With a little bit of housekeeping, your SwimTopia league website will be ready for your new season to start! We have put together a list of steps to make this as quick and easy as possible.
» Note: If this is your first time setting up your site, See ➞ SwimTopia Quick Start Guide (for Leagues)
Covered in this Article:
➧ Setup Support Tools
➧ Steps Before Creating Your New Season
➧ Create Your New Season
➧ Steps After Creating Your New Season
- Update Access to Site Administrators and Coordinators
- Update Role Assignments
- Update Meet Templates and Meets & Events Schedule
- Update Your Shared Acknowledgement Sections
- Review Division Assignments
- Create or Update Benchmarks (Records, Time Stds)
- Update Sponsorships
Setup Support Tools
➧ New Site Admins - Are you a new Site Admin this season? ➞ Check out our Quick Start Guide (New Site Admin).
➧ Product Support Options - We offer many support options to cater to your needs. Our robust Help Center, is accessible day or night. You'll find helpful step-by-step guides, topic-focused training videos on our very own YouTube Channel, and many tips and tricks within our Community section. ➞ View All Support Options
➧ What's New? - Want to catch up on all the latest and greatest changes since you've been gone? You can visit the "What's New" page from the top of your "Manage Team admin console" at any time to catch up. We also document the updates in our Help Center ➞ See our What's New? Making SwimTopia Better for You! article for details.
➧ Billing Questions - We are happy to answer any questions ➞ See our Billing Support & Policies Overview article for details.
➧ League Features Overview - If you need a refresher of all the great league features available, watch the recorded workshop webinar at your leisure.
➞ direct link to our League Features video.
Steps Before Creating Your New Season
Confirm Billing Contact
Most configurations within your site-wide Settings will remain the same each season, but your Billing Contact could eventually change. SwimTopia sends renewal reminders to the email listed as your Billing Contact, so it's imperative that this remain up-to-date to avoid any disruption in service.
This is found under Settings > Billing Contact.
Confirm Online Payment Configuration (Stripe)
If you plan to collect League Fees online through each team's registration, ensure your Stripe account is in good standing each season.
If a new volunteer is taking over this role, and they are not already listed as a Business Representative or Team Member on your Stripe account, you will need to add them due to a mobile verification step to access your account. See ➞ Stripe Account Access & Management - Add/Remove Team Members
Resolving issues or setting up an account can take time, so we suggest getting this started right away.
This is found under Manage League > Settings > Stripe Account.
» Note: If you do not yet have a Stripe account, you will need to set up an account to accept online payments. Reference our step-by-step tutorial ➞ Stripe Account Setup
Edit Content on Your SwimTopia Site
This can be done at any time, but if you are waiting on other decisions that affect updates to your site, you could get started scanning through your website content to see if there are any references to policies, dates, deadlines, etc. that are relevant to the last season but may have changed for the new season.
You can edit those pages directly by going to Manage Site > Edit Page Content.
» Tip: Limiting specific dates throughout your site will speed up this process each season. If you need to list specific dates, keep track of the pages that will need to be updated to expedite updates.
➞ See more about Managing Your Website.
➧ Do you want to require a CAPTCHA to prevent spam?
If you use the Contact Us Form snippet, you might want to consider turning this feature on if your team has received any spam through your Contact Us page. You can turn this setting off at any time and revisit the need for this extra security level each season.
Learn more about this topic ➞ Contact Us Form Snippet.
➧ Do you need some inspiration?
Check out how other SwimTopia teams have set up their sites ➞ Example Customer SwimTopia sites, or watch our recorded webinar (below) to learn how you can utilize additional website design options.
➞ direct link to our Looking Good! video.
Create Your New Season
➧ 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."
➧ How do I update my season?
When the current date falls outside the time that defines your current season, you'll see a gentle reminder that your season is out of date. When you go to Manage League > Schedule > Seasons and click on Fix the Current Season, your new season will be created for you.
