Much of Global Finals Awards is covered in the general help library.  This includes an explanation of the Global Finals Awards process for appraisers, ICMs, and Program Directors.


This topic covers setup for Awards and preparing for Closing Ceremonies.  This is typically handled by Score Room and the DIHQ Resource Area developers.  These actions are on the Official=>awards; Misc Actions page that requires elevated privileges to access.


Awards Setup


The Awards system is initialized in a few steps at or before the tournament (in Officials=>awards, Misc  Action red tab)


Cleaning up Team Information


Teams are identified by a team-number, organization (ie membership name), school name, team name, and location. Sometimes these names and locations need reviewing to make sure they meet the expectation of closing ceremonies.  Locations are expect to be a city or town not including province or state (we get this information from the team's affiliate).  There are a few tools to help clean up this information.


Event=>schedule teams, Misc Actions red tab, Fix Locations will search teams for locations that don't fit our expectations.  If you click on the Fix Locations button, it will search the location of each team for commas.  The last comma and text following the comma is removed from the location.  For example: Londonderry, NH will be replaced with Londonderry.  The feature will display each change it makes.  If the change is inappropriate, you can set it back using the method below.  To change Londonderry, NH, USA to Londonderry, this action needs to be run twice.


This information can also be edit from Teams=>edit.  After selecting the team to edit, the page will show how this team will be presented and allow you to change the organization, school name, team name, and/or location.


Test Awards Flags


This is typically done by the DIHQ Resource Area developers a week or two in advance of the tournament.  The test checks that we have an affiliate flag for any teams that might be displayed in the Closing Ceremonies slides.  Click the Test Awards Flags button on the Officials=>awards; Misc Actions pane to run the test. The test displays each affiliate with competing teams at this year's Global Finals.  If a flag is displayed in the table, that affiliate flag is known.  If blanks, an affiliate flag should be added. The process of adding a flag is covered here.


Initializing the Award System


Clicking the Init Tournament button on Officials=>awards; Misc Actions pane will initialize/reinitialize the awards system for Global Finals.  Prior to doing this, the Challenge-Level Status and Output Results pane will not show any challenges.  After clicking this button both of these panes should show the controls discussed in the general help library.


Open and Closing Awards


Use the Awards Process Status dropdown Officials=>awards; Misc Actions pane to control the Awards process.  Prior to tournament, the awards system is typically closed as appraisers would not be entering awards at that time.  It gets opened at the start of the tournament.  While the Awards process can be set to closed following the tournament, ICMs and Program Directors do close each challenge-level as they go through the process of reviewing and approving the awards, so that keeps appraisers from generating awards late in the process.


Setting IC Awards Status


Instant Challenge typically does not award Special Awards.  Instead in recent years they have recognized the top scores for Instant Challenge.  Using the dropdown IC Chal-Lev Status on the Officials=>awards; Misc Actions pane, you can set all IC rooms as not issuing awards or clear this status. Select the status wanted and click the Set button to the right to set the Special Awards status for all IC challenge levels.


Collecting Place Finishes


How do we get the place finish result determined by the Scoring Program into the Events website?  This is needed as part of the results announced at Closing Ceremonies.  Starting at GF 2024, this is a 2-step process:


  1. results are posted by the Scoring Program to the Resource Area
    GF is an affiliate level tournament for the affiliate DIHQ.  Appraisers run the Mobile Client to score teams.  These scores are posted to the Resource Area tournament and the Scoring Program collects these scores to determine the winners.  The Scoring Program can then post the results back to the Resource Area tournament.

  2. Closing Ceremonies collect the results from the Resource Area
    Clicking the Collect Place Finishes button on th Officials=>awards; Misc Actions pane will check for results in the Resource Area and post them in the Output Results pane.  You can click this button as often as you like.  Each time it will look for further results.

There are 2 other buttons associated with collecting place finishes:


  • Reset Places: clears out all the places
  • Generate Test Places: this button will clear out all place finishes and awards and then generate some test place finishes and award
    This feature is used to test out Closing Ceremonies in advance of the tournament.