Why can't my judges see any entries?

If you've configured your judging and notified your judges that it's time to begin evaluation, there are a few items to check in order to ensure that judges can view their assigned entries.  

Judging round

One common occurrence is that the judging round is not open; perhaps the round dates were incorrectly set or were previously set for a testing period. Dates for judging are set in the Manage workspace at Judging > Settings > Rounds. If the round is in the future or past, judges will not be able to see entries.

Judging panel

If a panel does not contain entries, judges will have nothing to view. You can check the panel in the Manage workspace from Judging > Settings > Panels.

If you see zero value in the 'Entries' column, something is wrong in your panel settings. Open the panel and make sure that:

• The Only include moderation approved entries checkbox is not selected under 'Entries' if moderation is not being used.
• One or more categories are selected.
• If a tag is selected, that entries have been tagged with it.
• One or more judges are selected.
• The round is selected.

Submitted entries

Check that there are submitted entries in the category the judge is assessing. To do this open the Manage workspace and go to Entries, click the Advanced button at the top right, then filter for the category and for Submitted entries. Then click Search. If there are no results then there are no submitted entries to this category.

Judge's email

Check which email address the judge is using to sign in. Some users have multiple email addresses and accounts but the judge user role is only added to one. Make sure the account with the judge user role matches the account they are signing into.

Browser cache

If you've checked all of the above and your judge is still unable to view entries, ask the judge to try performing a hard refresh in their browser window. They might be seeing a cached page which a refresh can fix. You can force your browser to refresh by holding down the shift key on the keyboard and clicking the refresh button in your browser. To learn how clear out all of the browser's cache, check out our guide: Clearing your browser cache.

Preview as a user

If you've checked all of the above, you can begin troubleshooting the issue by previewing the platform as the judge. This allows you to take a peek into what the program looks like from that judge's point of view and isolate the issue to their local environment (if you can see entries) or if there's an issue with the configuration (if no entries are shown). To learn more about this feature, check out our dedicated help article: Preview as a user.