Quickstart

This flow gets a new event organizer from zero to a runnable event.

Before you start: If you haven’t already, read Understanding Vote4Dance to understand the system and confirm you’re an event organizer.

1. Create an event in Manager

Manager is the control panel for event organizers. Go there and create a new event, completing these 4 setup steps:

Federation

Select whether this event is part of a federation:

  • Has a federation → Choose the federation that oversees this event (will apply federation policies like license requirements)
  • Independent event → Choose “standalone” or “test” based on your setup

Not sure? Go to Understanding Vote4Dance to understand federations.

Event details

  • Event name (e.g., “Spring Regional Championship”)
  • Basic description

Location and timezone

  • Where the event is happening
  • Timezone for schedules and results

Billing or practice setup

  • Practice: For testing and learning. Use bootstrap to auto-generate defaults
  • Billing: For real events (federation may require payment processing)

If you’re learning or testing, choose the practice setup and enable bootstrap.

2. Understand bootstrap (for practice events)

Bootstrap is an automated setup tool that creates baseline objects:

  • A main floor
  • A judging panel
  • Default schedule structure
  • Default screen configuration
  • Practice classes, generated rounds, and random teams

Use bootstrap to learn workflows quickly. After your dry run, you can reset and configure a real event from scratch.

3. Build your event structure (fine-tune after bootstrap)

If you used bootstrap, you’ll see pre-configured items. Otherwise, create:

In the Manager Guide:

  1. Event setup: Verify competitions, floors, user access, schedule
  2. Competition setup: Define classes, rounds, teams, judges
  3. Registration and check-in setup: Enable registration periods, check-in windows

4. Dry run before event day

Run a full test with your team:

  1. Set one round to Ready
  2. Have someone test the Judging app and enter sample scores
  3. Close, confirm, and publish results in Manager
  4. Verify that Screens, Speaker, and check-in work as expected

5. Live operations sequence

For each round during the actual event, follow this lifecycle:

  1. Open — Ready for dancers to enter and judges to prepare
  2. Ready — Locked in, judges can start scoring
  3. Closed — No more judge input accepted
  4. Confirmed — Results reviewed and correct
  5. Published — Results are live (on screens, public results, rankings)

Repeat for each round.

6. After the event

From the Post-event and exports section, run:

  • Result exports
  • Ranking updates
  • Award generation
  • Data archival

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