In order to promote entries from a county fair to a state fair, a Fair-to-Fair connection must be established, and the classes must be synchronized every year before entries begin. Entries that are made to your fair BEFORE synchronization will not be eligible for promotion to the state fair.
The synchronization process creates a link between the county fair class and the corresponding state fair class so that entries can be promoted. The order in which the hierarchy is created is crucial to the success of this process.
IMPORTANT: When you first create your hierarchy, it must NOT include any departments that include “state fair classes”—those come from the synchronization process, which is done AFTER the hierarchy upload process. The order MUST BE:
- Create a spreadsheet hierarchy of county-only departments and upload that.
- The state fair must set their fair (with the correct hierarchy) to Receive Connections before counties can request connection.
- Request connection, and when approved, use the Fair-to-Fair connection to synchronize and add the departments for which entries are promoted from the county fair to the state fair.
- Use the Hierarchy Editor to add county-only classes that exist within State Fair departments—an example would be a Pride of the County baking class that is county-only—the winners do not advance to the State Fair, although other Food & Nutrition class winners do advance. You can also delete State Fair classes that are not offered at your county fair.
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Only the first level of sub-classes will synchronize from the State Fair. Do not plan to add Sub-class level 2 of the hierarchy at the county level as the entries will not promote.
Request the Connection:
On the Setup menu, Fair-to-Fair Connection tab, click the green “Connect to another fair”.
From the list of available fairs, select the correct year and fair. Scroll to the bottom and click Select.
The Fair-to-Fair Connection tab shows that there is a Pending connection. Once it’s been approved by the state fair admin, it will show Approved status.
Synchronize State Fair Departments:
After the connection is approved, and after your own county departments have been uploaded, synchronize to add the state fair departments to your hierarchy. The first year, it will bring over all the synchronized departments/classes from the state fair. They will be noted as “synced” in your Hierarchy. You can re-synchronize if changes are made to the state fair hierarchy.
- Delete Items—if classes were removed by the state fair, they will be removed from your fair.
- Restore Deleted Items—if you deleted a state fair class from your hierarchy because it’s not available at your county fair, this will restore that deleted class if it still exists at the state fair.
- Synchronize Name & Number Changes (highly recommended)—if the state fair changes a class name or number, your county fair will be updated to the same new name & number.
- Skipping a year using that option will mean that the next year will not include the changes from the year you skipped--and there's really no way to "get them back now". You'll have to make the changes manually using the hierarchy editor.
- Please note that if you change the name of a State Fair class in your hierarchy, using this option will add back in the original class/name, and will not delete the changed class/name. That will be very confusing for exhibitors, and may end up with entries in the wrong (non-synchronized) class, which cannot be promoted. Manually delete the class with the changed name (in your new year fair), either before or after the synchronization process.
See also: Fair-to-Fair Connection Quick Video