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Global Components of the Registration Manager System
This tutorial is of particular interest for State or Regional Administrators who are responsible for setting up new Contests -- that is, the competitive events -- in the AcuWeb Contest Management System.
To facilitate quick and consistent set-up of each event within your jurisdiction, AcuWeb classifies the functional components which govern any Contest in two ways: Global components, which affect every level of competition within your State or Region; and Individual components -- things that are unique to each individual Contest event.
In most cases, only State or Regional Coordinators will need to access the Global components, which are found on the Admin Start Page, and are used to: - Add, edit or remove entire contest events
- Add, edit or remove registration elements common to all contest events, such as letter-writing campaigns to elected officials
- Add, edit or remove originating organization information, such as schools, institutions or chapters which may recruit or sponsor registrants for your competition
For each Global component, you'll see three button-options: "Add New," "Search," and "View." In general, the "Add New" button is how you can add new item details to each component; when you click "Add New," you will be taken to a brief form where you can supply the necessary detail for each item you wish to create. "Search" takes you to a powerful search tool that will allow you to quickly find any information you've entered into the system for each component. "View," as you might expect, takes you to a listing of each of the detail items you've established for that component. Note that from the listing view, you'll also be able to add, edit, or even delete detail items.
Now, let's briefly review each of these Global components:
The All Contests component is where each of the District or State Contests in your jurisdiction are initially set up. As the State or Regional Coordinator, it is your responsibility to do this initial configuration, using the "Add New" button to the left of the "All Contests" label. Once you've done the initial set-up for each Contest, the Event Administrator ("EA") for that particular event (i.e., your counterparts at the local level) should log into this System and provide much of the remaining detail needed to fully prepare their event for online registration, scheduling, scoring and results reporting. (Of course, you may elect to do the "details" step for them; but most State Coordinators appreciate the concept of "sharing the chores" with respect to Contest set-up.)
Letters to Elected Officials allows you to encourage a grassroots letter-writing or lobbying campaign on the part of your registrants, in order to build support for your organization or advance an issue of interest to you and your registrants. This adds a page to the online registration for each of the District or State events in your jurisdiction, where you can post instructions, sample letters, e-mail links to public officials, and other materials to facilitate such campaign efforts.
In order for this information to be offered during registration, the "Include Letters to Elected officials" checkbox must be checked in the Contest Edit View for each individual Contest.
For proper operation, Registration Manager must utilize a reference list of all public and private Schools in your State or Region. These lists are generally available in electronic form from your State's Department of Education, and can often be downloaded online. As the State or Regional Coordinator, you are responsible for locating and obtaining this list, and sending it in the proper format to the AcuWeb System Administrators at Acuity Marketing Communications, Inc.
You should have already received a request from your National office for this data, including the specific information Registration Manager needs for proper operation. Acuity must receive the properly-formatted data file at least two weeks prior to the launch of your State or Region's earliest contest registration period, to provide sufficient time to load and check the quality of the data. Once loaded, this data will populate the "Schools" item for all Contest events created within your State or Region.
Even though the vast majority of schools should be properly imported with the data file you supply, you do have the ability to edit, delete, and add information to the Schools list. If you have an opportunity, it may be helpful to review the Schools list, once it is imported, and remove data for school systems and/or districts you know will not be participating in your organization's events.
This will shorten the school list as it will appear to your online registrants and improve overall system performance. By the same token, if you find some schools are missing or have incomplete information, taking time to correct such issues before your online registration period opens will reduce registration errors and reduce your time resolving such errors "after the fact."
All other components in the AcuWeb Contest Management System are event-specific, and are managed from the Contest Items Menu [shown at right; accessed by clicking on an individual Contest event name in the list of Contests on the Admin Start Page]. Please see our tutorials on "Creating and Managing a Contest" and "Managing Contest Registration Details" for more about the event-specific components for each of your Contests.
To view another tutorial in this series, please return to the listing of RM Tutorial contents. |
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