Or you can select +Add Season to create one manually. (also update the age-up date)
➧ Why did information disappear?
Once you change your season, you might notice that the previous season's role assignments, people/roster, division assignments, meets/events, sponsors, and reporting information seem to “disappear." This is because this information is tied to the previous season.
Past season data can be found by selecting the season from a drop-down box or from the left margin where applicable (Registration/Schedule), or from the Reports tab.
Learn more about this topic ➞ Creating & Managing Your Seasons and Multiple Seasons in a Year
Steps After Creating Your New Season
Update Access to Site Administrators and Coordinators
As teams set up for the first time, or transition to a new season, one of the first tasks is to ensure board members, coordinators have access to all or specific areas of the site.
When you go to your People page, the members listed are those with an affiliation to the current season (you can easily change to a different season with a drop-down box).
➧ Site Administrator Access
Administrator accounts from the previous season, those with the red "Admin" badge, will automatically carry over each season in People, but their "Parent Affiliation" to the current season will not be automatically renewed. This occurs when they register for the season.
If there are admins who will not return, you can click the Revoke Admin button in their profile.
» Tip: To give you more control over who has the ability to make changes that could affect your parents/athletes and your site, we suggest limiting the number of administrators with full admin privileges.
➧ Other Board Members and Volunteer Coordinators
Many Board Members and other Volunteer Coordinators only need to access particular areas such as People, Meets/Events, or Reporting. You can grant partial privileges based on a “Role” to limit access for each volunteer.
➞ Learn more about managing access for your site admin and coordinator roles in our Adding New Admins and Defining Roles articles.
➧ Manually Add Season Affiliations
You can manually add a Season Affiliation to members by clicking their name on the People page. (If they are not visible in the People list, you can search for them in a previous season using the Search function at the top.)
On the right, you will see “Add affiliation for.” Select the current season from the drop-down box, then click “Save.”
Learn more about managing your members ➞ People/Roster
Update Role Assignments
Role assignments are also associated with seasons. Some roles are set up so the assignments are seasonal, and others can be set up so the assignments are ongoing from year to year when assignees do not change often.
➧ Seasonal roles
If the setting, “This role is reassigned every season” is checked, the role assignments will be reset at the change of a season, and all members who were assigned to those roles last season will no longer be assigned to those roles. If you know that any of your members are repeating their roles from last season, you have the ability to manually reassign them, but keep in mind, you won't be able to assign somebody to a role if they aren’t a member of the current season.
See ➞ Update Access to Site Administrators & Other Coordinators if you need to manually affiliate someone to the season.
➧ Ongoing roles
If the setting, “This role is reassigned every season” is unchecked, role assignments will carry over from season to season. Once you've updated your Current Season, you'll see people in your Roster with this Role badge next to their name. They won't have the Parent badge until they have completed the registration form. If a member is not returning to one of these roles in the new season, you’ll need to manually remove them from their role assignment.
» Note: Once a Role has been set up as being reassigned each season (or not), it's best to leave that setting as-is. If you need to change that setting, it's better to delete the Role and create a new one. Changing the setting from one season to the next may produce unexpected results for previous vs new assignees.
Learn more about how Roles are used ➞ Defining Roles
➧ Shared Roles
Leagues can create Shared Roles that are then pushed down to their SwimTopia teams. Shared Roles are used for positions that are common to all of the league’s teams, and especially when the league admins would like visibility to the assignments for those positions and for communication to those assigned to the roles from all teams. Examples can include: Team President, League Rep, Head Coach, Computer Person, and other board members
Each season, you'll want to review your Shared Role definitions and make any adjustments necessary for the new season.
» Note: If a shared role is seasonal, last season’s role assignments will “disappear,” so you’ll want to remind your teams to assign names to those Shared Roles.
Go to Roles and then click on Role Assignments in the upper right corner.
- To remove a name, click on the “X” next to the member’s name
- To add a name, click on “Add/Remove” next to the role
- Begin typing in the name of the member, and select the name when it appears
- Click “Save.”
