meet manager handbook - my swim results meet manager handbook.pdf · 1 introduction the process for...

My Swim Results

PO Box 31

West Perth WA 6872

Unit 14 / 1329 Hay Street

West Perth WA 6005

Ph: +61 8 9226 4990

[email protected]

www.myswimresults.com.au

MEET MANAGER

HANDBOOK

Step by Step Guide

My Swim Results [email protected]

Abstract A step by step guide to using HyTek Meet Manager to setup a swim meet, organize entries

through to creating the swim meet program and running the Dolphin timing system to collect the results. Includes sections on more advanced features.

Last Updated: 10 March 2020

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Introduction The process for setting up a meet remains the same for simple meets through to more advanced meets

and championships. This handbook is a step by step guide to putting together a swim meet through

and organising.

Meet Manager from Active Hy-Tek is the software that runs swim meets, here we will use it to: -

• Setup events for the Swim Meet

• Setup Qualifying times

• Setup Multiple Sessions

• Export the events in readiness for collecting entries online.

• Importing entries

• Seeding the meet

• Preparing a program for the “Officials”

• Preparing a program for the “Parents”

• Preparing Lane Timekeeping sheets

• Receiving results from the timing equipment

• Producing the results

In this document, we assume that you already have HyTek Meet Manager installed on your machine.

Some sections of this document are not appropriate for all meets. (i.e. it would be pretty rare to have

qualifying times for a club night) so just skip over a section if it is not appropriate.

Steps involved with preparing Meet Manager to organise a swim meet

Step 1 – Design a list of events to offer at a swim meet (not covered in this guide)1

Step 2 – Create a Meet Manager Database

Step 3 – Import the list of Events from Meet Manager into Online Entries

Step 4 – Monitor entries

Step 5 – Entries close – Import entries into Meet Manager database

Step 6 – Seed the program

Step 7 – Create an Estimated Timeline and Meet Program (various formats for different roles)

Step 8 – Use Meet Manager to Run the meet

Note: If the number of swimmers or which swimmers are going to be involved in each event is not

going to be known until they marshal then running the meet “By competitor number” might

be the solution.

Use the contents page to find the sections that are relevant to what you want to do. As you move

through the steps, you will find yourself further into the handbook.

1 Consult coaches and any previous meets in order to help build up a listing of events and decide how the results need to be reported (i.e. Certain age groupings)

https://hytek.active.com/

https://hytek.active.com/swim-meet-software.html

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Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 1

Meet Manager and Online Entries Workflow ......................................................................................... 4

Creating a new Swim Meet ..................................................................................................................... 5

Open a previously created meet ......................................................................................................... 8

Setup Events to the Swim Meet .......................................................................................................... 8

Editing events .................................................................................................................................... 12

Renumbering events ......................................................................................................................... 13

Setup Sessions ................................................................................................................................... 14

Setup Qualifying Times ..................................................................................................................... 17

Setting a maximum number of Events that a swimmer can participate in at the meet. ................. 20

Setting a minimum age for the meet ................................................................................................ 21

Exporting events in readiness for Online Entries .............................................................................. 22

Backup your work ............................................................................................................................. 24

Online Entries ........................................................................................................................................ 26

Sanctioned meets ............................................................................................................................. 26

Club Nights ........................................................................................................................................ 26

Calendar ............................................................................................................................................ 30

Exporting Entries from My Swim Results .......................................................................................... 33

Importing an interim entries file to check timeline in Meet Manager ................................................. 36

Importing the Final Entries file ............................................................................................................. 48

MC Athletes ...................................................................................................................................... 52

Advanced / Optional steps ................................................................................................................ 53

Run an Entries report .................................................................................................................... 53

Fixed lane assignments ................................................................................................................. 53

Seeding the meet .............................................................................................................................. 54

Review the Seeding of the meet ....................................................................................................... 56

Session / Estimated Time-Line report ................................................................................................... 58

Creating the Meet Program .................................................................................................................. 59

Event Sponsors .................................................................................................................................. 59

Spectator program ............................................................................................................................ 61

Officials program ............................................................................................................................... 62

Lane Timekeeper sheets ................................................................................................................... 63

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Producing a program that can be edited to include additional advertising ..................................... 64

Backup the Meet Manager Database ................................................................................................... 68

Restore a Meet Manager Database ...................................................................................................... 68

Running the Meet ................................................................................................................................. 71

Preparing the Dolphin timing system ............................................................................................... 72

Dolphin Version 4.3 ....................................................................................................................... 74

Dolphin Version 5.0 ....................................................................................................................... 77

Ready to start a race ......................................................................................................................... 84

Recording Scratching’s ...................................................................................................................... 90

Recording DQ’s.................................................................................................................................. 92

Printing Results ................................................................................................................................. 93

Reseeding an event ........................................................................................................................... 94

Manually adjust the swimmer’s allocations ................................................................................. 95

Reseed event in meet manager .................................................................................................... 95

Appendix A - Troubleshooting .............................................................................................................. 99

Appendix B – Using specific seed times from Team Manager rather than those allocated by Online

Entries ................................................................................................................................................. 100

Appendix C – Backup ........................................................................................................................... 101

Appendix D - Meet Mobile .................................................................................................................. 103

Appendix E - Exporting Meet Results to a Team Manager file. .......................................................... 106

Appendix F – Updating Meet Manager ............................................................................................... 108

Appendix G – Live results in Meet Manager with My Swim Results .................................................. 113

Appendix H – Interclub with Fixed Lane assignments ........................................................................ 115

Appendix I – Importing an Excel listing of Swimmers ......................................................................... 116

Appendix J - Running a meet “By Competitor Number”..................................................................... 117

Appendix K – Dolphin Timing ver 5 Events Extractor.......................................................................... 123

Troubleshooting the export tool ..................................................................................................... 125

Maintenance ................................................................................................................................... 125

Appendix L – Dolphin Timing with Splits ............................................................................................. 126

Frequently Asked Questions ............................................................................................................... 127

Sample Meet Organisation Checklist .................................................................................................. 132

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Meet Manager and Online Entries Workflow

Step 1 - Design a

Meet Program

Step 2 – Create a Meet Manager

Database

Step 3 – Import the list of events

into Online Entries

Step 4 – Monitor Entries Time-line checking

Meet Manager Online Entries

Step 5 - Import Entries into Meet

Manager

Step 6 – Seed the meet

Step 7 – Create the Meet Program

and Estimated Timeline

Step 8 – Run the Meet

Entries close

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Creating a new Swim Meet Hopefully by the time you get to this stage, a listing of the events has already been organised and it is

just a matter of setting up the database in readiness. Some thought as to what age groupings for the

results has hopefully occurred as well. This will help in setting up some of the features for the events.

(i.e. you want all the swimmers to swim together based on ability and report the results based on age

groups)

To start a new swim meet – it is best to start by creating a new swim meet database.

Note: It is possible to take a previous meet with all the same events and just “purge” all the entries

and results out of it in readiness for a new meet but you will need to be confident: -

• You are not destroying your previous meet completely

• Your file system naming conventions and structures are adhered to

In this document, we will be starting from scratch so to create a new Meet Database: choose File ->

New/Open

Use the folder structure to try and keep all the files relevant to the swim meet all-together. For

example:

create a folder structure so that all the meets for a particular season are together. Don’t be afraid

to add another level to your structure so that each swim meet has its own folder where you can

store other documents relevant to the meet.

C:\SWMeets8\ is the default area – why not put subfolders in there for each season

Create a new folder especially for your next meet.

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Now that you have your folder setup – give a meaningful name to the meet database

Press the “open” button to create the meet database (yes that is a bit weird – think of it as “Opening

a new database” rather than an existing database).

The Meet setup screen will appear for you to put in the basic information about the meet. Things like:-

• a name for the meet

• start and end dates

• “age-up date” (when the age is calculated for the meet)

o Typically, this is the same as the date of the meet however some club point score

systems require it to be set it up so that it calculates the age as at a particular date.

• When you want entries to close (Entry Deadline)

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Note: Some settings such as “Class”, “Meet Style”, “ID Format”, “Host LSC”, “Base Country”, “DQ

Codes” and even “facility name”, “address” and “Course” (if you only have 1 pool you run your

meets in) will always be the same from meet to meet unless you have something very specific

you are trying to do.

Press Ok to save the basic meet information. The window will disappear and generally the next thing

to do is to click on “Events” to setup the list of events.

Note: Meet Manager may popup “Meet Mobile Publishing” or ask if you want to back-up the meet

– you get used to closing these windows as they just get in the way at this point. Use the “X”

in the top right of their specific window to close them.

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This will not be the last time this screen appears, so you will get used to closing it whenever you open

a meet.

Open a previously created meet Using the “File” -> “Open” menu option from the main screen allows you to find a previously created

database in the folder structure.

Setup Events to the Swim Meet Hopefully by this point – you have some idea of what events need to be run – if not then stop and talk

to coaches or club officials to find out what they want to run. Try and get them to be as clear as

possible as sometimes they might say something but it may have different interpretations.

For this example - we are going to run a simple junior (12 and under) club night with 50’s of everything,

a 100 IM, 100 Freestyle finishing with some relays. Just to add a little complication - we also have

awards for only the 50s from first to fifth in the age groups of: -

• 7 and under

• 8 and 9 years

• 10 and 11 years

• 12 years

To begin - Click on the “Events” menu option along the top to open up the list of events. Initially this

will be empty.

Press the “Add” button to start adding events to the program.

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In the above example, we have made the first event a Mixed 12 & Under 50 Freestyle. This would be

fine but, when we run the meet, we also want to be able to report the results in a number of different

age groups. So what we are going to do with his event is enable “Multi-age Group” so that the system

will report the results for this event broken down into the age groups so that we can award the 1st to

5th swimmers. To setup the reporting to break the results into the age groups, tick the tick-box beside

the “Multi-age Group”.

Pressing the small square button beside “Multi-age Group” will open the screen to setup the age

groups to report on.

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A new window will appear and allow you to put an age group that you want to use to report on each

row.

Notes:

• make sure that all age groups are accounted for on this window

o the age group for this example is 0 to 12

• doesn’t necessarily need to be in order but it helps

• for “Open” age groups use the “High age” of 109 (or leave it blank)

Once all the age groups are accounted for – the Ok button will allow the window to close as the age

groups will be accepted.

Note: “Multi-age Groups” on mixed events will break the reporting up into separate Boys and Girls

as well as the individual age groups.

The “event type” for the event is typically “Standard” or “Multi-Class” however if you want to run a

novelty event which results need to be ignored when uploading to My Swim Results then you may

want to set those Novelty events to have a different “Event type” to the others such as “Time Trial” –

whilst it might not sound right when you export the results to TM there is an option to only export a

combination of “Standard”, “Time Trial” or “Swim off events”. This would mean that you can easily

exclude the novelty events from the results.

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Pressing OK on the “Add New Event” window will save the settings for event 1 and automatically move

to event 2 to enter. (If you have “Alt Gender” ticked and the gender set to either boys or girls – then

it will also switch to the next gender ready for the next event.)

Note: A nice feature is that it remembers all of the settings (including the multi-age groups) so you

just need to make changes to what the previous event had.

In our example, we actually don’t need to report the various age groups when we get to the 100m

events so we can just disable “Multi-Age Group” for the 100 Medley and 100 Freestyle.

Once we have pressed the Ok button on the last event that we want to enter, it will continue on to

the Next event on the assumption that there are more events – pressing the Cancel button to cancel

entering further events will return to the listing of events.

Note: The listing of events doesn’t update until the “Add New Event” window is closed.

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Tip: For Multi-Class events – set the age group to be different to that used by the able-bodied

events. I.e. if abled bodied events are “12 & Under” – use “7 to 12 years” for multi-class events.

If able-bodied events are Open – use “0 to 99 Years” for multi-class events. This helps separate

the events when qual times are applied to the able-bodied events.

Editing events Sometimes changes need to be made to the events, this can be done by double clicking on an event

to make a change.

In the above example, we have changed the 50 Butterfly to be 9 to 12 years.

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Note: As “Multi-age group” is enabled for this event – we will also need to change the reporting age

groups. The system will report this error when pressing ok or a button to move to the next

event.

At the bottom of the window there are 2 arrows for Left and Right – these are useful to move to the

next or previous events – they also save the changes that you made.

Tip: It is also useful if you need to add a new event with the same “Multi-Age groupings” as an

existing event to simply double click on that event first and then just close the edit screen.

Now when you open the “Add new Event” window – the settings from the previously opened

event will already be copied into the window.

Note: Using the left and right arrows to move between events moves the blue “event selection” bar

on window underneath however any changes made to the list will be visible until the edit

screen is closed.

To close out of the event listing screen use the “X” in the corner of the window or the icon highlighted

below.

Renumbering events Whilst on the Events Listing windows, it is possible to renumber the events or insert events. This can

be done manually by editing individual events. When editing the event number – care must be taken

not to duplicate event numbers.

The “Re-Number” menu option allows you to make some space in the program by increasing or

decreasing the event numbers of a range of events. This is useful when inserting new events into the

program.

In the above example we are asking the system to “Increase the events numbers” by 2 for all events

between event number 3 and 5. This will mean that 2 additional events could be inserted into the

program.

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Important: Once you have opened online entries – then adding, changing, swapping or

renumbering events will also need to be replicated in Online Entries which can be

complicated. These changes are best done before online entries have been opened.

