Coaches
As a coach or director, you will use Tabroom to do things like manage your school's account, maintain your student roster, register for tournaments, and view school-wide results.
If you just want to know how to register for a tournament, see the section on Registration.
When your Tabroom account is linked as the administrator for a school, you will see a set of tabs when you log-in that correspond to the main school admin functions:
This section of the manual will explain how to use each of these tabs.
School Setup
Before you can access your school's student roster, tournament registrations, etc. you must first either create a new school (also known as a chapter), or link your Tabroom account to the pre-existing school account.
Each school can have multiple Tabroom accounts linked as an administrator for that school, for example if you have multiple coaches. Similarly, any Tabroom account can be given administrator access to multiple different schools, for example if you coach multiple programs but want to maintain separate student rosters.
Linking To A Pre-Existing School
Odds are good that your school has already been created in Tabroom and linked to someone's account. Instead of creating a new school, which results in confusing duplicates, you should instead attempt to get access to the pre-existing school. This will also save you the work of recreating things like student/judge rosters from scratch and will ensure that your school's tournament results maintain continuity.
If you are a new coach, you should see if the previous coach can give your account access to your school in Tabroom. If that's not possible, you can contact us at help@tabroom.com for help getting access.
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are a student trying to register for a tournament, you should NOT create a new school just to sign yourself up - you should instead ask your director/coach for access to your school's tabroom account and register from the main school account.
If you are a previous coach trying to give someone else access to your school, see the section below on Controlling Access To A School
Creating A School
If your school doesn't exist in Tabroom yet, you'll need to create it. After logging in, click the link for "Create a new school/team" in the sidebar:
Then, fill out the required information such as School Name, State, etc. If you have a National Speech & Debate chapter number, or a variety of other school ID numbers, you can put them in here to ensure proper tracking. When done, press Save School Info.
If a school already exists in Tabroom with a similar name, you will see a warning that says "THAT INSTITUTION ALREADY EXISTS!"
If you need help getting access to an existing school, email [[mailto: help@tabroom.com]]. If you're sure you need to create a new school, check the "Confirm duplication" box:
Once your school is created, you should see a welcome message telling you what to do next - each of the suggested steps is covered in this manual in detail:
School Settings
To make changes to your school name, coach access, etc. you will use the Settings tab:
Name – This is where you’ll enter the official name of the school.
Level – Select the highest level for which you’ll have competitors.
Street Address – The official street address for the school.
City – The city where the school is located.
State – The state where the school is located.
Country – The country the school is located.
ZIP – The zip code the school is located in.
Coach Names – All school coaches/advisors should be listed here. Each name should be separated with a comma.
Entries may enter their own prefs – Enable this feature if you will allow students to enter their own judge preferences (MPJ) and/or strikes.
NSDA School ID – The NSDA membership ID for the school. If you do not know your NSDA membership ID please consult your NSDA account at speechanddebate.org or email info@speechanddebate.org.
Nat’l Center for Education Statistics ID – The National Center for Education Statistics ID associated with your school. This data only applies to public schools. If you do not know your ID, please search for it here: https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/schoolsearch/
College Board (CEEB) Number – The CEEB number is a unique identification number assigned to high schools and colleges by the College Board. If you do not know your number, please search for it here: https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/k-12-school-code-search NAUDL Affiliated School – Only enable this checkbox if you are a member school of the National Association for Urban Debate Leagues.
Controlling Access To A School
To edit who has access to your school's account in Tabroom, go to the “Access” tab and enter the tabroom.com email of the advisor that should be added to the account and click "Grant." Each adviser must have a tabroom.com account to be associated with a school.
Once you add advisors to the account, you will see a list of Tabroom accounts with access to your school ("chapter"). You have two options for providing any advisor account permissions:
Full Access – This option allows you to assign an advisor complete access over the school’s account.
Prefs Only – This option limits the advisor’s account to only allow them access to judge preferences (MPJ) and strikes data for a school. This option should be given to advisors that serve in a part time role and don’t need full administrative access.
How to remove an account – Click the red trash can button next to an account to remove an advisor’s access from the school. Note that you can't remove the last/only account from a school - so you would need to add another account first.
Allowing Pref Entry
You can grant specific Tabroom accounts access to your school for the purposes of prefs entry, as explained above. Or, you can let entries fill our prefs themselves by checking the option on the Settings tab for "Entries may enter their own prefs." As long as you have linked entries on your Student Roster to a tabroom account, they will be able to access their own prefs, but not the rest of the school's.
Administering Multiple Schools
If your Tabroom account is listed as the administrator for more than one school simultaneously, you will see a list under "Institutions" in the sidebar on your account dashboard:
Before editing your rosters, entering a tournament, etc. make sure you have selected the appropriate school by clicking on it - this will make it your "active" school for the rest of the school administration tabs.
Competitor Roster
Before registering for a tournament, you must add students to your student roster. When you first go to the Competitors tab, your roster will be empty:
You can add students to your roster manually, import them from your NSDA account, or import them from a file.
