Use the attached document as a guide to make sure that you have completed all the setup for a returning fair, and are ready for your exhibitors to log in and make their entries.
Remember the Big Three: (forgetting any of these will prevent your exhibitors from making entries)
- Change your Entry Registration Dates to the current year.
- Re-link your Animal Types to their divisions.
- Be sure the current fair is set as the Primary Fair.
These are the Almost-As-Big Two: (they won't prevent entry, but will cause unexpected results and complicate the entry process)
- During Entry Registration, the setting for Allow Online Buyers (Setup>>Fair Details) has to be set to "No". If a buyer account exists with the same email address as one used on an Exhibitor Group account, the system defaults to the Buyer login when the email is entered. So, in order for exhibitors to login and make entries, that setting has to be set to No during the entry registration time.
- Multi-Entry--During the Copy Fair process, all parts of the hierarchy are set to the default of Single Entry process. If you use Multi-Entry in your fair (or parts of it), you will need to re-set that. This is particularly important for 4-H Online fairs that restrict entry by project enrollment.
Fair-to-Fair Connection:
If your (county) fair is going to promote entries up to the state fair, you must establish the Fair-to-Fair connection with the current year state fair, and sync the current year hierarchy to your county hierarchy. Some years, it may look as though no changes were made (if state fair classes didn't change from last year), but the program is linking the classes in the current state fair to the classes in the current county fair, establishing the connection so that the entries can be promoted. This must be done before entries are opened in the county fair, so that the entries are going into a "connected" class.