All changes to PhotoEntry are recorded in the Changelog.

PhotoEntry uses the following entities:

The following is a good order to perform initial setup. You can always go back and add/change things. We recommend you leave creating Users to last though, because each User will receive an email as they are created and it is better to have a working configuration in place first.

1. You should have an email with your initial access details. Log on using these, and you will be prompted to change your password.
2. Click on Options and ensure they are set appropriately.
3. Click on Classes to create the Classes that you require.
4. Click on Categories to create the Categories that you require.
5. The next step is to create Competition Groups.
6. Within each Competition Group, now create the individual Competitions.
7. Within each Competition Group, create any Series that are required. This step could be left until later, but it would be wise to ensure that you do not need to fundamentally alter the Competition Group or Category structures before letting Users on.
8. You are now ready to create the first Users.

In various parts of the configuration you specify whether something is Active or Inactive. Active items are visible to all Users, whereas Inactive items are not. Use this when setting up, for example, a new Competition Group that you don't want Users to see until you have finished configuring it.

For Users it has a more specific meaning. If you delete a User, everything to do with that User is removed. This could affect the results of Series competitions. It is generally better to mark Users Inactive if they have entered into Competitions. Inactive Users cannot login.

Yes. The names of entities (Classes, Users, Competitions, etc) are purely for display purposes. All the internal linkages are done using hidden fields that you do not see.

The following Options are available:

If you select that a Competition is graded (rather than scored), the following grades are available. The choice of grades is fixed and cannot be customised:

• First
• Second
• Third
• Highly Commended
• Commended
• Selected
• Not Selected
• Disqualified

If you have not yet graded an Entry the grade will show as blank.

These are simply the Classes that you divide Users into. Examples might be Club, Intermediate and Advanced.

Categories serve a specific purpose within PhotoEntry: they allow a User to be in a different Class for each Category. Do not try to use Categories for other purposes!

You will have a pre-defined Category of "All Competitions". There are only two reasons to change this:

• If you allow a User to be in a different Class for e.g. Print and PDI, then create Categories of Print and PDI, and delete the All Competitions Category. Then assign each Competition to ether Print or PDI category.
• If some of your Competitions are run by Class, but others are not run by Class, then create a Category of e.g. Classless, and a Class of e.g. All Users. Assign your classless Competitions to the Classless category. Then ensure that all Users are in the All Users Class for the Classless Category.

Before creating Categories consider the following:

• For each User, you will need to specify which Class they are in for each Category. Additional Categories means additional maintenance of Users.
• When you define a Series you do not have to include all of the Competitions in it. In the above example, you might define a Series called Print Series and only include the Print Competitions in it. There is no need to define a Category merely for this purpose.

The two main reasons for creating Competition Groups are to group all Competitions for a season (e.g. 2016-17 Club Competitions), or for a specific event (e.g. 2016 Exhibition). Bear in mind the following:

• Every Competition must belong to one Competition Group.
• Users see the Competitions within a Competition Group ordered by Close Date.
• Users can view all of their Entries within a Competition Group on one page.
• Series competitions only work within a specified Competition Group.
• You can optionally specify a maximum number of Entries that a User may make across all Competitions within a Competition Group.
• You can optionally specify a maximum number of Entries that a User may make across all Competitions within a Competition Group that have the same Close Date.

The following Competition Group attributes can be set.

From the Main Menu, click on the Competition Groups button, and select the required Competition Group. Then underneath "Select a Competition" click "New...". Alternatively, if you already have a Competition (in that Competition Group) with most of the settings you want, you can clone it: click on the existing Competition, alter the fields you want to including the Competition Name, then click Create New Competition.

The following Competition attributes can be set. Note that you do not require a separate Competition for each Class.

Further buttons appear after the list of attributes according to the Competition State. There then follows a summary of all the Entries for the Competition. If it is in the Closed or Judged state, you will also be able to enter/amend scores/grades.

From the Main Menu, click on the Competition Groups button, and select the required Competition Group. Then click on "Series Competitions", then on "New...".

