Creating and Setting Up a New Meet
Team Admins create meets using the shared pool catalogue. Choose any listed facility and configuration; ask a Site Owner to add or correct one when needed.
Pools and staffing templates
A configuration describes the pool setup and has a staffing template: roles, quantities and optional per-lane multipliers. Team Admins can inspect this shared setup, while Site Owners add and edit pools, configurations and template quantities.
Creating the meet
Give the meet a name, pool and dates — its Meet start date and, for a meet over several days, its Meet end date (leave the end date blank for a one-day meet). Add optional details such as a sanction number, parent notes, what to bring, and when sign-ups open and close. Officials can't sign up before the opening time, or sign up or cancel after the closing time. Leave the opening time blank to open as soon as the meet goes live; leave the closing time blank to close when the first session starts. Choose how assignments work:
- First come: sign-ups can claim open roles immediately.
- Requested roles: officials request roles and you place them.
- Availability: officials offer sessions, optionally with preferences, and you assign roles.
The call for volunteers
The call for volunteers is the email that tells officials sign-ups are open. Each official sees the jobs they're qualified for. It only goes to officials who can sign up for this meet under its access policy, have an account, and qualify for at least one job the meet needs. Under “Call for volunteers” on the meet's form, choose how it goes out:
- Automatically when sign-ups open: it goes out by itself when sign-ups open. Deck Plan checks every 15 minutes, so it can arrive up to about 15 minutes after the opening time. If sign-ups close before it goes out, it isn't sent.
- “I'll press the button” (the default for new meets): nothing is sent until you press Send call for volunteers on the meet's page while sign-ups are open.
Nobody gets the call twice. Pressing Send call for volunteers again emails only officials who haven't had it yet, such as someone who qualified or joined since, and tells you how many it reached. If the email service refused some emails, pressing it again retries them (up to three tries each). An email the service didn't confirm either way isn't sent again, because it may already have arrived. If the email service itself has a problem, the call pauses and picks up where it left off on the next 15-minute check (or when you press the button again). For a meet whose call went out before Deck Plan recorded who got it, the button is greyed out with “Everyone eligible was emailed on …”, because sending again would email those people twice; use Send a message instead.
Priority window meets: invited clubs (and the host and co-hosts) get the call first. With the automatic setting, a second call goes out when the priority window ends, only to officials from the other clubs who can now sign up. With the button setting, press Send call for volunteers after the window ends to reach them. Either way, nobody who already had the call gets it again.
Like Edit meet details, only host-club admins and the meet's designated Meet Manager can send the call (including Open sign-ups now + send the call) or change this setting. Other managers can still use List meet.
Editing meet details
Use “Edit meet details” at the top of the meet's management page to change its name, dates, sanction number, message to parents, what to bring, sign-up opening and closing times, how volunteers are assigned, and how the call for volunteers goes out. Host-club admins and the meet's designated Meet Manager can do this; other granted managers and co-host admins can't (unless they are the Meet Manager). A locked meet must be unlocked first.
- The pool is fixed once the meet is created. To run a session as a different setup of the same pool, use “Change pool setup” on that session (see below).
- How volunteers are assigned locks as soon as anyone has signed up or been placed, so existing sign-ups are never stranded.
- Moving the meet's dates: if the meet keeps the same number of days (say it moves a week later), tick “Also move … with the meet” (it's ticked for you) and every session moves by the same number of days at the same times. Any other change — making the meet shorter, for example — can't leave a session outside the new dates: you'll see which sessions are in the way, so change or delete those first. Widening the dates just saves.
- Moving the closing time into the past closes sign-ups to officials straight away.
Saving never emails anyone. If you change something officials see (the name, dates, sign-up times, message to parents or what to bring), the management page offers to open Send a message with a draft summarising the changes. You still choose who gets it and preview it before it sends.
