Many teams in the southern states have already begun registration for 2016, while teams in central and northern America still have registration to look forward to. This year SwimTopia added a new registration locking feature to help teams avoid overbooking and impose their registration limits.
Registration Locking and Countdown Timer
Some teams have a limited quantity of available spots or items that are selected throughout the registration process. We’ve created a registration locking system that blocks the selection of restricted items during the registration process once limits are met. These items include:
- Overall spots available on the team*
- Age group limited spots*
- Job/shift assignments
- Season-long role assignments
- Merchandise with quantity limits
*You can read more about setting registration limits in this Help Center article.
If your team places limits on any of the above items, parents can lock in their claim to those items as they complete each section of the registration process. If a parent reserves the last item, that item will not be available to other parents.
After parents add any limited items to their registration and click the green “Next Step” button at the bottom of the form, they have 15 minutes to complete each subsequent step in the registration. The 15 minute countdown timer restarts after each step of the registration process.
If registration forms are still open after 15 minutes of inactivity, parents are forced back to the first page of the registration, and any limited quantity items they signed up for are removed. For example, if there are registration limits, then all athletes affected by those registration limits are removed. However, if there are no registration limits, the athlete registration will NOT be removed, but other limited items (like job/shift assignments) will be removed. If there’s been no activity for 15 minutes, then the system times out, and the spots that were being held are immediately opened.
Team Administrators are able to watch the limited item counts in real time as parents complete each section of their registration form.
What to do When You Hit Your Registration Limits: Managing Waitlists
Many of our teams have used SwimTopia to manage waitlists once registration limits have been met.
When setting up your registration limits, you have the option of adding a “Registration Limit Message.” This message will be shown when either the overall registration limit or any of the age-group limits have been reached. In this message you would include a link to a private waitlist registration form.
To set up your waitlist form, create a separate, private, registration form that only collects contact information. Waitlisted parents usually are not expected to sign up for volunteer shifts or pay a fee (although if you wanted to collect a waitlist fee, you could), so you would disable the other sections of the form.
If you find you have spots available after your main registration period is closed, you’ll mark your main registration form as private and adjust your entry limits (if needed). You can then invite the top waitlisted parents to register with a link to the private “main” registration form to capture all their information and payment. You can see more detailed information on setting up a waitlist in this Help Center article.
