# TrialTab user guide

For admins, coaches, and judges.

Open TrialTab: https://trialtab.com

Public guide: https://trialtab.com/guide

## For admins and tournament directors

Set up the field, manage access and conflicts, release results, and finish the tournament.

### Find your way around

| Section | Use it for |
| --- | --- |
| Overview | Setup checklist, portal announcements, and live counts of missing assignments, captains’ forms, ballots, and audits. |
| Teams & judges | Search contacts, copy invitation links, edit rosters and availability, choose conflicts. |
| Rounds | Choose a preliminary or elimination round. Review pairings, judges, rooms, forms, ballots, and round-specific reset actions. |
| Ballots | One review queue for prelims and eliminations. Filter by round, status, judge, team, or room; review and release each ballot. |
| Emails | Login emails, group emails, saved templates, mail-merge exports, and Gmail drafts. |
| Results & awards | Team standings, attorney and witness rankings, private spirit/judge award tallies, and certificates. |
| Settings | Format and judge count, release policy and resources, staff access, closing, reset, deletion, and backup. |

The selected tournament, page, and round are remembered in this browser and reflected in the address bar. You can share an admin page link with authorized staff; it never grants permissions. The dashboard refreshes every 15 seconds while visible and shows its last update time. Refreshing does not overwrite an open ballot editor.

### Review ballots efficiently

Open Ballots to see status counts for the current round, search, trial, and ballot-type filters. Choose a status chip to focus on awaiting submissions, audits, staff-only approvals, or released ballots. Search words can be entered in any order. Clear filters returns to the full queue; within a round it keeps that round selected. Export shown ballots downloads the visible list with judge assignments and submitted totals, without private draft comments or ranking details. In a ballot, Previous and Next ballot stay within that filtered list. Staff-only approval keeps ballots private until you choose Release to teams.

Settings, branding, ballot resources, and export preferences show unsaved changes and warn before leaving. If another staff member changes branding while you edit, reload their saved branding before continuing. The top bar shows whether live updates are connected, offline, or failed and the last successful check. Loading screens include a reload option if a workspace takes longer than usual.

### Tournament branding

Open Settings → Branding to upload a tournament logo, banner, or both. PNG, JPG, and WebP images up to 8 MB are resized for fast loading. Each upload suggests primary and accent colors; adjust them and review the preview before choosing Save tournament branding. Primary colors are darkened when needed for readable text. Your contest’s staff workspace, team and judge portals, public pairings, ballot PDFs, awards packet, formatted results, and certificates use the saved branding. Other tournaments retain their own settings. Choose Use TrialTab defaults, then save, to clear the artwork and theme. Uploaded artwork is displayed with the tournament, including its public pairings when enabled.

### 1. Open the staff dashboard and create a contest

1. Open your private staff invitation and choose Open staff dashboard. Staff do not need a ChatGPT account. The site owner can continue using the Site owner sign-in option. Judge and team invitation links do not grant staff access.
2. If tournament creation is enabled for you, create a tournament with its name and scheduled round count. Otherwise, choose one of the contests you have been invited to administer. Check the name before editing records. To reuse a test tournament, open Settings → Close, reset & delete → Reset tournament progress and type its name. This clears pairings, ballots and drafts, scores, ranks, captains’ forms, award votes, announcements, and any bracket. Teams, rosters, judges, rooms, declared conflicts, settings, and access stay. The contest reopens; bracket-related round counts return to the pre-bracket value. Choose Download tournament backup first if you need records. For smaller changes, open Rounds → Round actions → Clear selected tournament progress to delete one preliminary pairing, clear only a round’s results, or delete a whole preliminary round. Result-only clearing keeps that round’s pairings, judges, rooms, and captains’ forms. Confirm dependent later rounds explicitly. Preliminary changes clear spirit ratings and judge nominations. Deleted pairings leave teams unpaired: use Rounds → Pairings & judges → Add a replacement pairing, then assign judges/rooms and repost. You cannot post a partial round or pair the next round with teams missing. Elimination result clearing keeps the bracket and seeds while resetting downstream advancement. After a full reset, choose your counting judges and pair Round 1 again.
3. No eliminations is the default. For a standard four-round contest, schedule four rounds and leave Elimination bracket set to ‘Preliminary rounds only · no eliminations’.

Two completed samples are labeled ‘fictional results’: the original 34-team preliminary tournament and a full 36-team tournament with a 16-team elimination bracket. All scores, comments, ranks, and awards are demonstrations. Affidavit and Goliath and Bye Bye Bye have clearly labeled fictional competitors because no rosters were provided.

### Change witnesses after starting

Open Settings → Tournament → Witnesses per side, choose 3 on each side, and confirm. The increase applies to unsubmitted preliminary and elimination ballots. Existing draft names, scores, comments, and ranks are retained; third-witness fields start blank. Submitted ballots keep their original format. Teams must update their witness exchange, CX assignments, and confirmations. Judges should wait for Draft saved, then refresh their ballot. A tournament cannot decrease its witness count after this change.