Setup Sessions Any meet can have 1 or more sessions depending on the requirements. Meet Manager use these

sessions to help in planning the meet and some reports - such as estimating a timeline with a session

report – depend on the session being setup. Larger meets may have multiple sessions which may

separate Junior from Senior or the various days for the meet. It is really dependant on how you want

to treat the meet.

It is best done once all of the events have been entered into the meet. Whilst the session can be used

to change the order of the events, it is still preferred that the event numbers follow the numeric

sequence to make it easy for everyone at the meet.

Note: For some organisations, there is a limit to how many swim meets a club can submit in a month

to the database. Setting up multiple Sessions run on different days may be an easy way around

this. Effectively setting up the meet database to have a couple of club night results in it. My

Swim Results can be set to accept entries for each session independently by ticking a tick-box

on the website when you upload the events (see section on uploading club night events).

Whilst on the “Events Listing” window – click on the “Session” to open up a new window to allow you

to setup the “Sessions” for the meet.

The top section displays a list of the sessions that have already been setup in the bottom half of the

screen – will show the events for the meet (left) and the events entered into the selected “session”.

At the moment – there are no sessions setup – so add the first session by clicking on the “Add” icon.

For the majority of single day meets there will only be 1 session for the whole day.

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Give the session a Name. Commonly it is the day of the week or includes a date to make it easier. Set

the day number – typically Day 1. Change the “start time” to when you expect the meet to start (not

the warmup start time).

Set an “Interval” time – this is the amount of time to allocate between heats. Values of 35 seconds are

common. Additional time for backstroke can be added – it typically is left at 15 seconds.

Suggestion: Start with a 40 second interval between heats and reduce it depending on an

agreement between the officials and the meet director.

Some people like to set the “Diving Time per Dive” to zero. Meet manager can be used for Diving

competitions which is where this value would be useful but typically for pool competitions – it will be

ignored.

Even though you set the Course of the pool in the initial setup of the meet – it needs to be replicated

here.

Pressing OK will add the new session in the top half of the screen however the window will just move

to entering the next session. Pressing Cancel will close the window without saving the next session.

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Now we need to add some events to the session.

If you double click on the events, they can be moved over individually. This is useful if the event

numbering is not straightforward.

If the event numbering is straight forward and there is only 1 session – then the “Move All” menu

option will simply move all of the events into that session.

Events will be highlighted yellow on the left to show that they have been associated with a session.

This makes finding events that have been omitted simple.

The event order can be manipulated here by simply dragging the events up and down in the list for

the session but it preferable that the events are in a numeric order.

Championship events might include “Breaks” in the program for medal presentations. The length for

the break (in minutes) and a description can be included here which is useful for the Session report.

Note: Online Entries doesn’t take breaks into account when calculating the length of the session.

The “Session duration” can be edited online to reduce the length of the session to account for

these breaks.

Once all the events have been added to sessions, then the window can be closed.

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Setup Qualifying Times To add qualifying times to a meet or to certain events, this can be done from the listing of events by

clicking on the “Standards” menu option at the top. “Standards” is short for “Time Standards” which

can be certain “levels” based on a time – in this case we are going to setup a “Qualifying Time

Standard” which means that swimmers need to have previously gone faster than the Qualifying Time

for the event in order to be allowed to enter the event. There is also the ability for “Break Times”

which means that if a swimmer is faster than the “Break Time” for the event – then they will NOT be

allowed to enter the event.

Tip: If the time standard is a common standard used for a number of different things (such as a AA

time standard) then these are often available to download so that they can simply be imported

into the meet database.

To start with, there are no “Tags” at the bottom of the screen. Use the “New” tag icon to add a Tag to

the meet. Typically, “QT” for “Qualifying Time” is sufficient.

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Pressing Okay will close the window and return to the previous window however now you can enable

the “Tag” to be used for “Entry Qualification” by ticking the tick-box.

By leaving the tag as “Equal to or faster” means that a swimmer needs to achieve the qualifying time

before being allowed to enter the meet. Changing it to “Slower Than” will mean that only swimmers

who are yet to achieve the qualifying time will be allowed to enter the event.

We should now be ready to enter the times for each event which will be used as Qualifying times.

Ensure that the “course” is correct for the qualifying times to enter and then begin by selecting the

first event’s qualifying time field and typing in the time.

Tip: In the above example we have typed in 10000 which the system will automatically add the

time formatting to make the qualifying time “1:00.00” or 1 minute.

Repeat for each of the events that require a qualifying time. Any event that doesn’t require a qualifying

time can be left blank.

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Alert: The time standards use the age group, stroke and distance so if there is an Open MC (Multi-

Class) event for the 50 Freestyle (shouldn’t have a qual time) and an able bodied open 50

freestyle event (with a qual time) you will notice that the database will get confused and put

a qual time against the MC event. This is a known bug with Meet Manager and the work

around is to change the age group for the MC events to be different such as 0 to 99 years. This

is enough for the system to differentiate between the events and keep the qualifying times

separate.

Additional time standards can be added which are not used for Qualifying Times. These can be

included in the program so that it becomes and handy resource for spectators and coaches. E.g. State

qualifying times can be included and printed in the program so that it is quick reference.

Note: For Short Course meets - they often allow long course times to be used at Qualifying times.

Whilst it is not important for Online entries (as it will handle it by default) for those using Team

Manager – it may be a requirement to duplicate the Qualifying Times for each event into the

Long Course Qualifying Times. Use the options at the top of the window to switch to Long

Course and then duplicate the qualifying times.2

Note: For Long Course meets - a new trend / experiment is to include a separate set of short course

qualifying times to allow swimmers to enter a Long Course meet using a short course time.

Use the course indicator at the top of the window to switch to Short Course before entering

the separate set of Qual Times to use be able to use Short Course times in a long course meet.

2 Check with My Swim Results to see if the “Meet Sanitizer” is available – this tool sets up a Meet database with a number of common settings and can also duplicate the LC qualifying times to be SC times.

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Setting a maximum number of Events that a swimmer can participate in at

the meet. A traditional method for limiting the length of a meet is to limit the number of entries that a swimmer

can make in a meet.

This can be done in meet manger or online when in the settings for the meet. To do this in Meet

Manager – use the “Set-up” -> “Entry / Scoring Preferences” window. Click on the “Entries / Entry

Limits” tab at the top. Under the Entry Limits set the number of entries that an athlete can have.

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Setting a minimum age for the meet A minimum age can be set on each event however it is also possible to set a minimum age for the

whole meet for entries. To do this we set the “Minimum age for Open events” found on the “Set-up”

-> “Entry / Scoring Preferences” window. Click on the “Entries / Entry Limits” tab at the top.

Here we have actually set the minimum age for the meet to 5 and also set the date which results can

be used since at the beginning of the previous year. So even though the events that we previously

setup allow from 0 to 12 years. This minimum age will effectively mean that all the events are 5 to 12

years.

Note: Leaving the date when entry times can be used since blank - will mean that My Swim Results

will default to the 1st of January of the previous year for online entries however for those using

Team Manager for entries it will mean that any time can be used.

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Exporting events in readiness for Online Entries Now that all of the events are setup in Meet Manager for the meet, we are ready to extract the list of

events into a format that Online Entries can use to setup the meet. This format is also used by Hytek

Team Manager which can be useful in preparing teams, etc.

Use the File menu -> Export -> Events for TM.

A summary page will appear, check the dates and if there are any surcharges that apply.

https://hytek.active.com/swimming-management-software.html


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Note: if you set an event fee or surcharge for the meet, then this cost will flow through to online

entries. By default - My Swim Results will add a commission onto the price to cover the cost

associated with credit card transactions online.

If the summary is okay, press Yes to continue.

Some options on this screen may not be enabled depending on the setup of the meet.

The events to extract are typically “Standard Events” but if you have changed the event type to “Time

Trial” or “Swim-off” then the event will not be included in the extract unless the associated tick-box is

enabled.

Press Ok.

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Choose where the file can be saved so you can find it again.

The file is typically called “Meet Events” followed by the name of the meet. If there is already a file

created with the same filename, then the number on the end of the file name will increment so the

newest file will have the largest number on the end.

This file can be used with Online Entries to begin to accept online entries.

Backup your work Sometimes this is overlooked however it is still important that you make a backup of the database.

This backup will be useful if you want to check the length of a session by importing the entries file into

the database. You will need to restore back to an empty database before loading the final entries file.

In Meet Manager, close all other windows and then choose “File” -> “Backup”.

Check where the backup will be put before pressing the Okay button. Ensure that you will be able to

find the backup again once you have made the backup.

Tip: save the backup in the folder structure that you created earlier for the meet. This way it is

all kept together.

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Click on Ok. The system will then begin to back up the database before the following screen is

displayed.

Important: Remember the location of your backup.

Click on Ok.

Note: It is important to note that if a disaster happens such as the Hard Drive dies in the laptop, or

the laptop is stolen – all information stored on the hard drive is also lost. Utilising services

such as Dropbox does mean that the files are preserved somewhere and can be easily

returned to service.

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Online Entries Online entries through My Swim Results can be setup either for club nights, interclub nights,

sanctioned meets, state qualifying, state championships and national meets.

Club Night online entries is available to club registrars or authorised users which will allow these users

to upload the exported listing of events (previous section) to setup online entries.

Majority of meets are setup through the calendar by state association staff however club night entries

are actually setup via the club logins via the “Entry Wizard” tab -> “Import Club Night Events”.

Sanctioned meets Qualifying meets, various sanctioned and championship meets are generally listed on the calendar

well in advance of having entries opened. Generally, between 6 to 8 weeks before the meet starts –

the Event Listing extracted from Meet Manager can be attached to the Calendar item for the meet.

This is used to setup the listing of events and can start the process of enabling Online Entries.

My Swim Results does have a MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) for Online Entries which is

normally agreed to by the hosting organisation before entries are opened. This goes into better detail

about the expectations and requirements for Online Entries. Please refer to this document for further

information and liaise with My Swim Results to enable online entries.

The host will receive updates as to how entries are going.

State Association users are able to download the entries file at any time.

Club Nights By default, online entries for club nights: -

• Limited to members just for the club (feature: invitation only)

• Verification required (feature: verification)

The system can be used to try and limit the length of each session to try and prevent a meet from

being over-subscribed. This option is always on and can be configured by simply setting both the

number of lanes allocated to the meet and the length of the session. For swim meets, the default

value for the max duration is 8.5 hours which can be changed online to a more appropriate timeframe

for a club night if there is a requirement to limit entries.

The club will receive updates as to how entries are going.

Any Club logins are able to download the entries file at any time.

http://www.myswimresults.com.au/Help/Online%20Meet%20Entries%20Memorandum%20of%20Understanding.pdf

27

Club night entries are actually setup via the club logins via the “Entry Wizard” tab -> “Import Club

Night Events”. Public sanctioned meets are typically setup to an existing entry on the calendar.

Opens a list of any recent club nights that you have previously uploaded and allows you to upload

more.

The “Browse” button allows you to select the file of events that you exported from Meet Manager

using the “File” -> “Export” -> “Events for TM” menu option.

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Note: the “Browse” button may be different with different internet browsers (e.g. Internet

Explorer, Firefox, Chrome) but they will all achieve the same task.

There is a tick-box for “Separate entries for each session” – this allows you to setup a single database

for a couple of different club nights. Each club night would be a session in the same database and

ticking this tick-box will create multiple calendar entries each for a different session. Entries for each

session can then be handled separately but all be imported into the same meet manager database.

Note: This can be useful if there is a limit to the number of club nights that are submitted per

month however there are some drawbacks. Need to consider: -

o Results for each session will be submitted to My Swim Results once all the sessions are

complete which may not suit members who want to use the times sooner.

o Personal bests and Club Records on My Swim Results will be updated once all the

sessions are complete and the results doesn’t take into consideration that there might

be a week or more between meets. (The results will be treated as if it was a single meet.)

Clicking on the name of the meet will take you directly to the “Export Entries” page for the club night.

Please note that the meet will automatically appear in the “export entries” list once there are some

entries confirmed for the meet. See next section for more details on exporting the entries file and

importing it into Meet Manager.

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The pencil icon allows you to visit a screen to allow you to edit the meet details. E.g. change the

entries due date or add some comments for the meet.

The icon pops up a window which gives the direct links for Entries and Confirmed Entries which

can then be published elsewhere for members to easily find.

Use “Copy and Paste” to get the links into newsletters, emails or websites to distribute.

links directly to the calendar item for the meet.

Also see:

• Appendix B – Using specific seed times rather than those allocated by Online Entries

o Some point score systems used by clubs need the “Seed times” to be from a particular

set of meets (typically club nights only) which are stored in a specific Team Manager

database.

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Calendar The My Swim Results Calendar does change depending if you are logged into the system. Typically,

the calendar will display all sanctioned meets but it can also include club nights and interclub nights.

Varying levels of access will also have a number of different reports that are available, such as: -

• How much time before entries close

• Entry Wizard

o Starting point for online entries for an individual

• Relay Entries

o Starting point for a club administrator or coach to select relay teams.

• Confirmed Entries

o Lists confirmed entrants by club into the swim meet.

o Club and coaches can also extract a list of their club’s entries into formats such as

▪ TM Entry files

▪ Excel Listing of entries

▪ PDF Report showing a club’s entries by event, including the: -

• entry time

• a space for writing the final time

• target times for each race

• previous splits which make up the entry time

• suggested Target Splits

o Email all the club’s competitors direct from the website

• Eligibility reports

o Particularly useful for swim meets with qualifying times.

o Can be listed by Swimmer or by Event

• Event Listing

o Can also change the events details or event name

Depending on the level of access that each login has these options may not all be available.