Series work in the following way:

• Each Series works within a Competition Group.
• Series are re-calculated on the fly from the underlying Competition data. You may add, modify or delete Series at any time without losing any data.
• You select the Competitions that comprise the Series, and specify how many Entries (Maximum Entries) from each Competition may be considered. Setting that to zero excludes that Competition from the Series.
• A Series option MaxPerAuthor can be set. This is for use in inter-club scenarios when the Competition attribute "Separate Author Field Required" has been set. Do not set this unless your Competitions have Author enabled! By default it is 0 (no limit). If it is set, then within each component Competition, only MaxPerAuthor entries from the same Author will be considered. Author names are matched using a case-insensitive comparison, and any entries without an Author are excluded. Note that the Author field is free-format, so "F Bloggs" in one Entry will not match "Fred Bloggs" in another.
• For scored Competitions, the raw scores are used. For graded Competitions, you may specify what score value to use for each grade.
• You may assign a weighting factor to the first and subsequent Entries from each Competition. This allows you to, for example, take the full value of the highest score and half the value of the next highest score from a Competition. A weight of 100 is neutral, 50 will halve the score, 200 will double it, etc.
• From the candidate weighted scores from all of the Competitions, the top "Normal Entries" scores are then selected. For example if you had 2 Entries from each of 4 Competitions, you could then select the best 6. Weighting factors for the first Normal Entry, remaining Normal Entries, and Tie Break Entries may be specified. These weightings are applied across the sorted list of entries from all competitions.
• The calculations are performed, and if there is a tie for first place, the additional scores are added in one at a time up to a maximum of "Tie-Break Entries". Setting Tie-Break Entries to the same value as Normal Entries effectively disables this.
• Each Series may be By-Class, or Not-By-Class. If Not-By-Class, the processing is exactly as described above. If the Series is By-Class, the processing is performed once for each Class.
• Whenever a User submits an Entry, their Class at that time is recorded against the Entry. This means that if you re-calculate a Series from an earlier season, the results should still be correct, even if that User has now moved to a different Class.

Note that if you move a User from one Class to another during a Season (or whatever time period the Series covers) their Entries that contribute to a By-Class Series will be split across the Classes. If you need to retrospectively change the Class that an Entry was submitted for there is a Change Class button alongside each Entry.

To calculate the results of a Series, go into the definition of that Series, and click on "Calculate Series Results". This will give you two tables for a Not-By-Class Series, and two tables for each Class for a By-Class Series:

• The first table shows the interim working results for each Competition. Scores in black are those being considered, and the scores in red have been discarded.
• The second table shows the final results. The black scores from the first table have been selected and ranked. The number of columns will be between "Normal Entries" and "Tie-Break Entries" depending on whether additional scores (shown in red) have been included to try to resolve tie-breaks. The rows are totalled and sorted.

You can choose whether to allow Users to view the results of each Series.

From the Main Menu, click on the "Users" button, then click on "New...". Note that completing this section will generate an email to the User containing their access details.

The following attributes are available:

It is possible for a User to have multiple PhotoEntry accounts with different Organisations, but to use the same email address. It is also possible for two different Users to have individual PhotoEntry accounts with a shared email address.

Users now have a User ID and an Email Address. If the Email Address is left blank, the User ID must be a valid email address - all existing User accounts were migrated to this format.

To specify a separate email address for a User: change their User ID to the new ID format (alphanumerics and spaces), and enter their email address in the Email Address field. User IDs must be unique throughout PhotoEntry, but the same email address can be associated with multiple User IDs.

Impersonation allows an Administrator to "pretend" to be another User. During impersonation:

• Competitions behave as though they are Open. This allows an Administrator to adjust Entries after a Competition has Closed but without re-Opening it to Users. Adjustments could include changing a title, deleting an inadmissible Entry, or even creating a new Entry for that User.
• Inactive Competition Groups and Competitions will be visible.
• You will not have access to your normal administrative functions. They will be reinstated when you cancel the impersonation.
• You can use the "Show Your Entries in the Group" button to easily review a User's Entries. This can be useful if you suspect the User may have already submitted an Image earlier in the season.