### Invite administrators and tournament creators

1. Open Settings → Staff access. Select the intended tournament, enter the staff member’s email under Administrators, and choose Add administrator. Copy the private login link and send it to that person. No ChatGPT account is required and no email is sent automatically.
2. As the site owner, use Allow people to create their own tournaments to authorize a creator. Copy that private login link. Creators become directors of their new contests and can invite administrators there, without receiving access to other contests.
3. To replace a staff link, choose New login link. Links last 30 days and can be used again during that period; each sign-in lasts up to 12 hours. Replacing a link immediately ends sessions using the previous link for those permissions. Use Sign out to end the current private session.
4. Remove an administrator to revoke that tournament’s access immediately. Removing creator permission stops new tournament creation while keeping access to their existing contests.

The site owner can manage every contest. A director can manage staff only for their own contests. An invited administrator can manage tournament data, settings, and deletion, but cannot grant staff permissions. A tournament-specific login link never grants access to other contests, even if the recipient separately has broader permissions. Share private links only with the intended staff member.

### 2. Add teams, rosters, and judges

1. In Teams & judges → Teams, paste one team per line, for example Hercules | ModernBrain or Athena | Lake Howell. The full optional format is Team | School | Roster (names separated by ;) | contact email. There is no separate team code. Add the field before pairing Round 1 or creating a bracket.
2. Use Teams & judges → Teams → Edit to change the team name, school, contact email, or roster. Team names allow up to 120 characters and school names up to 240. Spaces and capitalization are preserved; team names must be unique within the tournament and cannot contain commas, semicolons, pipes, or line breaks. Renaming keeps the team’s ballots, access links, bracket entries, and conflicts connected. Enter one competitor per roster line for the ballot’s name dropdowns.
3. In Teams & judges → Judges, paste one judge per line using: Name | email | available rounds | team conflicts | preference. Separate available round numbers with commas. Preference can be Presiding, Scoring, or No preference.
4. Review declared conflicts and previously judged teams in Judges. Team-declared judge conflicts are shown separately and also block assignments. Clear a team declaration only after resolving it with that team.

The same contact email can appear on several teams, but each team has its own access link. Preliminary pairing currently requires an even number of teams; byes are not supported.

### 3. Set shared links, ballot release, and public pairings

1. Use Rounds → Rooms to add physical room names or numbers, one per line. Meeting links are optional. Select a round and choose Auto-assign unassigned rooms; this keeps existing choices and prevents two trials using the same room in that round. Use the Assigned room dropdown or Edit room / meeting link to override a trial. Rooms can be reused in later rounds, including eliminations. You can also edit a trial’s room from Ballots. One assignment updates every judge’s ballot and both teams. Room names appear on public pairings when enabled; meeting links stay private. Open Settings → Publishing & resources to save the shared Zoom / meeting link, location or joining instructions, universal case link, and universal rules link. Add a Presiding judge script link there too. It appears only for the judge marked Presiding in each preliminary trial and Judge 1 in each elimination trial, including presiders who also score. Teams and other scoring judges do not receive it. Shared resources update existing and future ballots; blank fields are omitted.
2. Choose ballot release: ‘After staff audit and approval’ keeps new submissions private; ‘Immediately after a valid submission’ releases each valid ballot to both teams as soon as it is submitted.
3. If you want a public pairing board, enable Public pairings page and copy its link. Public access starts disabled. Only posted rounds appear, with team names, sides, courtrooms, and judge assignments.
4. Use Settings → Tournament to rename the contest and Settings → Close, reset & delete to close it. Closing locks submissions, pairings, and roster changes, while leaving released records accessible. Staff can still rename the tournament or adjust its publication settings. Closing does not publish hidden ballots.

Release-mode changes apply to future submissions. Already released ballots stay visible until staff withhold them. The public pairing board does not contain scores, feedback, rosters, contact details, or private ballot links.

### 4. Distribute access and tournament messages

1. Open Emails → Email templates. Edit the starter Team login and Judge login templates, or create your own. Set a name, audience, subject, and plain-text message. Use the field buttons to insert values such as {{team_name}}, {{school}}, {{name}}, {{tournament}}, and {{login_link}}. Preview with a real recipient, then Save template. Each tournament keeps its own templates.
2. Open Login emails. Choose a Team email template and a Judge email template. You can select both groups in the same batch. Search and select the recipients who need login emails, or select all shown recipients. Add missing emails under Teams & judges first. Choose Review emails, check the exact names, then Prepare login emails. Usable saved links are reused without signing anyone out. Missing, expired, or unretrievable links are replaced only after you confirm.
3. Preview individual emails. Download all emails CSV, or download separate team and judge CSV files. Each row includes the recipient, role, school, personalized subject and message, and that person’s private login link. Teams sharing a contact email retain separate rows and links. Save the CSV before leaving Emails. You can retrieve each private invitation later in Teams & judges → Teams or Judges: use the Invitation link column to copy it, see its expiration, or create or replace a link. Older invitations appear after their next successful sign-in; otherwise, use Replace link once. Replacing a link requires confirmation and signs out only that participant.
4. For bulk email, import the CSV into your email or mail-merge tool. Map Email to recipients, Subject to the email subject, and Message to the email body, and send one email per row. A merge tool that accepts draft placeholders can use {{Subject}} and {{Message}} with those exact CSV column names. Never put personal login invitations in a shared BCC email. You can also use each invitation’s Open Gmail draft, or copy its subject and message, then review and send it yourself.
5. Use Emails → Group emails to load a saved shared template or write a message. Download the recipient CSV or open the Gmail batch drafts, review the BCC recipients, and send each batch. To display a message inside portals, open Overview → Portal announcements → Write an announcement. You can also view previously posted messages there.

