# StackRef User Documentation StackRef removes the pain and barriers from organizing and judging internal hackathon events for your organization. ## Overview StackRef is an **internal hackathon and ideation platform** that helps you to: * Locally or remotely **manage organization events**, participants, and teams * Provide easy tools for teams to **organize, prioritize, and deliver results** * Automatically **provision cloud-based systems and resources** for teams to build with, without concern for cost or clean up * Judge event results with **automated tools** measuring performance, security, cost, and collaboration * **Turn winning results into actionable projects** (*coming soon*) # Creating Your Account When visiting the StackRef Dashboard for the first time, you will be presented with the following login prompt:

Click the **Log In** button. This will pop-up an authentication window:

You can choose a single sign-on option (Google, etc.), automatically creating a StackRef account and syncing with your StackRef profile. Alternatively, you can create an account within the StackRef platform by clicking on the **Sign up** link at the bottom of the authentication window. Upon successful login, you will be prompted to enter your registration details:

Complete the registration form and click **Complete Registration**. # Logging In When visiting the StackRef Dashboard for the first time, you will be presented with the following login prompt:

Click the **Log In** button. This will pop-up an authentication window:

Select the method you chose when you [created your StackRef account](/getting-started/creating-your-account). A successful login will bring you to the **Dashboard Overview** page. # Accepting an Organization Invitation If an organization Owner or Admin has sent you an invitation to join the organization, you should receive an email similar to the following:

If you were provided an invitation code to join the organization by an organization administrator, enter the code at the top of the page and click **Accept Invitation**.

Otherwise, if you are initiating the creation of a new organization, proceed to ["Creating an organization"](/getting-started/creating-an-organization). # Creating an Organization If you are not accepting an invitation code sent by an organization administrator, you will need to complete a New Organization profile.

Fill in the required fields of the form and click **Create Organization**. # Managing Your Profile Navigate to the **Account** left-side menu item to view and edit your user profile. Here you can make changes to your contact email and phone number information, job title, and skill tags.

Skill tags are useful for event organizers to fairly choose diverse teams when manual team creation is enabled. # Dashboard Overview ## Overview The Overview page presents a high-level overview of the status of any current event and team you're currently active in, as well as any recent notifications that have arrived during your currently active session.

The five most recent notifications will be displayed in the Recent Notifications widget. Here you can also mark all notifications as read. Marking notifications read will eventually remove them from the list.

If you are joined into a currently active event, some of its details will be displayed in the Current Active Event widget. The state of the event will be displayed ("Running," "Judging," etc.), as well as a brief summary, its start/end times, and its judging criteria.

If you are participating in the currently active event as a player in a team, the Current Active Team widget displays the team name you are currently associated with, as well as a list of its team members.

The team StackCash widget will display if you are participating in a team in the currently active event. The most recent ten transactions will be displayed, the brief details of each transaction, the cashflow trend, and a graph showing overall transaction activity. ## Navigation Bar The top navigation bar provides quick access to several overviews from any page within the StackRef dashboard.

### Event details

The Event Details icon will display **green** when the currently active event is in progress and not close to ending, **white** when the event has not started yet, and **red** when time has almost elapsed. If the event has not started yet, the time below the icon will count down until the event has entered Running mode. Once the event has started, the time displayed will indicate the time remaining until the event enters the Judging phase. You can click the View Event button to be brought to the [active event overview page](/events/event-overview). ### Server Status

The StackRef Server Status icon indicates a successful or failed connection to the "Tator" messaging service. The icon will indicate red when connectivity is lost or failed; green when connection has been established. Tator rooms are used for notification delivery. Messages designated as organization-wide will be sent to and received in the Organization channel, event-wide to the Event channel, and team-wide to the Team channel. ### Team

Clickin the Team icon will display a list of currently-active team members, if you are in a team within your currently active event. ### Notifications