Adding Students Manually
Click the "Add a new student" link on the sidebar:
There are three options to add students to a school roster:
1. Find a student w/ a Tabroom login – You can manually enter a student tabroom.com email into this field to add them to your student roster. This will require the student to have a tabroom.com account setup prior to adding them.
2. Create a new student (without a Tabroom.com account) – If a student does not have a tabroom.com account, you can manually enter their information in the provided fields. Make sure your information is accurate. Enter the 4-digit graduation date and make sure it is accurate. Accounts with graduation dates in the past will be retired and not show on your entries dropdown menu to register the student for a tournament. The NSDA ID and Email fields do not automatically create accounts for the student and/or link them to their student records in tabroom.com or speechanddebate.org.
2a. Competitors requesting online access – Once you manually add a student to your roster, it will allow them to request access later once they have completed the setup of their tabroom.com account. Once a competitor requests access, you will receive an email notifying you of the request and the “competitors” tab will be red once you login to tabroom.com. To link the competitor, you will need to approve their account by selecting the green check mark. If you do not want to allow the competitor to link to their account or someone is linking to the wrong account, select the red X and it will deny them access. We suggest always allowing students to link to their competitor records to allow them access to the full benefits of tabroom.com, including access to their past, present, and future tournament data and results.
Competitors requesting online access – If you have manually added a student to tabroom.com Make sure to give each of your students a 4-digit graduation date, like "2018," and not just two-digits. You can also fill out additional information, such as diet preferences and gender. When you're done entering all your students, you can return to your student roster by using the link on the sidebar.
Adding Students From A File
To make it easier to add large numbers of students to your roster at once, you can use the "Import From Spreadsheet" option in the sidebar instead.
This will give you a form to choose the file to import:
Your file must be saved as a ".csv" comma-delimited file. You can download a sample file to fill out on the upload page. While it is possible to create an upload file manually, it is much easier to use this template, fill out the names and other information, then save and upload the file - just make sure your spreadsheet program doesn't change the file format.
Managing Your Student Roster
Student Info
Once you have added students to your roster, you will see them in a list on the Students tab:
Record – Allows you to see the individual tournament results for the competitor. Only tournaments that have posted public results will be visible.
First, Middle, Last – Name of the competitor that will be visible on tabroom.com. Clicking any of these names will allow you to edit the full student record, including linking them to their tabroom.com account.
Account – Allows you to see if a competitor is already linked to tabroom.com. If they are, their email will appear in that field. If they are not, it will be blank.
Points – Shows a competitor’s career NSDA points. A competitor must be linked to their NSDA account via speechanddebate.org for these points to show.
Districts – Shows if a competitor is eligible for districts. A “Y” will appear if the competitor is eligible.
Novice – Toggle this switch to a green “Y” if the competitor is in their first year of competition and considered a novice. Novice is turned off for all competitors by default.
Retired – Toggle to a red “Y” if the competitor has graduated and is no longer competing for your school.
Graduated Students
You can toggle whether to show or hide “inactive competitors” by selecting the red box at the top of your competitors’ screen. You can use this feature if you know a student should be on your roster. It is likely they were automatically graduated and made inactive. You will need to reactivate them using this option.
Remove Duplicates
If you accidentally created duplicates on your student roster, you could easily remove them by using the "de-duplicate students" link on the sidebar. If any duplicates are found, you will be given the choice to merge them. Please be sure that you’re merging duplicate students, rather than two different students with the same name. There are times when you will receive a message saying the graduation dates are too far apart. To fix this issue, change the graduation date for the duplicated student and run the merge process again.
Dietary Preferences
Your student roster is a convenient place to keep track of your student's dietary preferences, which also makes it easy for tournaments to access that information. You can see all of this information in one place with the "Dietary preferences" link in the sidebar:
Linking Your National Speech & Debate Association Roster
Linking your Tabroom student roster to your account with the National Speech & Debate Association allows you to automatically import your students, and also enables "auto-pointing," where a student's honor points can be posted automatically. To take advantage of this, click the "Students" tab to view your Student Roster. Then, click the link on the right for "Connect to NSDA Auto Pointing:"
First, you'll need to give Tabroom access to your Points Application account with the National Speech & Debate Association. Enter the username and password you use to log in to the Points Application (points.speechanddebate.org), and then type the "confirmation phrase" in the on-screen instructions. This is to prevent accidental linking to the wrong school.
If successful, you will see your list of linked Points App logins (with the option to "Unlink" if you made a mistake). You'll then need to select your NSDA school from the dropdown menu (just in case your Points App login is attached to more than one school), and click "Link to NSDA."
Tabroom will then show you the list of current students on your Tabroom roster (if any), and ask you to link each student with the correct entry from your roster with the National Speech & Debate Association. This is to ensure that each student is matched with the correct merit number. Using the dropdown menu for each student, choose a name, or "Do not link" if a student is not a member of the National Speech & Debate Association. You must also check the "Confirm" box next to each student.
