Introduction
With the fast-paced social networking scene of today, Athletes increasingly expect faster access to results and photos so they can share their accomplishments with their friends. What better way to offer results immediately after an Athlete finishes a race than with a QR code printed right on their Bib that links to their personal results page?
This guide will walk you through the process of generating QR codes for event results at large, and for each Athlete in your event for both the ChronoTrack Live results widget, and for the Athlinks results.
Finding a QR Code Generator
You will need to work with your chosen Bib Printer to ensure that codes can be printed on the correct bibs. Be aware that the printer you're working with may require a certain image format, pixel count, etc. for the QR Codes to be printable. We recommend that you gather this information before choosing a QR Code Generator. Some bib printers may offer QR code generation as a service, negating the need to find a third-party generator.
There are many free QR Code generators available online. Most will allow a “batch” or “bulk” QR code generation of 100-200 at a time unless you pay a subscription or premium fee. Some generators will have more options than others, such as Pixels per block, selectable output format, and additional data. We recommend that you do a web search for ‘bulk QR code generator’ and shop around the results for a generator that fits your needs.
Generating a Code for the Main Results Page
If you would like to simply print a QR Code for the main results page on each bib, simply open the Online Results page for your event, copy the URL in the web address bar, and paste it into the QR generator of your choice.
The results link will look like this for the CT Live widget:
http://results.chronotrack.com/event/results/event/event-12345?lc=en
The Athlinks results page will look like this:
https://www.athlinks.com/event/123456/results/Event/123456/Results
The number highlighted in red is the Event ID number for the event in CT Live.
Generating Codes for Each Athlete’s Results
Before you continue, please be aware that there is a feature in ChronoTrack Live that allows you to forward all traffic to the CT Live version of results to Athlinks. This can be found on the Event tab in the Results section. If you want to direct athletes to Athlinks results, but you're using CT Live for registration or scoring, it's simplest to use the Confirmed Entries report to pull athlete-specific URLs.
CT Live Widget - IF Bibs Have Been Assigned
To create Codes for the individual athletes’ results on the CT Live widget, you can use the Confirmed Entries Report if bibs have been pre-assigned to athletes. If bibs will not be pre-assigned, click HERE to skip to instructions on generating codes prior to assignment.
- On the Reports tab in your event, click the Confirmed Entries Report, and Edit it.
- Select each Race for which QR codes should be generated.
- Now, deselect EVERY other Check Box below the Race section.
- Under the Results Options section of the Edit window, check the Sort By BIB and Direct Results URL boxes. Then under Entry Status, check the Confirmed box so that only confirmed entries are included in the report.
- Click Save & Close.
- The report will probably look like this because the Confirmed athletes without bibs assigned will be sorted to the top.
- You can now download the Report, open it in Excel, and delete the empty rows which will leave you with a complete list of links for all athletes with bibs assigned. You can now copy and paste the links into a QR Code Generator or save the file for import.
CT Live Widget - IF Bibs Have NOT Been Assigned
To create Codes for the individual athletes’ results on the CT Live widget, use the link below as a template.
http://results.chronotrack.com/event/results/event/event-XXXXX?bib=YYYYY
The red X’s should be replaced by your Event ID Number. The blue Y’s should be replaced by a bib number.
If you are using the same tag number in two different races in your Event (Tag Disambiguation), you will have to include the Race ID which can be found by hovering your mouse over the Race name on the Scoring > Course tab.
The format to use in this case is:
https://results.chronotrack.com/event/results/event/event-XXXXX?bib=YYYY&race=ZZZZ
The green Z's should be replaced by the Race ID number.
Using one of these templates, you can quickly fill in an Excel sheet with links for a range of bib numbers. If bib numbers are not in sequence, this process will become harder, and you may need to use a formula to combine multiple cells.
To auto-fill a bib range:
- Enter or paste the above link into the first line of a blank Excel spreadsheet.
- Locate the small block in the bottom right corner of the selection. Click the block and drag down the page until you reach the number of bibs you need.
- Verify that the bib sequence continued correctly. (E.g. Not 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3....)
You can now copy and paste the links into a QR Code Generator or save the file for import.
Athlinks Results
For Athlinks results, you will need to create separate files for each Race in your event since the URL has to use the specific Course ID for each athlete's results in order for the link to work.
To create Codes for the individual athletes’ results on Athlinks, follow the procedure below.
If you set all ChronoTrack Live links to forward results traffic to Athlinks, you can use either of the processes for the CT Live Widget above.
- From the event dashboard, click the Athlinks link in the Results heading.
- On the Athlinks page that comes up, click the Start List dropdown to select one of the Races in the event. Once that race's Start List page has loaded, copy the URL in the address bar of your browser and paste it into the first cell in an Excel document.
- Repeat step 2 for each Race in your event, using a different Excel document for each race's URL. Each race's file must contain information ONLY for people who belong in that race!
- In each URL you paste into Excel, replace the section that says startList with results
- Now, add /bib/xxxx where the Xs are the bib number of one of your athletes.
The final URL should look similar to those in the example image below.
Using the URL as a template, you can quickly fill in an Excel sheet with links for a range of bib numbers for each race. If bib numbers are not in sequence, this process will become harder, and you may need to use a formula to combine multiple cells.
To auto-fill a bib range:
- Enter or paste the above link into the first line of a blank Excel spreadsheet.
- Locate the small block in the bottom right corner of the selection. Click the block and drag down the page until you reach the number of bibs you need.
- Verify that the bib sequence continued correctly. (E.g. Not 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3....)
You can now copy and paste the links into a QR Code Generator or save the file for import.