You start impersonation by going to the User maintenance screen and clicking "Impersonate User". Impersonation is cancelled by clicking on the "Cancel Impersonation" link in the navigation bar.

This answer describes the general process for downloading entries. If you are using an integrated projection software package, please also see the Integration section.

In PhotoEntry version 36.0, the download mechanism was enhanced to:

• provide many more ways to select which Entries are included in the download
• allow processing of Images during download, such as adding watermarks, resizing, and stripping metadata
• specify the format of the image filenames within the zip file
• store the download information in a new Download Centre
• automatically email the links to nominated email addresses

This now replaces the old Top Images emails with a more flexible and robust mechanism.

Each Zip Format now includes the selection and processimg options, as well as the rules for constructing the image filenames within the zip file.

If you have not yet defined any formats, two Default Formats will be created as you display this page. The first is suitable for many types of Competition where you wish to download Images for projection, but you may remove or change it as you wish. The second is suitable for downloading a set of top-scoring Images to be published on a website. A sample of the filename format is displayed beside each Format.

Clicking on a format name will allow you to see the detail of that format. You may edit the format, and either update it (click on Update Zip Format) or create a new format by changing its name, etc and clicking on Create New Zip Format. You may also delete the format completely. If you delete the last format, and do not create any more, the default formats will be created the next time you try to download a zip file.

The following fields are available and will be used in the order shown on the screen. Note that fields will be separated by an underscore (_) where appropriate. Fields that do not have a value (e.g. "Author" when no Author value has been set for the Entry) will have the word "null" in the filename.

Finally just click the Generate button beside the format that you wish to use. After the download has been generated you will be taken to the Download Centre.

The steps are:

PhotoEntry version 11 introduced support for projecting print Competitions. If you enable Presentation Sequence on a Competition, PhotoEntry will assign a random 4-digit sequence number to each Entry in that Competition. Users should be instructed to write the sequence numbers on the back of their physical prints before bringing them along to the actual Competition.

To prepare the images for projection, set the Competition status to Closed, then click on "Download Entries Zip File". At this point you should ensure that you have a Zip Format which includes Presentation Sequence as the first field in the filename. For example:

• Class name, Slash, Presentation Sequence, User's Full Name, Entry Title, Image Number (for a Competition judged by Class)
• Presentation Sequence, User's Full Name, Entry Title, Image Number (for a Competition not judged by Class)

Once downloaded, the images will all then be in a single directory ordered by Presentation Sequence, and can be projected using any standard photo viewer that preserves filename order. (Do ensure that you are using one that supports colour management though. In particular the default Windows 10 photo viewer does not apply colour profiles!).

As prints arrive on the night, sort them by Presentation Sequence (within Class if appropriate). Delete any digital images where the physical print does not materialise. You should then be able to project images in the same order that the physical prints are displayed.

Exactly how you should respond will depend on your own club's agreement with its members. PhotoEntry provides a Forget User capability that can aid you in fulfilling the request. Although you could simply delete the User from PhotoEntry, this will change the result of any Series that the User's Entries had contributed to. Forget User works by overwriting the User's personal data, while retaining their Entries.

Forget User performs the following operations on the User record:

• Clears User First Name, Email Address, Distinctions, and Membership Number.
• Sets User Last Name to "<Forgotten>".
• Sets User ID to "<Forgotten>-"<random string>.
• Sets Active to false.

An Import capability has been added to allow an administrator to copy Entries that already exist in other Competitions. It can be found in the Manage Competition screen on the Actions tab. The import is done in two stages:

• The first stage select the Competitions that you want to import from, and optionally a score/grade cutoff value. This stage does not actually perform the import, but allows you to preview and fine-tune what will be imported. Expand the Competition Groups to locate and select the required Competitions. If you want to pre-select Entries by numeric score, ensure that the Competition you are importing into uses scores (and similarly for grades). If you want to e.g. select by score, but then run the new Competition by grade, set it to be by score at first, then change it to grades after the import is complete.
• The second stage displays the available Entries, with any that match the cutoff value already pre-selected. A message tells you how many were pre-selected. If you want to start again, just use the browser "back" button to go back to stage one. Otherwise adjust the selections if required, then start the import.