Once you have linked students, you will see them appear on this screen with their Tabroom and NSDA roster information, current number of honor society points, along with the option to delink them from their Tabroom entry.
Once the initial linking of your Tabroom school to your National Speech & Debate Association account is done, you can import any students on your NSDA roster to Tabroom by choosing the "Import NSDA Roster to Tabroom.com" option on the sidebar.
This will show you a list of students from your NSDA roster that are available to import (with the option to exclude any you don't want).
After you've imported your students, you can verify that they're linked correctly by clicking their name from your student roster. Their "NSDA Merit Number" will be displayed at the bottom.
That's it - once a tournament is complete, you should see the points appear on the NSDA Points Application in the "Autopost" section of your school profile, where you can confirm them and choose a coach to assign coach points.
Note that for points to be autoposted, you'll need to have your rosters correctly linked prior to Tabroom processing that tournament's results. That is, autoposting points isn't retroactive - if you didn't link rosters prior to a tournament, you won't see those points.
Also note that for the time being, Congress points are not autoposted and will need to be input manually.
For auto-pointing to work correctly, the tournament director should opt-in by matching up their tournament events on Tabroom with the appropriate Association events in their tournament settings. If you want to ensure you get credit for points at a tournament you're attending, make sure to tell the tournament director you'd like them to do so.
Judge Roster
The judge roster works very similar to the student roster. You can click the "Add a new judge" link in the sidebar, or if your judge roster is empty, the form will appear automatically:
You can add judges by their Tabroom account email, or manually enter their information and click the "Save Judge" button. You can link judges on your roster to their Tabroom accounts later if you wish.
If you want to add a large number of judges at once, you can also use the "Import from Spreadsheet" option, which is found in the sidebar on your Students tab (not the Judge tab). For more information, see the section on Adding Students From A File above. Make sure you use the "Judge" template, instead of the "Student" template.
Once you have added judges to your roster, they will appear in a list:
Clicking on a judge's first or last name will let you edit their information. You can also toggle a judge between active/inactive to keep your roster easier to manage. You can select whether to see active or inactive judges on the sidebar.
If you accidentally created duplicates on your judge roster, you can easily remove them by using the "Deduplicate judges" link on the sidebar. If any duplicates are found, you will be given the choice to merge them:
First, Last – Name of the judge that will be visible on tabroom.com. Clicking any of these names will allow you to edit the full judge record, including linking them to their tabroom.com account.
Judged – Indicates the number of tournaments they’ve judged on tabroom.com. This record will only reflect the tournaments their linked account was attached to and not other tournaments where they may have judged prior to having an account.
Phone – Indicates the phone number they have registered on their tabroom.com account.
Linked To – Indicates the tabroom.com linked account email.
Inactive – By default all judges are active. If a judge is no with your program, toggle this to a red “Y” and they will be disabled from your roster.
To keep track of your judges dietary preferences, you can use the "Dietary Restrictions" link on the right - it will take you to the same page as for your student roster.
Circuits
In order to register for a tournament, you must first join the appropriate "circuit." All tournaments on tabroom must be part of a "circuit" - to find out which circuit the tournament you're interested in is a part of, look on the main Calendar.
Then, use the "Circuits" tab to join the circuit:
First, select the circuit you want to join from the dropdown. Then, choose whether to join for "Tournaments Only" or "Full Membership."
Choose "Tournaments Only" if you want to register for tournaments, but don't want circuit emails or to be a dues paying member. Some circuits are run entirely on a tournament-only basis, such as the US National Circuit (HS).
"Full Membership" means you will be able to register for tournaments, and will receive emails about the circuit. You may also be billed for membership dues. This is best for joining a state or local circuit that uses Tabroom to manage its membership.
Once you have joined a circuit, your Circuits tab will change to show you the list of tournaments your school is a part of, and will give you the option to leave a circuit.
School Results
If your account is the admin for your school, you can access results for your entire team.
Accessing Results
From your account dashboard, you can use the Results tab to see a list of tournaments with available results:
Selecting the blue “results” button will give you access to a list of reports that were produced by the tournament administrators.
Tournament Stats – Provides you a general overview of participation at the tournament.
School Dashboard – Returns you to the live tournament dashboard for your team. This is where you can see all the live results for each round that all your competitors participated in at the tournament.
Show Entry Roster – Displays the complete school entry from the tournament.
Show Ballots – Displays the available ballots for each entry. Selecting the blue eye icon will reveal the decisions and comments from each round a competitor/team participated in at the tournament.
Show Results – Displays the individual results, including record, points, and individual round results for each student. Only the data will show on this report without comments. Speaker award data for each competitor will also show on this screen.
Print Invoice/Receipt – Displays your tournament invoice and all payment information in a printable PDF format.
Full Results – Displays the full public results from each event. This report will show the round results, speaker awards, and final places for all competitors registered for that event.
Print Ballots/Results – Displays the same information as above, only in a printable PDF format.
Accessing Invoices/Receipts
Print Invoice/Receipt displays a breakdown of your registration costs, fines, and whether you've paid or owe money in a printable PDF format.