Manual
Overview
This chapter wants to give you a general idea on how the program works.
An important part of the program is the dancer database. For each known dancer, it has his name and additional information as for example his club, his barcode and his dance preferences. It is your task to maintain the dancer database.
Part of the dancers from dancer database will show up on the registration screen. The registration screen gives an overview of the dancers and their status using a colour code:
Green = present, will be included in next tip (if possible)
Blue = present but wants to sit out next tip
Light green = present and must dance the next tip
Red = absent dancer
You can click on dancer names to change their status. The present dancers will always show up on the registration screen. Which absent dancers are shown is controlled by the admin settings and the settings on the dancer record.
In the upper right corner of the registration screen you get an overview of the count of currently present dancers. The number in blue is the count of the dancers that voluntarily want to sit out.
When a dance tip is about to start, you click on "Tip: New" to generate a dance setup. The computer shows the results on the display screen. The display screen lists all present dancers. Dancers that wanted to sit out (or have to sit out because they do not fit into a square) are listed as "Out", the other dancers are shown together with their assigned partner and their square number. You may change the size of the text on the display screen by pressing the "big" or "small" links on the menu of the display screen. If not all dancers fit on a screen, it will page automatically. There are a few options on the admin screen to control the display screen.
After a while (configurable on the admin screen, defaults to 10 minutes), the display screen is automatically replaced by the welcome screen. This is useful to indicate that the display screen is "old" and to avoid confusion whether a new tip has already been generated or not. If you need to get back from the welcome screen, you can press the "Display" link on the menu to re-show the last tip or "Reg" to get back to the registration screen.
The program is optimized for the use of barcodes. The idea here is that every dancer has a unique barcode (e. g. attached to his badge) and that the dancer is able to register and unregister to the dance by himself by just scanning his barcode at a scanner attached to the computer.
Most of the program screens (especially the registration screen, the display screen and the welcome screen) contain a hidden input field that the scanner uses to enter the barcode that he read when the dancer scans his barcode. A special status screen will show the dancers presence status. This screen uses the same colour codes as the registration screen.
The general idea is that the dancer just scans his barcode to change his presence state from absent to present. If he scans his code in present state, he will change to sit out next tip, of if he scans again, to absent.
By scanning special barcodes, the dancer can modify other parameters of this dancer record, for example if he wants to dance only Belle/Beau or Both positions, or if he wants to be coupled with a fixed partner.
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