Judging Sessions

By accesing the “Judging Sessions” menu, you have the ability to configure the various sessions of the competition and arrange the corresponding judging panels.

The definitions of the following concepts are presented below:

Panel: This refers to a collective of judges who convene together to assess the same group of entries.
Judging sessions: These are continuous time intervals during which at least one panel of judges convenes to evaluate one or more groups of entries.

You will be directed to this screen:

If you click on “Auto generate sessions and panels”, you will be directed to the following form.

BAP will generate sessions and panels based on the input parameters such as judging sessions, entries, hours per session, and samples per panel per hour. For example, if a competition is to be conducted in 3 sessions, each lasting 8 hours, with 250 samples and an allowance of 5 samples per panel per hour, the system will propose the following setup:

If you click on “Generate”, the sessions and panels will be created. It is then up to the organizer to allocate judges and assign award categories across those panels.

You can alternatively create sessions and panels manually by selecting “Create first session” on the main page of the menu. The initial session will be generated, and it must be assigned a name. For this example, let's label it “Session 1 - Saturday”.

After clicking “Ok”, you will then be directed to this screen:

By clicking on “New panel”, you can configure the judging panels:

Judges can be added to the panel by clicking on their names:

If you wish to remove a judge from a panel, you can click on the trash icon next to the judge's name, and the judge will then be returned to the "Available judges" column. It's important to note that the availability of judges is determined by the session settings configured for each judge in Administration => Judges (refer to https://docs.beerawardsplatform.com/article/60-judges-administration). Judges will presented under the “Available judges” list or the “Other judges” list according to their availability.

If you click on the badge icon

, you can access the profile of that specific judge as follows:

By default, the panel is configured with a horizontal hierarchy of judges. If you wish to designate a head judge, click on the star icon next to their name. The head judge will have the ability to view other judges' scoresheets and to determine the consensus score, overriding the proposals of other judges if necessary. Additionally, during the Mini B.O.S. and B.O.S., the head judge will be solely responsible for managing the information regarding which entries are awarded and which are not.

By clicking on “Add”, you can assign award categories (previously configured in Administration => Award categories, see https://docs.beerawardsplatform.com/article/59-award-categories) to that panel:

The screen will appear as follows:

If you click on “Print entries list” (after completing the configuration of your panel and clicking on “Save”), you can obtain a list of entries for the categories associated with that panel:

By clicking on “Print a list of all possible samples to be evaluated by the panel, considering the panel's judging categories”, the list will encompass all entries from all award categories assigned to that panel. Alternatively, by clicking on “Print a list of the samples sent to panel to be evaluated by the panel”, the list will only include the entries that were checked out to that panel (refer to https://docs.beerawardsplatform.com/article/70-check-out). You can select the list of entries according to the type of round (First Round, Mid Round, Mini B.O.S. or B.O.S.).

If you have enabled the Flights service in Settings => Judging Options and you assign a flight that encompasses the entire award category to a single panel, a message will appear after printing the entry list. This message informs judges that medal assignment will be required after the completion of the first round. See the following example:

If you click on “Panel history”, you can see all the historic information regarding that panel:

It's important to note that, by default, the judging mode for a panel is set to “First Round”. In this mode, judges complete the scoresheets and come to an agreement regarding the evaluation of entries..

You have the option to modify the judging mode to a different one, such as “Mid Round”, “Mini B.O.S.”, or “B.O.S.”.

Below are the characteristics of these rounds. In all three of them, no scoresheets need to be filled out.

Mid Round: Judges compare and evaluate which entries should remain in the competition and which should not advance. This is useful for handling a large set of qualified entries.
Mini B.O.S.: Judges compare and select which entries should be awarded medals in a specific award category (a set of styles grouped together by the administrator).
B.O.S.: Judges compare and select the best entries from the entire competition, across all award categories.

If you click on Mini B.O.S., you will enable that panel to judge the Mini B.O.S. for the chosen category. In this example, Panel 1 will be judging the Mini B.O.S. of Hoppy Beers and the B.O.S. of the competition. Please note that for Mid Round, Mini B.O.S., and B.O.S., you need to specify who will be the panel captain. These settings can be deleted by clicking on the trash can icon if needed.

A panel's information can be saved by clicking on the “Save” button. By repeating this process, multiple panels can be created for the session.

Next to the panel title, you can observe the different judging rounds assigned to that panel:

The icons represent the First Round, Mid Round, Mini B.O.S., and B.O.S. respectively. And below the judge's names for that panel, you will find those rounds detailed:

If a judge reports limitations with certain styles, and an award category that includes one of those styles is assigned to their panel, a warning about this conflict of interest will appear:

If a judge reports allergies or dietary restrictions, and an award category contains at least one entry that includes one of those allergens, a warning message will appear:

By clicking on these icons, you gain access to some additional features:

By clicking on the gear icon, you can:

Consider only sorted beers for the setting of that judging session. This means the app will only take into account the award categories with sorted beers (entries that have been relabeled for higher data protection) for the judging session setting.
Grant judges access to view their panel assignments. They will be able to see this information in their dashboard.

By clicking on the printer icon, you can print signs containing information for panels, including the list of award categories for each one of them.

Here is an example of a sign:

You can utilize this search tool to track judges or award categories, and the results that match the search will be displayed on the screen.

You can create multiple sessions (blocks of judging time without interruptions) by clicking on “Add Session”:

Once created, any of the sessions can be accessed via the dropdown menu:

It is important to note that during the judging process, only one judging session can be open at a time (two sessions cannot be open simultaneously). When it's time to judge, this option will appear on the Dashboard:

You will need to click on the “Play” button to start the intended session, use the same button to stop it at the end, and then click “Play” again when the next session needs to start.

Throughout the judging session, the administrator will be able to monitor its progress through the Dashboard screen, as depicted below:

Judging sessions: Displays the current session in progress and the elapsed judging time.
Entries: Indicates the total number of entries entered (“Entries”), the number received (“Checked-in”), the number sorted (“Sorted”), and the number evaluated (“Judged beers”).
Pending configurations: Shows pending configurations of the competition, including those before it starts (“Before registration”), before triage (“Before sorting”), before judging (“Before judging”), and after judging (“After judging”).
Speed: Presents a graphical representation of the judging speed (in beers per hour) and the estimated time (in hours) for the completion of judging.
Session 1 - Saturday: Displays the number of beers evaluated per panel and the average evaluation time for each panel in the current session (“Session 1”).
Overall stats: Provides the average judging time and the average number of words per entry.
Judging categories progress: This chart provides information on the number of award categories that have already been judged, those currently being judged, and those that have not yet been started.
Judges: Presents individual statistics of judges, including the number of entries evaluated, and the average time and number of words used during evaluation.
Calibration round: If a calibration round is selected, it shows the average score and the number of judges who participated.