The way the queuing system works is on a first come-first serve basis, much the same as phoning in nominations. The main difference is that Campdraft Central can handle many, many "phone calls" at the one time.
In Campdraft Central, each event in a draft has a Total Nominations figure to indicate when the event needs to close once nominations fill up.
The queuing system works by simply giving out as many available queue positions to as many competitors - being individuals or as family - as required, based on the Total Nominations for an entire draft and a predetermine average per competitor, for example, 8 runs average.
The 8 run average isn't a restriction, but for a family where Dad has 12 noms, Mum has 8 and 2 kids have 12 between them, works out to be a total of 32 first round noms.
The system works out that if a draft has 400 first round runs available, divided by 8, equals to around 50 competitors.
As we all know, the demand for campdrafting often outweighs the supply of spots in a draft, to get a position in the queue to nominate for a draft comes down to timing and a bit of luck.
30 minutes before the draft opens, a notification will appear in the Competitor Area stating, for example "Clarke Creek opens in 30 minutes. Please refresh you page to update this information".
Once the draft opens to the second, at 6 AM for example, the positions are given out to those who are in the Competitor Area of Campdraft Central and have refreshed the page - the F5 key on the keyboard does this on any website.
The position is given based on time refreshing the page - eg, 6:00:01 will have the first position, 6:15:45 will be further back in the queue.
When your page is refreshed, you'll get one of three options for nominating:
"You can now nominate for Clarke Creek" or "Please Refresh your page - Nominations are still available" or "Nominations are Now Full for Clarke Creek".
With the second option about "Nominations are still available", depending on how far back you are in the queue, you may unfortunately have this changed to "Nominations are Now Full for Clarke Creek" next time your refresh.
It's disappointing when people miss out but unfortunately, there simply may not be enough spots in the draft for demand.
When a competitor gets a position in the queue, they then have a 20 minutes to complete their nominations. If you've had a chance to rehearse with the Practice Draft, you'll see that to add them in is fairly straightforward after you've put all your horses in.
IMPORTANT: You must checkout to process your nominations! If you don't, you nominations won't be counted and your position in the queue will be given to the next competitor who is waiting
For those who do unfortunately miss out, Campdraft Central will allow an unlimited amount of wait list nominations for any event. The secretary of the draft can accept these nominations based on the date and time they were entered into the system.
We've been testing and testing and testing the system for the past few weeks, by running simulations but the real test is when the general public has a go in a real scenario.
As the queuing system is new and is yet to be fully tested a number of times for real drafts, we've put a few backup plans in case of problems with the software.
If something does go wrong, which is unlikely, we'll know exactly who was on the website and the time and date they logged on.
This means we'll be able to fairly give the queue positions out at a later stage in a fair manner.
We're confident that things should run smoothly but in our experience, things still can go wrong no matter how much testing is involved, which is why we're letting you know what the options are in the event of any major problems.