meshO Manager

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Low-key events ​

Audience: Organisers of club trainings, come-and-try days and other events where nobody enters beforehand.

At a small event the runners turn up, borrow or bring a card, run one of a few courses put out that morning, and come back to download. There is no entry list to import and often no course file either. Five settings let Manager run such an event from the cards alone, with nothing to click at the download desk.

All five are on the Low-key event tab of Event details (the button on the event header card on the dashboard — see Editing event details), and all are off for an ordinary event.

Auto create competitors on download ​

With this on, a downloaded card that nobody is entered on is entered as a new competitor straight away, and the download banner shows their result, time and place as it would for anyone entered beforehand. There is no Unassigned banner to deal with.

  • The name. If the card is in your competitor registry, and only one person in it has that card, they are entered as that person (unless the event ignores the registry). Otherwise their card number stands in for their name, and the banner shows a small + beside it — click it to open the competitor and type the name. Nobody has to: an unnamed runner still gets a result.
  • The class. The class whose course the card fits — by the rule set out under What counts as fitting a course, so a runner who missed a control on a long course is entered on that course with the mis-punch, never on a shorter course their card happens to contain. If no course fits, they are entered without a class and the banner says Not competing — except for another run on the same card, which keeps the person's earlier class. Give them a class and the card is checked again. A relay class is never chosen: a card cannot say which team and leg.
  • Several runs on one card. When a card is read again after its owner has already finished, the new run is entered as another run of the same person — same name, same club, but not the same bib — in the class of the course they ran this time. Their first result is left as it was.
  • Hire cards are the exception to both of the above. A hire card is lent to somebody new each time, so it is never named from the registry and a second read is a new, unnamed person rather than another run of the last one — unless the event ignores hire cards.

Competitors entered this way count as entries on the day.

If a card cannot be entered — the event refused something it would have had to make — the banner says so, and the card waits at the desk as at any event.

Auto create courses and classes ​

With this on, a downloaded card that nobody is entered on, and whose punches fit no course, becomes a new course of those controls, in the order they were punched, with a class of its own. They are numbered: the first is Course 1 with class 1, the next Course 2 with class 2, and so on, skipping any number where a course called Course N or a class called N already exists; rename them on the Courses and Classes pages whenever you like.

  • What counts as fitting a course. A card is on a course if it is missing at most one of the course's controls, has at most one control the course doesn't, and shares at least one control with it. A skipped control, or a wrong control punched in place of the right one, is scored as a mis-punch on that course. One extra control on the way round doesn't count against the runner. A card that differs by two or more controls is a different course. Two courses that differ by only one control can't be told apart this way — import or draw them beforehand.
  • A card with no finish punch never makes a course. It is somebody who retired, not a course. An EMIT card has no finish of its own — its last punch stands in for one — so enter the event's Finish codes (on the Radio controls tab of Event details) and a card whose last punch is not that unit is treated the same way.
  • Existing courses are used. A card that fits a course already in the event — imported, drawn, or made from an earlier card — is scored on it. If no individual class uses that course yet, a class named after the course is made for it (numbered on, Orange 2, if a class called Orange already exists).
  • Score and scatter events never make a course from a card. Their runners choose their own order, so the order one card was punched in is no course. Set up the score or scatter course beforehand instead — see Score and scatter courses.
  • Every course made this way starts at the event's Start control and ends at its Finish; if the event has no Start or no Finish control, the missing one is made once and shared by every course.

Watch the first card on each course. The first runner back defines the course. If they mis-punched badly, their course is wrong and the next runner on the real course makes a second one. Check the Courses page after the first few downloads, and delete a course that should not be there.

Ignore competitor registry ​

With this on, nobody is suggested or named from the competitor registry in this event. Nobody is suggested from it while you type a competitor in — at the console or at the entry desk — and nobody is named from it when a card is downloaded: no provisional name under an unknown card, no Assign to name button, and an automatically created competitor is named by their card number. Editing a competitor here doesn't update the registry either. Importing entries still uses it, and the competitor changes report can still write to it if you choose to.

Use it where cards are routinely borrowed — from a parent, a club box, a friend — so that whoever the registry has recorded against a card is as likely to be wrong as right. The registry itself is untouched, and every other event goes on using it.

Ignore hire cards ​

With this on, the event treats no card as a hire card: the cards on your hire card list count as the runner's own. There is no prompt to collect the card at download, no card is marked as hired on the Competitors list or the Hire items page, and (with Auto create competitors on download on) a second run on one of them is entered as another run of the same person. Compasses, map boards and anything else you hire out are unaffected.

Use it where members borrow the same club card week after week. The hire card list itself is untouched, and every other event goes on using it.

Quick name entry on download ​

With this on, a download for somebody nobody has named puts a Runner's name field under the result banner with the cursor already in it, and a Class box beside it set to the class the card was matched to. Type the name and press Enter — no mouse, no dialog:

  1. The runner downloads their card.
  2. You type their name and press Enter.

If a mis-punch meant the card matched no course, the Class box is empty (and the banner says Not competing, or Unknown card). Then it is:

  1. Type the name, press Tab to move to the Class box.
  2. Press ↓ (or ↑) to step through the classes — or type a class's first letter to jump to it.
  3. Press Enter. The runner is saved in that class and their card is checked again, so the banner shows their result on that course.

You can change the class the same way when the match was wrong.

What Enter does depends on the card:

  • A runner entered under their card number (with Auto create competitors on download on) is given the name.
  • A card nobody is entered on is entered as a new competitor with that name, on that card, in the class of the course the card fits (if any), and the download is theirs. If the card is in your competitor registry, the field starts with the registry's name for it, so Enter alone accepts them — with their club and registry details, as Assign to name would. Type over it and somebody new is entered instead.

The last word you type is the family name and everything before it the given name, so Mary Jane Smith is Mary Jane / Smith. A name that doesn't split that way — Ian de Jongh — is put right on the competitor's Details tab.

Nobody has to type a name: the next card simply replaces the field, and a runner left unnamed keeps their card number and the + beside it. The field also won't take the cursor from you if you are already typing somewhere else — click into it in that case. On pages other than the dashboard and Card downloads, the download pop-up stays up until the name is typed or you close it.

Using them together ​

Turn on the first two and an event needs nothing set up beforehand: the first card back makes the course and the class and gets a result, and every card after it is entered and placed as it is read. These settings are chosen per event and are never copied from your defaults; Duplicate event keeps them, so next week's training is set up already.

With only Auto create courses and classes on, a card nobody is entered on still waits for you at the desk as usual — the class of the course it fits, or the one just made for it, is what the Add competitor dialog is pre-filled with.