Step by Step – Event Rollover

Many mass participation events are held on an annual basis and one of the most important tasks each year for Administrators is the “Event Rollover”. This is the process of setting up your event for the next year, normally based on using the setup from the last edition and then modifying to suit. Fortunately, Director has excellent cloning tools to make the event rollover process as smooth as possible.

When it comes time to setup your new event, you have a choice of using Director’s cloning tools to create a copy of another event setup to use as the basis for your new event … or you can go ahead and set it up from fresh.

If you want to start fresh with a blank canvas, see the separate Step by Step guide for “Create a New Registration Form”.

There are four parts to the Director Event Rollover and its important to do them in the correct order:

1. Create the Store (by cloning an existing Store)
2. Create the Event (by cloning an existing Event)
3. Create the Registration & Merchandise Products (by cloning existing Products)
4. Modify the Store setup

Step 1: Create the Store

1. Go to My “Stores”: menu: Stores -> My Stores
2. Click the Add New button
3. In the Create a Store dialog, give your store a new and choose a meaningful Short Code. Remember the Short Code is used in the URL so it will be widely seen. We recommend using the event property short code followed by the year. So, for the 2019 Big City Marathon, it might be “bigcitymarathon2019“.
4. Next, click the Create Type toggler to the “Clone from Existing …” setting.
5. You’ll now see a drop down list of all previous Stores (both open/current and older ones). Select the store for last year’s event from the list.
   For Advanced Users: if you have another store that you think it a better fit for your new event, feel free to select that instead.
6. Once you submit the form, the Store will be cloned and you’ll arrive in the Store Dashboard. We’ll come back here in Step 4 to tidy up.

Step 2: Create the Event

1. Go to “My Events”: menu: Registrations -> My Events
2. Click the Add New button
3. In the Create an Event dialog, enter the event name, date and edition. We recommend the event name begins with the year and we strongly recommend that the Edition is set to the year the event is being held in. So, as an example, if we are doing a rollover of the Big City Marathon from 2019 to 2020, we would use the event name “2020 Big City Marathon” and set edition to “2020“.
4. Next, click the Create Type toggler to the “Clone from Existing …” setting.
5. You’ll now see a drop down list of all Events you have in the system going back up to two years. Select the most recent edition of your Event.
   For Advanced Users: if you have another event that you think it a better fit for your new event, feel free to select that instead.
6. In the Associated Store drop down list, select the Store we just created in Step 1 above.

We now find ourselves in the Event Dashboard for the new event. We have some work do in here.

1. If you are planning to use the Director results module, you can upload a new event image (jpeg 1200 x 250) here. The same image as your store header would probably be fine.
2. Chances are, you wont need to make any changes on the Races or Questions tabs … the settings from last year will work in many cases.
3. If you are using Director’s automated bib numbering system (which you should – it’s awesome) then you will definitely want to go into the Bib Numbering tab. The clone process will copy the bib numbering sets from last year so you should check those. Sometimes, bib numbering ranges can get a bit out of control as an event gets close and extra ranges are quickly added to meet demand. Now’s the time to tidy those up, consolidate them with your primary ranges and delete any patchy work from last time.
4. Finally, it’s important to understand that Filters are not copied in the Clone process. So in the Questions tab (maybe) and the Bib Numbering tag (almost certainly) you’ll need to add back in any filtering that you were using. Filtering is essential in bib numbering as you will almost certainly have one bib number range for 21k, one for 10k, etc.

Step 3: Create the Products

Important! In this step, you can copy a single product (your primary registration product) or you can copy many, it just depends on how your event is setup. Some events will have multiple registration products. For example, you might have one product for individual entry and one for team entry, or you might have one product for marathon, one for half marathon, etc. Most events will also have at least one – and probably more than one – merchandise products that are specific to the event (e.g. Event t-shirt).

