The award manager’s guide to effective entry tagging

In this article…

• What is tagging in Award Force?
• Auto-tagging for powerful program results
• Tagging for awards entry management
• Tagging for judging panel configuration
• Tagging for awards certificates and badges
• Effective entry tagging for time-saving success
• Tags in Award Force: Resources + how-tos

Entries open is an exciting period for your awards program. It is the culmination of a lot of upfront work, weeks of planning, communication, program promotion and you get to see first-hand the talent and skill of your amazing entrants. But, when entries come in thick and fast, it’s a busy time for you as the program manager. 

Perhaps you’ve already divided up your awards program into categories or chapters to keep your program effectively managed. But it’s important to stay organised and keep your awards program humming along smoothly. What can you do to keep it all coordinated?

Enter, tags. In the Award Force awards management software, tags are a way to label entries and jumpstart many other automated actions and workflows. 

What is tagging in Award Force? 

Tagging is an extremely useful (and popular!) awards management software feature that allows you to add reference information to specific entries in Award Force. You can create and apply tags to entries as you see fit – you have complete control. They are searchable, too!

Tagging allows you to add additional information to assist in managing entries and when configuring your judging panels.

Common tag examples include:

• Identifying shortlisted entries
• Marking entries as qualified
• Identifying entries which require resubmission
• Segmenting entries for communicating different judging outcomes
• And more! The options are endless and completely up to you 

Auto-tagging for powerful program results

Tagging is a powerful tool all on its own. But, Award Force has added a bit of magic to the feature in the form of: auto-tagging. Automated tagging allows program managers to create workflows to also tag entries automatically instead of manually tagging entries. (#timesaver)

How does it work? 

Simply set up conditions to trigger the tags you want, and the auto-tagging will hum along in the background, keeping your program clean, clutter-free and organised.

For example, it’s common to receive duplicate entries in your program. Perhaps the same person or business was nominated for an award by multiple people. Rather than judging all duplicate entries, they can be merged so judges only see one entry per person/business. In this case, the tag “duplicate” could be applied whenever an entry is flagged as a duplicate. Or, when entries are tagged as duplicates, an automatic tag of “primary” can be applied with the duplicate entry tagged as “secondary.”

Or, if your program runs perpetually, you can auto-tag entries with the date/time when you archive your entries. This will help sort by season or time since – in this case – you would not be using the season archive functionality. 

If you use our workflow feature, Review flow, you might be gathering references and want tags to be added when the referring party submits a reference. This can easily be done with auto-tagging.

Tagging for awards entry management

Now that you’ve seen just how powerful tagging can be, here are some basics to keep your entry management clean and streamlined.

• Tag for advanced searches / filters
  Tags are searchable, which means you can pull up specific entries for one of your program managers, adding in several filters, for example payment status AND moderation and another customised tag. It’s easy to do this with tagging. This is also a great way to reference information outside the Manage entries view, such as in judging assignments or on the leaderboard.
• Tag for awards management workflows
  Spend too much time on mundane tasks? As previously mentioned, tags are a powerful tool to create automations in Award Force. You can create tags that trigger helpful actions, such as: sending a notification to your entrants; make an entry available for judging; apply a badge or create an awards certificate (more on this below!), or request a second-stage payment after entry moderation. The options are endless and allow you to add sophistication and depth to your awards program management, while saving time on previously manual tasks.
• Tags for targeted communications
  Tired of hopping between your email management system and awards software? Send Broadcast emails to a specific subset of tagged entrants right from within Award Force. This is very effective if you’d like to contact entrants to pay an additional fee, let them know they have submitted incomplete entry details or advise them on the outcome of their entry once judged.

Tagging for judging panel configuration

Using tags to help you create judging assignments is another powerful time-saving feature of our tagging functionality. When setting up a judging panel, you can use tags in the entries selection of your judging panel setup. Panels allow you to assign what entries get judged by whom and when. And you can get very specific here with tags. You can even select multiple tags to get super granular and specific about which judge receives the entry.

This not only helps you organise judging assignments, but it also declutters the judging experience. They see only the entries they need to judge. Easy, fast, effective.

Tagging for awards certificates + badges

If your program provides awards certificates for your winning entries, it’s easy to automate this in Award Force with, yes, you guessed it: Tags! 

Apply tags to the winning entries— this controls which entries will receive a certificate. For example, if you tag shortlisted entries “shortlist”, you can create a shortlist certificate and apply the tag, and only entries with this tag will receive this certificate.

This creates an easy, automated process for your entrants. You simply tag the entries, and a button is added under My entries for entrants to download their awards certificate directly within the Award Force platform. Win-win! 

It’s also possible to create badges based on tags. A badge can be created to highlight certain entries. For example, you might want to display the winning entries in a gallery. Badges can be either text or an image that displays directly over the entry thumbnail – an easy way to highlight entries to judges, entrants, or the public at large in your awards entry gallery.

Hot tip: If you have program sponsors, you can use their logos to provide even more exposure for them here. 

Effective entry tagging for time-saving success

We know – your time is precious. And tags in Award Force are a fantastic way to optimise your awards management processes and cut down on repetitive tasks. 

From entry management to automated workflows, judging assignments and award certificates, tagging is a powerful and popular feature to implement now in your awards management processes.

Tags in Award Force: How-tos and resources

Get step-by-step instructions on how to use tags in the Award Force Help Centre with the following articles:

• Tag entries – the basics on how to add and remove entry tags and panel configuration
• Automated tagging  – a how-to on automated tagging 
• Tags in Panels – Any, All, or None – How to apply tags in judging panel configuration 
• How to search and filter – How to use tags to search entries
• Sending an email broadcast – How to use tags to send emails from the platform to specific entrants

Learn more about Award Force entry submission management. Or take a tour to see how the platform can work for you.