Athletes and import

The list

The “Search (name, club, reference, member no.)” field filters as you type; the list shows the first 500 athletes found (“First 500 athletes: refine the search.”). The Entered column says whether they are already entered in the open event.

Check all

Checks the whole list shown.

Enter in the event

Enters the checked athletes (otherwise the selected one) in the open event; you then tick their races in the entries grid.

New athlete

An empty record to fill in and then save.

Record tab

Name (in capitals), first name, gender, date of birth (yyyy-mm-dd), club, country, province, language, notes and:

Reference

The athlete's identifier everywhere: session file, .LIF, overall standings of FINISH. Empty: EVENT assigns one.

Record status

Verified, or Provisional (to confirm): created automatically (photo from FINISH, old avatar, import without a member number), to be confirmed or merged.

Language (VOICE: fr, en…)

The language in which VOICE will announce the athlete.

Delete removes the athlete from the database, with their statuses and performances; refused if they are entered in an event.

Identity tab

Affiliations (one per national federation): federation, member no., international no., club; Add or update, Remove the selected affiliation. Two different numbers in the same federation are two people: a number already held by another athlete of the federation is refused.

External references (not member numbers): SpeedSkatingResults identifier, registration platform, reference from a FINISH file, old avatar, other.

Records merged into this one, with Undo the selected merge: what belonged to the absorbed record goes back to it.

Statuses tab

The athlete's status by discipline, dated: discipline, status, since, reason; the author is recorded. “The most recent one on a date is the one that counts.”

Performances tab

The athlete's known times (discipline, distance, time, date, place, source, ratifiable). These are what the seeding calculation in the Performances module looks at. Add a performance by hand (source “entered”): distance (m), time (1:23.45), date, place, Ratifiable.

Duplicates tab

Find duplicates lists the likely groups, from the most certain to the least: same reference or same member no.; same name and same date of birth; same name and a clue (year, club or gender): to review. Two different numbers in the same federation are never offered. For each group, choose the record to Keep: then Merge: entries, statuses, performances, affiliations and references move to the kept record; the others keep a pointer and a record of what moved. The merge can be undone (Identity tab).

Exchange tab

Move records from one database to another (a club computer to the competition computer, for example) through a JSON file that keeps statuses, performances, affiliations, references and photo.

• Export…: the athletes checked in the list (otherwise all those shown).
• Open a file to import…: the list of athletes in the file, each one matched against the database: “More recent in the file”, “Already up to date”, “Proposed: …” (same name, first name and birth date: if checked, it goes to the proposed record), “Ambiguous: … to review” (unchecked), “New”.
• Also replace records more recent than the file, then Import checked athletes; the report counts the records created, updated, unchanged, and the statuses and performances added.

1. The file

CSV, Excel (.xlsx, sheet of your choice) or JSON (an array of objects; nested fields become “a.b.c” columns). For a CSV: separator and encoding (“Detect”: UTF-8 if valid, otherwise Windows-1252). Header row: the row of headers (0: none, columns are identified by their number). Date format: if empty, it is detected (ISO, day/month/year, month in letters, yyyymmdd, Excel serial number, year alone).

2. The columns

Each column receives a field: ignore, reference, name, first name, full name (“NAME, First name” or “First name NAME”), gender, birth date, club, federation, member no., international member no., registration platform ID, country, province, language, transponders no. 1 and no. 2, bib, category, group, then, for each race of the event:

• “Entered 500 m Femmes”: a true value (X, oui, 1, ✓, “inscrit”, the distance or the race name) enters the athlete; empty, non, 0 or “-” does not; any other value is reported and does not enter them;
• “Entry time 500 m Femmes”: the entry time (and the entry in the race).

The SpeedSkatingResults ID is offered only in speed skating, long track SSR.

Fields are suggested from the headers (French, English, Dutch, German): a header that contains the race's name or its distance (“Inscrit 500m”, “1000”) becomes that race's field. EVENT checks that there is a name, that no field is duplicated and that there is at most one column per race.

Remembered format: the fields and reading options are kept automatically for each file format (same type, same headers) and come back with the next similar file. Start from suggestions redoes the suggestions; Forget this format erases what was remembered.

Values are formatted: name in CAPITALS, first name with initial capitals; country, language and gender recognized in many forms (“F”, “female”, “fille”…).

Extracting the entered races

An online registration form often puts the chosen races as a list in one column per day (“500m, 1500m, Poursuites”), and not always in the same column from one row to the next. Check Extract the entered races (below the column list, when an event is open):

• EVENT gives the Entered races (list to extract) field to the unassigned columns where at least half of the values match a race of the event (“Races looked for in: …”). You can give or remove it by hand; several columns can have it. If it finds none, it reads all unassigned columns, cautiously (an address or an email enters nobody in anything).
• Each cell is split (comma, semicolon, bar, line break); each value is compared with the event's races: its distance (“10 000m”, “1 500 m”, “3000 mètres”, “10 km”), its gender (“(F)”, “(H)”, “(W)”, “(M)”, Dames, Hommes, Women…, otherwise the athlete's) and its words (“Mass Start”, “Poursuite Sprint”), ignoring case and accents.
• Among several possible races, the one whose name has nothing more is used; otherwise the value is ambiguous and reported (“Poursuites” when there is both a team pursuit and a team sprint). A value of the other gender than the athlete (“5000m (F)” on a man's row) or that matches no race is reported. Nothing is ever guessed.

A preview shows each value found (Value found, Times), the race used per gender or “not recognised”, “ambiguous: …”, “other gender than the athlete” (Race used), with a summary: columns read, entries per race, values not used. The Race chosen by hand list settles a value: “(automatic)”, “(ignore this value)” or a race — the same race of the other gender applies to the other gender.

The extracted races add to those of the “Entered 500 m Femmes” columns, which work as before. A value not used shows in its row's Details at matching and in the preview of entries per race; the import report and log give the summary. The option, the columns and the choices made by hand are remembered with the format. Step by step: Importing entries whose races are in any order.

3. Matching

Match with the database → compares each row with the athletes in the database; the Status column shows the result in color:

Found

Same reference, same external ID, same member no. in the same federation (the column's, otherwise the event's) or same international no.

Proposed

Same name, same first name, same date of birth (accents, hyphens and name order ignored): the record is selected by default, the import confirms it.

Ambiguous

Several candidates, or only a clue: to review.

New

No record: the athlete will be created.

For each row, Matched athlete: a candidate, “Create a new athlete” or “Ignore the row”. Next to resolve goes to the next row to settle; Create all unresolved creates them all at once. Differences (name, birth date, gender) and unreadable values are shown in “Details”; a row that repeats a person higher up in the file is ignored.

Records already in the database: “Fill in the record's empty fields” (default), “Replace with the file's values” or “Do not change the record”. No category in the file: compute it (date of birth). The preview says how many entries each race will receive (“Race entries: 500 m Femmes: 18; 1500 m Femmes: 16”). ← Columns goes back.

4. The import and its report

Import creates the athletes (the club is recognized by its name or abbreviation), updates the records, stores the member no. in the affiliation with the federation, then enters each one (bib, category from the file or calculated, group, races with their time). The Import report gives the athletes created, the records updated, the entries created per race, the categories and races not found, duplicate bibs and errors by row.

What the import cannot settle on its own — different data, namesakes, duplicates in the file, races not kept, conflicting entries, duplicate bibs… — appears in the Conflicts column of the matching; the Show this conflict box keeps it in yellow in the entry list. Each conflict, an example and what to do: Entry import conflicts.