The Notifications icon will display an indicator if there are any unread notifications waiting to be read. Upon clicking **Mark all as read**, messages will continue to appear for a short time, and the unread indicator will disappear. ### Profile

The right-most icon will display either your profile picture or the first initial of your first name. Clicking this icon will display your name and job title (if you've added one), as well as a method for logging out of the StackRef dashboard. ## Sidebar Menu

# Organization Events To see a list of planned, completed, and currently-running events, navigate to the **Organization->Events** menu. ### Current events

Current events are those that are in a Running or Judging state. If your user has been added as a participant in one of these events, you can choose to Join or Exit from the ![](/files/o8gDqGqf0O7OWg5WhUUP) menu. Joining an event will present a green checkbox in the upper-right corner of the event box. This will be selected as your "Current Active Event" and affect what is displayed in the dashboard for teams, event times, and scores.

Current events that you are not permitted to join (e.g., not a participant) will be marked with a red-crossed circle in the upper-left corner of the event box. You can select from the ![](/files/sekuARnko8ZpDf0uRWX0) menu to "Request to Join," which will alert the event coordinators and allow them to decide whether to take action or not *\[Coming Soon]*.

### Upcoming / ended events A list of upcoming and ended events is listed at the bottom of the page. If permitted, you can view the details of each event, including team details and scoring results.

# Events Calendar The events calendar can be found as the **Calendar** tab in the **Organization->Events** menu. Items marked in red are those you are not a participant in and are not permitted to join or view. Hovering over an item in the calendar provides more information about the event, including specific start/end times and its current status. Icons in the upper-right of the calendar allow for different views, including a list view, week view, and month view.

# Event Overview The Event overview page can be accessed via the **Event->Overview** menu item. This page serves as a general overview of the Current Active Event, including a summary, description, timer, calendar, and the amount of StackCash remaining for distribution to teams.

A general overview of the Current Active Event can also be accessed at any time via [the calendar icon in the dashboard's top toolbar](/getting-started/dashboard-overview#event-details). Clicking the "View Event" button will bring you to the Event overview page.

# Participants The event participants list is accessed via the **Participants** tab on the [Event overview](/events/event-overview) page, which lists the current organization users who have been granted access to the event.

Event participants can be placed within one or several roles: ![](/files/Z92DATldYX4wtwDGtLnb) **Spectator**\ Spectators are able to view the general details of an event and the overall scoring results. ![](/files/VtSUEjNOgxCSsqeLW955) **Player**\ Players are able to be assigned to and participate in teams. ![](/files/EqNeNsshMOQZocybr6HR) **Subject Matter Expert (SME)**\ SMEs are participants available for teams to consult with for expert advice, at the expense of StackCash *\[Coming Soon]*. ![](/files/DzpH1dLPA7Le5DHqWA8W) **Judge**\ Judges are able to score teams based on judging criteria set for the event, once the event has entered its judging phase. ![](/files/zMBVOtCvixeJtFOK8hKC) **Manager**\ Managers are able to modify the details of the event, [modify participants and roles](/administration/event-management/editing-events/participants), and [modify teams](/administration/event-management/editing-events/teams) and their members' roles. ![](/files/FoJvys2D0Wu4wTgX7yPV) **Free Agent**\ A Free Agent is a potential Player in the event. They are participants not yet assigned to an event team and are available for recruitment, at the expense of StackCash *\[Coming Soon]*. # Teams & Results

The team with the trophy ![](/files/z8VBKaiQRoKxtlBtsG9k) icon is the team with the most accumulated points for the event. ### Event Activity

The Event Activity window will show a real-time, updating view of activity happening in the event, such as the event's start time and when a team has carried out certain actions, such as submitting a link for judging, receiving a code analysis result, and receiving a judge's score. # Managing Events Event participants with a Manager role can view the judging status of the Current Active Event and choose when to manually mark the event "complete" via the **Event->Manage** menu item. A list of the judging criteria for the event will be displayed along with the submission status of scores for each event judge. Once an event has been fully judged, event managers can choose to click the "Complete Event" button, which will lock all scores in place.

