While the majority of Award Force accounts utilise an annual or quarterly seasonal structure (wherein entries are accepted and then judged before a dormant period) some programs require an "irregular" cadence. There are a variety of reasons for this, but the largest number come down to the need for overlapping judging and entry rounds. You may, for example, need to start accepting your next batch of entries while your previous entries are still being evaluated by judges.
Below you'll find some tips and tricks to make perpetual seasons work for your program.
Auto-tag entries
The automated tagging feature available in Award Force allows you to set up a tag that will be automatically applied to your entries based on a specific trigger. For those clients using perpetual seasons, this is particularly useful.
You may want to automatically tag entries with the month or "cycle" in which they were accepted. This will allow you to pull those entries into designated judging panels. Here's how:
- Open the Manage workspace and navigate to Settings > General > Tags
- Click Add tag
- Provide your tag with a title in the Tag field
- Select the Entry submitted checkbox
- Save
When the time comes to automatically tag entries with a new tag:
- In the Manage workspace, go to Settings > General > Tags
- Click the tag you'd like to remove the automation from
- Deselect the Entry submitted checkbox
- Save
To create judging panels that pull in entries that have been tagged, follow the steps outlined here: Tags in Panels: Any, All, or None. To learn more about tags themselves, check out our Ultimate guide to tags.
Rounds
Programs that utilise perpetual seasons generally either never stop accepting entries, or take short breaks. When configuring your entry and judging rounds, you may opt not to close them which is possible in Award Force. To do this, simply skip adding a date or time to the 'Starts' and 'Ends' fields during round configuration. Should you choose to take a brief pause between rounds, simply edit the existing date and times.
For more information on creating rounds, see this article: Round configuration.
Archiving entries
Once an entry has run its course and has completed judging, you may wish to archive it. Archiving an entry does not delete the entry, but simply tucks it away for later use. You can learn more about how to archive (or unarchive) entries here: Archiving entries.
Archiving score sets
Like entries, score sets that have been used evaluate your program's submissions can be archived. Doing so will not only store the associated judging data, but will also archive any associated panels and scoring criteria. For instructions on how to archive and unarchive score sets, see this guide: Archiving score sets.