meshO Manager

Appearance

Resolving issues on the day ​

Audience: Timing operators dealing with problems during the event.

Recipes for the things that commonly go wrong during a live event. Each is a short symptom → fix. Most fixes live on the competitor's record or the control's record, so two moves cover the majority of them:

  • Open a competitor — click their name in the Competitors list, in the download history on the Card downloads page, or via Quick competitor actions on the dashboard. Inside the dialog, Ctrl+F (⌘F on a Mac) jumps to another competitor without closing it.
  • Open a control — click it on the Controls page to reach the Edit Control dialog.

Tip: Manager re-evaluates results automatically after a fix — change a start time, status, class, or punch and the race time and standings update within a few seconds. There's no separate recalculate step.

The competitor's tabs ​

The Edit competitor dialog has a tab for each kind of fix. Some only appear when they have something to show.

TabUse it to
DetailsCorrect the name, club, Card number, class and course
StartSee where the start time comes from, and set an Allocated start time or how a start punch is treated (On start punch). Not shown for a relay runner, whose start is the changeover
ResultRead the status, race time and place, and set the Status by hand. Also gives a runner with No start time a start
Radio punchesSee every radio punch for them, and delete a spurious one
DownloadSee the card read, choose between several, and make or edit a manual download
Unit downloadsSee what the Start, Check and Finish units' station memory recorded for them
PrintsPreview and reprint their splits or result label
AnalysisTheir mistakes and strong legs. Not offered on a course run in any order (score and scatter courses)
OverridesCorrect the punches: start and finish times, a missed control, a stale punch, a time penalty. A badge counts the overrides in force
Audit trailEverything that was changed about them, when and from where — see Audit trail
Custom fields, Hire itemsOnly when you have set some up in Settings

Competitor results ​

Still "On course" long after they finished. Their card hasn't been downloaded and no radio finish has arrived, so Manager still thinks they're out. Download their card — that produces the authoritative result. If they crossed a radio finish but haven't downloaded yet, they already show as a preliminary OK (the Pending count on the dashboard) and will finalise when the card is read. If they retired or have no card, set the status by hand (below). See Safety check.

A finish but no start time. Race time can't be worked out without a start. Give the competitor a start time — an allocated start on their Start tab, or a punched start if you run punching starts. See Start times.

A status that's wrong, or you need to disqualify. Open the competitor, go to the Result tab, and change the Status. The choices are None, On course, OK, MP, DNF, DNS, Not competing, Disqualified, Out of competition and Overtime. Most are free operator rulings and stick as you set them: later re-evaluations — a control edit, a class change, an added punch override — recompute the times but leave your status alone. Beside the status the tab says Manual for a status you set and Set automatically for one Manager worked out, and the Competitors list shows a hand icon beside a status set by hand. Click Auto beside the status to hand it back to Manager, which works it out again from the card or the radio punches.

OK is the exception: you can't force it on a competitor whose card doesn't support a clean result. Manager re-evaluates OK against the punches, so setting it on someone still missing a control is corrected straight back to MP (and OK always needs a race time). This is enforced on the server, so it can't be bypassed from the screen.

Approving a run with a missed control. When the jury or the organiser accepts a run the card says is incomplete — the control was misplaced, the unit failed for this runner, the card failed — don't set OK. Open the Overrides tab, find the leg reading No punch, click Mark visited, and give a Reason (Control miss-placed, Electronic punch failed, Card failed, Lost/damaged card, or your own words). The control now counts as visited, the card re-evaluates, and the OK follows by itself. A control marked visited has no punch time, so that leg has no split. If the control failed for everyone, mark the control Faulty instead (see Controls and hardware).

Note: Manager won't let you reset a competitor to None (no result) while there's real evidence they took part — a recorded race time, a downloaded card, a start punch, or radio punches. It tells you which evidence is blocking the reset, so you don't accidentally erase a genuine result. Clear the evidence (e.g. unassign the stray download) first if you really mean to.

Card reads but the competitor isn't in the list. Assign the download to an existing competitor, or add a new one, right from the Card downloads page. The same handles a wrong hire card — assign the download to whoever actually ran it.

Wrong course or class, after the download has scrolled off screen. Open the download's detail dialog from the history table and use Change class/course to re-check it against the right one, or change the Class (and Course) on the competitor's Details or Result tab. See Downloading cards.