TrialTab prepares drafts and mail-merge exports; no automatic email sender is connected. Saving, duplicating, previewing, or changing templates does not send emails or regenerate login links. Login templates must include {{login_link}} in the body. Group emails allow only tournament fields, so one recipient’s private data cannot be merged into a group message.

Personal links are reusable until they expire seven days after generation. Reopen the same link to sign back in after signing out or switching devices. Each successful sign-in creates a browser session for up to 30 days. Keep these links private; anyone with a link can access that portal. Generating new links replaces old links and signs out existing sessions for only the selected recipients. Posting a portal message alone does not send email.

### Quick scrimmage: one ballot

1. Choose Quick scrimmage in the admin sidebar. Choose 1, 2, or 3 attorneys per side and independently choose 1, 2, or 3 witnesses per side. Turn Score witnesses on or off, then create the ballot.
2. Enter your name as judge and both team names. Choose attorney slots and type competitor names directly in the performance fields as the round proceeds. Renaming a slot updates that person throughout the ballot. Witness names stay linked on direct and cross.
3. Your draft auto-saves to your staff account. Score each required performance from 0–10 and include written feedback. When witness scoring is off, witness scores and ranks are omitted from totals; witness names and comments remain available. Individual rankings are optional.
4. Choose Finish ballot. Confirm any intentional zero scores. The completed ballot shows all scores, comments, rankings, and team totals.
5. Choose Create sharing link, then Copy link. For a draft, choose Create draft sharing link before finishing. Anyone with the read-only link can view the latest saved ballot without logging in, updating about every five seconds. Drafts show provisional scores and rankings. The link stays active when you finish or reopen the ballot. Disable link revokes access. Print / save PDF is available for completed and shared ballots.

To add witnesses to an existing scrimmage draft, open Witnesses per side and choose a higher count. Confirm the change; existing entries and sharing links remain. New witness fields start blank. For a completed ballot, choose Edit ballot first. Scrimmages are separate from tournaments and do not change tournament results. Drafts are private until the staff member who created them enables sharing. Shared viewers cannot edit.

### 5. Run preliminary rounds

1. In Rounds → Pairings & judges, pair Round 1. The opening draw is randomized. Later rounds rank teams by ballot wins, then head-to-head only for exactly two teams at that win total, then CS and PD.
2. Before pairing Round 1, set Settings → Tournament → Counting judges in preliminary rounds. Choose 1–9 counting judges. With one ballot judge, automatic assignment uses that judge for both scoring and presiding. The first N listed judges count universally; extra judges provide feedback only. In Rounds, set Total ballot judges for each trial, then use Assign judges or the assignment dropdowns. A ballot judge may also preside. Panel size locks after the first submission.
3. Post pairings when ready. Teams then see their trial, and the public board updates if enabled. Judges see their assigned ballots in their own portals.
4. Open Rounds → Captains’ forms to check Submitted / Not submitted for both teams by round, filter for missing forms, see submission times, and expand each submitted lineup. This view refreshes every 15 seconds and remains available for locked trials and closed contests. In Ballots or Rounds → Ballots, monitor each judge’s saved P/D totals, scores entered out of 20, and last-save time. This read-only progress refreshes about every five seconds while the panel is visible. Drafts and corrections are labeled provisional and never affect results until submitted. Full scoring progress is not submission; feedback and rankings may still be unfinished. Judges can use Save draft at the top or bottom of the ballot without submitting. Unsaved edits are also backed up on that browser; reopening offers Restore this draft. Download backup makes a readable copy of scores, names, feedback and ranks. If another device saved the same ballot, Save draft offers an explicit Save this device’s draft action, which reconnects only while the assignment and submitted ballot are unchanged. Use one device and editable ballot tab at a time. Use Combined trial rankings and choose a trial to see separate attorney and witness tables across its submitted counting ballots, before release. Each judge has a rank column and competitors have total points: 1st / 1st / 2nd is 14 out of 15 across three judges. Incomplete panels are provisional; pending or missing ranking records are not treated as zero. Bonus preliminary ballots are excluded. To add one, use Rounds → Pairings & judges → Add bonus ballot on the trial, then assign an additional judge. This remains available after official ballots are submitted and in earlier rounds while the contest is open. The bonus judge uses the normal scoring form, autosave, and submission process. Release the submitted bonus ballot to share its scores, comments, and ranks with both teams. Bonus ballots never affect team standings, placement outcomes, combined trial rankings, or individual awards. An unassigned bonus slot does not block posting or releasing the official results. Only a last unused slot with no saved draft or submission can be removed. Elimination totals stay separate from preliminary awards. Open submitted ballots to review every score, comment, total, and individual rank. Opening and reviewing are read-only and never overwrite a judge’s private draft. Staff edits save only when you explicitly choose Save full ballot; that save can replace the ballot and supersede an in-progress draft. Choose Approve for staff only to record an audit without releasing scores; Approve & review next also keeps the ballot private. Approved ballots have their own status filter. Post the next round’s pairings when ready, then Release to teams for one approved ballot or approve and release the whole audited round from Rounds.
5. Finish all counting ballots for every trial before pairing the next preliminary round. Earlier counting scores lock after the next round is paired. Staff can still open any submitted ballot in Ballots → Review → Correct names & comments, including released ballots and decided elimination trials. This corrects performer names, case witness names, feedback and recipients of recorded ranks; numeric scores and rank positions remain fixed. Ranking recipient corrections update individual awards. Released corrections stay released; private corrections stay private and require a fresh audit. Extra feedback can still be submitted until released or the contest closes.

