I was so hopeful that the AKC staff would have some magical interface with their event system that would allow them to reproduce the event details for the CATs in Kalamazoo, but, alas, it appears that they can only really retain them from one year to the next. They did create placeholders on the new August dates, which saves me the trouble of actually initiating the events, but I’m going to have to fill in the FTS, FTC, judge, and closing time on all ten of those. Buckle up, it’s 8:20 AM, and we’ll see how long it takes.
I should mention that the first item needing to be redone for those CATs was the advertisement for the show premium and catalog. I’d asked the superintendent if they needed one, not being sure if it was already too late or not about ten days ago, without a response. Today, I simply sent it, figuring it out not to be too late for the catalog anyway and received a “thanks”. Box checked.
To the AKC’s web site we go, credentials in hand, and work our way in to the Online Competition Management System (OCMS). The event list has certainly been pruned. I always try to do the events in calendar order, which, as you can see, isn’t necessarily the order of presentation, so be careful.
Starting with event 2020261022, I mark it as the morning event, check the disaster plan box, and mark “no” for televising. Enter contact information for Beth as the event secretary and me as the event chairperson.
Next tab gets the gate entry fee, time zone, and closing date and time. The date is obviously the same day as the test if one is accepting gate entries and for the “morning” tests, I just put noon. Odd that the only option afterwards is “Save and Submit to AKC” instead of just “Save”. That must be some effect from the AKC having already applied the fees. We’ll circle back to that page after entering the judge. At least, I have the judges’ numbers marked on my planning sheet, so I won’t have to look them up.
Seems, I’m not going to get another shot as submission. That button is greyed out on the Event Details page, so I suppose I’m done with this event. We’ll try the next one in a different order. I hit the little home icon to get back to the event list, and… wait… wait… wait. What is it thinking about?
It’s been a few minutes, and it’s still not responding. I’ve reentered OCMS via another window, and the event looks ok in the list, having changed to “Approved” on both event status and panel status. We’ll check it after we finish the others.
Event 2020261023 will be the afternoon event on 27 August, but instead of entering the event details, I’m going to enter the judge first. No problem. Now, back to the event details, with the FTS and FTC. Beth’s contact information is committed to memory now, so these won’t take as long. The real trick is maintain enough focus to get the slight differences between each event right. On the Coursing Ability Test tab, the closing time for the “afternoon” test will be the time we listed in the ad, which will be 14:30 for these August dates. Now, “Save and Submit to AKC”.
Good, just the “Final AKC Review Required” validation error. Let’s see if the home icon will get us back to the updated event list, as it should. Roger that. The flow of that process was definitely more reassuring.
Now to repeat the process for the other four days and eight events. Who’s watching the clock? It 8:56 AM. And, we’re done at 9:29 AM.
The summary report on the first event looks fine, so I think it did save properly. I’ll send a note back to the AKC staffer who created the templates for me as a courtesy. Tomorrow, I can deal with the monotony of updating all of the dates and event numbers in the premium.
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