A runner shows Not competing with No start time. They completed the course, but nothing says when they started — the Start unit failed, or they didn't punch it — and the event doesn't guess from the check punch or midnight. Give them a start time: on the download desk's panel straight after the read — type the time, or press Use check punch to start them at their check punch — or any time later from their Result tab, or as a start override on their Overrides tab. If a whole start went unpunched and the check is close enough, you can instead turn the no-start-time fallback on for the event (Starts tab of its Event details) and every such runner is timed from their check punch at once. If the course had no start unit at all, it can take its start from its first control instead: see Starting or finishing at a numbered control.

Typing a time in by hand ​

Which time you type, and where, depends on what is wrong:

  • The start they were meant to have — their Start tab, Allocated start time. This is the start list, not a correction: a start punch can still win over it, depending on On start punch. See Start times.
  • The start they actually had, when the punched or allocated one is wrong — the Overrides tab, Start row, Override. An override beats every other source of a start time.
  • The finish — the Overrides tab, Finish row, Override. Use this when the finish unit misbehaved, or a runner reached the line without punching and you have their time from elsewhere (a radio finish, the finish unit's station memory, a stopwatch).
  • The whole run, when there's no card read at all — a manual download on their Download tab.

Each time override takes a Time of day and an optional reason, and is listed with an Edit button and a × to remove it. The Check row has no time override: a check punch can only be excluded or included.

Editing the punches on a downloaded card ​

The Overrides tab is where you correct what the card says without changing the card itself. It appears once the competitor has a card read, an override already in force, or a race time to adjust; otherwise it says overrides are only available once their card has been downloaded. If their class has a pool of courses and none has been chosen yet, control overrides are disabled until a course is picked on Details or a download arrives.

At the top, a table of Start, Check, Finish and Race time — each with the time the card gave, any override, and its actions. Below it, Punches: one table in course order, every leg of the course with the punch that counted for it, and the card's other punches between them, each with a Status — Included, Excluded, Manual override (a control marked visited), No punch or Not on course. From here you can:

  • Mark visited a leg with No punch, with a reason — and Remove that again.
  • Exclude any punch the card carries, with a reason — and Include it again.
  • Override the start or finish time (above), or the race time (below).
  • Delete all overrides, at the foot of the tab, to put everything back to what the card says.

Hover over the small note icon beside an override to read the reason given. Nothing on this tab changes the card download itself — the Download tab and the Card downloads page still show every punch the chip physically held.

A card that still holds a previous run ​

The runner forgot to clear and check, so their card still holds a previous run. This is the case exclusions exist for. The old punches are still on the chip, and because Manager matches punches to controls in order, it consumes the stale ones first — so every split is wrong, this run's punches pile up as extras, and worse, a leftover Check silently becomes the start of the race while a leftover Finish fabricates a finish time.

Open the competitor's Overrides tab. Every punch the card holds is listed with its time of day, under Punches, alongside the Start / Check / Finish table at the top. Work out which punches belong to the previous run — the times give it away, usually a clean block an hour or more before the real start — and click Exclude on each, choosing a reason (Card not cleared, Punched wrong control, or your own words) if you want one recorded. Everything re-evaluates as you go.

An excluded punch reads exactly as one the card never carried: it's never matched to a control, never produces a split, never counts as an extra. Excluding the Start drops the competitor back to their allocated start time; excluding the Finish leaves them DNF until you enter the real finish time as an override. Excluding a stale punch also stops Manager offering you a "did they run a different class?" suggestion that isn't the real remedy.

Watch the start time after excluding a Start or Check punch. Those two are rungs on the start-time cascade, so removing them hands the start to whatever is next — and if the competitor has no allocated start time either, the cascade runs out. With the no-start-time fallback on, Manager then measures from midnight, which makes the race time equal to the finish punch's time of day (a runner finishing at 08:36 reads as a race time of 516:08) while the status still shows OK — a placing you don't want in your results. Manager flags such a runner (No start punch), but make sure the competitor has an allocated start time, or set a start time override on the same tab. With the fallback switched off, they show as Not competing with No start time instead, so there's no placing to miss.

The reverse can also fool you: if the allocated start happens to match the punch you excluded — common when start times were generated from the punches themselves — the time won't visibly change at all. Check the source label beside the start time on the Result tab (start punch, allocated start, class mass start, event mass start, check punch) rather than the number: it tells you which rung the time actually came from.

Nothing is erased. The Download tab and the Card downloads page still show every punch the chip physically held — the card stays the record of what happened, and the exclusion is your judgement layered on top. Changed your mind? Click Include to put a punch back.