Tip: A grouping of icons along the right hand side of the screen can provide coaches and club

logins some hidden gems.

For club nights, the coaching and club logins associated with the club are allowed to edit the details

for the calendar item. This means that you will be able to click on the pencil icon to be able to

edit the details of the meet. Most settings are pretty basic such as dates for the meet or close of

entries.

Note: If no time is specified on the “Entries Due” (aka Entries Closure date) then it will be the end

of the nominated day. (yes it takes into account the time zone but doesn’t consider

daylight saving)

The “Entries Wizard” section will control some of the configuration for the online entries system for

a particular meet. It does have the option of sending the visitors off to a 3rd party website for online

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entries but in this document we will concentrate on setting up using online entries built into

My Swim Results.

For the most part the system will setup defaults after determining what sort of meet it is however

for certain meets further investigation might be required.

The number of lanes for the pool is used in the calculation of the timeline and subsequently any

remaining lanes if the system is left to automatically close events when it reaches a certain timeline.

Some meets have a limit on the number of individual events that a swimmer can enter.

Tick-boxes for:-

• Allow “No Time” entries

o Normally available to allow swimmers without times to enter the meet

o If an event has “qualifying time” then the event will require that the swimmer have

an entry time

• Allow “Club Trials”

o Meets in the database normally are official meets which can be used for entry times.

If there is a requirement to remove the club nights from the entries, then this could

be disabled but normally this is left ticked.

• Allow “Manual Times” as entry times

o Not normally required

o If competitors are required to nominate an entry time but doesn’t have a time in the

database – then they are prompted to nominate an entry times and where then

achieved the time

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• Allow SC times for the LC Meet

o Normally disabled

• Allow LC Times for a SC Meet

o Normally allowed

• Allow Entry Wizard to accept entries

o Authorises My Swim Results to accept entries for the meet.

New Members can be setup so that they become prospective members of the club through online

entries.

There is also an “Advanced” section which can be expanded which can control the:

• Minimum age for the meet

• When the age is calculated

• Which membership types are allowed for the meet

• Which email addresses used to send the daily statistics about the meet

• Transfer Unattached period length

o Note the unattached period uses the “Entries Closure” date and not the starting

date for the meet

• Enabling the invitation only will limit the entries to only those clubs or individuals

nominated. Club nights are by default limited to the club only.

• Entries require verification is useful if entries are free and will require the person entering

the competitors into a meet to know their birthday.

• The Session name and “Max Duration”

o By altering the “Max duration” will mean that the system will keep the entries to

that duration by enabling limited registrations to only remaining lane-space once the

timeline is reached.

o Default length for each session is 8.5 hours

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Exporting Entries from My Swim Results There is a couple of different methods that you can get to extract the entries. (An alternative is to

get to the entries via the calendar.) In this example, we will go via the “Entries Wizard” tab on the

main page of My Swim Results.

With access to Entry Wizard tab, click on “Entries Extract”

A listing of the meets that are available to your login is produced. Where you can choose the specific

meet to view further information. (you can also extract the entries from this screen)

Once an event is chosen, more details about the meet can be displayed.

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Along the top there are a number of options that you can use.

“Set all entries to be SC (or LC) times” sets the system to avoid any conversion factors that Meet

Manager might apply.

“Confirmed Entries Only” will only pickup those entries who have completed the entries process. Some

clubs are lenient when it comes to entries and will bring in members’ entries even if they haven’t

completed the process. Normally this is done when introducing the system to members and there are

no fees that the system needs to collect.

“Separate Membership types” will look at the membership class (Competitive, Prospective, Non-

Competitive, Club Only or Open Water) and setup separate “clubs” for each so that if your club allows

swimmers who are not currently registered as Competitive Swimmers to participate – these will

appear in Meet Manager under a separate club which can be easily removed before submitting the

results for just the competitive members to the relevant authority.

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allows you to head back to edit the meet details. E.g. change the entries due date or add some

comments for the meet.

pops up a window which gives the direct links for Entries and Confirmed Entries which can then

be published elsewhere for members to easily find. Use “Copy and Paste” to get the links into

newsletters, emails or websites to distribute.

links directly to the calendar item for the meet.

opens a window showing a financial summary for the meet. (i.e. How much money has been

collected, paid out or retained as commission.

Also available is some statistics for the meet. The number of Competitors, clubs and entries should

match what Meet Manager imports into the database.

Each session will also be listed showing the number of swimmers, entries and an estimated duration.

By default, there is a quick summary of the event for each event showing the various ages of the

swimmers that are participating.

There will also be an option to drop down a list of clubs or add a Manual Entry.

If a club is selected, then the list of the entrants from that club will be displayed. Each entry will have

an icon allowing the entry to be edited if needs be.

Note: The online entries system automatically checks for entry times overnight and also when the

Entries age extracted using the “Meet Mgr Entries” button (1 check per hour).

Exporting the entries file before entries close will cause the system to call the entries file an “Interim

Entries” file. The only reason it is an Interim entries file is because entries are still open and that it is

still possible for someone to come to the website and add new entries. The interim entries file is useful

if the host wishes to check the timeline or do some preliminary work on the database. (e.g. investigate

the timeline for the meet and any possible event amalgamations in advance of closing entries.)

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Importing an interim entries file to check timeline in Meet Manager This guide uses HyTek Meet Manager to produce a session / timeline report on an entry file to confirm

that entries for the meet don’t cause the meet to be too long.

The process will guide you through importing the entry file into an empty swim meet that only has the

events setup in it. It would have been the same database that produced the events file for online

entries.

Once entries close – a “Final Entries” file can be supplied which will need to be imported into the

database that doesn’t already have entries imported into it so ensure that a backup is available which

doesn’t have any entries in it so that the final entries file can be properly imported.

Note: If online entries are still open then the system only generates “Interim entry files”. The only

difference between the entry files data is in the name of the file however an Interim entry

file would indicate that as entries are still open it so would still be possible for new entries

to be organised online. It is quite normal to set a time on the entries close date field online

(not possible in Meet Manager) so that entries close at a specific time of the day. By default

- entries close at the end of the day nominated in Meet Manager.

Download the entries file from the My Swim Results website by

1) visiting the “Entry Wizard” tab on the main screen.

2) Click on “Entries Extract” to view a list of the meets available to you.

3) Click on the name of the meet to see information specific about the meet

4) Click on “Meet Mgr Entries” button and save the file that it response with.

a. Tip: Use the folder structure that you previously setup to store the file or just save it

somewhere you can find it again.

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Step 1: Confirm the Session is setup and ready with events

The database would already have the events ready to go, just ensure that the session(s) are also setup.

This may have already been organised prior to online entries opening but sessions are required if we

want to check the Time-line. Click on the Events menu item.

Refer to the previous section on setting up sessions to ensure that all the events have been allocated

to a session.

Tip: Once all the events are linked with a session they should all be highlighted.

You may return here to include small breaks in the program for medal ceremony’s or refreshments as

required.

Use the icon to return to the previous window. Use again to return back to the beginning.

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Step 2: Backup the Meet Manager Database

As entries are open, it will be important to return the database back to an empty state so that the final

entries file can be imported into an empty database. By backing up the database at this point – you

ensure that the database can be restored back to an empty database in readiness for the next time

you want to import the entries.

Please refer to a previous section for more information about backing up the database.

From the Meet Manager main screen – choose “File” -> “Backup”. Choose a location for saving the

backup file.

Tip: Use the folder structure setup previously so that the backup is kept together with the

database.





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Step 3 – Import the Entries file

My Swim Results can supply an entries file for the meet to be imported into the original database that

the list of events was created from. Save the file somewhere, like the desktop, so that you can find it

again.

In Meet Manager choose: File -> Import -> Entries.

Choose the entries file to import

Once the Open button is pressed – the entries file will be unpacked.

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Select the file and press the Open button.

Press okay to check the import settings.

Press the Ok button for the import to begin.

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Hopefully everything behaves and the imported number of Teams, Athletes and entries should match

the statistics that My Swim Results provide with the entries file.

Press the Ok button.

The Entries are now imported into the database, ready to be “seeded”.

Step 4 – Seed the Meet (recommended for checking timeline)

Whilst the session report in the next step doesn’t necessarily require this step – we have found that

the unseeded meet can produce a difference in the timeline / session report with a report done from

a seeded meet. Not sure why there is a difference but there is no harm in seeding the meet before

running the report.

Seeding the meet sets up the entries and organises them into the event so that the meet program can

be organised.

Use the “Seeding” menu.

Select the sessions or events that you want to “Seed”.

Tip: Use the “Select All” menu option to select all the listed events.

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Press the “Start Seeding” menu item to organise the entries into the various heats for the events. Once

complete the following will be displayed.

Press Ok.

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Once seeded – you will notice that the number of heats would have been allocated and the event

status changed.

Use again to return back to the beginning.

Now that the event is seeded – you can produce a meet program. Report -> Meet Program. Select all

events for the program and press the “Create Report” menu option.

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Step 4 – Check the Session / Time-Line report

Now that the entries are imported into the database, it can produce a session report / timeline report

for the meet.

Choose “Reports” -> “Sessions”.

Choose “Select All” to select all of the sessions and then press the “Create Report” menu item.

A report with then be produced which will estimate what time each event will start at.

Tip: Go back to the “Interval” setting on each session in Step 1 to adjust the amount of time between

heats. (A short time between heats –rushes the officials but a long time between heats can make for

a long / slow day.)

Suggestion: Start with a 40 second interval between heats and reduce it depending on an agreement

between the officials and the meet director.

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Step 5: Restore the meet back to an empty database.

The final entries file should be imported into a meet manager database with only the events setup in

it. As we have just imported a whole heap of entries into the database – it is easiest to restore the

database back to the version that is in the backup that was taken in Step 2.

Ensure that you know where the backup was put before beginning.

Choose File -> Restore

Generally, you will want to replace the database that is currently open with the version from the step

2 backup.

Press Ok

Navigate to the location of the backup. In this case “C:\SWMeets8” and choose the backup file.

Press Open

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The above is a warning to say that the backup will replace the currently open database. Looking at the

red text saying “Click OK to replace <meet database> with <meet database>” – if both databases are

the same then it is a good check – press Ok to continue.

Press Yes.

The database has been restored. Press OK.

The list of athletes and teams should now be empty ready for when the final entries file is created.

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Alternative to restoring the empty database.

Note: An alternative to restoring the database maybe to “Purge” the Teams from the database by

simply using the “File” -> “Purge” -> “Remove Data Selectively” option. Note: this will also remove any

manual entries that you may have already done.

This allows you to pick which data to remove from the database. In this case we are looking to remove

all of the Team, Athlete and Entry information.

By simply clicking the “Teams” option – the additional tick-boxes will also be enabled. Pressing Ok will

start the process and it will return you to the Meet Setting screen just in case you need to make a

change. You can just close the window.

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Importing the Final Entries file This guide is applicable once meet entries close and they now need to be imported into the HyTek

Meet Manager database that was originally used to export the list of Events for Online Entries.

Once entries close – a “Final Entries” file can be supplied which will need to be imported into the

database that doesn’t already have entries imported into it so ensure that a backup is available which

doesn’t have any entries in it so that the final entries file can be properly imported.

Note: If online entries are still open then the system only generates “Interim entry files”. The only

difference between the entry files data is in the name of the file however an Interim entry

file would indicate that as entries are still open it would still be possible for new entries to

be organised online. It is quite normal to set a time on the entries close date field online (not

possible in Meet Manager) so that entries close at a specific time of the day.

Step 1: Confirm the Athletes are not already imported into the database and sessions are setup

A quick check here can save you some time later trying to work out what went wrong. By opening up

the Athlete list – it will show that the database doesn’t have any Athletes in the database so there is

no risk of having entries included who may have already scratched.

Also check that the Session(s) are setup in dataset. Refer to a previous section about setting up a

Session and linking events to that session.

Step 2: Backup the Meet Manager Database

Ensuring that you have a backup of the meet prior to entries can be useful. We always hope that

nothing will go wrong but always plan for something strange to happen.

Please refer to a previous section for more information about backing up the database.


backup file.


database.





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Step 3 – Import the Entries file

My Swim Results can supply an entries file for the meet to be imported into same database that the

list of events was created from. The file has previously been saved somewhere like the folder structure

for the meet or the machines desktop so that you can find it again.

In Meet Manager choose: File -> Import -> Entries.

Choose the entries file to import

Once the Open button is pressed – the entries file will be unpacked.

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Select the file and press the Open button.

Press okay to check the import settings.

If you have qualifying times in the meet – tick the tick-box to enforce qualifying times. Online Entries

would have taken the qualifying times into account but this is piece of mind. If there are problems

with the import an exception report will be produced.

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Press the Ok button for the import to begin.

Hopefully everything behaves and the imported number of Teams, Athletes and entries should match

the statistics that My Swim Results provide with the entries file.

Press the Ok button.

The Entries are now imported into the database, ready to be “seeded”.

If there are exceptions, then a report will be produced which details what went wrong. Typically, this

occurs when you are trying to import the entries into a different database that Online Entries was

setup for.

Note: Additional Entries files can also be imported into the meet database as well as any manual

entries.

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MC Athletes For those swimmers listed as an MC swimmer – Online entries automatically includes their

classification on the swimmers name. (e.g. “John Smith S9 SB8 SM9”). For the MC Point Score to be

correctly calculated – the swimmers classifications need to be recorded properly on the Athlete.

