Managing Competition Officials

Overview

Every competition needs a staff beyond the primary admin: adjudicators to judge, a scrutineer to confirm recalls and placements, a deck captain to check competitors in, an emcee to run the floor, and sometimes a co-organizer to help manage the event. This page explains how to add people to those roles, who is allowed to do it, and how removal works.

Who Can Manage Officials

Only the primary admin — the account that originally created the competition — can add or remove officials. Co-organizers cannot, even though they can help manage most other parts of the competition. This is not a setting you can change; it's a fixed limit on the Officials page itself.

If you're a co-organizer and need an official added or removed, ask the primary admin to do it.

Key Concepts

Officials don't need an account first

Add an official by email address, whether or not they already use the platform. The system looks up the address you enter:

• If an account exists, that person is added to the role straight away.
• If no account exists, one is created for them with the right role, and an invitation email goes out with a link to set a password.

Either way the official is on your competition immediately — you don't wait for them to accept.

Note: Studio accounts can't be added as officials. Use the individual's personal account instead.

Invited officials start with a placeholder name

Someone invited by email hasn't told us their name yet, so the system gives them a temporary one made from an adjective and a dance — "Feisty Waltz", "Snappy Rumba" — picked so no two officials at your competition share the same one. It's a stand-in that keeps them identifiable in lists and assignment grids until they sign in and enter their real name.

The invitation link is valid for 30 minutes. If it expires before they get to it, they can request a new one at any time using Forgot Password on the sign-in page.

Ask your officials to watch for the email and complete their profile promptly. Parts of the system rely on an official's full name, so the sooner a real name replaces the placeholder, the better. The Officials page shows a warning while anyone on your competition is still missing a name, including how many and in which roles.

One role per competition, per person

A person can hold exactly one official role on a given competition at a time. The roles are:

• Owner (primary admin)
• Organizer (co-organizer)
• Adjudicator
• Scrutineer
• Deck Captain
• Emcee

These are mutually exclusive — for example, someone who is already your competition's scrutineer can't also be added as an adjudicator for the same competition. If you try, the system will reject it. To change someone's role, remove them from their current role first, then add them again in the new one.

The same person can hold different roles at different competitions without any conflict.

Adding is immediate — there's nothing to accept

There's no accept or decline step, for existing accounts or invited ones. As soon as you save, that person holds the role on your competition, and it appears on their dashboard the next time they sign in. An invited official holds the role even before they've opened the email.

Because it takes effect immediately, double-check the email address and role before saving. A typo in the address will now create an account at the wrong address rather than simply failing, so it's worth a second look.

Adding an Official

Steps

1. Open the competition and go to the Officials page.
2. Click New Official.
3. Enter the official's User Email. If they already have an account, use the address they registered with; otherwise use the address you want the invitation sent to.
4. Select their Role: Adjudicator, Deck Captain, Emcee, Organizer, or Scrutineer.
5. Click Save.

The new official appears on the Officials page immediately, and you can filter the list by role using the filter menu at the top of the page. If the address didn't match an existing account, they'll appear under their placeholder name until they sign in and set their own.

Note: The Owner role isn't available from this form — it reflects the account that created the competition and isn't assigned through this flow.

Removing an Official

Steps

1. Open the competition's Officials page.
2. Find the official's card and select Remove.
3. Confirm the removal in the dialog that appears.

Officials who can't be removed

Once an adjudicator has been assigned to judge a round on the competition's schedule, they can no longer be removed — even if the round hasn't started or they haven't submitted any marks yet. This protects the scoring records tied to that assignment.

If you try to remove an official in this state, the removal will fail and you'll see an error. To free them up, you'd need to reassign the round to someone else first; if the round has already been judged, the assignment — and the official — generally can't be removed at all. Contact support if you run into this and aren't sure how to proceed.

Officials who haven't been assigned to any round yet (including adjudicators newly added but not yet scheduled) can be removed with no restriction.

Where to Find This

Organizers manage officials from the competition's Officials page (in the Competition section of the management sidebar). Assigning an already-added adjudicator to specific events or rounds is a separate step, done from the Event Assignments and Round Assignments pages under Adjudicator Assignments.