Welcome to Swimtopia! Team management happiness is just a few steps away!
This Quick Start Guide includes a checklist of steps and links to other Help Center articles that guide you through the tasks as you set up your new Swimtopia site.
The tasks are listed in a suggested order but can be done in any order based on your timing. Focus on what you need to get done specific to your team, so you can announce your new website to your members. Just because a feature is there, does not mean you have to use it now. (If you are delegating tasks, share this information.)
» Summer/Recreational swim teams ➞ use our Swimtopia Quick Start Guide (New Teams), Non-swim team customers ➞ use our Team Topia Quick Start Guide.
Covered in this Article:
➧ Getting Started
Accessing your "Manage Team" Admin Console
Import your Roster and Meet History
Create your Stripe Account for Online Payment
➧ People and Communication
Promote the Swimtopia Mobile App to Your Team
➧ Registration
➧ Merchandise and Sponsor Management
Set up your Merchandise Items and Online Store
Set up your SwimOutlet Team Store
➧ Schedule and Meet Management
Add Meets and Events to your Schedule
Learn about our Diving, Divisional, and Double Dual Scoring Features (if needed)
Swimtopia Meet - Best Practices and Meet Settings Checklists
➧ Benchmarks
Set up your Time Standards Sets
➧ 
USA Swimming Sanctioned Meets
➧ Need Help?
Getting Started
Accessing your "Manage Team" Admin Console
You will design most of your website from the front end, but the "Manage Team" admin console is where you will set up and manage your team.
After you have activated your account, you can log in and access the admin console by clicking on Manage Team from the menu at the top right of your screen.
If you did not receive an activation email after signing up for a Swimtopia account, check your spam/trash folder. If you still cannot locate this email, contact our Customer Support team for assistance.
Import your Roster and Meet History
The options below provide an avenue to import your data from your existing system into your Swimtopia site. For future seasons, Swimtopia’s registration process allows you to collect the data from your members to keep your member information up-to-date.
➧ Active/Hy-Tek Team Manager
➧ Active SwimManager
➧ TeamUnify
➧ Excel Spreadsheet (Swimmingly or No Software)
» Tip: We recommend importing your team history first. Having that history in place helps you see how you can manage this data.
Configure your Site Settings
Once you're in your admin console (Manage Team), you'll see a link to a Settings menu for a list of site-wide settings and tools.
- Modify your team's name and abbreviation (if needed)
- Add a team logo and set your time zone
- Confirm your billing contact (keep this updated to avoid disruption in service)
- Set your Meet Entry Preferences (allow parents to sign up for events...)
- Configure your Athlete Roster Groups (if using)
- Configure your School Year Groups
The following Help Center articles will guide you through each of these steps:
➞ Swimtopia Site-wide Settings
Create your Stripe Account for Online Payment
While you are in your Settings, if your team intends to take online payment for registration and/or merchandise, now would be a good time to set up a Stripe account from within your Swimtopia site (existing Stripe accounts created outside of Swimtopia are not supported through our integration).
This can be done at any time before you open registration, but we suggest starting early since the process can take time if you need to gather the required information about your team.
➞ Quick Start Guide - Enabling Stripe
Confirm Your Season Setup
When you sign up for a team website, the current season will automatically be created using the year as the Name and Start and End Dates based on a calendar year. Additional seasons will be created if you import your roster and meet history. You can change these fields and create additional seasons as needed.
➧ What is a Season?
A Season is simply a span of time during which your team’s activities take place.
- A season defines a range of time, from the start date to the end date (default is the calendar year).
- Seasons are used to organize your events, athlete affiliations, role assignments, sponsorships, and registrations.
- The selected current season determines which season is active, regardless of the current date.
- Members affiliated with the active current season are included in Communications and Reports.
- By setting the current season you can control when your team "rolls over to the next season."
➞ Creating & Managing Your Seasons
Add Content to your Website
PREMIUM
This feature is available to our Premium customers.
No need for a trained website designer! We provide simple tools (called Snippets) to design your website quickly. Focus on the most important information first to get your website up and running. Then you can explore all the design options as time allows. (If transitioning from another system, you can copy/paste relevant information into Text Area Snippets.)
➞ Editing Page Content with Snippets
➞ Site Settings: Header, Logo, Colors, and Background Images
➧ Do you need some inspiration?
