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.)
» School swim teams ➞ use our SwimTopia Quick Start Guide (New Schools), 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
Confirm Your Season and Age Up Date
➧ People and Communication
Download and Explore the SwimTopia Mobile App
➧ Registration
➧ Merchandise and Sponsorships
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
➧ Benchmarks
Set up your Time Standards Sets
➧ 
USA Swimming Teams
➧ 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
➧ 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
From your admin console (Welcome Menu > 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, set your preferred course, and 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...)
- Confirm your Athlete Age Groups
- Configure your Athlete Roster Groups (if using)
The following Help Center articles will guide you through each of these steps:
➞ Manage Team: 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 and Age Up Date
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. You need to set an Age Up Date if your team uses one to determine what age group your athletes compete in based on their age at or before that date.
➧ 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.
- If a season has an age-up date, that date is used to determine athlete ages for age groups.
- 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
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 - color scheme, page arrangement, navigation, and important content.
As time allows, 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
Download and Explore the SwimTopia Mobile App
Members of your team can receive alert notifications, sign up for meet entries & volunteer jobs, and view their team and athlete info at any time for free. The Live Event/Heat Bar broadcasts what’s happening in the pool during meets in real time. Guest Mode provides spectators access to follow their favorite athletes throughout the meet from anywhere!
If your team is using Meet Maestro, SwimTopia’s meet management solution, you’ll have access to heat sheets (if shared by the team), estimated start times, upcoming swim reminders, live meet results and more when they upgrade to our Pro subscription.
The SwimTopia mobile app is available in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
➞ SwimTopia's Mobile App Information (for admins and parents)
▶️ Training Video - SwimTopia's Mobile App
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 highly 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, and includes 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
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 highly suggest creating your Meet & Job Templates to save you time each season. Once created, you can just apply these events/settings and jobs/shifts to your meets each season. Quick and easy!
Test Drive Meet Maestro
Planning to use Meet Maestro to run your meets?
Meet Maestro 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.
➞ Meet Maestro Overview & Test Drive Options
➞ Getting Started with Meet Maestro
▶️ Training Videos - Meet Management with Meet Maestro™
» Note: Meet Maestro is only fully supported using the Google Chrome browser (versions 89+ March 2021), especially when printing reports. All major browsers are supported for the team management side of SwimTopia, but some reports may print best using Chrome.
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, Meet Maestro, 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 Teams
Connect to USA Swimming
SwimTopia integrates with SWIMS 3.0, syncing USA Swimming membership information and status with each member’s SwimTopia account information.
If you confirmed that you are a USA Swimming team on the SwimTopia signup screen, or have connected your SwimTopia account to your USA Swimming account, your SwimTopia team site is configured to integrate your member data with USA Swimming.
You must have SwimTopia selected as your team management vendor on the USA Swimming Club Portal to utilize SwimTopia's integration features. This selection should be done now, if not already completed.
▶️ Training Video - SWIMS 3.0 Integration Overview
Need Help?
➧ Billing Support
Any questions related to your SwimTopia subscription should be directed to our billing department ➞ View Billing Support & Policies Overview
➧ Product Support
We offer many support options to cater to your needs:
- Our robust self-service Help Center is accessible 24/7.
- You'll find topic-focused training videos on our YouTube Channel.
- Check out our Community section for many tips and tricks.
- We periodically offer free live webinar training to dive deeper into specific topics. Keep an eye on our Workshop Webinar page each season to register or view recordings of past workshops.
- ▶️ Training Videos - Getting Started with SwimTopia (team management and product overviews)
Feel free to reach out to us for additional assistance, we're happy to help ➞ View All Support Options
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