# Status and Scores

# Kanban

# AWS Account

### StackCash-Limited Resources Services and resources that require a sufficient StackCash balance include EC2 and RDS. If your Team attempts to provision one of these resources and does not have sufficient StackCash, the resource may fail to provision or will be stuck in a "stopped" state. ### Permitted Services and Resources AWS services permitted for use with Team-assigned AWS accounts are the following (but not necessarily limited to): * EC2 (see instance types and storage limits below) * S3 * Lambda * DynamoDB * RDS (see instance types and storage limits below) * IAM * VPC * Redshift * ElastiCache * Route53 * CloudFront With EC2 and RDS, only the following instance types/families are permitted: * a1.medium * t2 (nano, micro, small, medium) * t3 (nano, micro, small, medium) * t3a (nano, micro, small, medium) * t4g (nano, micro, small, medium) EC2 and RDS instances are limited to 1TB of storage each, and only of storage types gp2, gp3, and standard. ### Account, Resource, and Data De-Provisioning Once a Team's Event has concluded and judging is complete, access to all Team AWS accounts will be removed. All data and resources in the accounts will be completely de-provisioned and all data wiped. **It will not be possible to recover these resources and data**. # Code Analysis As part of the judging process for a team's submission, StackRef offers a free automated source code analysis service. Credentials for your team's respository are found in the **Team->Status** section.

{% code overflow="wrap" fullWidth="true" %} ```shell-session $ git clone https://app.stackref.com/v1/repos/a87ff92f-702c-4940-acfc-0576500e613a Cloning into 'a87ff92f-702c-4940-acfc-0576500e613a'... Username for 'https://app.stackref.com': a87ff92f-702c-4940-acfc-0576500e613a-at-317915500643 Password for 'https://a87ff92f-702c-4940-acfc-0576500e613a-at-317915500643@app.stackref.com': remote: Counting objects: 3, done. Unpacking objects: 100% (3/3), 323 bytes | 323.00 KiB/s, done. ``` {% endcode %}

# Judging Overview Event participants with the Judging role are able to score teams once the event has entered its Judging phase. The Judging dashboard displays items to aid scoring decisions, such as the use of a team's StackCash (if enabled) and any external links the team has provided as references to a submitted project.

### Scoring Judges score on a half-fractional scale of 1-10 on each of the event criteria set by the event organizers. These scores are then multiplied by each criterion's respective assigned weight to calculate a team's final scores.

### Feedback Judges can provide optional, anonymous feedback to each team. This feedback will be visible to the respective team upon the completion of the event.

# Organization Details

# StackCash Transactions

# User Management User management can be accessed through the **Admin->Users** menu. Organization administrators can remove users and modify their assigned roles within the organization. To add new users, you must use the [**Invitations**](/administration/user-management/inviting-users) tab to create and send invitation codes to individuals to join your organization.

# Inviting Users ### Managing invitations Navigate to the **Invitations** tab in the **Admin->Users** menu. Here you can view, create, and manage invitations sent to individuals to join your organization.

{% hint style="warning" %} Be sure the email address you submit your invitation to will only be used by a single individual. Invitation codes can be used only once. {% endhint %} ### Creating a new invitation Click the **New Invitation** button to manually send a new user invitation to the email address you provide.

### Bulk uploading users To submit a bulk list of users to invite to your organization, click the **Upload Invitation List** button. This will display the following dialog:

The file should be a comma-separated value (CSV) file in plain-text format, with or without an initial header. As long as the file you are submitting has an email address in any field, the file should successfully process and have invitations sent to all recipients. {% hint style="warning" %} Uploaded lists can contain a maximum of 100 lines/users. If you need to upload more, separate the file into 100-user blocks and upload them one at a time. {% endhint %} ### Resending invitations Invitations can be resent to invited users by clicking the ![](/files/i5mWL2nrAkZKhfUEefeY) in the Actions column of the invitation. Invitations can be resent a maximim of three times. If invitations are not being received by the invited users, they may need to check their email provider's Junk folder. Alternatively, you can send the invitation code to the user via another means, but clicking the copy icon ![](/files/HIxFmbmgefCx1uQpkSmi) to copy the invitation code. # User Roles Navigate to **Admin->Users** to modify user roles. Organization users can belong to one or more roles. Each role has a different set of permissions, though some do overlap. It is not necessary to add a user to more than one role if that role has the required permissions, though it is possible to do so.

