Guest Hackathons

Have you ever wanted to invite someone from outside your organization to a Hackathon? Maybe you want to invite an entire team from a Customer to work more directly with them to adopt your products? Guest hackathons will enable you to do just that.


The new Guest feature allows hackathon organizers to invite users from outside their organization to participate in their hackathons. Guests will only have access to the hackathon they are invited to, making it a great option for collaborating with external teams while keeping your existing hackathon and project data safe and secure. 


Getting Started


Inviting Guests


First, you need to setup your guest list and send invitations in two ways:


Email invitations

  1. Create a new hackathon or open an existing one
  2. Click Edit in the Admin bar
  3. Click on the +INVITE AND MANAGE GUESTS link located on the right-hand side of the page
  4. Click Invite guests and type in the email of your guest
  5. Click Send invitations

Invitation link

Follow the above steps and click Copy guest invitation link. You can then share this link through your preferred communication channels. Guests who receive the link will need to complete a request form and be approved by a hackathon organizer before they can join.


⚠️ Important information on guest link

Once a user clicks on a guest invitation link, they are taken to a request form where they will need to fill out their name and email address. Once they submit the request, it will appear in the Guest management side panel (accessible to Organizers by clicking INVITE AND MANAGE GUESTS). Organizers or Administrators can then accept or deny the request.

Guests will receive an email notifying them of the decision on their request. If approved, they can join the organization and will be directed to the hackathon page after completing the signup process.

Note that guests will remain in the "Invited" tab until they register for the hackathon.

 

Managing Guests


Viewing Guests who have joined and those yet to join


Guests who receive an invitation email or click on the invitation link will be prompted to create Devpost for Teams accounts and then redirected to the Hackathon registration page. You can track guest registration status.


To do this, follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to the Hackathon.
  2. Click Edit in the Admin bar.
  3. Click on the +INVITE AND MANAGE GUESTS link on the right-hand side of the page.
  4. Here you will see two tabs: INVITED and REGISTERED.
  5. Click on INVITED to see all guests who have been invited to the Hackathon but have not yet registered.
  6. Click on REGISTERED to see all guests who have registered.


To approve or deny guests that have used the invitation link, navigate to the guest management area and click on INVITED. From here you can approve or deny each guest.



Removing Guests from your Devpost for Teams Organization


Users who join your organization as a Guest can be removed from your Organization via the Organization Settings. Removing Guest users results in them no longer having access to your Devpost for Teams Organization, including any hackathons they had access to:


⚠️ Important: Only Admins are able to remove users from the Organization via Organization Settings 


  1. Click on your profile image in the top right-hand of the screen and click Organization Settings  
  2. Open the Members tab
  3. Locate the Guest user you would like to remove
  4. Click the trash can icon to start the process
  5. Click confirm when you are ready

Viewing Guests in the Hackathon People Tab


To view guests in the People tab of a hackathon, use the following steps:


  1. Navigate to the Hackathon where your Guests have registered
  2. Either scroll down to the People and Project section or click the number of registrants at the top of the page to scroll down
  3. Click on People
  4. You will now see Guests who have created Devpost for Teams accounts and have registered for the Hackathon
  5. If you would like to filter to only the Guests, click the Guests filter button in the People filter bar


Exporting Guest Information


Viewing Guests in Projects Exports and Registrant Exports


  1. Open the Hackathon that has Guests registered
  2. Click the Metrics icon in the Hackathon Admin bar
  3. Click Download projects or Download status by the user; you’ll receive an email from [email protected] indicating that the file is ready to be downloaded. 
  4. Within the CSV file, all Guests will have "Guest" Appended to their user name so you can easily identify who are Guests, and what Projects they have created

Guest Participation in Hackathons


Participating as a Guest


As a guest in a hackathon, you can perform the following actions:


  • Create, join, and submit projects.
  • View all projects and users in the hackathon.
  • Comment on projects.
  • Join a project.
  • Edit your user settings and profile details

Permissions and Limitations


As a guest in a hackathon, please note the following permissions and limitations:


  • You are able to view hackathons that you have been invited to
  • You are able to view projects that have been created in the hackathon you have been invited to
  • You are able to view other users who have registered for the hackathon you have been invited to
  • You cannot view or invite existing organization members to the hackathon if they have not registered for the Hackathon you have been invited to 
  • You cannot invite new members to the hackathon.
  • You cannot invite other guests to the hackathon.