Using the Athlete menu, it will give you a full list of the swimmers. You can quickly sort the athletes

into “MC swimmers” and “abled bodied” by clicking on the “Status” column. The MC swimmers will

be listed as “Disabled”. Double-clicking on each name will open the Athlete details for a swimmer.

Copy the swimmers’ classifications into the designated classifications field.

Tip: Ask “My Swim Results” about the “Swim Meet Sanitizer”. This program applies a number of

standard settings to a meet manager database specific to a meet and also has the ability to

pre-load the swimmer classifications into the Meet Manager database for you.

Note: Newer versions of Meet Manager (Version 7) have started to automatically add the MC

classifications into the program which can mean that the program will have a double-up of the

classifications. It may become policy to remove the classifications off the last name into the

correct classification fields so that Meet Manager can take care of publishing the

classifications for the program.

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Advanced / Optional steps

Run an Entries report

To confirm how many entries have been taken so that you can confirm how much entries money

should have been collected – use the Report -> “Teams” report. Include the “Athlete / Entry Count”

so that it will be easy to calculate how many entries are included.

Fixed lane assignments

Some meets are setup such that each club will always participate in the same lanes. Now that the

teams are available – they can be allocated to their lane. Use the “Setup” -> “Seeding preferences”

menu option.

Double click on the club to assign them to the next available lane. Also enabled “Strict Assignment All

Heats” and “Use Lane Assignments Above”.

Note: When seeding with “Fixed Lane assignments” return to the “Setup” -> “Meet Setup” and

change the type of meet to a “Dual meet” before seeding

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Once seeded, the meet style can be returned back to a Standard type to avoid potential

problems.

Seeding the meet Seeding the meet sets up the entries and organises swimmers into heats and lanes within the event

so that the meet program can be organised.

Use the “Seeding” menu.

Select the sessions or events that you want to “Seed”.

Tip: Use the “Select All” menu option to select all the listed events.

Press the “Start Seeding” menu item to organise the entries into the various heats for the events. Once

complete the following will be displayed.

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Press Ok.

Once seeded – you will notice that the number of heats would have been allocated and the event

status changed.

Use again to return back to the beginning.

Now that the event is seeded – you can produce a meet program. Report -> Meet Program. Select all

events for the program and press the “Create Report” menu option.

Important: Once the Meet Program has been printed then re-seeding the meet will mean that all

of the printed programs will now be out of date as the system would have allocated

the swimmers into different heats and lanes.

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Review the Seeding of the meet This optional setup involves having a look at the lane assignments for the swimmers – particularly

those without an Entry Time. The seeding process works best for those swimmers with an entry time

and generally swims the kids of similar ability together to give them the best opportunity for a good

race. Some competitors may not have swum an event for a while whilst others may be swimming an

event for the first time – swimmers in either of these categories will be assigned an NT but will find

themselves swimming together which is not really the best outcome for the seeding.

As a rule of thumb, swimmers without a time will need to be shuffled around a little in order to find

them a more appropriate race. By having a browse through the program for the first couple of heats

of each event – specifically looking at the swimmers ages and genders may reveal that some changes

may be required just to slot the swimmers into better races.

In the above example there is 1 swimmer who is twice the age of most of the swimmers in that race

but hasn’t swum the event for a while and so has an NT. A little further investigation may also reveal

that this particular swimmer is more than capable of being the fastest swimmer for the whole event

so this would be a good candidate to move the swimmer before the final program is produced.

Obviously for Championship events – this is not necessary as the meet will require that the swimmers

already have an entry time. However, for club nights – it would still be more preferable to swim the

younger swimmers on their first attempt in a different race to older swimmers.

Once a change has been identified, then it is a matter of deciding how to best deal with the change.

As a rule of thumb – if the swimmer is an older swimmer then they probably have swum the time in

the past and the easiest way forward is to enter their Career Best time. This has an advantage in that

the event can be reseeded and will result in a better heat for them. It also means that if the event is

reseeded on the day – the reseeding will again be based on their updated entry time.

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In this example there are a number of 10 years swimming against 7 year olds. We could manually

shuffle these around so that the younger kids swim together and the older kids find themselves in a

following heat. The easiest way to change the seeding is in the “Run” screen. Select an event and then

press the “Adjust” (F8) button to bring up a window to swap swimmers around.

This screen will allow you to simply drag the swimmers around to swap positions. So we will move the

7 and 8 year olds into Heat 1 and the 10 and 11 year olds in the first heat into the second heat.

Once you have finished moving the swimmers around – save the changes using the “Save” menu

option at the top.

Important: Once the Meet Program has been printed then any re-seeding will mean that all of

the printed programs will now be out of date.

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Another reason to review the seeding is to have a look at the MC swimmers who are participating.

Blind swimmers (S11 – S13) prefer to swim with lane ropes on either side of them. Most 8 lane pools

don’t have lane ropes down the gutter so moving them 1 lane in will mean that they will have a lane

rope on either side of them.

Session / Estimated Time-Line report Now that the entries are imported into the database, Meet Manager can produce a “session report”

(also known as an “Estimated Timeline”) for the meet.

From the Meet manager main screen, choose “Reports” -> “Sessions”.

Choose “Select All” to select all of the sessions and then press the “Create Report” menu item.

A report with then be produced which will estimate what time each event will start at. Factors on the

day can mean that the events can run earlier or later than this estimate.

Tip: Go back to the “Interval” setting on each session to adjust the amount of time between

heats. (A short time between heats –rushes the officials but a long time between heats can

make for a long / slow day.)

Suggestion: Start with a 35 to 40 second interval between heats and reduce it depending on an

agreement between the officials and the meet director.

Tip: The meet can be reseeded if there are early scratches or refunds that need to be processed

however once the meet program has been created (and particularly if it is printed or

published) then the whole meet should NOT be re-seeded.

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Creating the Meet Program Once the meet has been seeded, the system will be ready to produce a set of Meet Programs. Each

variant of the program (with the exception of the Lane sheets / timekeeper sheets) is done via the

“Reports” -> “Meet Program” menu option.

Each report can be printed for the whole meet, an individual session or particular event. In the

majority of cases before the meet, you will likely want to “Select All” events before “Creating the

report”.

Event Sponsors can be mentioned in the program by including their details in the comments field.

A couple of different formats of meet program are used during the meet. Each format is slightly

different but essentially has the same information for different roles. Officials programs, Spectator

Programs and Timekeeping lane sheets are 3 common program formats.

Important: Once the Meet Program has been printed - any re-seeding done to the meet will mean

that all the printed programs will now be out of date as the system would have

allocated the swimmers into different heats and lanes.

Event Sponsors Event Sponsorship can be acknowledged by updating each Event with the name of the sponsor. This

can be done several ways, however using Meet Manager we can include the sponsors name or

message underneath the event name in the program.

To do this in Meet manager, return to the list of events by clicking on Events from the main screen.

Highlight the event that you want to setup the sponsor and then choose the “Comments” meu

option at the top.

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Enter in the comment into “Comment 1” that you want to put into the Program. Press Okay.

Continue to select events and enter comments.

When it comes to producing the program from the reports menu – make sure that the option to

include “Event Comments” is picked to be included in the program.

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Spectator program Typically, this is a 2 column continuous format which is typically printed duplex (on both sides of the

paper).

Note: The start time for each event can be listed in the program if the program is produced for each

session.

See troubleshooting section if the system is producing blank columns.

Note: it is also possible to put the estimated start time for each heat on the program however the

program will need to be produced for each Session. For multi-session meets - it will likely be

easier to have a separate “Session” report showing the start time for each event.

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Officials program Officials like a separate format which is normally: -

• single column

• 1 event per page

• Single sided

• Show empty lanes

If your meet has multiple sessions, produce the official’s program so that each session is together.

Technical officials often change roles between sessions or may not always be continuing for another

session.

As a general rule, count the number of officials you would have and make sure you have enough

printed beforehand with a couple of extras.

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Lane Timekeeper sheets These are produced via the “Reports” - > “Lane / Timer Sheets” and offer a lane by lane program with

a space to manually record the swimmers times just in case there are problems.

This program is designed for the timekeepers behind each lane to record the times from their watches.

Even when using the Dolphin timing system, it is still recommended that the timekeepers write down

the times displayed on their watches as a backup. The buttons on the Dolphin Timing system are very

sensitive and they often are triggered unknowingly. We have found that if a watch is stopped but then

the button is pressed again accidently – the watch assumes that it is to continue timing and as such

the result is removed from the Dolphin timing system screen which means it doesn’t get used in the

final calculation of the result.

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Producing a program that can be edited to include additional advertising Note that in the proceeding stages – Meet Manager will produce perfectly good reports however if

there are additional sponsor requirements then it may be necessary to produce a format that can be

edited to include advertising amongst the events.

This process is not for the faint of heart and there may be other ways to do it which you may be

more comfortable with. Such as using a PDF editor to put a number of documents together to make

up the spectator’s program rather than editing a word document.

Effectively we are asking Meet Manager to produce a Word Document which can be edited to

include sponsor logo’s etc. Once produced, the formatting of the Word Document can be time

consuming and needs to be done with care.

Choose the events that you want to print or just press the “Select All” menu item at the top.

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Take note of the options at the bottom. In this exercise we will be producing a Microsoft Word

document which can then be used to add sponsorship and other documents together to form the final

program. To make it easier to manipulate the document – tick the “RTF Export”.

If additional items such as event comments, time standards, records, heat start times or qualifying

times are to be included in the program then click on the “Include in Meet Program” tab and update

it accordingly.

Once satisfied – press the “Create Report” menu item at the top of the window.

Once processed the Meet Program will be displayed. In this form it is a basic meet program – this

document needs to be saved into a document that can be easily manipulated to include sponsors

messages and any other important information.

Choose to save the document.

This will open a new window showing a choice of file formats to save to. Search for “Microsoft Word

– Editable (RTF)”.

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Then press “Ok”.

Press Ok.

The system will have an initial file name which should be altered to something a bit more recognizable

before continuing. Also Save the file where you will be able to easily find it again.

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Once saved the meet manager report will again be displayed you can minimize or close out of Meet

Manager entirely to find the file and confirm that the export is suitable.

The word document will be in a format that is reasonable easy to edit (if not then check that you used

the tick-box for “RTF Export” towards the beginning of this step and also the “Microsoft Word –

Editable RTF” option.)

Note that the formatting of the document may need to be cleaned up before continuing. For example

– the below snippet shows that Event 6 has slipped across 2 pages however on the first page there is

no information. This would be a good example of simply cleaning up the event so that it appears on

the next page in its entirety rather than splitting it across 2 pages.

Use the “CTRL-Enter” to insert a page break before the event starts and clean-up the content.

By changing the flow of the document – the remainder of the document will also need to be checked

to ensure that it hasn’t had a flow-on effect to other areas to the document.

Sponsors advertising could also be slipped into the program – particularly if an event is being

sponsored by a particular sponsor.

Once finalised the Meet Program can be printed and / or distributed.

Note: If the meet program is being distributed electronically – then ensure that the version of the

program is a PDF document of the word document.

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Backup the Meet Manager Database Now that you have done all the preparation – it would be a shame to lose it. If you need to send the

database to the venue, then this is format that they would be expecting it in. This also conveniently

packages up the meet database ready for transport to another machine.


backup file.


database.





Restore a Meet Manager Database If you need to restore a database from a backup – use the File menu from the main screen and

choose “Restore”. The system has 4 options for you to choose.

Carefully read each of the 4 options before selecting. Most common selections are the 2nd (Unzip and

copy a database to C:\SWMeets8) or the 4th Option (Unzip, copy database to a selected folder and

then open the database). The 4th Option will allow you to choose the folder structure you created

previously to put the database.

Make the selection and press the Ok button to open a window which is asking you to select the backup

that you want to restore.

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Browse to the backup that you wish to restore.

Note: If the database has been downloaded from My Swim Results as a Meet Manager backup –

the filename that you download would likely have been changed so the default open screen

may not show the backup initially. Saving the backup file from My Swim Results with the

suffix of “swmm” will solve the problem.

Once you have found the file, select it and press the Open button.

Depending on the choose of restore you choose earlier, a window will appear asking where you

would like to put the restored database.

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Make your selection and press okay. A new window will appear asking for a final confirmation of

what you want to do.

Press the OK button to start restoring the database.

The process will not take very long and the confirmation screen will alter to say that it has

completed successfully.

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Running the Meet Meet Manager integrates into a number of different timing systems. The most common include:-

• Dolphin Timing

• Aries

• Quantum

Dolphin Timing doesn’t require a special HyTek license to run whereas the larger AOE / “venue timing

systems” have specific licensing requirements.

From Meet Manager’s point of view, the basics are similar between the timing systems, but the

interfaces are very different. In this handbook we will use the Dolphin Timing system.

The Dolphin Timing system requires that:-

• the computer, starter and all of the individual watches are all within wireless range of one

another.

• All these devices would be set to operate on the same channel

• each of the individual watches have been configured for a specific lane and watch (A, B or C

depending if it is the 1st, 2nd or 3rd watch on the lane).

• The computer has the Dolphin timing system installed on it and the USB base unit is plugged

in.

Note: raising the Dolphin Timing Base Unit up slightly may yield better reception and as a rule of

thumb should have clear “line of sight” to all of the other equipment.

