Quickstart, your first event in 15 minutes

This is the shortest path from an empty workspace to a working event: one event record, your categories, an open nomination route, a judging panel and a test run through the whole loop. Everything below is done from your own workspace, so it is worth doing on real data rather than a sandbox — nothing here is published to the public until you hand out a link.

Before you start

• An Accolade account. The Free plan is enough for every step except the AI route in step two.
• The ceremony date and venue, even if provisional. Several screens count down from the event date, and they show nothing useful until it is set.
• A list of your award categories. Names are enough; descriptions and criteria can follow.
• Your judges' names and email addresses, if you want to test the scoring loop today.

How the workspace is laid out

The navigation is a two-row rail across the top, not a sidebar. The top row is the chapter — I Entries, II Judging, III The Slate, IV Partners, V The Room, VI The Night, VII Afterwards, plus Setup and Overview. The second row is the modules inside whichever chapter you are in. If the window is narrow, chapters that do not fit move behind a More button rather than wrapping. Everything in this guide lives in I Entries, II Judging and Overview.

1. Create the event record

Go to I Entries → Event Setup and click CREATE EVENT. The form asks for Event Name, Region, Event Date, Venue, Description, Budget (£), Expected Attendees, Status and Template. Only the name and date matter today; the rest can be edited at any point.

Expected Attendees is worth filling in even as a guess — the table planner uses it to tell you when you have seated more people than the room holds.

2. Or let the setup wizard do steps 1 to 3

Open accolade.live/setup. It has two tabs. Set it up yourself asks for Event name, Date, Venue, Expected guests and Budget, then takes your categories one line at a time, then the key dates — entries opening and closing, judging, shortlist, ceremony. Press Build it and it writes the event settings, the categories and the schedule milestones in one go. Skip for now leaves everything untouched.

Describe it and let AI build it takes a paragraph of plain English and drafts the same records plus more. It is a paid feature: on Free it returns "AI wizard is a Pro/Enterprise feature" and does nothing. Your description must be at least 30 characters, and outside Enterprise you get three runs a year. See Using the AI Setup Wizard for what it does and does not create.

Both routes only seed categories and schedule milestones if you have none yet. Running the wizard after you have started by hand will not duplicate or overwrite your work — it will quietly skip those sections.

3. Add your categories

Go to I Entries → Award Categories and click Add Category. Each one takes a Category Name, Description, Category Type, Scoring Method, Max Nominations per Person, Minimum Judges Required, an Allow Self-Nomination toggle, a Nomination Deadline, a Judging Deadline, an optional Category Image and a Status. You can also add weighted criteria here, one row at a time, each with a Criteria Name and a Weight — that is where weighting is defined, not in the judging module. Full detail is in Categories and nominations.

4. Open a route for nominations

Go to I Entries → Nominations. There are four tabs: Nomination Inbox, Form Builder, Public Portal, Review Queue. Form Builder controls the fields nominators fill in; Public Portal holds the Portal URL you share, along with the Event Logo, Accent Colour, Nomination Deadline and Welcome Message. Preview Live shows you the form as a nominator sees it.

There is no single open/close switch. Entries are gated by the Nomination Deadline on the portal and on each category, plus each category's Status — so if you need to stop entries early, change those. You can also enter nominations yourself with + Add Nomination or bring a spreadsheet in with Import CSV.

5. Add your judges

Go to II Judging → Judging Panel and click Add Judge. Fill in Full Name, Email, Organisation, Title / Role, Phone, Expertise Area and, importantly, Assign to Categories. Leave Send invitation email immediately ticked if you want them to get their link now. The Scoring Portal’s Authentication setting defaults to Magic Link (Email), with Password and SSO as the alternatives. Judging workflows covers scoring methods, deadlines and reminders.

6. Run the loop once, today

1. Copy the Portal URL from Nominations → Public Portal and submit one test nomination through it, as a stranger would.
2. Check it has landed in Nomination Inbox and move it through Review Queue.
3. Add yourself as a judge on that category and score the test entry from the Scoring Portal.
4. Open II Judging → Scoring Progress and confirm the score is counted.

That is the entire spine of the product. Everything else — sponsors, tickets, the room, the run of show — hangs off it.

If something does not work

• The AI tab refuses to run. You are on Free, your description is under 30 characters, or you have used your three runs for the year. The message tells you which.
• The wizard did not create your categories. It only seeds when the category list is empty. Delete the placeholder rows, or add the rest by hand.
• A module is missing from the rail. Modules appear by plan. Check what each plan includes.
• A judge says the link does not work. Check their Status on the Judging Panel, and check the Session Timeout and Authentication settings on the Scoring Portal tab.

What to do next

• Set up the guest list and table plan
• Add sponsors and start the commercial side
• Invite the rest of your team
• On Enterprise, set up your custom subdomain