Before we dive into the JudgeApps technical updates, we want to announce a change we’re making in the blog. If you pay close attention to the title of the updates posts, you might have noticed that this one is different than previous ones. As of this post, we’re moving from a bi-weekly to a monthly schedule. The main reason for this is that changes in development usually pile up, and then get reviewed and released as a bunch, leaving some weeks with very little content. We know this change means you’re getting the new stuff less frequently, but the updates will be more consistent and complete.

So, without further ado…

JudgeApps Accounts

To use JudgeApps, you need an account. That’s a well known fact. To get an account, you need to be approved by a judge with approval privileges. This used to be done automatically with a script that checked your information against Judge Center, but with Judge Center down, all accounts have to be approved manually. With reviews moving to JudgeApps, and certifications relying on an advancement review, we got a new catch-22: you can’t get certified without a JudgeApps account, but it can take several weeks for an account to be approved.

To solve this problem, and to decrease the amount of time required to approve a new account, JudgeApps was changed so:

• L2 judges can approve L1 candidates (or ones they recently certified)
• New accounts are always L0 (existing judges have an account already, and newly certified ones require an advancement review to move from L0 to L1)

To learn how to approve new accounts, check out the “Reviewing New Account” instructions page.

We also fixed some issues and improved the wording on error messages users get when their account hasn’t been approved yet, and they try to access it, change a password or create the account again.

Roles

When you look at your profile, the first line (other than your name) is “Roles”. This indicates whether you have an advanced role (such as L2 tester or RC), or some other role (like Scorekeeper or TO). One role almost everybody has, is “Judge”. While it seems obvious, if you have a judge level, you should have the judge role. Now JudgeApps enforces it, so this role can’t be removed for anyone who has a judge level. While it might seem like a weird chance, since there’s no reason to remove the “Judge” role if someone is a judge, mistakes (can no longer) happen.

Another change was the addition of the D2 TL certification review. When a GP Head Judge is certifying a L2 judge as a GP Day 2 TL, the reviewer no longer has to copy-paste the list of requirements into an evaluation review. They should just chose a “Team Leader Certification” review type, fill out the necessary fields, and voila!

Events

We made some changes to events to make them work better. Some of the changes are invisible to most people, and some of them will improve events for everyone. The biggest change was made to the way we load staff photos. We changed the way it works so the page should load faster. We also optimized the way event details are handled.

Another change that was made relates to withdrawing applications. Other than moving code from side to side, making maintenance easier, we cancelled the option to withdraw from an event after it ended. We believe most users won’t miss the option.

One other small fix we implemented, handles people without letters in their username. The “My Events” link now works for you!

Additional Features

Finally, we implemented some quality of life features to make your life a bit easier:

• You can search judges by secondary region only
• When an exemplar wave CSV is being updated, a warning is shown for you to know that downloading it might result in an outdated CSV file
• Reported forum posts now come with the text of the post and a link to the user’s profile, to forum moderator’s delight

Feedback

As always, we’ll be happy to get your feedback, whether if it’s a feature you need, a bug you spot or any ideas for this blog.