If your new Competition is a panel (i.e. Max Images per Entry is greater than 1) then only panel Competitions are available for import. Similary if it is a normal Competition, only normal ones are available for import.

During the import you may exceed entry limits. The import will succeed, and you will see orange warning messages detailing which Users are above the limits you have set. You can adjust the limits, delete some Entries, or simply ignore the warnings. You may also end up with duplicate Entry names for the same User if you imported multiple Entries with the same title from different Competitions.

Importing Entries is a fast operation, simply copying database rows that still point to the same physical images. After the import, either the original Entry or the imported Entry can be changed or deleted without affecting the other. Entries may be imported an arbitrary number of times.

A common activity, especially near the end of a season, is to create a best-of-year type Competition from Entries made during the year. This can be done either by the Administrator (as described above), or by Users selecting their own Entries. This section describes the latter.

The first step is to create the new Competition. In the General tab, there is an option to allow Users to import Entries. Select either this, or if you wish the option to allow both upload of new Entries and import of existing ones.

Once this is set, Users will see a button to Import Entries from an Existing Competition. They can then choose from their existing Entries, subject to the normal Entry limits. For a normal non-Panel Competition they will only be able to choose from other non-Panel Competitions, and vice versa.

Administrators may now embed a direct web link to a Competition on their own web site, or even within emails. The link can be found at the bottom of the General tab of the Manage Competition screen. When Users click on this link, they will be taken directly to the corresponding Competition page (after login if necessary).

If you'd like your logo at the top of each page, just email it to us. It must be gif, jpg or png. For a "square-ish" logo with "PhotoEntry" beside it, the logo should be 100 pixels high, with minimal white space around it (PhotoEntry adds a little space). Alternatively if you have a wide banner-style logo, I can place it across the top with "PhotoEntry" below it. In that case the logo should be 60-80 pixels high. It should be as small a file size as reasonably possible, ideally less than 25KB. If it is a jpeg, using a modest quality setting usually reduces file size significantly without undue degradation.

Note that Judge Previews are now deprecated. Please see the Admin FAQ entry for Viewings instead.

PhotoEntry allows you to create Preview snapshots of a Competition that judges can use to examine the images in advance. From the Manage Competition screen, go to the Actions tab, and click on Judge Previews. Note that creating a Preview "snapshots" the Competition at that point in time, so you would normally only create a Preview when the Competition is in a Closed state and you have finished making any adjustments to it.

When a Preview is created, PhotoEntry makes copies of the images stripping out any identifying metadata. For a large competition please allow PhotoEntry time to do this processing.

The judge name must be specified, along with the expiry date after which the Preview will be deleted. The expiry date can be set up to 30 days ahead, and the Preview will be deleted shortly after midnight.

You may create as many Previews as you wish, and you should always create one for each judge (see next paragraph). When the Preview has been created you will see a URL that you can use to check the Preview if you wish. If you select the "Email Preview Information to Judge" option PhotoEntry will email the Judge the access details. You may wish to follow up with any additional information and guidelines. Note that anyone who is given this URL may preview the images.

When the judge uses the URL you have given them, he/she will see a page with basic information and instructions. The judge's browser MUST have Javascript enabled to use the preview. The judge may print a score/comment sheet to make notes on. However, as of PhotoEntry version 32.0, the judge may make notes online as they view the images. Below each image is a field where the judge can enter free-format notes. The notes are saved whenever the judge moves to another image (or explicitly clicks a save button). The notes will then appear on the score sheet. Typically a judge will either print the score sheet without notes and write them on by hand, or make the notes online then print and/or have the score sheet emailed to them. As an administrator you will be able to see any notes made by accessing the preview yourself (this is noted in the instructions displayed to the judge).

For each Class, there is a link that will start a slideshow of Entries within that Class. This shows the Entry title, and the Entry number as printed on the score sheet. The judge may scroll forward and back through the Entries.

