version with this copy if your test fails.
The Merge With Archive button, when pressed, will use an uploaded file of pre-registered entries to update the Event Management system's latest version of the e-stick owner information archive. For each entry in the entries file that corresponds to an individual runner and not a group or team, the following is done: If the e-stick used by that runner (1) is not a BAOC rental e-stick and (2) does not already have an entry in the archive, then information from the entry in the entries file will be used to construct a new entry in the archive for this previously unknown e-stick and its owner.
Edit Registration Data By Hand
The two forms you'll find here are each accompanied by instructions that explain details associated with the entry of specific items in the forms. These forms accept the following information:
The Event Summary form is used to input general information about the currently selected event. This is exactly the type of information you'd find in a BAOC event announcement: Event name, Location, Event type, Event date(s), Event host, Organizers, Info link label, and Info link URL. Event host refers to the club or organization hosting the event. Organizers is meant to be a comma-separated list of names that includes the event director, course setter(s), and any other key organizers of that level. Info link label is a short phrase or name that can be clicked to go to the BAOC webpage with the event announcement. Jan. 10 at Shell Ridge would be a typical example of such a label. Info link URL is the URL of the corresponding event announcement webpage and should be something like http://baoc.org/wiki/Schedule/2009/Shell_Ridge. The Info link label and Info link URL can both be input as ? if there is no webpage with an announcement of the currently selected event or if the webpage is not yet available.
When all Event Summary values have been typed, press the Submit Event Summary button on the form's left to save the summary in the Event Management system.
Use the Courses Offered form to input the currently selected event's course statistics. Here the items that you type or select for each course are: Course ordinal, Name, Level, Length, Climb, Controls, and E-punch?. Course ordinal is simply the ordinal number of the line in the Courses Offered table on the Event Pre-Registration page where the corresponding course's statistics will appear (when the corresponding event is selected). If you type a 3 for this value, for example, that course's statistics will appear on the third line of the table. Level should be the familiar word or phrase that describes the course's level of difficulty, such as Beginner , Intermediate, Advanced, Abandon all hope, etc. The E-punch? is a drop-down from which you select Yes or No to indicate whether or not e-punch will be used on that course. Two other drop-downs associated with Length and Climb let you indicate whether the course length is in kilometers or miles and whether the course climb is in meters or feet.
To the left of the Courses Offered form are three buttons labeled Submit Course List, Next Course In List, and Add This Course. Keep in mind that you are constructing a list of course statistics and the form can only display a single course's statistics at any one time. Press the Next Course In List button to cycle through all the courses currently in the list. After using the form to type or select values for a new course or edit the values of a course already in the list, press the Add This Course button to add the new course to the list or replace the edited course in the list. When all course statistics in the list are finally as you want them, press the Submit Course List button to save the course statistics on the Event Management server.
Server Commands
At the bottom of this section you'll find a blank into which you can type a text command to be carried out by the Event Management system. Above the command entry blank are descriptions of the formats of all commands currently recognized by the system. Here's a list of those commands and what they do:
createvent: Create a new event in the Event Management system
The createvent command sets up a new event in the Event Management system. The name of the event and first (and perhaps only) day of the event are specified in the command. After this command is executed, the new event's name will show up in the drop-down list of scheduled events on the Event Pre-Registration page so that a runner can select this event and pre-register for it. You, the administrator, will also be able to use all the Event Management system's event results tools to create and edit results after the event takes place.
NOTE: Issuing a createvent command does not cause the new event to become the currently selected event. Before you can set up the Event Summary or Courses Offered tables for the new event, you must click over to the Event Pre-Registration page, select that event from the drop-down list of scheduled events, then return to the BAOC Event Registration Administrative Tools page.
removevent: Remove an event from the Event Management system
The removevent command accepts an event name and removes all data associated with that event from the Event Management system. After an event is removed, its name will not show up in the drop-down list of scheduled events on the Event Pre-Registration page and no registration or results processing operations on this event will be possible.
WARNING: You cannot remove the currently selected event.
removearchiveline: Remove an entry from the e-stick owner information archive
The removearchiveline command accepts an e-stick number and removes the entry in the Event Management system's e-stick owner information archive that corresponds to this e-stick. This can be useful for (1) purging the archive of old junk entries that you know will never be referenced, or (2) removing an archive entry so that the Merge With Archive button or automatic archive update can be used to construct a new entry in the archive with corrected information for the same e-stick.
unregister: Cancel a runner's event registration
The unregister command accepts the name of a runner (not enclosed in quote marks) and cancels that runner's registration in the currently selected event. If the file of pre-registered entries being accumulated before an event is to be used as the entries file in OE2003 on the day of the event, it's fairly critical that the file contain only the entries for runners who actually attend the event. Otherwise OE2003 may produce a "missing runners" report that includes people who never actually showed up for the event. This command provides a means for event administrators to eliminate "false entries" at the last minute for runners who don't show up but who didn't cancel their own registrations.