Note: an exclusion is tied to the exact punch on the card it was made against. If you later assign the competitor a different download, exclusions that don't match anything on the new card stop having any effect, and are listed at the bottom of the punches table under No longer on this card so you can clear them out.

Time penalties and time credits ​

A runner should lose time, or get time back — a penalty the jury awarded, or a runner held at a road crossing or by an incident on the course. Open the Overrides tab and, on the Race time row, click Override. Enter the Time adjustment (s) in seconds — positive adds a penalty, negative credits time back — and a Reason, which is required. The dialog shows the New adjusted time before you save.

That adjusted time is what the runner is ranked, exported and published on; the Result tab shows it as Adjusted time beside the clock time. It can only be set on a competitor who has a race time. To take it off, remove it from the same row.

For a delay that affected everyone on a leg — a road crossing, a hold at a bridge — use an untimed leg instead of adjusting each runner.

Lost cards and shared cards ​

A card was lost, so there's nothing to download. Open the competitor and, on the Download tab, click New manual download…. Type in their start, finish and control times — from the finish unit, the station memory or their radio punches — and Save. Manager evaluates it exactly like a card it had read. See Manual downloads.

Two runners went round together on one card. Open the runner who didn't have the card and, on the Download tab, click New manual download…, then pick their partner's download under Copy from a download. Save, and both get the run — the partner's download stays exactly as it was. A manual download can only be made for a runner with no download, so if they also read a card of their own that has nothing of the run on it, unassign or delete that read first. See Manual downloads.

A card number was typed wrong. Correct the Card number on the competitor's Details tab (or with Set card in Quick competitor actions). Everything the card number is the key to follows the correction: a card read waiting unassigned for the new number is assigned to them and scored, radio punches already stored for that card become theirs, and anything the old number put on them — a read, a punched start — is taken back. You don't have to re-read the card.

Two runners swapped cards, so each download landed on the other person. Open each download's detail dialog (click the card number in the history table) and Unassign it, then correct the Card number on both competitors. Each picks up the read of the card they now hold by itself. If a read doesn't attach, the Card downloads page counts it among the cards to assign: open it and Assign it to the right runner. If both ran with the same card at different times, see More than one run on a card.

Note: Assigning a read to somebody who already has one asks first, then takes their old read off them and clears their result. Assigning a card that was on somebody else does the same to them. Manager says so on the Card downloads page, and the released read waits to be assigned again.

Stray radio punches ​

A radio punch is wrong — a unit double-reporting, an official testing a control, a phantom read keeping a card on the On course list. On the Competitors list, the punch shows in the competitor's Last seen chip: Suppress it from there. A suppressed punch is kept and greyed out, is ignored by the Leaderboard and the predicted positions, and can be reinstated at any time. To get rid of a punch outright, delete it — from the trash icon on the competitor's Radio punches tab, or the delete radio punches action in the On course or Pending dialogs. A deleted punch can't be recovered, and the competitor is re-evaluated from the punches left. See Radio punches.

Controls and hardware ​

A control's clock was off — all its punches are shifted. Open the control and set a Time Offset: a + or − correction in hours, minutes and seconds that is added to every punch time it recorded, so a unit running two minutes fast needs − 00:02:00. It's applied to every punch recorded against that control — card downloads and radio punches alike — and retrospectively, so fixing it after downloads have come in re-times the affected punches. Start, Finish and Check controls have the tab too. See Time Offset.

Three places tell you a clock is wrong:

  • For a control with a meshO Control radio, Manager estimates the error from the time each radio punch was stamped against the time it arrived. The Controls page's Clock column shows it, anything over five seconds is highlighted there and raised as a dashboard alert (Control … has a clock error of …), and the control's Clock tab shows the punches behind the figure with a Use suggested offset button that sets the Time Offset for you. Punches that all arrived together after a radio outage say nothing about the clock, so the tab waits for one that arrives on its own before suggesting anything.
  • For any SportIdent unit you can reach with a reader, the Station clock on the Station memory or Station configuration screen shows how far its clock is ahead of or behind this computer (Drift vs PC).
  • On a card, a control whose punch times are out of sequence with the controls either side of it.

Correct the punches with the Time Offset rather than changing the unit's clock part-way through the event — changing the clock leaves the punches already made wrong.

A control unit failed and was swapped for one with a different number. Open the control and set its Replacement code (on the Replacement tab) so punches on the new number count as the original control. See Renumbered or swapped controls.