For a Panel Competition, each Image within each Entry is displayed. If Image Titles have been made mandatory for the Competition, the Image Titles are also displayed after the Entry Title. Regardless of whether Image Titles are mandatory or not, an additional notes field is available for the individual Image. This is always displayed immediately below the Entry notes field.

When a Preview is created, the Presentation Sequence option is automatically turned on for that Competition. This allows you to run the Competition itself displaying the Entries in the same order as the shown on the judge's score sheet. Please see above for information on using Presentation Sequences, particularly in conjunction with Di Centra. This is not mandatory but will help a judge who is referring to his/her notes while judging.

By returning to the Judge Preview screen, you may see the date and time when the judge last accessed the Preview.

You can now clone an entire Competition Group. This includes all of the Competitions and Series within that Competition Group. Any Entries themselves are of course not cloned. The new Competition Group is set Inactive so that Users won't see it until you are happy with it and mark it Active. Before doing that you should manually update the Competition Close Dates and any other changed information such as judges. The cloned Competitions will all have status Future so you will need to set these to Open before Entries can be made. You will find the Clone Competition Group button on the Manage Competition Group screen, in the Settings tab.

It is possible to run inter-club Competitions alongside your normal club Competitions. The basic process is to create a separate Category and Class for the inter-club ones (so that only clubs can see the inter-club, and vice versa), then create a PhotoEntry "User" for each participating club.

The recommended steps are:

1. Create a Category (e.g. InterClub).
2. Create a Class (e.g. InterClub).
3. Create a "User" for each participating club. Leave the FirstName blank and enter the club's name in the LastName field. The email address for each "User" should be that of the person making the entries on behalf of that club. Use a UserID that reflects that it is that particular club for your interclub (e.g. myinterclub-club1).
4. Assign each of those "Users" to the InterClub Class for the InterClub Category.
5. Create a Competition Group for the interclub competitions.
6. Create Competitions in that Group with Category=InterClub, and Max Entries at whatever level you want for the InterClub Class only. Ensure the Competitions have Separate Author Field Required set to yes.

It is not uncommon to end up with more Entries than a judge can comfortably cope with, and the administator needs to be able to cull some Entries out. This is normally done according to a "priority" order that each User sets for his/her Entries. It has always been possible to do this manually, but there is now a Cull Entries action available to help.

The prerequisite is to ensure that Users have their Entries in descending order of priority - i.e. with the highest priority at the top of their Entry list. If necessary the User can use the little blue buttons beside each Entry to re-order them.

Once the Competition is Closed, you can use the Cull Entries action to show you tables, by Class, of how many Entries would remain if the maximum Entries per User was reduced to various values. Note that the counts in these tables only include valid Entries. Invalid ones (with a red error message) are ignored by the Cull Entries action.

One Class at a time, choose a level to reduce to and click Cull Entries. This will permanently delete User Entries, starting from the bottom of their list, until the required level is reached. Note that this is a permanent deletion and cannot be undone. If you want to send an email to each affected User informing them which Entries have been culled select that option before culling - it cannot be done afterwards.

You can do the culling gradually (i.e. reducing the maximum entry count one at a time) if you wish. However if you are generating emails to Users it may generate more than required (each time a cull is performed the batch of emails is sent). Being able to see the effect of reducing to various levels means gradual reduction should not be necessary.

Although the Cull Entries action removes Entries down to the specified maximum per User, it does not modify the Max Entries settings for the Competition itself.

A Viewing can be activated for a Competition. Viewings replace the old Judge Previews, providing extended functionality. Viewings can be used to:

• Prepare images that have identifying metadata stripped out.
• Allow Judges to view these images without having to have a PhotoEntry login. Judge access to the Viewing can be granted for up to 30 days at a time.
• Optionally allow a Judge to provide notes and/or scores/places on the Entries (and Images within each Entry for panel Competitions).
• Allow your Users to view these images if you want to have your own Users judge or comment on the Entries. You can also allow them to add notes and/or scores/places.
• Let an administrator review notes and scores/places entered by Judges and/or Users, and to delete any inappropriate ones.
• Let an administrator import a Judges (or even Users) scores/places as the actual ones for the Competition.
• Allow each User to see the entire set of notes and/or scores/places from all Users and/or Judges, with or without the name of the User who made the Entry.
• Include the Judge and/or User notes in an Entry Report.

