Managing Stages

Viewing your list of stages

• After clicking on the ‘Manage Stages’ button for a specific lottery’s card, you will be shown a focused view for that lottery. This view contains a ‘Lotteries’ link at the top of the page, to navigate back to the list of all lotteries. The card for the currently selected lottery appears below that link, followed by a list of all the lottery’s stages and a ‘Schedule a Stage’ button to create a new stage.

Scheduling a new stage

• Click ‘Schedule a Stage’. This will display a card that allows you to configure the details of a new stage to be added to the applicable lottery.

• Provide a ‘Stage Type’. This dropdown contains two options. The first option is ‘Sequential Selection’, which means that each Selection in the stage would contain multiple Blocks, creating a stream or ordering of rotations. Selecting the second option, ‘Singular Selection’ means that each Selection in the stage will contain one Block each.

• The choice between ‘Sequential Selection’ or ‘Singular Selection’ is often dependent on a given organization’s preference. A diagram displaying a comparison between the two stage types is provided below.

• The next set of inputs are for defining the open and close dates of your lottery stage. This date range determines the period of time when learners will be able to log in and rank their preferences for selections.

• The next input is a drop-down list that sets the minimum ‘Satisfaction Threshold’. When the lottery processing occurs, it will attempt to optimize the results, matching as many learners with their top choices as possible. This process tracks overall learner satisfaction on a weighted scale. The closer all learners get to their top choices, the higher the score accumulated for the stage. This accumulated score is checked against the maximum possible score, which would be achieved if every single learner received their top choice. The stage’s overall satisfaction rating is the percentage derived from those two scores. This threshold input allows you to set the minimum overall satisfaction that must be achieved for a stage to be considered successful. Any processing iteration that falls under this threshold will be flagged.

• The final input on the form is a text area for notes. ‘Notes’ are not required but can be useful for identifying or commenting on any steps remaining in the lottery processes or leaving information for other staff who may be continuing the process at a later time.

• Click the ‘Confirm’ button at the bottom of the form to schedule the stage with the details you’ve entered.

• Click ‘Cancel’ to discard the stage currently being defined.

• Click 'Schedule a Stage' again to add additional stages to the lottery.

Viewing a single stage in the list

• Each stage card is titled with its start and end dates in the header. Just below the title in the header is a status bar that displays some helpful information, including a badge for the stage’s status, a counter for how many selections the stage contains, and a label showing whether the stage type is “Sequential” or “Singular”. The footer contains three buttons, ‘Manage Selections’, ‘Edit’, and ‘Delete’.

• The ‘Edit’ button will open up an existing stage for editing, however “Stage Type’, ‘Open Date’, and ‘Close Date’ will be locked, as only the ‘Satisfaction Threshold’ and ‘Notes’ fields may be modified after a stage has been created.

• The ‘Delete’ button will discard and remove that stage after prompting the user to confirm their action.

• The ‘Manage Selections’ button works similarly to the ‘Manage Stages’ button that was clicked to arrive at the current view and list of stages, but will instead take the user to a new view focused on the associated stage, displaying a list of all that stage’s selections.