There are two components that should be considered before you create a new Group Lottery record. Determining the following before creating a new Lottery record is our recommended best practice.
- Group Access: Which group(s) of students will be participating in the lottery? Students that are participating in your lottery should be part of a group(s) that can be assigned access. While multiple groups can be assigned access, it is important to note that every student within the groups that have been assigned will have access to rank their lottery selections.
- Elements: Elements are the things that students will be ranking. These can be Groups, Events, or Course Sections. For the easiest workflow, you should make sure that the elements already exist within your system before creating your lottery record. Keep in mind, that events and course sections can be created in bulk via the data entry tool in the Admin Toolbar.
This article will address the components and various considerations for creating a Group Lottery in Leo. Leo also supports Event, Course, and Course Block Lotteries. Not sure which one to utilize? Click here to learn more about each type of Lottery and the various outcomes.
Create a new Group Lottery
- Lottery Name: Create a name for your Course Lottery.
- Program: Select the Program from the drop-down list.
- Type: Select Lottery from the drop-down list.
- Signup for: Select Group from the drop-down list.
- Course: This defaults to HIDDEN for this type of lottery. This allows you to utilize any group in your system as elements for the Lottery. If you select a course, you will only be able to utilize groups linked to the selected course section. NOTE: Once you have selected a course, HIDDEN is no longer an option. You would need to delete this record and create a new one to utilize the HIDDEN option.
- Begin Date & Time: Select begin date.
- End Date & Time: Select the end date.
- Min Count: The minimum number of students required to be awarded an element before the system will award the element to anyone (e.g. A group much have at least 6 students in order to be allowed). This field is optional. Setting it here will set it globally for all elements, although these numbers can be adjusted individually for each element.
- Max Count: The maximum number of students that are allowed to be awarded a specific group. This field is optional. Setting it here will set it globally for all elements, although these numbers can be adjusted individually for each element.
- Save Record: Save the Record and then reopen it to add Elements and Group Access. When you reopen your saved Lottery, you will see more menu options at the top of the screen.
For a Group Lottery, Elements are the Groups, that you should have already created in Leo. Students will be able to select and rank these Elements in the Lottery.
Choose Options > Add. This is where you can select a single Group to add to the Lottery.
- Linked to: begin typing or double-click to get a drop-down list of items to select from. If you selected HIDDEN for the course field in your lottery settings, you can select any group in your Leo system. If you chose a specific course section, you will only see groups associated with that particular course section.
- Min Count: the minimum number of students required to be awarded an element before the system will award the element to anyone (if left empty, this field will default to the Min Count set on the previous screen).
- Max Count: the maximum number of Students that can be awarded this course section(if left empty, this field will default to the Max Count set on the previous screen).
- History: this field will show you any important information about the history of the record. This field will remain empty until the record has been finalized.
Click Save Record to save and exit this screen.
After adding all of your Elements, choose Options > Settings to return to the Edit Lottery Record screen. Click Group Access.
Group Access Screen
Select from the Available Groups (left hand column) to move Students to the Selected Groups (right hand column). Click the small square icon at the top-right corner of the screen to save your selection and exit the screen.
NOTE: Do NOT skip this step - if you do not select which Groups are included in this Lottery, the Lottery will be sent to every User in your system.
Choosing Reset Min/Max, will present you with a warning asking you if you are sure you want to reset the elements based on the defaults entered in the Lottery Record.
- Click OK to continue.
- Cancel to go back.
NOTE: This option will reset all the Min/Max elements to match the original Min/Max Count you originally set when creating this Lottery.
Return to the Edit Lottery Record screen.
- Make sure you click Save Record before exiting this screen.
- This will save the Lottery record and all the settings.
- Your Lottery will be available for students to rank their selections based on the dates entered on this screen. They will receive a notification in the Activity Bell, and can access the Lottery from that screen.