Computer operator often needs a helper / recorder in order to keep up-to-date with everything that

is going on. They should be armed with a printout of the latest program and a pen. As the meet

progresses, they can record things like:-

• The Dolphin Timing Race File number for each heat

• “No Shows” in the pool

• Scratchings

• Which event has been printed and which are waiting for DQ slips to come in from the field.

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Preparing the Dolphin timing system Before the meet officially starts, make sure that the equipment is tested. This does a couple of things,

firstly it ensures that everything is working, but it also sets up the current “Data Set” ready to import

times. Allow the timers to run for over 10 seconds as the system will automatically ignore the results

if stopped before then.

Refer to the Dolphin Timing hardware setup guides to ensure that: -

• All devices are operating on the same channel

• Lane Timers are configured to each lane

• Lane Timers are in the lane that they are assigned to

• Batteries are replaced if required.

Liaise with the starter to work out who is going to “reset” for the next race. This can be done either at

the “starter” or at the “computer”.

Ensure that the timekeepers are familiar with their timing handsets. Some things to remind them

could include:-

• Starter will start the timers automatically (don’t need to press any buttons)3

• Press a “Black button” to stop the timer when the swimmers finishes

• Timers are expensive so use the lanyard.

• If no-one is in your lane and you feel “compelled” to press a button to stop the timer – press

the “Reset” rather than a black stop button. Otherwise don’t press any buttons.

• Black stop buttons are sensitive. If they find that the timer has stopped before the swimmer

finishes then press the stop button (again) to get the timer to resume timing. It will pickup

from where it should be in the race.

With the Dolphin Timing base unit plugged into the computer, open Meet Manager and click on the

“Run” menu to begin. Use the “Interface” -> “Timing Console interface” menu option to ensure that

“Dolphin Timing System” is selected.

3 Starting with Dolphin Timer Firmware 1.51 – watches can be set to “Manual timing: off” which means that they have to be started by the Dolphin timer.

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Choose “Colorado Time systems Dolphin” and press Ok. (See Appendix J for using Dolphin Timing with

splits option.)

If this is the first time setting the timer type for Meet Manager – you may need to close out of the

application before re-opening before the menu and buttons will all appear suitable for the timing

system.

Next Step is to open the Dolphin Timing System software.

Older versions of the Windows Operating system will happily start the Dolphin timing system from

inside Meet Manager however newer versions of the Operating system seem to have introduced

additional security on programs that are started from within another program. This can result in weird

error messages ranging from “unable to find a COM port” to “unable to connect”. On newer operating

systems - the more reliable way to start the Dolphin timing software seems to be to visit the folder

C:\CTSDolphin in Windows Explorer and double clicking on Dolphin.exe.

The Dolphin Timing system software will need to remain open for the duration of the meet.

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Note: Starting version 5 of the Dolphin Timing software is done by double clicking on the blue

“Dolphin” on the desktop or by navigating to “C:\program files (x86\Colorado Time

Systems\Dolphin5\Dolphin5Launcher.exe”

Dolphin Version 4.3

Here we can see the battery levels and wireless signal strength for each timer and the starting unit.

Battery icons start as full Green batteries and gradually work their way down to

empty Red batteries.

Wireless signal strength is best with 4 strong bars and may fluctuate with signal strength. Raising

the height of the “Base Unit” may improve the signal strength and reliability to each device.

Get the Officials to test the starter and the timing equipment. Wait about 10 seconds before getting

the timekeepers to stop their timers. As the timers are stopped, the time recorded on each timer will

come through on the Dolphin software.

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The “Traffic light” symbol beside each time indicates that the watch has been stopped. Other options

are:-

• Currently timing

• Has been stopped

• reset ready for the next race

Once they have all been tested, reset the timers by pressing the “Reset Timers” button in the top right

does 3 things:

1. This will change the “Traffic Light” symbol on each watch to yellow ready for the next race.

2. Create the file to be imported into Meet Manager

3. Resets the clock on the starters unit so that they know we are ready for the next race

Now that a timing file has been created we can easily identify the “Data source” for the meet. Return

to the Meet Manager software and choose the Interfaces -> Timer -> Select Data Set

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This opens a window and allows you to browse through the various data sets found on the computer.

Use the “Previous Meet” and “Next Meet” to locate the current meet by checking the date for the

meet and there should be the “test race” listed. Once you have identified the meet – you can close

that window by pressing the “Close” button at the bottom.

Pressing the “Get Times” button will now list files for the dataset.

If everything is okay, there should only be the “Test Race” in the system.

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Also have a look at the “Logging” option in Dolphin. By enabling logging, it will mean that the event

and heat numbers need to be maintained during the meet, but it stores the results in a readable text

file which can be handy to refer to. (It will log to C:\CTSDolphin\Timers.txt and will just append to the

existing file.) The individual timing files are effectively readable text as well.

If there is a problem, check the Dolphin setup and make sure that all devices have a reliable

connection, check that the equipment has been reset and that Meet Manager has the correct data

source. Re-test.

Dolphin Version 5.0

Dolphin Version 5.0 has some new features which may help run a swim meet. It requires a firmware

upgrade across the devices however the enhancements over version 4.3 are worthwhile.

Important: Laptops with screen resolution height of less than 768 pixels will struggle to fit the whole

timing window on the screen.

The interface has been redesigned but a lot of the “traffic light” indicators remain the same as previous

versions.

Live screen shows the current race. It can also show the event details if the list of events and heats

has been entered / imported.

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A red “low battery” indicator will appear in the top right corner if there is a low battery

somewhere among the devices. Checking the “Signals” screen will indicate which battery needs to be

replaced.

Signals window shows the signal strength and battery level for each device.

Events screen allows you to enter the list of events and setup the number of heats and splits to be

recorded for each event.

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Whilst the interface can let you update the event names – it is really designed to import the list of

events from a CSV file in bulk and then the interface can be used to make small changes on the fly.

Suggestion: Speak to My Swim Results about using their “Dolphin Event List Extraction” tool

which effectively reads a seeded Meet Manager database and creates a CSV file

suitable for importing into the Dolphin system.

Note: Updating the number of Heats and Splits can be done by:-

• Left clicking on the number to increment

• Right clicking on the number to decrement

The “Round” can be “All”, “Preliminary” or “Final”. For most meets run with the Dolphin timing – A for

“All” or F for “Final” will be sufficient.

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Importing a CSV file containing columns for the:

• event number

• event name

• number heats

• number splits

• round.

Importing the file can be done using the “Load” button found in the bottom right corner. Select the

CSV file you created and it will pull through the list of events.

Settings window shows certain configuration settings to the Dolphin Timing system.

Important: By default the “D04” and “D03” file formats are not enabled – these need to be enabled

for Meet Manager to import the times. (D04 is required if taking splits.)

Whenever the timers are “reset” – the heat or event number is moved forward depending on the

information from the events screen.

The majority of the meet will be in the “Live” screen.

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Before the meet starts, get the Officials and Timekeepers to test the starter and the timing equipment.

Wait about 10 seconds before getting the timekeepers to stop their timers. As the timers are stopped,

the time recorded on each timer will come through on the Dolphin software.

Important: Once the watches are “Reset” 4 things will happen:-




4. Dolphin timing will expect the next heat to be ready and update the event and heat

information at the top of the window.

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As this was just a test – the arrows at the top will be needed to bring the Event number and Heat

number back to the start of the meet.

The race number cannot be changed. (This corresponds to the timing file produced for each race.)

Tip: If you have upgraded from the previous version of the Dolphin Timing system – remove all

the previous timing files from the c:\CTSDolphin folder prior to the meet (all DO3 and DO4

files) as they just will get in the way.

Now that a timing file has been created we can easily identify the “Data source” for the meet. Return

to the Meet Manager software and choose the Interfaces -> Timer -> Select Data Set

This opens a window and allows you to browse through the various data sets found on the computer.

Use the “Previous Meet” and “Next Meet” buttons to locate the current meet by checking the date

for the meet and there should be the “test race” listed. Once you have identified the meet – you can

close that window by pressing the “Close” button at the bottom.

Pressing the “Get Times” button will now list files for the dataset.

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If everything is okay, there should only be the “Test Race” in the system.

Suggestion: Once the timers are upgraded to firmware version 1.51 – set each watch to “Manual

Timing: Off” (Displayed on the timer as “Man Off”) – this means that the watches can’t accidently be

started by the timekeeper and will only start from the “starters signal”.

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Ready to start a race Important: The Dolphin Timing Software needs to remain running for the duration of the meet /

session.

Now that the timing system is setup, the rest of the Meet Manager Run screen becomes important.

There are various sections to the run screen.

Top left shows a listing of the events where you can select the event that is going to be swum. By

changing events – this changes a row of buttons for each heat that is available in that event. The

selected heat will have a blue button and the swimmers in that particular heat will be listed below.

Return to the Dolphin Timing system and record the File number for the next race.

Dolphin Version 4.3

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Dolphin Version 5.0

In this case write on the program against the race that is about to start that the file is “0002”. This will

help in keeping track of things throughout the meet.

Once the race has finished, the watches need to be reset for the next race. Depending on the

organisation - the decision to reset the timers can be done from either the starter or the computer.

Computer Starter

Press the “Reset Timers” on the Dolphin timing software. Dolphin Version 4.3

Press “R” or Press “Y” or Yes to confirm to reset the timers Dolphin Version 5

Press “R” or Press “space” or Ok to confirm to reset the timers.

1) Press the Start / Stop button on the starting unit

2) Press the Reset button on the starting unit

Resetting the timers does 3 things




Dolphin Timing version 5 also moves to the next heat or event depending on the “Events” listed in the

system.

Now that the timers are reset, Meet Manager can import the timing file for the race.

Make sure that the correct event and heat is selected.

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Note: in the above example, we have already imported results for Heats 1 and 2 (which is why they

are not Grey.) and we are importing the results from Heat 3.

Press the “Get Times” button. (Pressing the Race # button can also be used to efficiently import the

race data but it assumes that everything is running smoothly.)

A list of the timing files will be displayed, and you can select the right file based on the file number

recorded in the program previously from the Dolphin Timing software.

A “download alert” might occur if the database believes there is a swimmer, but the timing system

doesn’t have a time.

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In this case – we know that the swimmer in lane 1 didn’t swim because the recorder crossed out the

swimmer in the program. We can accept the times and Lane 1 will be recorded as a NS.

Note: the pink time in Lane 8 has been highlighted because it has been ignored because it is more

than 0.3 seconds from the others.

Meet Manager may indicate that a timing file was previously used to import results from the previous

race with a warning that looks like the following window. However, it doesn’t recognise that the file

was previously imported for a prior race.

This process of Resetting the timing and importing the timing file is repeated for each race. This routine

can get interrupted by:

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• Scratching’s

• DQ’s

• Changes to the program

• Re-printing events

• Printing Results

• random queries

This is where having a second person at the computer desk recording what is going on in the pool and

the Dolphin timing system is useful.

Ideally, all of the heats should be green if there are no problems. The buttons can also be “Red”

indicating that there are problems with that heat (button turns yellow when the heat is selected). In

the below example, heat 12 is red

By clicking on heat 12 to investigate we found that the times from the timing system were inconsistent.

In this case, there are no backup times at all and only the time from the touch pad so the system has

a question mark about the result.

Clicking on the Question mark will replace it to say that the time from the Touch Pad will be used.

Other reasons for a query against a result is that the times recorded are not very consistent with each

other – i.e. the timers have all got very different times.

Note: The system can also record a question mark against results that doesn’t seem to be

warranted. In those cases, simply clicking on the question mark removes it completely.

For most meets, the computer operator leaves the heat as red and moves on without resolving the

query. As long as the swimmer has a time in the “final time” column – it is considered “good enough”.

MSR would prefer to have these “Question marks” resolved before the results are finalised.

Consider the below example: -

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A question mark has been raised against the result for the swimmer in Lane 6. The 3 backup times

don’t support the time from the pad (1:13.73) and are highlighted in pink. Lane 4 also has a backup

timekeeper who must have been watching the wrong lane and their time was also listed as pink.

In this case the officials were using Quantum as the timing system and after discussing it with the

Referee – decided to leave the pad time on the assumption that the swimmer had missed the wall and

all 3 timekeepers had “anticipated” the finish rather than seen the finish. The matter was resolved in

Quantum before bringing the time through however Meet Manager also noticed the problem and

marked the result as something that needed to be resolved (hence the question mark.)

To record the Referee’s decision: -

• As the Referee had decided to keep the time – the computer operator can simply click on the

Question mark and the system will acknowledge that the time from the Pad is accepted by

replacing the question mark with a “K”.

• If the Referee had decided to use the backup times, then pressing the “Calc” button will open

up a new window listing the backup times and suggesting a time from the backup. Ensuring

the Lane is ticked and pressing “Accept” will change the swimmers result to be that of the

backup timers rather than the Touch Pads.

Once the decision is recorded, the heat button will become “Green” indicating that everything has

returned to normal.

Note: The event listing shows the number of results that have questions raised against them but

this section of the screen will not update automatically. Clicking on another event or heat

should be enough to cause the event listing to update.

If you want to put the times back the way they were, then press “Restore Pads” and the original pad

times will be put back and the decision cancelled so you can try again.

As a rule of thumb: -

• Refer to the Referee when the backup times are faster, generally not when the backup times

are slower

For meets using the Dolphin Timing system, the timekeepers are the only source of the times so they

need to be concentrating on what they are doing. Should their times be more than 0.3 seconds out

from each other – then the risk is that their time is automatically discounted when calculating results.

