Competitor Signups
The signup system, new in fall of 2017, allows you to do away with that sheet of paper in the corner of your classroom where competitors illegibly sign up for tournaments. This feature lets the coach only have to confirm the entry data the competitor has input in, and it also notifies debate/duo partners, as well as parents, at the time a competitor signs them up. You can put in tournament travel and logistic data either in raw text directly in Tabroom, or provide a document memo that the system will send to everyone. Then, when you're ready, simply confirm or reject the entries and they will be registered into the tournament. The system will also allow you to transfer a TBA or registered slot onto a signed up slot, to manage tournaments with entry caps and wait-lists.
Linking Parents
You can set parents to follow their student competitors, so they receive tournament memos automatically. Doing so also permits you to later easily email all the parents of students going to a particular tournament. To do so, go to your school's Competitors tab, when you first log in. Click on "Parent Notifications" at right.
Then next to each competitor, you can see who is already set to follow a student's notifications, click the trash icon to remove them, or to enter their email address to set them to follow. Parent notification recipients do NOT need to have a Tabroom.com account; just a simple email will do. You can also see this information by clicking on a competitor on your main roster; this screen just lets you see them all at once.
Once linked parents will be notified with a short email informing them they are linked and what Tabroom.com is and why they're getting emailed from it.
Competitors linking parents
You can also have competitors register their own parents for updates, to make it easier on those with large squads. Students must have a Tabroom.com account linked to their student record first. When they log in, they should find at right a section labeled Competing, and after that can click on Parent Notifications at right.
Students can add parents or delete them at any time, but parents will be notified when they do so. If for some reason you wish to delete a parent notification recipient without notification, a coach can delete their email without notification.
Set up tournament signup sheet
To set up your tournament signup sheet, click Register on the tournament like any other, and click on the new Signups tab.
Here, you must first specify a Signup Deadline; competitor signups will be available until this deadline, and competitors can also withdraw their entries by this deadline. Competitors cannot withdraw entries that you have accepted and registered, however.
Your signup deadline must be before the tournament's own registration deadline, naturally, You can also set options on whether to show the students entry and registration fees, and whether the info and memo you upload should be automatically sent to parents once they sign up. Finally you can upload a info document and/or put tournament logistics information that everyone should know into the Message box. Once you save a tournament deadline, you will get a new switch to enable the signup sheet. This switch enables you to turn on the signup sheet; it can also be turned off at any time before the deadline as you wish.
Competitor Signups
Competitors logging into Tabroom will now see the tournament available to sign up when they first log in now under "Tournament Signups Open."
They can sign up using the blue Add icon at right, and will be given the tournament information and logistics you uploaded, and a selection menu for events they can register into. Once they select an event, if the event requires more information (a partner's name, or tournaments that require information such as piece titles or authors in interp), the system will ask them for it. Then, once they have registered for a few events, their information and status will be available to them on their signup page.
Approval of Signup Entries
Now once you have some signups, go back to your tournament registration page, and click Signups again. Instead of the Settings button you will be brought to the Signups button, which will list your competitors who have signed up, who signed them up, for which events, and when. Next to each competitor you have a couple of options:
At the top of the page, you have the option to simply accept all signups; use this to register all entries into the tournament immediately.
On each row, you have the option to Transfer a slot to a competitor. This function is especially useful for tournaments with limited entry space; if you pre-registered a bunch of TBA entries ahead of time, you can use this function to transfer that TBA slot to the signed up competitor. Confirm by hitting the blue arrow-transfer icon.
You can also use the blue checkmark icon to simply accept the signup and register them into the tournament at that time. And finally you can use the red X to reject the signup slot.
None of the actions you take on this screen will trigger an automatic notice to either the parents or students themselves; therefore if you click the wrong button you can undo it later. The only thing you cannot undo is transferring a slot to the wrong student; if you do that you have to either drop the entry under the Entries tab or transfer the slot to another student.
Tournament Emails & Notifications
Since the system does not automatically notify, we also created a new Emails tab for a school registration at a tournament. You can use this tab to send emails to all the linked students, all the linked judges, parents following students, or all three at a tournament at any time. You can also use this page to download and print a contact list of all the students, judges, etc at your tournament.