A control unit died and wasn't replaced. Open the control and mark it Faulty (on the Faulty tab). A faulty control is never required, so competitors aren't penalised with a missing punch for a control that wasn't working — on every course, for downloads already read as well as those still to come. It keeps its place in the course, so splits, exports and analysis still line up with the control numbers on their map. Marking a control faulty clears its replacement code and time offset. See Faulty controls.

The start or finish unit is the one missing. Faulty is for numbered controls only. A course can instead take its start from its first control, or its finish from its last, so the run is timed between those punches: see Starting or finishing at a numbered control. For a few runners whose finish punch is missing, a finish time override is simpler (see Typing a time in by hand).

A control was out of place for some runners only — moved, vandalised, or put out late. Leave the control as it is and approve each affected run by marking the control visited on their Overrides tab, with the reason Control miss-placed.

A radio control stopped reporting, or forwarding dropped. The dashboard's Radio controls tile flags a control that's gone quiet, and the Radio punch forwarding tile shows whether punches are still being forwarded. Punches the radio missed still arrive with the card download, and a unit's own memory can be read afterwards — see Recovering missed punches.

The computer running the event failed. If a live standby is following the event, press Take over the event on it and work through its handover list. Without one, restore the newest backup on another computer and resume it; see If the event is already live.

The course and the start ​

A leg that should not count ​

A leg has to be taken out of the timing — a road crossing runners must walk, a dangerous leg the jury voids, a hold at a marshalled crossing. Open Event data → Legs, click the leg (the pair of controls), and set an Untimed time in minutes and seconds. On every card download, each runner's time for that leg is reduced by up to that amount: a runner who took less than the allowance loses the whole leg from their race time, and one who took longer keeps only the excess. To void a leg completely, give it an allowance longer than anybody took on it.

Worth knowing:

  • The allowance belongs to the leg, not the course, so it applies to every course that runs between those two controls.
  • It applies only where the runner punched both ends of the leg.
  • It is applied to card downloads only. Live radio results — the Leaderboard and the projected times — are not adjusted.
  • Changing it re-scores the cards already read.

A start that was interrupted ​

The start was held up, or the whole programme has to move. What to change depends on how far the start has got:

  • Before anyone has started — open the Start list tab of Starts and use Actions → Move all start times… to move every individual start later or earlier. Mass starts and the course closure stay where they are; change those separately. See Moving every start time.
  • Part-way through the start — Move all start times refuses once the first competitor has gone. Move the rest of a class on the Manage starts screen, change a class's mass start on the class, or give individual runners new times on their Start tab. Runners who already started keep their times.
  • Runners who were sent off late — at an event with punching starts their start punch already records when they really went. Otherwise give each the start they actually had as a start time override on their Overrides tab.
  • Runners stopped on the course — credit the time they lost back with a race time adjustment.

Start lists you've already printed or published don't move with the change; reprint and re-publish them.

Bulk and admin fixes ​

Marking all the no-shows DNS at the end. On the Competitors page, open Actions and choose Set competitors DNS…. Choose which statuses to sweep — None (never turned up) and On course (no radio punches) (an allocated start, but nothing — no radio start punch, start station read or radio control — saw them go) — and which classes. The dialog counts how many will be set to Did Not Start before you click Set DNS. Anyone who checked in and hasn't come back is always left out, for you to rule on one by one. This is the tidy-up that clears the On course count once you're sure everyone's accounted for. Once the check or start unit's memory has been read, No record of starting on the Station memory screen is a more exact list of non-starters. See Safety check.

Finishing the event with people unsettled. Finish event checks first. If anybody has no settled result, Event not finalised lists them with the buttons that settle them in bulk — Set competitors DNS…, Set competitors overtime… for runners a radio control or the check saw go out, and Set radio finishes DNF or overtime… for runners whose only result is a radio finish. See Settling everyone first.

Adding a late entry after the event has started. Classes and courses stay editable mid-event, so a late entry is a new competitor. Add them from Quick competitor actions on the dashboard or from the Competitors list, give them a class (and card), and they're in — a card they have already read, or radio punches it has already made, are picked up as soon as their card number is entered. See Late entries.

Someone turns up after you've finished the event. Open the event and click Restart event in the app bar. It goes live again, so you can download their card and correct the result, then finish it a second time. This works on any later day too, and the late download gives the same result it would have on the day. See Restarting an event you've already finished.

Who changed this? Every fix on this page is recorded. The competitor's Audit trail tab, and the event's Audit trail screen, show what was changed, when, and from which computer. See Audit trail.