Odd power-matched rounds snake the sides: P/D/D/P/P/D/D/P, or the reverse, with a random starting side. Even rounds reverse each team’s preceding side. For a six-team, four-round contest, Rounds → Pairings & judges → Special Round 3–4 placement finish can be enabled after all Round 1–2 counting ballots are in, before Round 3 is paired. Review seeds 1–4: 1 vs 2 plays for first and 3 vs 4 plays for third in both rounds. The remaining two teams are not scheduled. Pair Round 3, then complete it and pair Round 4; the return round automatically reverses sides. Team places use combined Round 3–4 ballot wins, then PD, then the reviewed original seed. Individual ranks from all four rounds continue to count. To remove the first/second versus third/fourth split for Round 4, use Change Round 4 to open top four. Select two matchups and review their sides. This returns final places to cumulative wins, head-to-head only for exactly two teams at that win total, then CS and PD across all four rounds. Round 3 ballots stay intact. Existing Round 4 matchups can be replaced only while they have no saved scoring drafts or submissions; judge assignments and captains’ forms are cleared and changed pairings must be reposted. Publish pairings and release ballots separately as usual. Preliminary pairing blocks same-school matchups and rematches. A judge who submits a ballot gains a conflict with those teams for future assignments. Presiding history counts after a completed preliminary trial.

### 6. Choose whether to run eliminations

| Format | How to use it |
| --- | --- |
| No eliminations | Leave the default in place. Finish the scheduled preliminary rounds and use Results & awards. |
| Four preliminaries, then eliminations | Complete Round 4, open Rounds → Bracket & format, choose the format and cut size, then create the bracket. Original seeds use preliminary wins, CS, and PD. Creating the bracket locks preliminary scores. |
| Bracket only | Before creating preliminary pairings, open Rounds → Bracket & format, choose the format and size, and enter team names in original seed order, best first. |

Bracket sizes are powers of two from 2 to 128, limited by your registered field. No byes are inserted. A 16-team bracket begins 1 vs. 16, 8 vs. 9, 4 vs. 13, 5 vs. 12, 2 vs. 15, 7 vs. 10, 3 vs. 14, and 6 vs. 11. Winners follow this bracket without reseeding. Seeded matchups may include teams from the same school.

An unused bracket can be removed with confirmation; this restores the previous round count and leaves preliminary records intact. Removal is blocked once an elimination ballot has been submitted.

### 7. Manage elimination rounds and advancement

1. Choose an elimination round and rename it if needed. Set Judges in this trial separately for each matchup, from 3–9. One semifinal may have three judges and another five. Each trial’s size locks after its first submitted ballot. Changing a trial size preserves retained judge slots and hides round pairings until reposted. The round default applies only to trials without a custom size.
2. Update judge availability for the elimination round numbers. A bracket after four preliminaries begins at Round 5; a bracket-only contest begins at Round 1. Keep any earlier rounds a judge already worked in their availability list.
3. Assign judges and resolve conflicts. Judge-friend preferences are considered in both preliminaries and eliminations; availability, conflicts, full panels, and existing assignments take priority. Every assigned elimination judge scores; Judge 1 also presides. Judge-declared, team-declared, and previous-team conflicts apply. You can reverse sides before scoring, which clears that trial’s assignments.
4. Post pairings, collect every judge’s full ballot, and audit them. Staff can enter or edit an elimination ballot directly in the Ballots review queue before the trial is advanced.
5. Review the calculated winner, then Advance winners. In the final, choose Confirm champion. Advancement locks that round’s scores and fills the next bracket stage.
6. In Rounds → Pairings & judges, each elimination trial has a Posted or Hidden status and its own Post pairing / Hide pairing button. Publish one semifinal now and another on a different day. Post all pairings / Hide all pairings applies to the entire selected stage. Unposted matchups stay off team portals and the public board; assigned judges can still open their own ballots. Preliminary pairings are always published a whole round at a time. Release individual ballots or approve and release the whole round. Advancement and ballot publication are separate actions. Teams see a confirmed advancement result after all panel ballots are released.

| Order | Advancement rule |
| --- | --- |
| 1 | More ballot wins. A tied scoring ballot gives each side ½ win. |
| 2 | If ballot wins tie, higher total point differential across the panel. |
| 3 | If point differential is also tied, the better original seed advances. A lower seed number is better. |

All assigned judges must submit before advancement, including when one team has already secured a majority. Elimination ballots include attorney and witness ranks, but those ranks do not decide the winner and do not add to preliminary award totals. A bracket-only contest has no preliminary individual awards.

