Football Tipping competitions are a great way to increase customer interest and excitement in your venue. The Zen Portal provides a simple way to create and manage tipping contests. In this tutorial we will set up an AFL tipping competition for a company and demonstrate some of the reports associated with the tipping competitions.

 

Part One: Tipping Administration

 

Tipping competitions are managed from the Tipping Administration screens. They can be located in the Tipping Menu under Administration. To navigate to the Tipping Menu, select Menus, Customer, Services and Tipping. The Loyalty Menu also has a direct link to the Tipping Menu.

 

 

The Administration section of the Tipping Menu has a link to the Company Options screen and a link for each of the four screens that are used to manage a tipping competition. As a quick overview, each competition is known as a Group. Each Group has Venues where matches are played and Teams that compete in each match. Matches are organised into Rounds where each team plays once. We will start this section of the tutorial by creating an AFL Group to which we will add venues and teams for our competition. Next we will add rounds of matches to our Group and demonstrate how to enter the results of the round and process the results.

 

Select the Edit Groups link from the Tipping Administration Menu to open the Tipping Group Maintenance screen. To create a new group press the New button. Two other buttons are provided in this screen - Update saves the Groups to the Portal and Delete removes a selected Group. After you have pressed the New button, a line appears in the grid with the name New. Change the name to AFL and enter 16 in the Teams column for that row. The Number column can be left as its default setting - it is just an identifier generated by the Portal. Press the Update button to save the new Group to the Portal and a confirmation message appears.

 

 

Next click on the Edit Venues link in the Tipping Administration Menu to open the Tipping Venue Maintenance screen. Select the AFL group from the Group drop-down list. Press the New button to create a new line in the grid and change the Name field to the name of a venue in the competition. Leave the Number field as its default - this is just an identifier generated by the Portal. The Update button can be used to save the venues to the Portal. To remove a venue from the list, select it and press the Delete button. Add each of the venues in the AFL and press the Update button to save the venues. A confirmation message is displayed.

 

 

Adding teams is similar to the two previous steps. Click on Edit Teams to open the Tipping Team Maintenance screen and select AFL from the Group drop-down list. Press the New button and enter the name of the team in the Name column. The Team Number field can be left as the default that was generated by the Portal. Add each team in the AFL and press the Update button to save the teams to the Portal and a confirmation message will be displayed. If you make a mistake select the team and press the Delete button to remove it from the Portal.

 

 

To edit the rounds, select the Edit Rounds link in the Tipping Administration Menu. This opens the Tipping Round Details screen which allows you to select a round to edit.

 

 

Click on a round to edit. This opens a grid screen where you can add games by pressing the New button. Enter the home team (Team 1), away team (Team 2), Venue, Date and Start Hour (kickoff time) for the match. Note that the start hour is used to prevent members from entering their tip for a game after it has started. Press the Update button to save the matches for the Round. As usual, the Delete button can be used to remove a selected match from the Round.

 

 

After a match or round of matches has been played, select the winner from the Winner  column drop-down list. Press the Update button to save the changes and then the Process button to process the results. A confirmation message is displayed after the results have been processed.

 

 

Note that if the winner of a match is selected as a team that did not participate in the match, the details will not be saved or processed for the round. An error message will be displayed in this instance instead.

 

 

Part Two: Tipping Reports

 

The Portal provides several useful reports to assist with the administration of your tipping competition. You can access the reports from the Tipping Reports section of the Tipping Menu.

 

 

The following Tipping Reports are available:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In this tutorial we have discussed the processes involved in creating and managing a tipping competition. The example given was for an AFL tipping competition, but this could easily be adapted to NRL, Soccer or any other sport that could have a tipping competition. Tipping contests are a great way to increase your members' involvement in your venues and are a great way to advertise your Company.