OpenWater provides a feature known as Scoring Groups. The Scoring Groups feature allows you to apply a winner status to submissions automatically based on certain score rules that you specify. This feature is rarely used since marking winner status manually is preferred and often most convenient. The only time you may want to use the Scoring Groups feature is if you have to mark a massive number of submissions with a winner status and would rather have this process automated.

An example of this would be to automatically designate anyone with a score of 90 and above a gold, anyone with a score of 80 to 89.99 a silver, and anyone from 70 to 79.99 a bronze.

To configure scoring groups, first navigate to your program.

Under the Program Settings drop down menu and then click Scoring Groups.

You can determine which scoring groups you need based on how you judge your categories. Using our fictional example, if our Car categories award winners for any submissions with a score greater than 90, but our Truck categories award winners for any submissions with a score greater than 80, then we need a Car scoring group and a Truck scoring group.

If the winner determination is standard across all categories, then only one scoring group is needed.

Click Add Scoring Group.

And give the scoring group a name.

After adding your scoring groups, tab over to Categories and assign a scoring group to each category.

Select the appropriate scoring group.

Our categories page now looks like this:

A prerequisite to setting up your scoring ranges is to ensure that you have your winner types configured. Winner types must be set in the system before you can configure the scoring ranges.
​
After you configure your winner types, navigate back to your program. Under the Round Settings drop down menu, click Configure Scoring Ranges.

Set the ranges to apply to each winner designation type.

The Advanced tab allows you to change the calculation from Score to Percentile or even rank position. If you choose rank position, you will want to set the Lowest and Highest on the Ranges tab to be the number of winners allocated within that scoring group. For example if you only want the highest score to be the winner, enter '1' in both the Lowest and Highest boxes.
​
If you go with Rank Position, such as 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc, and wish to apply these rankings for each individual category, then you will need one scoring group per category.

To apply the allocation, go to Tools drop down menu and click Winners Allocation.

Click Apply Allocation when ready.