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Recording Scratching’s Recording scratching’s that might arrive from the Marshalling area is useful in keeping the meet

manager database up-to-date to reduce the number of “Download Alert’s” generated when importing

the times. If there are a lot of swimmers scratching from particular events, then it is also useful in

deciding to reseed an event to try and improve the quality of the racing for those still nominated for

the event.

Using an electronic marshalling system can quickly report back to the computer operator of

scratching’s taken in the field. They normally order the scratching’s so that they can be processed in

the order of events. These systems can also make requests that particular events be reseeded if there

is enough scratching’s to be able to reduce the number of heats for an event.

Scratching’s and recommendation to reseed need to come from marshalling only. Marshalling Officials

will decide to either deck-seed if swimmers can be simply moved forward a heat, or a “re-seed” if they

are required to move a swimmer to an uncompetitive heat to free a heat (e.g. a NT swimmer into the

final heat). They must always get approval from the referee first.

Normally a Scratching will appear including the Event number, Heat and Lane with the person’s name.

For example, Benjamin Belward has requested to scratch from Event 3, Heat 5 Lane 4. Computer

operator can easily select Event 3, Heat 5 and double click on Benjamin’s name to record the

scratching.

Double clicking on his name will ask for confirmation of his scratching for the event.

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Pressing Yes will remove them from the event leaving the lane empty.

If enough scratching for the same event have been received, then the event may be reseeded to help:

• Improve the quality of racing

• Reduce the timeline

A quick check of the whole event by pressing the “Adjust” (or F8) button will show all the heats for an

event and if there are enough “holes” then it might be time to reseed. Check with the Referee if they

want to reseed and make sure that the marshalling area (and any score board timing) has enough time

to respond to the changes before proceeding.

In this example, most of the heats have been affected by scratching’s and 1 heat in particular has been

reduced to only 4 swimmers. This is a very good candidate for reseeding particularly as it is still a

couple of events away. See “Reseeding an event”.

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Recording DQ’s After a race has started, the officials may have a DQ slip which gets passed from the official to the

Referee, to the Announcer and finally arrives at the computer desk to record. The DQ slip contains the

Event, Heat and Lane number as well as the rule infringement for the offender. (A Referee may report

that there is a DQ in the “pipeline” to avoid results being printed prematurely.)

Select the Event and Heat on the Run screen and tick the “DQ” tick-box on the lane.

There is also a place in the database to record the reason for the DQ however the dropdown list can

be a bit awkward to use. (Having a separate printout of the DQ codes can be useful.) The code can

simply be typed in or selected from the drop down list.

For some unknown reason, some officials believe strongly that recording the DQ reason in the

database is not needed. My Swim Results actually prefers that the database does have the reason

assigned to the DQ in the database as it means that:

• The printed results can display the reason on the day.

• The swimmer can take the reason direct to their coach for an explanation rather than interfere

with the running of the meet by coming down to the computer room or an official for an

explanation.

• Once the results are published, swimmers often query why their times don’t appear and the

database or results file will have the explanation without having to track down the original DQ

slip.

Note: Need to allow 30 minutes from when the DQ was announced for any protests to be submitted

before results can be finalised.

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Printing Results Results are generally printed and published somewhere at the venue. The results are also distributed

to the Medals table and Announcer.

Things to consider before printing the results:

• Keeping track of what results have already been printed

• Are there any DQ slips in the pipeline yet to arrive?

Once an event has been completed, then the results can be produced. Results can be printed for

events from the Run window by selecting the “Reports” -> “Results” menu option.

Events will have a status of either “Done” or “Scored” with no outstanding DQ’s to process can have

their results published.

To include the reason for the DQ in the results – ensure that “DQ codes” is enabled in the “Include in

Results” tab.

Select the event to print and Press the “Create Report” menu option at the top.

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Reseeding an event If it is decided to reseed an event, then the computer operator can do 1 of 2 things:

1) Deck Seed (manually shuffle swimmers around by the Marshals) to fill up heats and remove

empty heats.

a. This can mean that the majority of the printed program is maintained

2) Meet Manager to reseed the entire event

a. Previously printed programs will become useless

In either case, a new program will need to be produced for at least: -

• Referee

• Starter

• Marshalling Officials

• Check-starting (may receive these direct from the Marshals)

• Announcer

Note: any electronic marshalling system will need to be updated before the event is opened for

marshalling.

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Dolphin Timing Version 5 or Quantum track the number of heats in each event so these systems may

also need to be updated.

Manually adjust the swimmer’s allocations

Select the event and use the Adjust button to open a window showing all the heats. Literally drag

the swimmers around to swap places or fill empty lanes.

Dragging a swimmer over another swimmer will effectively swap their positions.

Care must be taken so that their seed time would mean that the fastest swimmers are in the middle

of the pool and that swimmers of similar ability are swimming together.

Quantum timing may need to be updated for lane allocations for the purposes of displaying names

on the scoreboard.

Reseed event in meet manager

From the Run window in Meet Manager, click on “Seeding”. Select the event that needs to be

reseeded. In the below case – we are reseeding event 3 only.

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Press the “Start Seeding” menu option at the top.

The re-seeding won’t take very long. Now effectively all printed copies of event 3 are now all out of

date and will need to be replaced for at least: -

• Referee

• Starter

• Marshalling

• Check-starting (may receive these direct from the Marshals)

• Announcer

(Coaches may also request a copy if they are all in a coaching area on pool deck)

A new program just for that event can be produced through the Reports -> Meet Program (either

from Run window or Seeding window)

Note: Dolphin Timing version 5, Electronic Marshalling and Quantum track the number of heats for

each event so these systems may need to be updated.

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Choose the event to re-print, ensure that it is set to “Single column” and “1 event per page” before

pressing the “Create Report” button at the top. Under the “Include in Meet Program” tab there is an

option to include “Heat Start Times” for the event which will not be accurate if you selected the

session. This will likely need to be turned off if it has previously been enabled.

Note: the printer icon can be used to print directly to the printer without previewing the program

if the feature is enabled in preferences to “Print Directly for reports”. Most machines are

set to preview before printing.

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Print the document and circulate as required.

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Appendix A - Troubleshooting Symptom Solution

2 column reports (such as meet programs) requested but the report is leaving the 2nd column blank and continuing on the next page.

1) Close Meet manager and change the default printer for the machine through the control panel -> Devices and Printers (or equivalent). Success has been had by setting the default printer to certain “software printers” such as “Microsoft XPS Printer” or “PDF Printers”

2) Check that the device is set to “A4”. 3) Check that the report preferences (in Meet

Manager) is set to “A4”

Importing Meet entries from My Swim Results is resulting in a lot of exceptions appearing

1) Check that the database you are importing into is the same database that originally started online entries.

Dolphin Timing was reset but no file was created Races need to be at least 10 seconds long in order to have a timing file created.

“Race Time” on the Dolphin timing system starts by itself.

This is very disconcerting however it is actually because 1 of the timer buttons has been pressed which starts the clock. (you can identify the culprit by looking for a “green” light amongst the timers) When the starter starts the race – this starts all the timers again from Zero regardless so it should take care of itself in the results but unfortunately the software “Race Timer” doesn’t reset with all the watches. Timers firmware version 1.51 allows the timer to be set to “Manual Timing: Off” (displayed as “MAN OFF” on timer) which means that they can only be started by the starting signal. This avoids this scenario all-together.

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Appendix B – Using specific seed times from Team Manager rather than

those allocated by Online Entries By default, Online Entries will find the best time that a swimmer has achieved for the event across the

entire database. Whilst some meets can be configured to only look at results from Meets that are

“Qualifying”, “National” and “International” (or various combinations) – the system will typically look

for the best time from any meet.

This can be a problem for some clubs or organisations using some sort of point score system to help

with picking club champions at the end of the season. These point score system often rely on the

“Seed Time” being from a very specific set of meets. These are typically kept in a HyTek Team Manager

database for the purpose of calculating the point scores.

To replace the “Seed Times” that are given by “Online Entries” with those from the Team Manager

database – you just simply import the entries file that came from Online Entries into that Team

Manager database. Then extract the entries from Team Manager and use that file instead of the online

entries file to import into Meet Manager. The process of putting the entries into Team Manager

replaces the seed times from Online Entries with those from the Team Manager database whilst

preserving the swimmers event selections.

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Appendix C – Backup A simple backup solution, which is almost “set and forget”, is to use a “DropBox” or similar service.

Essentially these services will copy any file that is stored in a certain structure into “the cloud” as a

backup. If multiple machines are used, the file is also replicated across to the other machine.

Important: The machine needs to connect to the internet in order to synchronise files.

Whilst meet manager can change the default location for the meet databases and backups, a typical

meet manager machine will still default to “C:\SWMeets8” as the first place it looks for databases. A

useful tip might be to relocate this folder so that it actually resides within the “DropBox” folder and

the original location is merely a pointer to the dropbox folder.

Suggestion: Get an IT professional to set this up for you.

A Microsoft command-line tool called “Junction” or Windows 10 “MKLink” can setup a “symbolic link”

for “C:\SWMeets8” so that the files can actually be stored in a Dropbox folder with the rest of the Club

related documents without upsetting Meet Manager. Meet Manager will continue to “think” that it is

saving databases in the “C:\SWMeets8” folder but it is actually being stored elsewhere. The actual

storage area means that “DropBox” can automatically backup the database into “the cloud”.

Note: Dropbox will only copy the database file after Meet Manager is closed. If Dropbox is busy

synchronising the database up to the cloud – it may prevent Meet Mgr from opening until it

is finished.

Example:

If your Dropbox folder can be found at “C:\Users\username\Dropbox”.

Step 1. Move the “C:\SWMeets8” folder into your Dropbox so that it becomes

“C:\Users\username\Dropbox\SWMeets6”.

Step 2. Open a command line up and use the command: “junction C:\SWMeets8

C:\Users\username\Dropbox\SWMeets6” to create a link so that the original

folder will appear as Meet Manager would expect however the files will now be

synchronised with DropBox automatically.

Using this method – your meet manager files can be kept with the other club documentation such as

minutes, procedures and reports all safely backed up “in the cloud”.

Note: Dropbox is a paid service however it does offer 2 GB for free to start you off. Other services also

offer similar deals.

Other alternatives are: -

• Dropbox http://www.dropbox.com

• Microsoft OneDrive http://www.onedrive.com

• Google Drive http://drive.google.com

http://www.dropbox.com/

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896768.aspx

http://www.dropbox.com/

http://www.onedrive.com/

http://drive.google.com/

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There are others if you want to investigate. If you have additional suggestions, please email

[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

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Appendix D - Meet Mobile Meet Mobile is a mobile app for Android and Apple which integrates into Meet Manager. A meet does

need to be enabled for Meet Mobile before results will be uploaded.

In the US, the software can be used for “Revenue Sharing” (i.e. the meet host sells the program

electronically through the application and a portion of that is returned to the meet host.) however it

doesn’t appear that option is available in Australia.

Meet Mobile can be setup by confirming their agreement. Setting up Meet Mobile is best done once

all the entries are in and the program finalised. If you have already closed the window for Meet Mobile

Publishing, then you can re-open it via the “Setup” -> “Meet Mobile Publishing” menu option. This

needs to be done before the meet starts so that it is activated online to allow people to find the meet.

Pressing the “View Contract to Agree” will open a new window displaying the agreement and allowing

you to enter your name and then date of birth.

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Once agreed to, the window will close and some setup information about what is going to be published

can be organised in the “Publish” tab. Select what type of Team Scoring option you want to use.

Choose to “Do not publish team scores or no team scores in this meet” if the meet is not going to use

a scoring system.

The 2 buttons will push the initial program up to the HyTek servers so that they can start publishing

the meet information.

This sets up a link for the meet to the HyTek servers so that they can start publishing the data from

Meet Manager once it is enabled.

Once the meet is about to start, in the Run window menu – choose “Meet Mobile” to enable the

system for the meet sessions.

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“Upload Session Results” will force any results that are already in the database to be published in Meet

Mobile.

Once activated – Meet Manager should change from a red “Meet Mobile Disabled” to green “Meet

Mobile Enabled”.

->

Once it has switched to enabled, it has a good internet connection with the publishing servers and will

deliver the results as they become available.

Note: As the results are delivered when they become available – the Mobile App can also pick-up

the results. The results are incomplete until after the event has been fully uploaded so there

may be keen parents who present their mobiles as evidence that their child is entitled to

medals. This is due to the fact that their device is yet to download all of the results for the

event yet. The conversation can be very awkward.

Important: The machine running Meet Manager on the day will need reliable access to the internet

in order to push the results up the HyTek publishing servers. A mobile wireless hotspot

is sufficient if the mobile has good access to the mobile network. It doesn’t utilise much

in terms in data usage.

We have had instances where Meet Mobile refused to work and kept indicating that the session

needed to be created / enabled when it already was. Start troubleshooting with a File -> Compact /

Repair as this may solve the problem.

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Appendix E - Exporting Meet Results to a Team Manager file. Once the meet is completed – results can be sent to My Swim Results. To prepare the results as a

Team Manager export – start by opening the meet in HyTek Meet Manager.

Choose “File” -> “Export” -> “Results for Swim Manager or SWIMS or NCAA or USMS”

Note: Versions of Meet Manager prior to version 5 have the menu option listed as “Results for Team

Manager or SWIMS or NCAA or USMS”.

A new window will appear asking what to extract or limit the extract. The default is to extract all the

results.

