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.