How to Test your Award Before it Opens
It is important that admin users take time to thoroughly test awards before opening them for entry. Testing the award via the entrant interface is the best method, but opening the award to create test entries can introduce the risk that an entrant may find the form and attempt to enter prematurely. To avoid this, you can safely test the award by creating a new entry for yourself or members of your admin team. A new, unsubmitted entry will be created in your account, enabling you to access the entry form.
You will need to log into your entrant account and edit the entry from the Dashboard. Additionally, the Submission date on the Awards set-up page must be set in the future for submission to be possible. Ensure that a number greater than 0 is entered in the “Show entries for” field on the Award settings page.
How to Create a New Test Entry
- Login into the Admin Interface
- Navigate to the Entry Creation Tool – The tool can now be accessed in two ways:
- Via Control Centre: Go to the left-hand menu and select Control Centre > Entry Creation Tool.
- Via the Entrants or Organisations pages: Click the “…” (action menu) next to a user or organisation, and choose Entry Creation Tool from the dropdown options.
- Once the Entry Creation Tool is opened, select which Award you want to create a test entry for
- Select which Organisation and Recipient (user that belongs to the selected organisation) you want to create the entry as
- Set the Number of Entries to Create – Specify the number of new entries you wish to create.
- Select the Recipient
Choose the recipient within the organisation whose account the entries will be created in. - Click on Create Entries – Once clicked, the specified number of entries will be created within the chosen account. An email notification will be sent to the user, containing the organisation/createEntries template.
- entries created this way can be found in the Entries section of the award that was selected, and appear as Unsubmitted. If you wish to submit them for testing purposes you can transition them as Submitted directly from the Entries page of the award if it does not contain any Required questions. Differently from that, you will have to click the … icon and click on Edit, fill the form as required and submit.
New Entrant/Preview Option
In addition to the Create New Entries feature, the Entrant/Preview Option allows you to preview the entrant interface and ensure that everything is working as expected before the award opens for public entry.
- To access this option, select Preview on the Award Settings page.
- This will show you exactly what the entrant will experience, allowing you to test the form without needing to submit an actual entry.
Note: Admin users will need to create an entrant user organisation to issue entries, enabling them to test the process.