Important dates
The meet's management page lists its key dates in time order, in Toronto time: when sign-ups open and close, when the call for volunteers went out (or how it will), when a priority window ends, each session, the day-before reminder emails, and when the grid was published or the meet locked. Upcoming dates say how far away they are (“in 3 days”); past ones say when they happened (“closed Oct 20”). A sign-up time that isn't set reads “Not set”: with no opening time, sign-ups open as soon as the meet is open; with no closing time, sign-ups close when the first session starts. Reminder emails go out the morning before each session date, to officials placed in a role, once the grid is published (or straight away for a first-come meet); until then the card says they start once the grid is published. The card only shows dates; change them with “Edit meet details”.
Listing or opening the meet
A new meet starts as a Draft that officials can't see. When it's ready, use one of the two buttons at the top of its page:
- List meet: officials can see it now and sign-ups open by themselves at the “Sign-ups open” time. Set a future opening time first in Edit meet details. Listing doesn't send the call for volunteers; with the automatic setting it goes out when sign-ups open.
- Open sign-ups now + send the call: sign-ups open straight away and the call for volunteers is emailed to eligible officials, whichever call setting the meet has.
After that the status follows the dates. Close sign-ups now, Reopen sign-ups and Open sign-ups now change those dates for you; they don't offer to message officials. Meet status.
Adding sessions
Add sessions with their dates, times and pool configurations. Each session's date must fall within the meet's dates (the date picker starts on the meet's start date); to add a session on another day, change the meet's dates first. A meet needs its dates and at least one session before it can be listed or opened. Staffing is seeded from the configuration template; changing one session's staffing doesn't rewrite the reusable template. Add club jobs where needed.
Editing a session changes its scheduling details. To run it as a different pool setup, use “Change pool setup” on the session's Edit page (see below) — you don't need to delete and re-add the session. Deleting a session removes its associated work, so inspect existing sign-ups and assignments first.
Staffing roles by pool end
Some pools are staffed from both ends — for example, Inspectors of Turns working the far end (the bulkhead) while everyone else works the near end. A Site Owner can turn this on for a configuration: tick “Staff roles by pool end” and name the two ends (the defaults are “Start End” and “Turn End”; a club can rename them, e.g. “Shallow End” and “Deep End (Bulkhead)”).
Once a configuration has named ends, each row of its staffing template gets a checkbox for each end. Tick the end(s) a role works at and its quantity becomes per end — e.g. 8 Inspectors of Turns ticked at both ends seeds 8 at the Start End and 8 at the Turn End. Leave both boxes unticked and the role floats, unrelated to either end, exactly as before. A role at an end can also have a few extra “Relief” slots (renameable, e.g. “Spare/Relief”) — a small floating pool for that role that isn't tied to either end.
Editing a configuration's ends or template — including turning ends on or off, renaming them, or changing a role's quantity — never changes a session already set up with it. A session only picks up those changes when a manager uses “Change pool setup” on that session and either re-applies its current setup or switches to another one.
Changing or re-applying a session's pool setup
From the session's Edit page, “Change pool setup” lets a manager run the session as another configuration of the same pool, or re-apply its current configuration to pick up a template edit made since the session was set up. Choosing a setup shows a confirmation before anything is saved:
- Who's already placed and whether their slot's label or end changes — nobody already placed is ever removed by this.
- Which roles' quantities change, including a role dropping to zero or a new one appearing.
- How many open slots are added or removed.
- For a first-come meet, anyone waiting who will be placed into new capacity.
People whose slot is only relabelled or moved to a different end are not emailed — the confirmation says so on a published meet. Someone the manager moves afterwards on the board gets the usual single assignment email. Anyone promoted off the waiting list into new capacity is emailed, as any first-come placement would be. This action is blocked once a meet is locked.
Someone contacted you directly
Use the management page's on-behalf sign-up action to mark an existing official available for a session. This adds them to the board's candidate pool rather than assigning a specific slot.
Deleting a meet
Host-club admins can delete an unlocked meet. This permanently removes its sessions, sign-ups and placements. A delegated manager cannot use this action. Locked meets must remain intact until unlocked.