Opiniones de Award Force

We use it to allow design students to upload their work at the end of the year. Setting the system up to meet our requirements was challenging because there are so many options, but once it was configured the students found it very easy to upload their work, and even sent some fan mail. They could revise their entries up to the deadline, we could specify the acceptable file types and everything worked smoothly. We also invited reviewers to comment on the work , that too was very easy on the user end.

There are a few odd things here: it is , for instance, not possible to sort all entrants by their last name, only by their first. If a judge is already in the AF system they have to use their previous password to log in which can cause confusion. With the help of AF we set up an algorithm that randomly assigned student work to reviewers and you would think that it would be easy for the computer to do this evenly, but it turned out that the some judges got only 10 assignments and others as many as 16. One complaint judges had was that they did not get any sort of confirmation after they completed the reviews that were assigned to them. There were a few questions I did not know to ask at the initial setup. I DID ask if there was a file size limit for the upload (the answer is no) but I did not ask if the file sizes have an effect on the download. The answer here is: yes, definitely! This may not matter for users who deal with text files, but in the design world files get big, and when I tried to download all the work to local drives it turned out that large files (almost ALL of ours) could not be downloaded in bulk, but in batches of about 10, and extra large ones had to be done separately, This is almost a deal killer, but hopefully can be avoided next time with file size limits during upload. MY number one item on a wishlist: create an option for a one stop download of ALL selected files.

I have already detailed this

I have already detailed this

The software saves us time and energy by storing the material, categorising it, and allowing entrants to manage the submission themselves until close of entries. Even then, entrants are permitted to resubmit incomplete content if necessary, which saves us a lot of filing.

Centralised storage that is backed up and accessible to anyone (with permissions) is a relief.

We're pleased when entrants give us feedback that they find the process simple & intuitive.

It's very convenient for the administrators to be able to export customisable reports. I could go on and on...

We haven't got around to asking the helpdesk about this feature yet (perhaps it already exists), but we can see some benefit in providing the capacity for an entry to be able to be a "linked copy" of the primary entry. Rather than making a full duplicate of an entry simply to enter into a different category. It would be useful if all the common content was linked between each instance, and there was the capacity to provide additional content specific to the linked category(s) if required.

I don't think this functionality exists currently, but if it doesn't I wouldn't be surprised if they are working on it already.

The program is fairly intuitive so the learning curve is not too steep. And for the times when I have needed help, the response time and quality of support is unparalleled in my experience. I send an email, within a few hours no matter what time of the day or night I send it, someone from around the globe answers me. If further assistance is needed e.g. a call with someone, it can usually be set up within a day or two of my request.

And the quality of the support is excellent. The staff are extremely knowledgeable of the product and understand the questions from a user or functionality perspective vs providing technical-speak. It seems that often times tech support for other SW I have used is staffed by technical wonks who write the code and make the bells and whistles but don't have a real understanding of the business or user function so the support comes from that perspective rather than understanding what I am trying to do and then providing a solution.

Another thing that I use all the time is importing to excel to run reports. In this way, I can always have a user friendly aggregated view of what is on the platform depending on what I am needing. I love this ability to have offline access and I know some of our judges have also made good use of being able to download PDF versions of entries that they can review on the go and then come to the platform to enter their scores and comments.

I have come across some small functionality that I would like to have such as a bit more ability to "pretty up" my email broadcasts or filtering by 2 different dimensions to randomly assign entries for judging. With that said, the SW really addresses so many of our main needs that these issues are not an issue and I have been able to create workarounds if needed.

The Award Force management and support teams were incredibly helpful during our entire selection process, set up phase and implementation. There was always someone available for answers, no matter that we are located in the US and their main office is in Australia.

From our initial conversations as far as what was on our "must have" list and our "nice to have" list of features, AF was able to make a few small customizations to their program to give us 100% of the items on our "must have" list and 95% on our "nice to have" list of items.

They appear to constantly have the customer as their #1 focus and even after we launched came back to us with an idea to use something in their existing platform in order to offer us a small work around to give us something that was on our "nice to have list" that would help our judging community.

We've had nothing but positive reviews from our client base - from our entrants, to our judges and even our accountant who compiles the entrant scores.