Press Ok and the export will begin.

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Once the data is exported, press Ok and the program will ask you where you would like to save it.

Choose a location that you can find again easily as you will want to find the exported file to upload

to My Swim Results.

The file has been exported ready for uploading into My Swim Results or HyTek Team Manager.

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Appendix F – Updating Meet Manager HyTek Meet Manager is updated to a new edition every couple of years which means that to stay

current, clubs need to organise themselves a new license every few years. There is an upgrade

option which is often cheaper than buying the software again. To qualify for this the license name

(found in the bottom left corner of the main menu screen when the software is first opened) is

required. Visit https://hytek.active.com/ and look for “Meet Manager for Swimming” under

products. (Note the prices listed will be in US dollars.)

In additional to updating new editions of the software – HyTek create updates to the latest edition

to solve problems / bugs in the software. It is best to keep up-to-date with the latest version

particularly if you have invested in the most recent edition of the software. These updates are

provided free of charge.

Note: Updates are not only bug fixes but can also include updates to the base times used to

calculate Point Score systems such as the FINA point Score of Australian MCPS.

Meet Manager does offer to download the update from within the application itself. This is fine

however it often wants to do it when you are trying to do something and it seems to take longer

than normal. While it is trying to download the update – you won’t be able to do anything in Meet

Manager.

A way around this is to use a normal web browser to download the update separately. This method

is often faster and more reliable.

Downloaded update from https://hytek.active.com/downloads.html

Look for the section for the right version of “Meet Manager” and then right-click on Update and save

the file somewhere you can find it again.

Note: Ensure you download the “Meet Manager” update. The “Team Manager” update is a different

software tool.

https://hytek.active.com/

https://hytek.active.com/downloads.html

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Download the zip file and save it somewhere – do not need to unpack it.

File -> Install Update

Selected No.

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Selected the Update file from the Download area.

Pressed Ok.

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Press okay.

Security warning asking me to approve the running of the application.

Press Ok

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(you may get the following error – newer versions have actually fixed this error.)

Press Ok

Opening Meet Mgr says that it is now up-to-date. (I’m always a bit wary because of the error

message.)

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Appendix G – Live results in Meet Manager with My Swim Results A “Network License” of Meet Manager does have the ability to upload meet results to a website

which is often handy to publish to allow remote people to access the results and follow the meet.

Also see the section setting up Meet Mobile.

Before the meet organise with My Swim Results (or another provider) to have a working folder setup

for the meet. They will then provide details such as:-

Site Address: liveresults.myswimresults.com.au

Username: WA

Password: HBFStadium2016

Working Directory: UWAWestCoastSC

URL: http://liveresults.myswimresults.com.au/WA/UWAWestCoastSC/

Important: Each swim meet should have its own working directory. Meet Manager doesn’t record

the above details inside the database with the rest of the results. It does however

remember the previous working directory details which means that it is very easy to

overwrite the results of another meet and make the links make no sense. Care needs to

be taken to ensure that the Working Directory is correct for each meet – particularly if

there are multiple meets happening at the same time.

This needs to be configured on the machine running the meet (preferably before racing starts): In

Meet manager visit the “Run” -> “Web” menu.

In Meet Manager the screens should look similar to below:-

http://liveresults.myswimresults.com.au/WA/UWAWestCoastSC/

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The “Password” and “Working Directory” need to be carefully entered as these are case sensitive

fields and simply putting a lowercase character where it should be an Uppercase character will prove

to be a problem.

The settings for the service should be “Passive FTP”. This should allow for the widest possible

network configurations.

Note: Setting it to “Active FTP” may still pass the “Test Web Site Connection” button however when

it comes to uploading data – it may struggle.

Once the Mode is checked – return to the “Log-in” tab and then press at least the first 3 buttons on

the page to:-

• check that there is a valid connection to the live results server

• Upload the event listing for the meet

• Upload default results pages indicating that the results are still pending.

Press F11 after each heat and F12 after each event is finalised.

During the meet, pressing F12 will upload the completed event however if there are some that have

been missed – return to the “Web” menu item and press the “Upload Results for All Completed

Rounds” to quickly catch-up the results.

Note: If you are going to use another provider, still let My Swim Results know and they can

configure their website to publish the meet results as they come through.

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Appendix H – Interclub with Fixed Lane assignments For some competitions, it is a requirement that each club swims in a dedicated lane. This can be

organised through meet manager once entries have been imported but before the meet is seeded.

The meet type needs to be set to “2 Team Dual” or “3+ Team Dual” in the “Setup” -> “Meet Setup”

menu.

Since the entries have been loaded – the Teams will be in the database and can be assigned lanes in

the “Setup” -> “Seeding Preferences” and choose the “Dual Meets” setup.

Drag or double click on the Teams on the left to assign them to lanes on the right.

Once assigned, “Seed” the meet as normal and the system will allocate the Teams to the allocated

lane.

Note: If you are going to use a scoring system, then set the meet back to a “standard” type before

running the meet so that the scoring system works as expected.

Tip: For these sorts of meets, it may also be advantageous to import all club members for each

club so that if clubs change their minds about who is swimming each race – then at least the

swimmers will be in the database already and won’t have to be re-entered. To get a listing of

members from My Swim Results – look at the “Membership Extract” options and select

“competitive” members and output as a “Hytek Roster” file. This resulting download can then

be imported into Meet Manager using “File” -> “Import” -> “Roster”.

Something else to consider is My Swim Results Excel Entries to produce a suitable entries file.

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Appendix I – Importing an Excel listing of Swimmers Meet Manager was not designed to import an excel document containing swimmers names. To get

around this My Swim Results produced a conversion tool which reads an excel document and produces

a “Roster” file which is compatible with both HyTek Meet Manager and Team Manager. This

conversion tool hopefully means that countless hours is saved in setting up a swim meet and better

data accuracy.

In order to use the conversion tool, prepare the spreadsheet out of another database or lists.

Note: the conversion tool will look at each worksheet that it is provided so it is best to remove any

“working” sheets before submitting to the conversion tool.

Once you have the list of swimmers, make sure that the column headers (first row in each worksheet)

contains these as the field names:-

• “Surname”

• “Given”

• “Birthday”

• “Gender”

• “Class Year” (may be omitted)

• “Team Name” or “Club Name” or “House” or “Faction”

• “Team Abbrev” - (system will auto-generate if omitted)

With a subscription to My Swim Results – you will be able to visit the conversion tool at

http://www.myswimresults.com.au/ConvertExcelToHyTekRoster.aspx where there is more

information about additional fields and an example format spreadsheet.

Use the file browse button to search for the file that you have saved (preferably in the latest Excel

format) so that it can be uploaded to the conversion tool.

Note: The conversion tool doesn’t store the file and doesn’t remember the contents of the file

once it is converted.

Pressing the “convert” button will submit the file for conversion. Please note that sometimes it can be

very quick in its response. The page will then ask you to save a file – this is the results from the

conversion which can then be easily imported into Meet Manager or Team manager as a “Athlete

Roster”.

The same conversion tool can actually be a replacement for online entries if you want. This is perfect

for school based carnivals where online entries doesn’t have the kids information. Essentially a Google

Form can be setup so that students can enter their name, class year, faction and choose their events.

The conversion tool can then take the responses from this “survey” as an excel spreadsheet and

together with the Meet Manager backup create an entries file suitable for importing into the Meet

manager database. This takes hours of data entry out of the requirements for the school carnival.

Speak to My Swim Results directly for more information.

https://hytek.active.com/swim-meet-software.html


http://www.myswimresults.com.au/ConvertExcelToHyTekRoster.aspx

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Appendix J - Running a meet “By Competitor Number” Organisers of “Time trial” meets often don’t really know who is going to swim what event until the

swimmers “appear” in marshalling. If there is a known list of competitors who may turn up (such as a

student list or team list) then we can import that list into Meet Manager4 as a big step forward for

the computer operator who would otherwise have to manually type those swimmers details into the

database.

The idea of running the meet “by competitor number” is that each competitor is allocated a number

which is often written on their shoulder(s). When they are allocated a race in marshalling – some

paperwork5 is completed by the marshal which records the swimmers race number and what heat

and lane they are swimming in. Once completed, this can be sent to the computer operator to enter

competitor numbers which will bring through the competitors name etc. Then the timing file for the

race can be imported which assigns the results to a swimmer. Scoring can also be done in Meet

Manager to complete the results for meet.

Example of a marshalling sheet showing 5 heats on 1 sheet before it is submitted to the computer

operator.

4 My Swim Results conversion tools can take an excel spreadsheet of names and details to produce a roster file which can be imported into Meet Manager. 5 My Swim Results has templates which include 5 heats to a form.

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Step 1 – Setup Meet Manager to run by Competitor Number

Setup the meet as per normal including:-

o Meet details, type

o list of events

In Setup -> Athlete / Relay Preferences – ensure “Enter Competitor Numbers” and “Auto

increment competitor numbers” is ticked.

Note: for school related meets – tick the “Enter School Year” tick-box while you are there.

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Step 2 – Import Swimmers details

Best results is to take an excel spreadsheet table of swimmers details and convert the list

into a Roster file through My Swim Results. This avoids having to do a lot of manual entering

of swimmers.

For those that want to do it manually – Enter Teams into the database and then use the

“Athletes” menu to add new swimmers into the database.

The athletes screen will also display the competitor number assigned to the swimmer.

Step 3 – Assign competitor numbers

If importing multiple roster files from different sources into the database – the competitor

numbers may get populated differently so it might be a good idea to re-assign the

competitor numbers so that they are all unique and also has the advantage of re-ordering to

make sort of sense.

As the competitor number will typically only be valid for a particular meet we can use the

Athletes -> Comp# menu option to re-number all the swimmers.

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This will re-number all of the swimmers into some order.

Step 4 – Print the competitor listing with the competitor numbers

Meet Manager has a Team Roster report which can include the competitor number. This is a

great starting point.6 Best select the report by Team to try and make the distribution of the

competitor numbers easy.

Reports -> Athlete Roster

Suggested settings highlighted below

Tip: to remove the birthday and Registration ID options – set the Report type to

“Detailed”, untick those tick-boxes then return the report type back to “Basic”.

The resulting report will now list all of the swimmers with their allocated competitor number

alphabetically by team name.

6 If you want additional options such as sorting the report by School Year group then speak to My Swim Results about what options are available.

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Once you have published the competitor numbers – then it is best not to reassign all the

competitor numbers again using the previous step unless you can control the spread of the

document with the outdated competitor numbers which may cause confusion.

Step 5 – Check

• Ensure Marshalling staff know that they need to record the competitor numbers on the

marshalling sheets to be sent to the computer operator.

• Put the correct competitor number on the right set of shoulders.

• Print out enough marshalling sheets to cover the number of events and heats

Optional

Some computer operators like to have all of the events with a set number of empty heats

ready to enter the competitor numbers. To do this they tend to enter a “dummy” swimmer

into heat 10 lane 1 from the athlete screen. This means that the system will automatically

have 10 heats ready to have the competitors loaded into them for that event before the

meet starts. When they get to that event – they scratch the dummy swimmer and enter the

correct swimmer according to the marshalling sheets.

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Ready to run the meet

On the “Run” screen in Meet Mgr there is an addition column available which is the column for the

Competitor number. So when the marshalling sheets come in showing the competitor number we

can enter the competitor numbers against each lane in a particular heat according to what was

recorded / decided in marshalling.

Entering the competitor number and pressing the enter key will automatically move to the next lane

ready for the next competitor number.

As the competitor number is entered you will notice the Swimmers name and team appear.

Tip: Pressing “Ctrl H” will add an empty heat so you can quickly add additional heats as

required and having a keyboard with a dedicated numeric keypad will be a speed

advantage over a standard laptop keyboard.

If you make a mistake in entering the competitor number and the system has already pulled up the

competitors name – you will find that you will have to double click on the swimmer to “scratch”

them from the event before you can reattempt the competitor number.

Once the competitor numbers have been entered for the whole heat – you can get the times from

the timing system for that particular race.

Tip: If you are using Dolphin Timing - have someone beside you to record the race number from

the timing system for each event and heat so that you can quickly refer to the list to get the

right race number for a heat.

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Appendix K – Dolphin Timing ver 5 Events Extractor My Swim Results has a “Dolphin Timing Events Extractor” tool which exports the list of events from a

seeded Meet Manager database to produce a file suitable for importing into the Dolphin Timing

version 5 system.

Tool requires the machine to be Windows 10 and would typically have Meet Manager installed.

Double click on the Dolphin Event Listing extract tool

Close Meet Manager (not required if using a networked version of Meet Manager)

By default the last meet database opened by meet manager will be currently listed but you can also

quickly switch between previously opened databases.

Click on the export button to choose a place to export the event listing.

Remember where you are saving the event listing.

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Press “Start Dolphin Timing” to start the dolphin timing software.

Note: The extract tool can be closed down however during the meet the “Dolphin Timing”

software must remain open (can be minimised)

Click on the “Events” button at the bottom.

Click on “Load” found in the bottom right corner. Select the file that was previously created by the

Extract tool and the event listing and number of heats will be updated.

Dolphin Timing can now automatically moves between heats and events as the meet progresses.

If reseeds are done and the number of heats change – the specific number of heats for an event can

be changed by pressing either the left or right mouse button to increment and decrement the

number of heats.

Arrows at the top for Event and Heat can also be used to skip through events if needed.

Return to the “Live” screen to see what is happening on pool-deck.

