Competition Night Operations Guide

Take two minutes to do these checks before leaving for the venue:

• Verify the Prism app is accessible from the venue (open it in a browser on your phone).
• In the competition setup (Admin > Competition > Run competition), click "Cache now" to download all competition images to the laptop browser. This means the slideshow will work even if the internet drops.
• Consider downloading a Venue Pack (the "Venue pack" button on the competition admin page). This is a fully self-contained offline version of the competition that runs entirely in your browser with no internet required at all.
• Note the competition's voting URL or QR code - it never changes, so you can print it in advance.

Everyone can stay on the club Wi-Fi. Prism's venue-scale voting has been tested with 100 voting devices sharing one venue connection and one public internet address, across a 100-photograph competition, with more than 10,000 successful vote submissions including corrections, and with its protections against misuse active throughout. That is tested capacity, not a promise about every venue network - a struggling access point is still a struggling access point - but nobody needs to leave the club Wi-Fi to vote.

• Each phone is given its own secure voting identity the first time it votes, so one device casts one vote per photograph. Nothing is typed in and nothing needs installing.
• Only the photograph currently on screen can be scored. The server checks this for every vote, so a tap that arrives after the runner has moved on is refused rather than attached to the wrong image - the member sees "The photograph has moved on" and simply scores the one now showing.
• A member can change their score by tapping a different button any time before the runner advances. Once the runner moves on, that photograph's vote is fixed.
• Votes are private. They are recorded without names, the runner sees only counts and averages, and no member or judge can see how anyone else scored.
• Members who close the browser or lose signal simply rescan the QR code - their earlier votes are already on the server.

The competition can continue without interruption.

• The slideshow continues from the browser cache (if you pre-loaded images).
• Judge scores entered while offline are saved to the laptop's local storage and will sync to the server automatically the moment the connection returns.
• A status bar on the setup screen shows how many scores are waiting to sync. It turns amber when scores are pending, and green when everything is confirmed saved.
• Do not close the browser while the status bar is amber (scores are pending sync).
• The green "Publish scores and finish" button is disabled until all scores are confirmed saved to the server. You cannot accidentally publish incomplete results.

This is the most common accident and has no impact on your scores.

• Reopen the browser and navigate back to the competition page.
• Click "Run competition" again.
• All judge scores reload from the server automatically.
• Any scores that were in the process of syncing also reload from local storage and re-sync.
• Continue from exactly where you left off.

Same recovery as a browser crash. The laptop's local storage is saved to disk, so scores survive a power loss. Recharge and reopen the page.

When all images have been scored, a green "Publish scores and finish" button appears on the competition setup screen. This step:

• Blends the judge's scores with the audience vote averages using the weighting you set at the start.
• Writes the final score for each entry.
• Makes results visible to all club members.
• Locks the competition so no further changes can be made.

If you click Publish and then realise a score was wrong, an admin can reopen the competition from the competition admin page, correct the score, and publish again.

The Venue Pack is a complete offline competition runner. Download it before the event using the "Venue pack" button on the competition admin page. It runs the entire competition without any internet connection, then exports a scores file which you import into Prism when you are back online.

If you are using the Judge Portal - a judge pre-scoring in advance, or following remotely on the night - see the dedicated Judge Portal & Rehearsal Competitions Guide for the full workflow, including inviting a judge, locking a class before the night, and using a locked pre-score alongside the audience vote.