Role	Manage users	Manage events & teams	Edit organization	Manage profile	View events
Owner	true	true	true	true	true
Admin	true	true	false	true	true
Standard	false	false	false	true	true

To modify a user's roles, select the pull-down under the Roles column of the Users table. Select or de-select the role(s) for the selected user, then click outside the dialog to set the user's roles.

{% hint style="warning" %} More than one user can be set to the Owner role, though users who are set to an Owner role cannot remove themselves as owner; another organization owner must perform this task. {% endhint %} # Event Management

# Events Calendar

# Editing Events

# Participants

### Adding participants

### Participant roles Event participants can belong to one or more roles. Each role has a different set of permissions, though some do overlap. It is not necessary to add a participant to more than one role if that role has the permissions it requires, though it is possible to do so.

Role	View event	Play in event	Judge event	Manage event & teams
Manager	true	false	false	true
Judge	true	false	true	false
Player	true	true	false	false
Spectator	true	false	false	false
SME *	true	false	false	false
Free Agent *	true	true	false	false

{% hint style="info" %} \* Coming soon {% endhint %} To modify a participant's roles, select the pull-down under the Roles column of the Participants table. Select or de-select the role(s) for the selected participant, then click outside the dialog to set the participant's roles.

# Teams

# Editing a team

# Creating a team

# Managing team members

# Judging Criteria Event managers can specify judging criteria for the events they're able to manage.

# Creating and Editing Judging Criterion You can create up to 20 judging criteria per event. Event judges will see the full set of criteria during the judging phase of the event.

Available categories for a judging criterion: * Performance * Cost * Feasibility * Teamwork * Presentation * Innovation * Other The summary of each criterion helps highlight what is actually being judged for each team submission. A criterion's weight is applied to the 1-10 star score judges submit for each team. You may, for example, want to give a higher weight to a criterion in the "Performance" category than to the "Teamwork" criterion. # Stuck for ideas? So you want to have a quick hackathon with your internal teams but need some general ideas? Maybe these could spark your imagination. 1. Develop a tool that helps organizations streamline their project management processes. This could include features such as task assignment, project scheduling, and progress tracking. 2. Create a mobile app that helps people track their daily expenses and manage their finances. The app could include features such as budgeting tools, expense tracking, and bill payment reminders. 3. Design a website or web application that helps people find and compare local services, such as health care providers, home repair contractors, or tutors. 4. Build a software solution that helps people organize and manage their personal or professional contacts. This could include features such as contact import, categorization, and communication tracking. 5. Create a game or interactive application that teaches users a new skill or concept in a fun and engaging way. This could be an educational game for children, a language learning app, or a training program for professionals. 6. Develop a platform that connects volunteers with non-profit organizations and causes that match their interests and availability. The platform could include features such as a volunteer directory, event calendar, and impact tracking. 7. Create a virtual reality application that allows users to explore and learn about different locations or historical events in an immersive way. 8. Build a tool that helps people plan and book their travel arrangements, including flights, hotels, and activities. The tool could include features such as price comparison, itinerary planning, and trip tracking. 9. Design a software solution that helps small businesses and freelancers manage their client relationships, including tasks such as invoicing, project tracking, and communication management. 10. Create an application that helps people improve their mental health and well-being, such as through guided meditation, stress management techniques, or journaling exercises. The app could include features such as personalized recommendations and progress tracking.