### 8. Review results, export awards, and close

1. Open Results & awards → Spirit & judge awards to review each team’s spirit ratings, submission status, rating totals and averages, and outstanding judge nominations. The dashboard refreshes automatically; use Refresh submissions if you need an immediate check. Received ratings and all tallies are admin-only. An average is total points divided by ratings received; review counts before choosing winners. Equal averages or nomination counts remain tied. Closing the contest locks both forms.
2. Rounds → Captains’ forms shows witness submission, pending CX assignments, required reconfirmation, and Complete status separately. Open View lineup and confirmations to see roles and timestamps for demonstratives and character-evidence confirmations, including after ballots lock. Older submissions show confirmations as not recorded until a team explicitly provides them. Captains’ meeting submissions also prefill new ballots entered by staff in Ballots or Elimination bracket. Existing scored ballots keep their recorded names. If pairings or sides change, the affected teams must submit a fresh lineup.
3. Open Results & awards → Team standings for the live staff standings. Use Attorney rankings and Witness rankings for individual totals, and Results & certificates for exports. Choose the number of team places, attorney and witness point cutoffs, optional dates, and any additional result-sheet text. Choose Save export settings to keep these choices for everyone administering the tournament. Downloads use the current preview; unsaved changes are marked.
4. Choose Download results PDF for a round-by-round tab summary, W/L/T records, ballot point differences, CS/OCS/PD, and selected team and individual awards. Each elimination round starts on a separate page with the judging panel, ballot totals, confirmed winner, and tiebreak. Elimination results PDF downloads just those rounds. Reports fetch the latest saved results, mark incomplete contests provisional and demo data fictional, and do not release any ballots. Results text, a formatted page, individual-rank CSV, and separate certificate batches are also available. Open a certificate HTML file and choose Print / save as PDF.
5. Check the team Results tab’s publication rules: it uses released ballots only, so its running standings may differ from staff standings while some ballots are withheld. Preliminary awards are separate by category and side.
6. For elimination or bracket-only results, confirm the winner in Rounds → Pairings & judges and release the panel ballots. The team Results tab then shows bracket progression, original seeds, and released finishes. Results & awards produces team certificates and formatted result sheets with elimination records.
7. Close the contest in Settings → Close, reset & delete when finished. Export the records you need before deletion. Deleting requires the exact tournament name and permanently removes that contest’s data and access.

Preliminary certificate cutoffs are staff choices. Additional award text appears on the result sheet but does not create extra certificates. Team certificates and results exports use confirmed elimination finishes when a bracket exists. Teams eliminated in the same stage are ordered by original seed; individual certificates continue to use preliminary points only.

## For coaches and team contacts

Use your team’s invitation to manage your roster, find pairings, declare judge conflicts, read ballots, and track released results.

### 1. Open your team desk

1. Open the personal invitation sent by tournament staff, then use its sign-in button. Check that the tournament and team names are correct.
2. Return to your Team desk in the same browser, or reopen your private link to sign back in on another browser or device. The link can be reused until it expires seven days after generation or staff replace it. If it has expired or been replaced, ask staff for a new link.
3. Keep your team’s access link private. A public pairings link does not sign you in. Each team has a separate invitation, even if one coach is the contact for several teams.

There is currently one active team or judge identity per browser session. Opening another team’s invitation changes the active portal identity; separate browser profiles can keep team sessions separate. Coaches use team access, not the staff dashboard.

### View and edit your roster

1. Open your team’s unique invitation, then choose Roster or View / edit roster at the top of your Team desk. Your roster is available before any pairings are posted.
2. Choose Edit roster or Add competitors. Enter one competitor per line; optional pronouns can follow the name, such as Alex Chen (they/them). Choose Save roster. Each name must be unique, with no more than 4,000 characters in the full roster.
3. Review any captains’ form that used a changed or removed name. Affected witness or attorney selections will be marked for updating. Changing a witness competitor requires the opponent to reconfirm its CX assignments after the revised witness lineup is submitted.
4. Names already recorded on submitted ballots must remain on the roster. Ask staff to correct those names so recorded results stay connected. You can still add competitors. Earlier ballots, feedback, and rankings are preserved.

Only your own team’s roster can be edited through your invitation. Closed tournaments keep the roster available to view; staff handle corrections. If someone else saves a roster while you are editing, your entries are kept and you can load the latest roster before retrying.

### 2. Declare conflicted judges

1. Open Judge conflicts → Your declared conflicts.
2. Search for a judge, select the name from the dropdown, and repeat for all applicable conflicts. Remove a selection if it was entered by mistake.
3. Choose Save conflicts. Contact staff immediately if you already have an assignment involving a newly declared conflict.

Judge declarations concerning your team also appear in this section. You cannot remove a declaration submitted by the other participant; ask staff to resolve it. Saving a conflict flags an existing assignment but does not automatically replace the judge.