eventformat: Set the event course format
The eventformat command is used to set the format of courses in the currently selected event. It accepts a name which indicates either (1) the format of all courses in the event, or (2) a specific combination of course formats for a specific type of event, or (3) a specific "hybrid" combination of course formats for an event that will take place on a specific day. The Event Management system needs this information to correctly interpret and process the event results. Examples of a type 1 event format name are Classic, ScoreO, and Motala. (A Classic course is defined as one in which a fixed sequence of controls is traversed in a prescribed order.) Examples of type 2 are ScoutO and GoldenGoat. A typical format name of type 3 might be Hybrid021409, which refers to a specific combination of course formats used in an event that took place on February 14, 2009.
NOTE: At this time, the only event formats available are Classic and Hybrid021409. Additional formats, such as those mentioned above, will be added to the Event Management system as the need for them arises and as the time permits to implement those parts of the system that process the corresponding event results. If you want to use the SportIdent GeBE printer to provide e-punch service at an event with a specific combination of course formats not yet in the list of event formats available, please contact Event Management system authorities.
NOTE: The event format is part of an event's "metadata". The default event format is Classic.
maxentries: Limit the number of participants in an event
The maxentries command can be used to limit the number of runners who can pre-register for the currently selected event. It accepts a number which will be enforced as this maximum entry count. Whenever a would-be participant attempts to pre-register in the event after all available entries have been taken, he will receive a very disappointing error message.
NOTE: The maximum permitted entry count is part of an event's "metadata". The default value of this count is 10000 (essentially unlimited).
firstrentalstick: Set first of rental e-sticks to be consecutively pre-assigned
The firstrentalstick command can be used to set the number of the first rental e-stick that will be pre-assigned to a runner pre-registering in the currently selected event who indicates that he needs to rent an e-stick. The Event Management system allocates rental e-sticks in the order in which it encounters them in a numerically ordered list of all the available rental e-sticks that BAOC owns. (When it reaches the bottom of this list, it "wraps around" to the top.) This command enables event administrators to control which e-sticks are rented out at an event.
NOTE: The first assignable rental e-stick number is part of an event's "metadata". By default, the Event Management system sets this to a different number within the rental e-stick list for each event, depending on the event's date, in an attempt to promote equal usage of the rentable e-sticks.
regdeadline: Set deadline for pre-registration in an event
The regdeadline command can be used to set the deadline after which a runner attempting to pre-register in the currently selected event will not be permitted to do so. It accepts a date and a time which will be enforced as the deadline. Anyone who attempts to pre-register for the event after the deadline will receive an error message informing him of his tardiness.
NOTE: The pre-registration deadline is part of an event's "metadata". By default, it is set to 18:00 on the evening before the event.
showmetadata: Show miscellaneous settings for an event
The showmetadata command takes no input and displays all metadata associated with the currently selected event. Current values of (1) the maximum permitted entry count, (2) the first assignable rental e-stick, and (3) the event pre-registration deadline are displayed in the green box where successful command outcomes appear. (See descriptions of the maxentries, firstrentalstick, and regdeadline commands above.)
addsticks: Add e-stick numbers to BAOC's list of rentable e-sticks
The addsticks command accepts a list of SportIdent e-stick numbers and adds those numbers to the Event Management system's list of e-sticks available for rental at BAOC events.
WARNING: Issuing an addsticks command will not add the indicated e-sticks to the lists of rental e-sticks available at events currently open for pre-registration in the Event Management system. The updated list of available rental e-sticks will only take effect in events created in the Event Management system after this command is given.
removesticks: Remove e-stick numbers from BAOC's list of rentable e-sticks
The removesticks command accepts a list of SportIdent e-stick numbers and removes those numbers from the Event Management system's list of e-sticks available for rental at BAOC events.
BEWARE! Like the addsticks command, the removesticks command will not remove the indicated e-sticks from the lists of rental e-sticks available at events currently open for pre-registration in the Event Management system. This could cause a serious problem if some of the e-sticks to be removed have been pre-assigned to runners who have already pre-registered in those events. It's best to issue a removesticks command at a time when no events are open for pre-registration in the Event Management system.
changepassword: Change your Event Management system administrative password
The changepassword command can be used to change your administrative password on the Event Management server. This command accepts your current password and a new password which you'll have to use the next time you want to access the BAOC Event Pre-Registration Administrative Tools webpage or the BAOC Event Results Administrative Tools webpage. As is the case with any secure system, you are encouraged to change your Event Management administrative password on a regular basis.