The system is incredibly secure, with various different user profiles that only gives them the access they require. Award Force even created two new user roles specifically for us based on our award program requirements and what our users needed to have access to in the system.

I can't praise our implementation manager and the entire AF support team more as they were always available and never made it seem like even my dumbest question wasn't something they took seriously.

There is very little that I don't like about Award Force. But if I had to pick one: since the system is used by multiple award program clients around the world there are a few small areas that don't quite give us exactly what we need and that weren't able to be changed for us. However, these are just a few small items and through conversations with our AF implementation manager we devised ways to get what we needed through small work arounds that didn't add any more time or effort to what we had done previously for these items. So in the end, even though there were a few small "cons" in AF, the amount of time that we save using Award Force verses what we used before, along with the amount of information that is now available to us where it wasn't before, far outweigh the small amount of cons in the system.

Award Force is so easy to use, yet delivers a thoroughly comprehensive solution. The system is so clear, intuitive and logical it's an absolute pleasure to use. You can navigate your way around without ever getting lost or confused, everything is exactly where you'd expect to find it and you always feel completely in control.

From the clean and clear layout you may initially be fooled into thinking it's not very sophisticated, but you'd be wrong. It delivers everything you need, and much much more, they've just worked very hard to make sure you don't have to.
Whilst you have the ability to customise the site so you are able to reflect your brand and visual identity, you don't have to be a designer or web developer to understand it. I've never felt out of my depth configuring anything on Award Force and nothing has ever felt onerous, just simple and straightforward providing the result you were hoping for quickly and easily.

The versatility of the system means I've never had to compromise and can have the exact set-up I want without it taking an age to change hundreds of settings, it just lets you choose exactly what you want then replicate it as many times as you wish.

The extensive reference guides and online tutorials are an amazing resource, if you're unsure of anything you can have the answer within a few minutes - usually with a step by step guide!

I have to confess that I have struggled with this question, but the ability to sort by all of the fields within a view would be helpful. It would also be helpful to be able to configure bespoke reports for export, but it's not exactly a chore to have everything exported and then just choose to keep the ones you want.

The things I've mentioned above may well be possible, I'm by no means an expert on every aspect of the system and I find new features and options every week!

The greatest pro is community and people working to keep the software up-to-date and answer questions you have around the product. It's hard to know everything about a new software, so having a great support team is crucial.

I don't feel like I missed anything when buying the software. Perhaps some features are missing, but that can be easily fixed by upgrading your subscription.

The product is versatile and the support team is TOP!
Whenever I had a question (simple one or complex), the support team got back really fast and was very helpful and friendly. It's also great that we can request for short Zoom call to solve the problems. I find it very helpful and efficient, than to send numerous emails back and force.

It takes some time to learn the system. There are so many features (which is good), but it also makes it harder to learn the functions. Now that I'm used to using the system, it's not a problem, but in the beginning the interface was a little confusing (e.g. you are able to access the judging from the judging menu and also settings > judging, only "one" form editor for all awards)

Everything

There are no cons. I like everything. Nothing to complain about whatsoever.

It's reduced our manual data entry process and made it easier for judges to review from anywhere at any time.

Creating the tabs and each individual criteria field - for our particular awards program, this was very lengthy!!

It works well and is visually appealing.

I wish there was a way to close a round for entries but have a secret way to allow ppl to still edit their entry.

- Customizability
- UX/UI
- Support Team
- Managing Features

- If you want a highly, highly complex setup, it does get complicated. However, the support team has your back and allows you to learn as you go. Eventually, you feel like an expert.

I was a bit affraid before implementing this tool because we have many different awards, each of them with other criteria but from the beggining we had big support - with a lot of tutorials on the website and especially with the customer service.
What I like most is the big range of possibilities and its versatility. However your award system is complicated, you will find a solution in implementing it in Award Force.
I also like the main menu. It is very useful and easy to use.

What I don't like is the button "configuration mode ON/OFF". It should be on the botton of the page also not only on the top. It is the only thing that comes to my mind.

Relatively easy to use and makes the awards management quicker

1. not possible to search for duplicates in different categories
2. No possibility to open attachments from PDFd entries

All the functionalities I needed were built into the software. There was no feature our project needed that wasn't available with this product.

I didn't experience any cons while using Awards Force!