### 3. Find your pairings and ballots

1. For each trial in Rounds & ballots, choose Complete captains’ form. Step 1 asks only for your two case witnesses in calling order and the competitors playing them. Submit witness lineup without choosing CX attorneys. Both witness lists appear together after both teams submit; until then, the opponent’s witness selections remain hidden.
2. In Step 2, select your opening, closing, DX, and CX attorneys. Each examination identifies the actual case witness, its calling order, and the team calling it. Before Confirm roles and disclosures, check both required confirmations: all planned demonstratives have been shared with the opponent, and notice of intent to offer character evidence has been disclosed in accordance with applicable laws, statutes, and tournament rules. Each confirmation also covers having none planned. These confirmations must be made explicitly; they are never prechecked. The form works in preliminary and elimination trials after the pairing is posted, until its counting ballots are complete. If an opponent changes a witness or the calling order, review the revised list and reconfirm CX assignments. Open, unsubmitted judge ballots check for pending captains’ forms about every five seconds. Submitted forms populate roles and case witnesses even if the judge began editing beforehand. Judges can override those names afterward. Scores, comments, rankings, and previously submitted ballots remain intact.
3. Use Rounds & ballots. Trials appear newest first, with your side, opponent, round or elimination-stage name, and courtroom.
4. Check the room name or number for each trial. Open the optional Zoom / meeting, case, and rules links shown with the ballot. Follow the location instructions supplied by staff.
5. Choose an individual ballot under its round to open a spacious read-only view: judge name, every performance score, totals, comments, and attorney/witness rankings are included.
6. Check Messages for tournament announcements. If enabled, View all public pairings opens the board for the whole field.

Ballots appear according to the tournament’s release policy: immediately after valid submission, or after staff audit. Unreleased ballots are not missing from the tournament; they are still private. Team portals check for changes automatically while visible and refresh when needed. Full ballot feedback loads when you open a ballot. If a roster or score looks wrong, ask staff; coaches cannot edit a judge’s ballot.

### Team awards after Round 4

1. Open Team awards after all counting ballots for your Rounds 1–4 are submitted. This feature is available in preliminary tournaments, including those followed by eliminations; bracket-only tournaments do not use it.
2. Use each opponent’s dropdown to select a spirit score from 1 to 10, then Submit spirit ratings. Each distinct opponent appears once. No score is preselected.
3. Optionally select up to three different judges for Outstanding judge. Eligible judges include completed preliminary scoring and presiding assignments, plus extra judges who submitted feedback. Save with no nominations is also valid.
4. Spirit ratings and nominations save separately. You can update either until staff close the contest. You see only your own choices; received ratings, other teams’ submissions, totals, and nomination counts stay private to admins.

### 4. Read team standings and individual points

1. Open Results. Team standings compare your team with the whole field, highlight your row, and show place, ballot wins, eligible head-to-head records, CS, PD, and the number of ballots released. Exactly two teams tied on ballot wins use their combined counting-ballot head-to-head record before CS and PD. If they never met or split the record, use CS and PD. Three or more teams at the same ballot-win total skip head-to-head entirely, even if CS later separates some of them.
2. Treat running positions as provisional while releases are uneven. A withheld ballot is excluded from team-facing totals, including tiebreak calculations.
3. Under Your team’s individual points, choose Attorney points or Witness points. Each competitor has separate prosecution and defense totals, with a maximum of 20 when two judges count per round or 30 when three count.
4. Open a point total to see the contributing round, ballot, judge rank, and awarded points. Pending means no released ranking data yet. A 0 means the released ballots awarded no points in that category. Open the total for each ballot’s explanation.

| Judge’s rank | Award points |
| --- | --- |
| 1st | 5 |
| 2nd | 4 |
| 3rd | 3 |
| 4th | 2 |
| Outside the top four | 0 |

With two counting judges per round, four first-place ranks give 20 points across two rounds on that side in preliminary Rounds 1–4. The maximum scales with the tournament’s counting-judge number. Extra feedback ballots never add award points. Do not combine prosecution, defense, attorney, and witness points into one total. Staff confirm award cutoffs and certificates.

If your tournament has eliminations, Results also shows posted bracket stages and released advancement decisions. Bracket-only tournaments show bracket results; they do not use the preliminary 20-point award totals.

## For judges

Declare conflicts, open the correct assignment, complete the full ballot, and confirm successful submission.

### 1. Sign in and declare conflicts

1. Open your personal judge invitation and sign in. Reuse that link to sign back in after signing out or switching devices. It expires seven days after generation, and staff can replace it. Check your name and tournament at the top of Judge desk.
2. Open Conflicts & judge friends → Your declared conflicts. Search for a team, choose it from the dropdown, and repeat for every applicable team.
3. Choose Save conflicts. Team-declared conflicts concerning you are also displayed. Contact tab staff if an existing assignment is affected or a declaration needs correction.
4. Under Conflicts & judge friends, open Judge friends, search and select the other judges you would like to judge alongside, then Save judge friends. Either judge can request a pairing; mutual requests get extra priority. Staff can see preferences in Judges. Saving does not move existing assignments. Ask staff to correct your availability, contact information, or judging role if needed.

A previously judged team becomes an automatic conflict after your submitted scoring ballot. Presiding-only preliminary history counts when the trial is complete. These automatic conflicts are enforced even though they are not removable dropdown selections.

