The timing of arranging appraisers varies from tournament to tournament.  Here is a suggested time-line:

  1. establish the structure of the tournament (weeks before the tournament)
    A tournament will host a certain number of teams over a certain period of time.  These teams need to be divided into groups that a team of appraisers will judge during the time allotted for appraising.  Out of this effort, you learn the number of rooms (ie teams of appraisers) and the number of appraisers needed in each room.  You now know roughly the number of appraisers you will need.
      
  2. identify the appraisers and their challenge (weeks before the tournament)
    It takes considerable time to arranging adults' schedules.  It also takes time to learn how to appraiser and in the case of Team Challenge learn the challenge.

  3. assign appraisers to rooms at the tournament (start when rooms at the tournament are known)
    The scheduler lets you setup the rooms at the tournament before you know the detailed schedule.  This is enough to start building appraiser teams.  If loading the schedule from a .CSV, this file will contain the rooms you need, but also requires performance times for the teams.

  4. assign Team Challenge appraisers to scored items (week or so in advance)
    As the items to be scored are well known, you can use the guidelines in the Appraiser Guide for each challenge to work this out.

  5. print Team Challenge score sheets (week or so in advance)
    If you are using Mobile Scoring, the only score sheets needed are worksheets as scoring, deductions, and stickies can be handled by the Mobile Client.  
    For paper scoring, this step is still necessary. While you can print out blank score sheets where appraisers need to enter team information at the top, you can also have the website do this.  Once the schedule is stable, score sheets are printed by room in time order.  If you are still moving teams around in the schedule, it is too soon to print.  

  6. assign Instant Challenges to rooms (just prior to the tournament)
    Your Instant Challenge Challenge Masters have likely chosen the instant challenges well in advance of the tournament so they have plenty of time to assemble the materials needed for the challenges.  For secrecy reasons this likely doesn't make its way into the Resource Area until very close to the tournament.

  7. import information into the DI Scoring Program (just prior to the tournament)
    At this point you have all the information needed to initialize the DI Scoring Program to score the tournament. Many score room leads like to check out that all is working well in advance of the tournament.  Working with them on preliminary scenarios is often greatly appreciated.