What is seasonal in Award Force?

A common question we are asked is: what is seasonal and what is not seasonal in Award Force?

It is very important to understand what is meant by the terms 'seasonal' and 'non-seasonal' when it comes to creating a new season and making updates in your account.

Seasonal elements can contain different configured content in different seasons. Updating the content in one season will not affect the content in a previous, or archived, season. For example, if you make changes to the categories in your new season, the categories in archived seasons will remain unaffected.

Changes made to configured content of non-seasonal elements, however, will be reflected across all seasons. For example, changes made to the theme apply to your account and will be seen in the active season and archived seasons.   

The following elements are non-seasonal. Changes made to these elements will be reflected in all seasons so take care when updating them.

Non-seasonal elements

• Account (program) name and URL
  • Both the name of the account and the URL can be changed in Settings > General > Account. Please note, if you change the URL the old URL will no longer work and could be taken by another program. 
• Users
  • People who register or are added to your account belong to your account, not a season. However, each user can have seasonal data associated with their user profile such as custom user-resource fields, entries and judging results. Deleting a user permanently will remove them from all seasons (Read more here: Permanent deletion of users).
• Funds
  • A fund, any fund, is available, for fund-allocation purposes, across all seasons. Allocation of funds, on the other hand, are seasonal, allowing you to see how much funding has been allocated each season. In order to see all allocations made from a particular fund, go to Funding > Allocations and select All seasons from the season dropdown found at the top of the page.
• Content blocks
  • Updates made to existing content blocks (read more in our dedicated guide: Content configuration and management) will replace any prior messaging. It is possible to create new content blocks, rather than update existing ones, but then the new content blocks will need to be selected in place of older content blocks from their relevant display area. For example, if a new 'tab info content block' is created for the Attachments tab, the old tab info content block will remain in the list of content blocks but the new content block will need to be actively selected on the Attachments tab in order for it to display. Note: it is not possible to choose from multiple 'Login page' and 'Entrant home info box' content blocks, even if multiple versions are created. The original content blocks for these locations must be edited instead.
• Terms
  • Terms are account-level attributes, they are not seasonal.
    Read more about terms here: Configuring terms.
• Interface text
  • Interface text overrides are account-level attributes, they are not seasonal. 
    Learn more here: Interface text changes.
• Account settings 
  • Any adjustments made to the list of settings outlined below, apply to the entire account, they are not seasonal. Read more about your options here: General settings overview.

• Payments
  • Only changes made to prices and discount codes are seasonal. All other adjustments made to the payment settings are non-seasonal and will update for all seasons.
• Roles
  • Adding a new role or making changes to existing role settings will update for all seasons.
• Theme
  • Any changes made to the theme settings, such as uploading a new logo or adjusting the colour palette will update for all seasons.

For additional information regarding seasons, please see the Ultimate guide to seasons.