Repeat this process once for each Product you need to clone …

1. Go to “Products & SKUs” page: menu: Stores -> Products & SKUs
2. Click the Add New button
3. In the Create a Product dialog, enter the product name. We recommend the name begins with the year the event is being held in. So, as an example (using the 2019 Big City Marathon), for you might have individual entry in the 2019 Big City Marathon – Individual Entry” product (a Registration product) and you might have the event t-shirt in the product “2019 Big City Marathon – Event T-shirt” (a Merchandise product).
4. In the Associated Event drop down list, select the Event we just created in Step 2 above.
   
   We now find ourselves in the Product Editor for the new product. We have some work do in here.
   
   Important!
   The Clone process will copy not just the Product, but also the SKUs – and any SKU Items and SKU Pricing Bands that were attached to those SKUs. What’s more, the Clone process will attempt to link any Races attached to the SKU Items to your new event (by matching on Race Short Code) and will adjust the Pricing Band date ranges based on the number of days difference between the old and new events.
   
   Pretty cool huh? But you need to check and validate that all of these transformations have taken place exactly like you wanted them.
   
5. On the main “Product” tab, there isn’t really anything to do. The description field isn’t used for Registration products so you only need to tweak it if you are copying a Merchandise item.
6. On the SKUs tab, we have a copy of all the SKUs from the source product. Almost all of the properties of these SKUs will be identical to the source product except;
   • the sales count will be set to zero
   • the stock on hand count will be set to null
   • the “is active” flag is always switched ON
7. It’s very important for Registration type Products that you check the SKU Items for each and every SKU to make sure they are correct (Merchandise type products should not have any SKU Items). You can get to the SKU Items from the Actions drop-down button next to the SKU. For the vast majority of Registration SKUs, there will only be one SKU Item. This means that a purchase of that SKU will result in a registration for the race specified in the SKU Item. If this is a family entry or a series pass then you may more SKU Items in this screen. The Clone process will attempt to adjust the SKU Items to match the new event and for simple SKUs that should work well.
8. Finally, you then need to check the SKU Pricing Bands for each and every SKU to make sure they are correct. Its possible – perhaps even likely – that you might be increasing the price of your entry fees or merchandise items each year. If you are, you’ll definitely need to edit the pricing bands to set the new fees. For registration products, you’ll also want to check any price break dates (like when earlybird fees end or late fees begin) to make sure they are correct. Director will try to match them up based on the new event date … but you’ll still want to check.

Step 4: Update Store Setup

To finish up, head over to Store Dashboard. On the menu select Stores -> My Stores then click on the dashboard icon next to your new store.

1. On the Store Details tab, check the store open and close dates. Director has chosen default dates for you but you’ll certainly want to change the Store Close Date. We suggest setting it to the event date + 7 days for now. Remember you can always close your store at any time using the Force Close toggle. Plus, the actual entry categories available at any particular time for new entrants are set by the SKU Pricing Bands.
2. On the Store Contents tab, you need to edit each of the products listed there and select the new products that you created in Step 3 above. If you didn’t create a new product because you are not planning to sell that particular item this year, you can delete the store content item. You may have some merchandise or admin products which haven’t changed at all, in which case those lines can stay as is.
3. Chances are, you won’t need to make any changes on the Payment Methods or Documents tab. But you will want to check the contents of your documents and update any information that is in there (on the menu, go to Setup -> Documents).

Launch!

We’re done, all that’s left is to hit the big red button on Store Dashboard to “Launch Store” and check our work.

End-to-end Testing: For most administrators, following the process through to the Checkout will be enough. However, if you really want to test your setup end-to-end, you can enable the ecom test payment method on Store Dashboard -> Payment Methods. Click the ADD button and select the test payment method from the list – be sure to enable it for standard checkout. Then, when you get to the checkout, you can complete the process by using the Test Payment button. To use the test payment method, enter a credit card number of 4111111111111111 (4 and 15 1s) plus any future expiry date and any 3 digits for the CVV. This will return a success message and then you can be redirected to the Director success page.

Important! Test registrations will be billed to your account, so be sure you only do one or two. There is no need to do one every time you tweak the system as you can run almost the entire test without completing the checkout and you can use an existing registration to review changes to the e-ticket, success page, etc.