» Note: The Role assignees shown here are from each site’s Current Season. Shared Roles will show the team’s assignees from that team’s Current Season. “Local” roles will display assignees from the league’s Current Season.
➞ See more about Shared Roles.
Update Meet Templates and Meets & Events Schedule
➧ Update Meet Templates
Review your Meet Templates each season to ensure they're set up properly. Pay close attention to the following sections:
- Name: Is the year included in the title of the template and need to be updated for the new season?
- Double-check that your Entry Rules and Seeding/Scoring Rules still apply for the new season.
- Check your Eligibility section to if anything has changed, paying special attention to the "Since Date" indicating dates that qualifying swims must have occurred by
- Do updated Time Standards need to be applied to your template?
➧ Update Meets and Events Schedule
If you'd like to send us your league's meet schedule at the beginning of the season, we can push those meets down to the sites of all of your SwimTopia teams, and they'll be automatically added to their Schedules.
To send a league meet schedule file to us, follow the instructions under "League Meet Schedule" in our Help Center article about the League Meet Schedule.
» Note: If you've listed any events on your own site's calendar in past seasons, be aware that events and meets are associated with a season. If any of these events are recurring from one year to the next, you’ll want to copy those events from last season to this season.
Go to Manage League > Schedule and change the season to the past season. You should If the setting, see your list of events from that season.
- Click on an event
- Click on “Copy” in the upper right corner
- Change the date (and the meet age-up date for meets)
Review Shared Acknowledgement Sections
If you've created any Shared Acknowledgements that your SwimTopia teams are using on their registration forms, you should review them each season and determine if you need to make any updates.
Go to Manage League > Registration > Shared Acknowledgement Sections. You can use the icons to the right of each form to copy an existing form, edit the existing form, or delete it. Please refer to this Help Center article to determine the best way to manage any changes to an existing acknowledgment ➞ Managing Changes to Shared Acknowledgements
Update Division Assignments
As you begin your new season, you'll want to update your Division Assignments.
Go to Manage League > Settings > Division Assignments. Review the list of SwimTopia teams, and if any teams are missing from the list, contact SwimTopia Customer Happiness (The team must also be using SwimTopia to show up on your list).
Select the new season. Then for each team, select the appropriate division from the drop-down list next to each team name.
➞ See more about Setting up Divisions for Your League.
Create or Update Benchmarks (Records, Time Stds)
➧ Update Shared League Record Books
Create or update your Shared League Record Books to display on the league site, and share with your teams to apply those records to their Meet Maestro meets (if using). League admins can also directly attach them to meets listed on the league site as needed.
➞ See more about League Record Books
➧ Update Shared Time Standard Sets
Create or update your Shared Time Standards Sets and apply these to your Shared Meet Templates, so your teams can access these Time Standards to apply to applicable meets.
➞ See more about League Shared Time Standard Sets
Update Sponsorships
If you are displaying league sponsors on your site, be aware that Sponsorships are tracked per season. So once you update your Season, old sponsors will no longer show up in the section of your website that is created by the Sponsor snippet. You'll need to set up new Sponsorships for the new season. We offer a handy tool for copying Sponsorships that renew from one Season to another:
Go to Manage League > Website > Sponsors > Sponsorships
- Select the last season
- Select all the Sponsorships that will be renewing for the new Season - you can either select all by checking the box above the top of the list, or you can select individual Sponsorships from within the list
- Once you've selected one or more Sponsorships, you'll see a drop-down box that says "Copy to Season"
- Select your new season
Once the Sponsorships are copied to the new season, you can edit their categories. And you can add new Sponsors to your new season's Sponsorships.
➞ See more about Sponsorships.
Voilà! Your SwimTopia league site should be all ready for your new season!
Now that you've done the housekeeping for your league's transition to the new season, you can point your teams to our helpful article about the steps they'll need to take for their team sites. ➞ See New Season Setup Guide (for Teams)
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