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Troubleshooting the export tool “Command text was not set…” If an error occurs after Pressing the Export button with a

message similar to “Command text was not set…” then close the application and check that the device is not applying additional security to the application. Right-click on the application and choose “properties” – if there is a tick-box for “unblock file from another computer”.

If so – tick the tick-box and press okay before trying again.

Extract file not produced If your version of Meet Manager is not a networked version then close Meet manager before trying extract tool again.

Dolphin Timing won’t start If the Dolphin timing software installed? Is the base unit plugged into the computer?

Dolphin Timing doesn’t have an option to import event listing

Upgrade Dolphin Timing software to version 5.

A wrong heat is selected at the top

use the arrows to move between the events and heats for the meet.

Timing files are not produced Dolphin timing has a number of different output files. Ensure “DO3” and “DO4” are enabled.

Also check output folder is what Meet Manager is expecting. Check the correct Dataset is selected in Meet Manager.

Maintenance Dolphin timing files can build up with time so it is recommended to use the “Archive Timing Files”

button prior to using the Dolphin timing software for a meet. This will organise any previous meets

timing files to be put into a subfolder specific to that meet / data set.

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Appendix L – Dolphin Timing with Splits It is possible for the system to record splits at the finish end of the pool. If you are going to use the

system to record splits then the system needs to setup to include:-

• Each Event in Meet Manager need to be set to “not have touchpads at both ends” otherwise

meet manager will expect times from the timekeepers at every turn.

• Meet Manager Timing interface set to “Colorado Time Systems Dolphin with Splits”.

• Computer operator has the additional responsibility of telling the system how many splits

are expected for each race.

Dolphin Timing ver 4.3 Dolphin Timing ver 5.0

Set the number of splits recorded for an event

Left click – increments # splits Right click – decrements # splits

o Important: Make sure that you reset the timers from the previous heat before

changing the number of splits for the next race.

o Effectively each split will be recorded every 2 lengths of the pool.

o Examples:

▪ 200m race in a 50m pool will mean that the swimmers return to the

timekeepers 2 times (1 turn and 1 finish) – i.e.. 2 splits

▪ 200m race in a 25m pool will mean that the swimmers return to the

timekeepers 4 times (3 turns and 1 finish) – i.e.. 4 splits

• the timekeepers will need to press side buttons on the Dolphin timers when the swimmer

touches the wall at their end.

o If a timekeeper forgets to take a split then pressing the reset button is better than

pressing a side button as it will move them to the next split (as indicated in the

watch top right corner).

Important: Timekeepers need to ensure that their watch has the right split number on it. If their

watch thinks that they still have a split to do – no finish time will be recorded for that watch.

Timekeepers need to concentrate on the race and be familiar with the dolphin timing gear in order

to attempt this.

Replacing batteries during the race will lose the split history on that watch.

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Frequently Asked Questions Our local pool only provides lanes 5 to 8 for our club night, can we get the Meet Manager to only

Seed swimmers into those lanes?

In Meet Manager - change the Seeding preferences via “Setup” -> “Seeding Preferences” and click on

the “Standard Lanes” tab then press the button to view the lane preferences.

As your “pool” will effectively be a 4 lane pool (with lanes numbered 5 to 8) change the 4 Lanes so

that the preferences are:-

Preferences: 1st 2nd 3rd 4th

4 Lanes 6 7 5 8

You want to have the fastest swimmers (1st preference) in the middle lanes working your way out to

the slower swimmers (4th preference) in the outer lanes.

Save the new settings and check that the events are all set to having 4 lanes.

The seeding process will now limit the program to using lanes 5, 6, 7 and 8.

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I want to have qualifying times for each age group but swim the finals as just Open – how do I do

that?

Online entries will still need the qualifying times setup for each age group so initially the meet can be

setup with Multi-age turned on and all the age groups setup. This will mean that the standard can be

configured with each of the age groups qualifying times. Online entries can then be setup from this

database. Once entries are closed and imported into the database, the multi-age can be turned off for

the events so that they return to an Open age group.

How do I setup Meet Manager to use the same DQ codes as our officials?

Meet Manager comes standard with a couple of different DQ Codes files. Most notably is the FINA DQ

Codes. However, each federation can have their own specific DQ Codes which is why the system also

includes a set for the United States and the ASA. There is the option to create your own set be used,

which is effectively a text file stored in “C:\Hy-Sport\SwMM6\dqcodesCustom.txt”. If everyone could

use the same set of DQ codes within a federation this would make it easier. Machines used to record

the DQ and those used to create the results files need to have the same customised DQ listing on it,

particularly if the DQ reason is being printed with the results.

The Custom DQ Codes is a text file which is readily editable using any text editor. The format is

effectively a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file with double quotes as a text qualifier which Microsoft

Excel can open and edit however when it saves it back – it tends to leave out the double quotes. There

are 3 “columns” for each infringement.

Column 1 is a 2-character alpha-numeric code which can be used to quickly enter the DQ Reason into

the results. The first character is a digit between 1 and 7 depending on the stroke or category

of the infringement.

First digit Stroke

1 All Butterfly events

2 All Backstroke events

3 All Breaststroke events

4 All Freestyle events

5 Medley events (but also includes the above for each leg)

6 Relay events

7 All events

Column 2 is the DQ Reason that will be displayed in the results to explain the infraction.

Column 3 is a “category” of DQ code which is what Meet Manager uses to try and limit the DQ options

for each event. This column will have “fly”, “back”, “breast”, “free”, “IM”, “Relay” or “Misc”.

Note: Saving the file using Excel may not always add the double quotes around each of the text

items. Excel will also prefer to save the file as a CSV file

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Distributing such a DQ Codes file is simply a matter of over-writing the existing “C:\Hy-

Sport\SwMM6\dqcodesCustom.txt” file with the new DQ Code list.

The Meet Manager setup for the meet then just needs to be told which set of DQ codes to use in the

“Setup” -> “Meet Setup” option.

Alternatively – download the updated FINA Code file which has been prepared to replace the FINA DQ

codes with those used in Australia. The downloaded compressed folder contains a file which just needs

to replace the c:\Hy-Sport\SwMM6\DQCodesFINA.txt file then just select “FINA DQ Codes”.

dqcodesFINA.txt

Note: Meet Manager 7 (update Dh or better) already includes this file so there is no need to update

it. It is referred as the “FINA DQ Codes” on the “Meet Setup” menu option under DQ Codes.

How do I update Meet Manager quickly?

Meet manager can download its own updates when they are made available however the download

takes a long time and it doesn’t allow you to do anything until it’s finished. A faster method is to visit

the https://hytek.active.com/downloads.html website and visit the “Support” -> “Download Centre”

section. Choose Meet Manager and there will be a link for downloading the latest update. Save the

file somewhere you can remember and when Meet Manager asks if you want to download the update

choose No, point it towards the file that you downloaded and get it to install from there.

https://www.myswimresults.com.au/Help/dqcodesFINA.zip

https://www.myswimresults.com.au/Help/dqcodesFINA.zip

https://hytek.active.com/downloads.html

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The Dolphin timing screen has a “Race Time” which sometimes starts before the starter.

Whilst this is a nuisance, it doesn’t affect the overall system. It is caused by one of the timekeepers

accidently pressing a button on the side of their watch. It does mean that particular watch is started

but as soon as the starter presses his button – all the watches start at zero. Unfortunately, the “Race

Time” continues but has no real effect on the results other than to make the Computer Operator

nervous.

The Dolphin timers seem to drop out during a race?

The signal between the timers and the base station needs to be improved. Even if the signal strength

appears to be good on each watch.

Suggestions: -

• Move the computer operator closer to where the watches are in clear “Line of sight” to the

majority of the equipment (i.e. Starter and all watches)

• Base station to have the large Dolphin logo facing up for best results

• Base Station to be plugged into a powered USB port such as a computer or powered USB Hub.

• Mount the base station higher to have better reception to the other devices.

• A large number of swimmers / spectators are surprisingly good at blocking wireless signals

just by standing in-between the base station and the watches.

The Dolphin Timers are being reset but no timing file is produced?

This is weird (and disastrous) but it could be a couple of factors. The first factor is that not all the

watches are receiving or acknowledging the “reset” signal. The Computer will wait until all watches

acknowledge the “Reset” signal (as indicated by changing their indicator to yellow ) before writing

out the file. Therefore, if 1 or more watch does not acknowledge the reset signal then the computer

will continue to wait. Should the starter start the next race – the times for the previous race will be

lost as no file will be written.

Suggestions:-

• Move the computer operator closer to where the watches are in clear “Line of sight” to the

majority of the equipment (ie. Starter and watches)

• Base station to have the large Dolphin logo facing up for best results

• Base Station to be plugged into a powered USB port such as a computer or a trusted powered

USB Hub.

• Mount the base station higher to have better reception to the other devices.

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• Clear any previous / redundant timing sets from the c:\CTSDolphin folder as a large number

of these can cause the operating system to be slow to discover files are already in the folder.

Files are typically labelled “DOC3” or “DOC4” files.7

• Try some screen capture software to record a video of what happens with the Dolphin timing

window to help with future fault finding.

Instructions for Timekeepers using the Dolphin timing gear.

Confirm that the Timers are in their allocated lane.

The timekeepers are there to record when the swimmer touches the wall to finish the race. They don’t

have to worry about the swimmer’s technique it is just a matter of stopping the clock when the

swimmer touches the wall – no matter what body part they touch with.

Some timekeepers feel compelled to press a button on the timer to stop it from timing when there is

no-one in their lane. If they feel compelled to press a button – get them to press the “reset” button

rather than one of the black stop buttons. The “reset” button will indicate that the lane is blank rather

than the system recording some random time that can easily be missed and go through to results.

Getting the timekeepers to record the swimmer’s times, not only serves as a good backup for the

computer it also allows the swimmers to find out what their time was before the results are published.

The stop buttons on the Dolphin handsets are very sensitive. They can easily be stopped accidently. If

a timekeeper notices that their watch has stopped well before the swimmer has finished - they can

press the stop button again to have the timer return to timing (at the correct time for the race).

7 See My Swim Results “Dolphin Timing Events Extractor tool” which can quickly organise the previous results files.

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Sample Meet Organisation Checklist

Task Action required Overall Responsibility Comments and Other Help Required

Event Organisation

Start a new checklist ✓

Pencil in dates for meet with Venues West

Meet Sanctioning Application Approved

SWA to send through approved dates

Program on My Swim Results

Put together Meet Manager database

On line Entries Opened

Check availability of Electronic marshalling

Check with MSR

Organize TO’s for the day

Follow-up the TO’s assignments

Venues West Check Venues West Booking Need to receive the “Venue Hire Pack” including the venue Terms and Conditions and Catering forms

Venues West Return Venue Hire, pool layout form

Commented about having to submit database a week before event

Venues West Return Catering form

Venues West confirmation Confirmation of the venue hire needs to be returned

Venues West will send through a confirmation which needs to be signed and returned.

Meet Management

Once entries close

• Seed and produce program Meet Manager

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• Start Lists, Est Timeline Start Lists Uploaded to Calendar

• Back-up File To Venues West Required by 5pm Monday week before otherwise extra $150 cost

• Clubs Timekeeping Roster Allocation

Upload to MSR

Publish volunteer signup sheet Distribute to Club Members Includes timekeeping responsibilities for the day

Post Meet Event Report / Results File To Swimming WA Must remember to print off the damn thing before going to the pool

Program

Compile Cover page

Meet Information page

Club information

Program compilation • Cover page

• Puzzles

• QT’s

• Timeline

• Club Volunteer roster

• Meet Program

Organise Electronic program sales

Program printing

Medals

• Medals stock-take Find out what we currently have in stock which can be re-used

• Medals- order additional Order Expected on the ???

• Medals have arrived

• Medals to be transported to venue

Sponsors / Fundraising Fundraising Sub Committee

• Contact business sponsors

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• Email to Club Members Raffle Donations / Sponsors requested

• Art work / Sponsors for program insertion

Raffles etc Fundraising Sub Committee

Arrange for donations of items Notify members

Organise drop-off of items Typically to ???

Package items

• Raffle books

Refreshments Purchase

Lollies, Cups & Cordial

Refreshments required for all officials & timekeepers

Venues West complete ban on providing food that might be able to be purchased from the café. (including homemade cakes, Biscuits, tea / coffee) Lollies excepted

Officials Catering & Coffee Venues West Booking

• Cash Floats

TO payments Cash envelopes

Cash Floats Cash Floats for Raffles & Program Sales

Miscellaneous Items

• A4 paper, Pens, stapler, scissors, sticky Tape

• Music

• USB Stick USB thumb drive required for meet results

• Key for SWA Cupboard (bells and Lap counters)

May not be required as bells are stored on-top of cabinet at Venues west

Other Meet Jobs

• Announcer Listed on the signup sheet

• Runners Listed on the signup sheet

• Medal Presentation Desk Listed on the signup sheet

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• Refreshments Listed on the signup sheet

• Photographer

• Media / Facebook

• Volunteer Coordinator for day Listed on the signup sheet

• First Aid Officer

Technical Officials ✓

• Meet Director

• Referee

• Starter

• Judges of Stroke (JOS) JOS 1:

JOS 2:

JOS 3:

JOS 4:

• Inspector of Turns (IOT)

• Automatic Officiating Equipment (AOE)

• Computer & Recorder

• Marshal (Clerk of Course)

• Check Starters

meet manager handbook - my swim results meet manager handbook.pdf · 1 introduction the process for...

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