Initial Setup for the year
The registration for the year has several key concepts.
- Admin Only fields for Plate #, Chip #, and Course. The Plate and Chip numbers you will assign on the registration so that each race is pulling the same bibs and chips. The Course field you will populate each race day from a CSV file uploaded 5min before the race.
2. There is also a series registration field as well as one field that represents each One Night Only entry option. These will be used to ensure only people who have registered for a particular night are on the startlist/results.
3. In Reports, there are 4 key reports. The first report is called “Assign Season Plates” and it should have the following fields with the key part being that the last column which puts it on the far right MUST be the “Plate Number” field
This would have a condition set on it for “Series Entry” “is set” to ensure you are only working with series entries who get permanent numbers.
Then use the “Assign Bibs” and “Assign GoChips” functions in the registration as detailed here: https://help.zone4.ca/kb/assigning-bibs-and-gochips-in-registrations/ Note the Assign GoChips function is performed on a copy of the above report where the Chip# field is the column on the far right.
Weekly Registration File Setup Procedures
Each week starting the day after your last race, you will:
- Create a new registration field for the following week with the pricing for the 3 different age groups. This field will be how the single-race-only people signup for the next race.
- Edit the previous week’s field and set it to Admin-Only.
- Go to your two weekly reports for “Assign Single Race Chips” and Plates. Click the … menu in the upper right and click Assign Bibs.
Click the “Empty Rightmost column” to erase all the plates/chips in that report.
This ensures that those plates and chips can be re-assigned for the next week and not interfere with new racers who are holding that chip.
4. Now modify each of the 2 Single-race reports to only show racers that have the next week’s field set. Your reports are now ready for the week of registration.
5. Set the Registration Close date/time to a few hours before the next week’s race. People who are signing up for just a single day must signup a few hours before the race.
Weekly Race File Preparation
Once the registration closes for the given week, you need to assign Bibs and Chips to the one-day only racers via the 2 reports in your registration report area. Assign bibs and plates for that week the same way you did for the season ones using the built in “Assign Bibs” tools in your registration reports.
Once everyone had a bib and chip, click the main menu in your registration and click ‘Race Timing.’ Click Create new race and proceed to select the race template “MTB -> Standard Race”, enter race details, and selecting to import the racers from the registration.
On Step #5: Categories & Fields, select “Don’t create racer groups yet” and then click “Click here to modify standard race fields“
And then check the field “There is a Racer Number field on the registration form, and select the Plate # field from your registration. Repeat for the Chip field.
Proceed to build your startlist and course groups based on the Course field. Because nobody has a course defined yet, you will have to select “All” and then manually unselect the “No Course” group. At this point your startlist should be a list of empty groups. Repeat the setup for your course groups and then Rename the course groups on that page. Then when you go to create your result sets (Overall and Age Group) the full course group names will be inserted automatically.
Now that your race file is setup you are ready to move operation to the race venue. Once on-site, you will manage name, bib, and chip changes in the race file as you normally would, but for recording course information, you will use an excel file with just the following 2 columns: plate and course. Turn ON cap locks and enter data with the following sequence: bib_number <tab> course letter <enter> repeat. This entry method can easily enter 100 entries in minutes.
When you have completed all of the entries in excel, click File -> Save As and save the file into CSV format. Choose the CSV UTF-8 format.
Next go to https://next.zone4.ca and login and click through to your race file. Next is zone4’s future version of the software that allows early access to new advanced features. Click on the 2. Racers tab and click “Import Columns from CSV File“
Select the CSV file and then “CSV File column to use for matching” select your plate field. For “Race Field to use for matching, choose “Racer Number“. For CSV File column to get data from, select course1, and for field to update select “course“. Click Save to make the change. To confirm the entries got updated, view your startlist, or results and the groups should be populated now.
Note that the above upload of course information doesn’t need to happen before the race starts if you are using the Timing -> Manage Start Times screen to record when each group starts. This screen allows you to just hit “Record” when each group starts, and the groups don’t need to necessarily have any racers assigned to them yet. This is different than starting a group by punching in a plate number into the android app which needs to know which group that racer is in in order to assign the time to the group. So it’s good to have both options in case registration gets behind on uploading the course info.
You can proceed to time the race and manage course changes and other edits manually in the file as usual. The CSV upload on NEXT is only for speed-entry and the rest of the race should be treated as normal.