The new DI season rolls over in the summer.  Exactly when it happens varies a bit from year to year, but typically takes place during the month of July.  Factors that effect when the rollover takes place include:


  • accounting for Global Finals is largely done
  • challenges for the new season are ready to go
  • new software packages IT wants to rollout are ready to go
  • prices are set for the new year


To prepare the Resource Area for the new season, go through the sequence below.  This requires an account with administrator privileges. This sequence initializes much of the Resource Area.  Other areas that need some setup for the new year AFTER the Resource Area is setup include:



Resource Area Setup Sequence


  1. define the new program year (eg 2015)
    1. this is the current year + 1 or the year when Global Finals for the new season will take place
    2. go to the management dashboard (administration=>manage site)
    3. choose Settings on the left
    4. choose DI Website Settings on the right
    5. increase Max Program Year to the new season (typically adding 1 to the current value)
    6. click Save at the bottom
    7. at this point the new Program Year (both in DI Website Settings and Program Year dropdown in the upper right on many Resource Area pages) should include the new Program Year
  2. set your Program Year to the new year using the Program Year Dropdown
  3. go to administration=>initialize year
    1. make sure you are initializing the new year (check title of the page)
    2. click on Initialize Roles to copy last year's ADs, AAs,... to the new year
      • the action lists the roles that it adds
      • the action also resets the groups that give access to the forum.  When done ADs and AGD should have access to their forums and the CM groups should be emptied.
    1. click on Initialize Regions to copy last year's regions to the new year
    2. click on Initialize Challenges to setup the challenges for the new year
      • the next year challenge names (all you need) are typically on the main website having been introduced at the last Global Finals
      • spelling is important as these names will show up elsewhere such as on score sheets and in team data
      • capitalization is typically important, but avoid special characters
      • you can come back here at a later time to adjust spelling or capitalization
    1. click on Initialize Affiliates
      • this sets editing flags for all the affiliates (see affiliates=>manage affiliate)
      • editing is set to disabled for the prior year
      • editing (except import) is enabled for the current year (editing will be disabled later in year for Global Finals in particular)
    1. click on Purge Account Queue
      • this will remove both completed entries (those that resulted in a role being setup -- ie someone acted on it) and entries that no one acted on
      • it is reasonable to do this at this point as roles shortly will be set up for the new year
  1. select the new Program Year from the DI Website Settings
    1. go to the management dashboard (administration=>manage site)
    2. choose Settings on the left
    3. choose DI Website Settings on the right
    4. you can now pick the new program year from the Program Year dropdown
    5. click Save at the bottom