### 2. Open the assigned courtroom

1. After both teams submit their witness lists, the called witnesses prefill the ballot. Confirmed attorney roles populate the corresponding examinations. Check each team’s status and demonstratives/character-evidence confirmations. If witnesses change, stale CX defaults are cleared until the team reconfirms; review any names you previously edited yourself. You may override any prefilled name, and you may still complete a ballot if a team has not submitted a lineup. If you began editing before the forms arrived, their first submission replaces provisional names automatically. Overrides you make after the forms arrive stay yours. Your scores, comments, and rank selections are preserved. Submitted ballots retain their own lineup snapshot.
2. Under Assignments & ballots, check the round or stage, courtroom, teams, and your role, then choose Open ballot or Resume ballot. Feedback-only preliminary judges submit the same full ballot, but their scores and ranks do not affect results. Teams can read those ballots after release.
3. Check the courtroom shown on your ballot for your physical or online room. If supplied, use the Zoom / meeting link and the case and rules links. Read the location instructions. If you are marked as the presider for this trial, the Presiding judge script link also appears when staff have added it.
4. If you are presiding only in a preliminary trial, the scoring judges submit their own ballots. In an elimination trial, every assigned judge scores, including Judge 1, who also presides.

Do not score a trial assigned to another judge. If a team, role, or name is wrong, contact tab staff before submitting.

### 3. Complete performance scores and comments

1. For every performance, select a score from 0 to 10. Scores are totaled automatically for tabulation. Combined team totals are hidden from judges, including when reviewing submitted or locked ballots; staff and teams viewing released ballots can see them.
2. Select the competitor from the roster dropdown for that performance. CX attorney names come from the team conducting cross, which is the opposing side from the witness. Direct and cross witness selections stay linked.
3. Write useful performance comments and/or overall feedback. The larger comment boxes can be resized vertically. At least one written comment is required; a wholly blank or whitespace-only feedback ballot is rejected.
4. Review each performance score and all name selections. If you entered any 0, you will be asked to confirm that it was intentional when submitting.

The current ballot contains 20 scored performances: 10 per side, with a maximum total of 100 per team. If a rostered competitor is missing from a dropdown, staff must correct the roster.

### 4. Enter attorney and witness ranks

1. At the bottom, choose the top performers in each category from the people selected on the ballot. The dropdown identifies each person’s team and side.
2. Complete the required ranks and use each competitor only once within each category. The form checks category eligibility and duplicate rankings.
3. Use 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th as relative ranks. TrialTab converts them to 5, 4, 3, and 2 award points.

For preliminary awards, each side/category maximum is 10 times the tournament’s counting judges per round: 20 for two judges, 30 for three. Only the first N listed ballots count. Elimination judges still enter ranks and comments, but elimination ranks remain on those ballots and do not alter preliminary individual awards or determine advancement.

### 5. Submit and verify

1. Use the section shortcuts to move between performances, feedback, and ranks. The number of scores entered and save status stay visible. Choose Submit full ballot. Missing fields are listed and linked; the form takes you to the first one. Fix them, then submit again. Confirm intentional zero scores if prompted.
2. Auto-save stores your incomplete ballot while you work, normally about one second after a change. Tournament staff can monitor saved P/D totals, score counts, and the last-save time; draft comments, names, and rankings remain private. Watch for Draft saved and its timestamp. Closing the ballot view flushes pending changes and refreshes the saved assignment; if saving fails, the view stays open. Avoid refreshing or leaving while changes are unsaved. Reopening your assigned ballot restores the saved scores, comments, performers, case witnesses, rankings, and manual overrides. Drafts do not count toward results or appear to teams or other judges.
3. If a save fails, keep the page open. TrialTab shows the error and retries connection failures automatically, with a Retry save button. It warns before leaving with unsaved changes. Two tabs cannot silently overwrite one another; if you see a conflict, copy your unsaved changes before refreshing.
4. Wait for the Submitted timestamp after choosing Submit full ballot. Draft saved is not submission. All score, roster, ranking, feedback, and zero-confirmation checks still apply. A draft correction to an existing ballot does not change its submitted scores until you choose Update full ballot.
5. If the ballot remains editable, use Update full ballot to submit a correction. If it is locked, contact tab staff.
6. Remain available for questions. In eliminations, all assigned judges must submit before staff can advance the winner.

A ballot can lock when it is released, when a later preliminary round is paired, when an elimination trial is advanced, or when the contest is closed. Under automatic release, a successful submission becomes visible to the teams immediately. Staff control corrections and release decisions.

## Common questions

### I only see ‘Open your invitation’. What do I do?

Teams and judges need their personal invitation from staff. Staff use a private staff invitation; the site owner can also sign in with ChatGPT. The public pairings page is a separate read-only page.

### Why are team standings different from the staff dashboard?

Team results use released ballots only. Staff can see unreleased submissions. Positions can change as audits finish, ballots are released or withheld, and opponents’ released wins change CS.

### Why can’t a judge be assigned?

Check availability for that round number, declarations from both the judge and teams, previous teams judged, duplicate scoring slots, and another courtroom assignment in the same round.