Check out how other Swimtopia teams have set up their sites ➞ Example Customer Swimtopia sites, or check out our training videos to learn how you can utilize additional website design options ▶️ Training Videos: Your Site's Content and Appearance
People and Communication
Manage your People/Roster
If there are other committee members or your coach who need access to view or set up specific areas within your team site, manually create their accounts (if not already in the system). In the next section, you'll learn how to assign them to roles with appropriate permissions so they can get started.
▶️ Training Video - "Manage Team" Admin Portal Overview
If you imported your team roster, this article will show you how you can view the imported information within your team site, and export the data if needed ➞ Viewing / Exporting Imported Team Roster and History
Create and Assign Roles
Create Roles with specific permissions and assign committee members to these roles so they can access the admin console (under Manage Team) to perform their tasks. Assigning members to specific roles also allows for communication targeted directly to these roles.
➞ Assigning Volunteers to Roles
Promote the Swimtopia Mobile App to Your Team
With all the great features Swimtopia’s mobile app offers, you’ll want to help get the word out to all of your families. We’ve provided some tools to make it easy for you to communicate with your parents about Swimtopia Mobile ➞ Tools to Inform Parents about Swimtopia’s Mobile App
FREE VERSION |
PRO VERSION (Swimtopia Meet) |
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➧ Push Notification Alerts ➧ Meet and Calendar Event Signup ➧ Job Signup PREMIUM ➧ Public Meet Search ➧ Result History & Best Times/Scores ➧ Post-Meet Results ➧ Family Overview ➧ Swimtopia Live Event/Heat Bar ➧ Manage Team Access (Admins & Coach) |
➧ Heat Sheets (when enabled in the meet) ➧ Heat/Lane Assignments and Estimated Start Times for favorite athletes ➧ Estimated Start Times update as the meet progresses (Adaptive Timeline) ➧ Upcoming Swim Reminders for favorite athletes ➧ Results notification alerts for favorite athletes ➧ Live Results ➧ Team Scores |
➞ Swimtopia's Mobile App Information (for admins and parents)
▶️ Training Video - Swimtopia's Mobile App
The Swimtopia mobile app is available in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
Communicate with your Members
Your members may start looking for information about the next season, so you could begin communicating with them to let them know about your new team site, your new registration process, and the benefits of downloading the Swimtopia mobile app for important team communication (weather alerts, and meet delays) and other meet features.
If you have imported your membership/roster, you can send these messages directly from the Communications page. When ready, you can send an email to let them know when registration, meet and volunteer sign-up are open.
▶️ Training Videos - Communication
Registration
Create your Registration Form
Ideally, your members create their accounts through the registration process. Regardless of whether you import a past or current season roster, or don't import data at all, we suggest that you create a registration form and invite your members to register.
Each season they sign in and register to be affiliated with the current season, and new members create their accounts as they register. This process ensures you have current data.
Each team can have varying degrees of complexity when it comes to the registration fee structure and required waivers. We suggest keeping your registration as simple as possible to ensure your families can complete the process efficiently.
If you plan to sell your merchandise and/or sponsorships and allow members to sign up for meets/jobs during registration, you may want to get those areas set up first and then create your registration form, but you can always come back to update your form later as well.
The registration section of our Help Center provides step-by-step instructions and tips on each section available within a registration form, including the specific help articles listed below:
➞ Registration Checklist (for Teams)
▶️ Training Videos - Registration
If you find yourself questioning the best way to set up your form(s), feel free to reach out to our support team. We will do our best to provide direction based on your specific requirements.
Merchandise and Sponsorships
Set up your Merchandise Items and Online Store
Create each merchandise item you plan to offer in your registration form, and/or your Online Store. You can also sell your sponsorships and collect coach donations by setting these up as "merchandise items."
➞ Setting up the Online Store*
*Features available to customers on our Premium tier PREMIUM
Set up your SwimOutlet Team Store
Swimtopia has partnered with SwimOutlet, the web's most popular swim shop, to streamline the management of your merchandise offerings directly from your Swimtopia team site!
If you want to take the hassle out of ordering and distributing the bulk of your team gear and spirit wear, allow your members to purchase through your SwimOutlet Team Store and receive orders at their doorsteps!
➞ See our SwimOutlet Team Store Snippet article to set up your own SwimOutlet Team Store (or connect your existing store) to your Swimtopia site.
▶️ Quick Feature Demo - Adding a SwimOutlet Team Store
Set up your Sponsorships
PREMIUM
This feature is available to our Premium customers.