Please see the separate Viewing FAQ for information about viewing the images.

You can access the Viewing menus using the button on the Actions tab of the Manage Competition screen. When you activate a Viewing, PhotoEntry makes copies of the images stripping out any identifying metadata. For a large competition please allow PhotoEntry time to do this processing. Only one set of viewing images is created, and the Viewing and the associated images and data do not expire.

If you are using external Judges (or an internal member as a Judge) you may create Viewing Judges. This will give any person who has the unique link generated for each Judge access until the expiry date. You may set the expiry date up to 30 days in advance, and it can be extended further if required. You can remove further Judge access by disabling that Judge (don't delete the Judge unless you want to permanently remove any notes etc they have made). You may specify whether the Judge can make notes, just see any he has already made, etc.

When the judge uses the URL you have given them, he/she will see a page with basic information and instructions. The judge's browser MUST have Javascript enabled to use the preview. The judge may print a score/comment sheet to make notes on. However, it would be better to enter notes online while viewing the images. Below each image is a field where the judge can enter free-format notes. The notes are saved whenever the judge moves to another image (or explicitly clicks a save button). The notes will then appear on the score sheet. Typically a judge will either print the score sheet without notes and write them on by hand, or make the notes online then print and/or have the score sheet emailed to them.

For each Class, there is a link that will start a slideshow of Entries within that Class. This shows the Entry title, and the Entry number as printed on the score sheet. The judge may scroll forward and back through the Entries.

For a Panel Competition, each Image within each Entry is displayed. If Image Titles have been made mandatory for the Competition, the Image Titles are also displayed after the Entry Title. Regardless of whether Image Titles are mandatory or not, an additional notes field is available for the individual Image. This is always displayed immediately below the Entry notes field.

When a Viewing is created, the Presentation Sequence option is automatically turned on for that Competition. This allows you to run the Competition itself displaying the Entries in the same order as the shown on the judge's score sheet. Please see above for information on using Presentation Sequences, particularly in conjunction with Di Centra. This is not mandatory but will help a judge who is referring to his/her notes while judging.

As an administrator you are able to review notes made by Judges, and to delete any inappropriate notes.

You may also choose to allow your Users to view the Competition and make their own notes. There are separate configuration options to enable this. Each user can only see and optionally modify his own notes, until you set the option to make all notes visible.

When Users are viewing the Competition, you can select whether they can see their own Entries, until the Competition has been placed in a Judged state. This is particularly useful when allowing Users to add their own notes and scores, as they cannot then score their own Entries.

After the Competition you can generate an Entry Report that can include Judge and/or User notes.

You may choose to leave the Viewing visible to Users indefinitely, or to remove their access. Unless you explicitly deactivate a Viewing it will remain, along with any notes (and other types of input in the future). Deactivating a Viewing will hide it, but the data will remain and it can be reactivated if required.

This applies only to users of BitDefender Antivirus Free Edition. In April 2021 this product started denying access to the Manage Competition screen, showing messages such as "This page isn't working at the moment", "compent.photoentry.uk didn't send any data", etc. We are certain this is a spurious (false positive) error in BitDefender. Points to note:

• We know it happens with the Windows version. We don't know about MacOS or other platforms.
• It only seems to happen with the free version. It does not happen with the Total Security version.
• It only happens accessing our production system, not our development one.
• There is nothing on that screen that isn't used on other screens that it doesn't block.
• BitDefender does not generate any event that it has blocked the page, and therefore no indication of why.

To stop BitDefender free edition blocking the page:

• Open BitDefender, click on the gear icon (top right), and select Exclusions.
• Click Add Exclusion.
• Select Add URL and enter "compent.photoentry.uk" (without the quotes).