Practice Signup Configuration Options

If you want to manage your practices online, we have a few options you can consider below. 

Covered in this Article: 

• OPTION 1: Using Athlete Roster Groups on a Registration Form 
• OPTION 2: Using Merchandise on a Registration Form
• OPTION 3: Using a Non-Meet Event with "Practice" Jobs/Shifts 
• OPTION 4: Google Form or Signup Genius

OPTION 1: Using Athlete Roster Groups on a Registration Form 

One way to handle this is to use a set of registration forms combined with Athlete Roster Groups (ARG) that have limits per group.

1. Set up an ARG for each practice slot—many times these are loosely skill-based, so setting age ranges with some overlap will work.
2. Create a minimal Registration Form for the first slot (give it the title of the first slot).
   • No registration fee
   • Set a Registration Limit (button at the top of the form’s first tab
     • Limit registrations counting: only registrations via this form and set it to the size you want this practice group to be
   • On the Athlete Groups tab
     1. Enable this section
     2. Select only the first slot ARG
   • No other tabs need to be enabled
   • Save
3. Repeat for each slot, choosing the proper ARG for the slot

OPTION 2: Using Merchandise on a Registration Form

You can use the merchandise feature (Merchandise) to create your signup slots and you can use the merchandise limit feature when creating each slot to limit the number of signups.

» Note: you can only limit merchandise during registration, not on the online store

Just like the first option, you create a minimal registration form, but enable the Merchandise section to add the items you created for signup.

If this is something that would be set for the season, then you should be able to do this with one registration form, but if it changes weekly, you could copy the original form to create a form for each week.

You could download the Registration Details report to have your list of signups. If you do this from the Report tab, you'll see all registrations combined from each form, but if you download the report from within View Registrations of each form, you'll only see registrations from that particular form.

OPTION 3: Using a Non-Meet Event with "Practice" Jobs/Shifts 

» Note: This is written from a customer's perspective who came up with this idea. She mentions the drawback at the end.

➧ STEP 1: 

I set up an Event (not a meet) called "6/29-7/3 Practice Sign-up". Then I created a Job for this event called "Monday, June 29th" and one called "Tuesday, June 30th", etc. through Friday.

➧ STEP 2: 

Then, in each of these jobs, I created Shifts for each available practice group, called, for example "Practice Group 1: 7:30am-8:10am", "Practice Group 2: 8:20am-9:00am", "Practice Group 3: 7:30am-8:10am", etc. 

» Note: Each shift name must be unique if you copy jobs after setting up the first one. If not unique, duplicate shift names won't copy even if time etc is different

➧ STEP 3: 

Then I selected the number of slots available for each of those practice groups as the number of people who can sign up for the "Shift", and I set the points at zero.

➧ STEP 4: 

I toggled off the flag if someone tries to sign up when they're already scheduled (so that parents will be able to sign up siblings.)

The only obvious problem is that it will have the parent's name, not the swimmer's name, on the sign-up sheet. I can override that on the back end myself with the swimmer name, but in the case of siblings I could have a little confusion or extra work, but I think overall it should work pretty well and there's a significant advantage to having it all in Swimtopia. I'll make a new "Event" for each week, since I'd like to be able to email just the people signed up for "shifts" that week.

OPTION 4: Google Form or Signup Genius

If you don't want to worry about any of this setup work, then we suggest using a Google Form or Signup Genius. We've heard from many coaches that Signup Genius works very well.