### Can a director choose no eliminations?

Yes. Preliminary rounds only is the default. Nothing creates an elimination bracket automatically.

### What if an elimination panel is tied?

The team with more ballot wins advances. If wins tie, use the panel’s total point differential. If that also ties, the better original seed advances. All panel ballots must be submitted.

## Feature checklist

### Staff ownership and access

Staff can sign in with private links without ChatGPT. Staff access grants tournament-specific administration or creator permissions; directors can invite co-admins to their own contests. Teams and judges use separate personal invitations.

### Team and judge lists

Teams & judges stores names, schools, rosters, contact emails, availability, and conflicts. The full fictional demo contains all 36 supplied teams and 84 judges.

### Mass access and messages

Emails saves reusable templates with merge fields, prepares separate team and judge login emails using existing links when available, exports personalized CSVs or Gmail drafts, and prepares group BCC emails. Shared addresses are deduplicated for group emails; team login emails remain separate. Teams & judges keeps private invitation links available to staff. Portal announcements live in Overview.

### Complete ballots

Staff and the assigned judge can inspect individual scores, comments, and ranks. Combined team totals appear for staff and on teams’ released ballots, and are hidden from judges. Teams see all their released ballots together in their portal.

### Scores and feedback

Every score uses a 0–10 dropdown and contributes to automatic totals. Zero scores require confirmation. An entirely blank feedback ballot is rejected. Judge comment boxes are larger and resizable.

### Competitor names and individual awards

DX, CX, witnesses, and other performers use the appropriate team roster. Attorney and witness rank dropdowns award 5, 4, 3, and 2 points. Preliminary totals remain separate by category and side, with a maximum of 20 for two counting judges per round (30 for three).

### Conflicts and assignments

Judges choose conflicted teams; teams choose conflicted judges. Staff see declarations and judging history. Assignment and submission checks block declared conflicts and repeats. Judges select preferred co-judges in Judge friends; automatic assignments favor those panels without overriding eligibility or fixed assignments.

### Preliminary pairing

Power matching uses ballot wins, then head-to-head only for exactly two teams at that win total, then CS and PD. It avoids school conflicts and rematches, snakes odd-round sides with a random starting side, and reverses sides in Rounds 2 and 4.

### Tournament controls

Settings → Close, reset & delete supports name and settings edits, close/reopen, and confirmed deletion. The Backup download includes preliminary and elimination records, release flags, and conflicts.

### Release choices

Directors choose automatic release after valid submission or staff audit and approval. Staff can release or withhold individual ballots or rounds.

### Room assignments

In Rounds → Rooms, admins can maintain physical or online rooms, auto-assign unassigned trials by round, and manually override any trial. Assignments avoid double-booking and update ballots, portals, and posted pairing boards.

### Public pairings and shared links

Each contest can enable a public round-by-round pairing page with a last-updated time and Print this round action. Zoom/location, case, and rules links automatically appear on its ballots.

### Team results

The team Results tab compares released preliminary standings across the field, breaks down individual points (20 maximum with two counting judges), and shows posted brackets with released finishes.

### Team roster editing

Team portal → Roster lets the team view and edit its own competitors before or during an open tournament. Submitted-ballot names are protected; affected captains’ forms require updated selections.

### Separate elimination publishing

Rounds → Pairings & judges → Post pairing or Hide pairing on an individual elimination trial. Bulk controls still post or hide the whole stage. Preliminary rounds remain round-wide.

### Tournament formats

No eliminations is the default. Directors can create a bracket after four preliminaries or run a bracket-only contest, with custom stage names and independently sized panels of 3–9 scoring judges per trial.

### Elimination advancement

Fixed original seeds produce standard 1-vs-16-style pairings. All judges submit ranks and feedback. Ballot wins decide advancement, followed by PD, then the better original seed.

### Results and certificates

Results & awards exports a results PDF with round-by-round records and separate elimination pages, formatted text/pages, preliminary individual ranks, and separate team and individual certificate batches. Team placements include elimination finishes and round records when a bracket exists.

### Completed samples

The original 34-team sample remains available. The separate 36-team sample includes four preliminaries and a 16-team bracket: 144 preliminary ballots plus 45 elimination ballots, all fictional.

### Combined trial rankings

In Ballots or Rounds → Ballots, choose a trial under Combined trial rankings. Separate attorney and witness tables show each judge’s rank and total award points from submitted counting ballots, before release. The maximum is 5 points times the panel size; pending ballots are marked. Elimination ranks do not add to preliminary awards.

### Live admin ballot progress

Ballots and Rounds → Ballots show saved provisional P/D totals, scores entered out of 20, last-save times, and submitted counts. Refreshes about every five seconds while visible. Staff viewing never changes a judge’s work; draft feedback stays private.

### Judge ballot auto-save

Private server drafts save while judges work and restore on reopening in preliminary and elimination ballots. Save status, retries, unsaved-change warnings, and conflicting-tab protection are included. Submit full ballot is still required for results and release.

### Guides

This page contains admin, coach/team, and judge instructions, with a print/save-as-PDF button and a downloadable text edition.

Email delivery uses Gmail drafts or your own mail merge. No automatic email sender is connected. Brackets require power-of-two fields without byes.