Create your sponsorship categories (i.e., Gold, Silver Bronze). Then determine which category to assign each sponsor, and in what order they should display on your website. This setup is all done on the Manage Team admin console. Then using the website configuration options (under the Welcome menu), add the Sponsor Snippet on any page of your site to display your sponsors.
Schedule and Meet Management
Add Meets and Events to your Schedule
Unless your league is importing your meet schedule (only available to 100% league-wide customers), you can create Meet and Job Templates (one-time setup) to apply to a "New (Empty) Swim Meet," or use the "Import Meet Event File" option to import a meet file and save the meet information as a Meet Template to apply to future meets.
You can also create your non-meet RSVP Calendar Events, and apply a Job Template, or manually add jobs & shifts to your meets and events for volunteer sign-up.
➞ Quick-Start Guide to Setting Up Meets
➞ Creating Calendar Events (Banquets, Socials, Meetings...)*
▶️ Training Video - Meets and Entries
▶️ Training Video - Your Volunteering Schedule
*Features available to customers on our Premium tier PREMIUM
» Tip: If you're creating your teams' meets, we provide two default meet templates using the NHFS order of events. Meet & Job Templates will save you time each season. You can modify as needed and apply these events/settings and jobs/shifts to your meets each season. Quick and easy!
Learn about our Diving, Divisional, and Double Dual Scoring Features (if needed)
➞ Swimtopia Diving Support Overview
Test Drive Swimtopia Meet
Planning to use Swimtopia Meet to run your meets?
Swimtopia Meet is included with your Swimtopia subscription, and accessible from your meets (after the entries are merged) in Swimtopia, or via a desktop application download if using a timing system.
➞ Swimtopia Meet Overview & Test Drive Options
➞ Getting Started with Swimtopia Meet
▶️ Training Videos - Meet Management with Swimtopia Meet
» Note: Swimtopia Meet is only fully supported using the Google Chrome browser (version 117+ Sept. 2023). If you experience printing issues, Chrome is usually the solution. Swimtopia Meet can work using the other browsers (Edge 117+, Firefox 119+, Safari 17+), but it is NOT compatible with Internet Explorer. (All major browsers are supported in the Swimtopia team management system, but some reports will print best using Chrome.)
Swimtopia Meet - Best Practices and Meet Settings Checklists
For teams using Swimtopia Meet to run meets, we've compiled a best practices and meet settings checklist covering topics beyond the initial setup of your meet in your Swimtopia team management site. We want you to take advantage of all the great features and configuration options available.
➞ See our Swimtopia Meet - Best Practices for Running a Successful Meet (Start to Finish) Help Center article for a comprehensive checklist, and our Swimtopia Meet - Meet Settings Checklist article after your meet entries have been merged.
Benchmarks
Set up your Record Books
Don't forget to create your record books. If you import your historical meet data, this can be a quick process. You just need to set up your record books (Pool, Team etc.,) and use our feature to find the records on your site. Any records not already on your Swimtopia site will need to be entered manually. There is no option to import records at this time.
If you are using our meet management tool, Swimtopia Meet, to run your meets, you will have the option to include your record books.
▶️ Training Video - For the Record Books
Set up your Time Standards Sets
If your league does not share Time Standards with your team through our automatic league sharing feature, you can create your own to apply to your Meet Templates and applicable meets.
➞ Time Standards & Qualifying Times Overview
USA Swimming Sanctioned Meets
Add USA Swimming IDs
Swimtopia integrates with SWIMS 3.0, syncing USA Swimming membership information and status with each member’s Swimtopia account information.
If your team participates in USA Swimming-sanctioned meets, you should enter the USA Swimming ID numbers for your athletes in the Athlete Registration Number report. Otherwise, their times won't upload to SWIMS.
This report is found under Manage Team > Reports > Member Information > Athlete Registration Numbers
» Note: As new athletes register, you can update this report. Make sure you double-check these numbers to avoid adding times to the wrong athlete.
Need Help?
Product Support |
"Customer Happiness" is not just a team name at Swimtopia, it's our mission! |
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We offer many support options to cater to your needs:
Feel free to reach out to us for additional assistance. ➞ View All Support Options
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Billing Support |
Any questions related to your Swimtopia subscription should be directed to our billing department. See ➞ View Billing Support & Policies Overview |
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