Setting up an Event

Setting up an event in Middletwin is easy. It all starts by going to the Events tab from the left hand menu. You will need to ensure that you have Administrate access for the Event Manager permission. See the Account Logins knowledge base document for details on setting up logins.

In the Events list page you will see a list of all your events. If you are creating one for the first time, the list will be empty. Click on the “Add event” button above the list of events to create a new event. A side panel will open where you can type in the name for your new event and you can optionally select an existing event to copy. Copying an existing event will copy many of the settings to the new event, like car classes, makes and models, ticket types, and more. This makes setting up future events very easy because you can copy a similar event that you hosted and just make some tweaks for your new event.

The new event

Your new event will be added to the list. Click on the row for your new event and you will be taken to the landing page for your event setup. By default, the event will be a “Basic” event. A Basic event is used for just selling tickets. A use case for this would be if you just wanted to sell tickets to a club banquet.

To start setting up your show or event, click on the “Show Settings” icon.

Once you are in the show settings you will see several of the settings for the show.

Name

At the top will be the name, you change the name of your show here.

Type

Next is the type, change this to “Competition Show (Has Voting)” if this event is a car show with voting.

Availability

Set the Availability to “Members Only” If you are a car club and want this to only be available to car club members in the member portal, otherwise leave it as “Open to the Public”

Dates

Set “The first day of this event” and “The last day of this event” to the dates of the actual event. Set them to the same date if the event is a one day event.

Description

Provide a description for the event, make sure to include location, start and end times, and any other details that you would want to share.

Purchase agreement policy

Provide any policies that you want to include at the point of purchase for any registrations, tickets, vendor or swap spaces in this location. This will be displayed to your customers when they are purchasing anything related to the show. You might want to include things like “No Refunds”, “All Sales Final”, “Rain or Shine” and things of that nature. Additionally you might want to include that you are not responsible for the post office loosing confirmation letters or wristband if you mail those things out.

Tickets Label

If you plan to use the ticket sales feature in Middletwin to sell something other than tickets, you can set the label to a custom value. For example if you plan to use this to sell sponsorships for classes, you can set the label to be “Sponsorships”. Leave it blank if you are satisfied with tickets.

Media

Here you can upload an image of your show flyer. This helps your customers identify that they are looking at the correct show and will be displayed in the public events landing page.

Schedule

Follow the onscreen instructions to create a schedule for your event. This is optional and only needed if you will be having multiple activities at your event, like a burn out contest for example.

Participant Registration (Optional)

To allow participants to register their cars online prior to your show (aka Pre-registration), enable the pre-registration by setting the toggle to on, and setting the start date for when you want to allow participants to register, and the end date for when you want pre-registration to end.

NOTE: You will want to configure classes and makes and models before pre-registration begins

Set the price to your pre-registration price, note that credit card fees will come out of this amount, so set it accordingly. If you are a club and want to offer club members a discount when they are logged into the member portal, set the discount price here. It is up to you to ensure you communication to your members that they must be logged in to get the discount.

If you want a notification email to be sent out everytime someone pre-registers online, set the “New Notification Email” to the email address.

Lastly, you can create an email template that will be used as a confirmation email to everyone who registers online. Set the “Response Template” to the email template you want to use. All email templates are created in the Email section of Middletwin.

Click the “Save Event” button at the bottom of the page to save all your changes.

Classes

Click on the Classes icon to start setting up classes.

The Classes icon

Car classes are very important in Middletwin and must be setup correctly to ensure a smooth running show. Classes consist of a class number, a section or location, and a description.

Class Number

The class number for your class is important because all the car numbers, which must be unique, are based off of the class number. For example, for your first class you would use 100, the first car that registers for class 100 will be car number 101, the second will be 102, and so on. This keeps all the car numbers unique.

Even if you are doing an all makes and models show you will want at least 1 class for all the cars to register in.

If you anticipate getting more than 100 cars in any class, make sure you use a class number high enough to allow for more than 100 cars.

Section/Location/Area/Lot/Building

This setting is mostly for you. It is not displayed to people who are pre-registering. Use it for your workers to help them guide cars to the correct location.

Description

Set your description for your class appropriately so that people will be able to identify if it is the correct class for them to register for. For example “All convertibles”. But also ensure that the cars that register for that class will be as evenly competitive as possible when it comes to voting or judging.

Hidden from online pre-registration

If you will have a class that you need in the Middletwin system, but you don’t want cars to pre-register for the class, then set this toggle to on. An example of this would be if you have a display only class that costs less than a regular class registration because it will not get a goodie bag or be eligible for an award, and you will allow people to register for at the show, you can add it here and set this to be hidden. This will provide the class in the system so that you can manually enter the car that come in on the day of show into this class so that you can have their names, emails, and other information in the system so you can send them thank you emails or invites to future shows.

Makes & Models

Click on the Makes & Models icon to setup makes and models for your show. You have 2 main options here, the first is to allow users to type make and model, if you enable this the makes and models mapping tools will be hidden, and customers will have text entry fields where they can type in whatever they want for their car make and model. Alternatively, if you are only allowing specific makes and models for your show, you can setup a list of the specific makes and models of cars that will be at your show.

Balloting

There are 2 types of balloting, Printed or Mobile.

Printed Ballots

After setting up the classes you can go to Printed Ballots and see all of the classes listed. If you want to print ballots on your own, outside of the Middletwin system, and hand them out at your show, you can manually enter in the completed ballots by going here and entering in all the votes from the ballot (pro tip, you can use the keypad/number section on a full size keyboard to make this going really fast), use the “Enter” key or “Tab” to go to the next field, click “Submit Ballot to submit all the votes. Note that all cars must be in the system before submitting ballots.

Mobile Ballots

Optionally you can use Mobile Ballots. Click on the Mobile Ballots icon to get started. Within the Mobile Ballots there are 2 tabs, “Ballots” and “Setup”. Click on the “Setup” tab and follow the onscreen instructions to setup the mobile ballots. When you are done setting up mobile ballots, save the setup and go back to Ballots.

Click on the “Add ballots” button to create your first batch of ballots. Select the quantity of ballots you want to create and choose a batch name. Ballots are printed in batches so that you can print them by batch name.

After creating a batch of ballots, click on the “Print” button in the top right of the table of ballots and select the batch of ballots that you want to print. You can create and print mobile ballots at anytime, you do not need to wait for all cars to be in the system, however all cars must be in the system before the voting start time.

After printing your batch, cut them up into individual ballots and put them in your goodie bags or hand them out to all eligible voters. Be prepared to help anyone who might be struggling with using their smart phone’s camera to read the QR Code.

See the knowledge base for guides on other features in the events setup