How to Manage Teams and Invite Participants

Step 1: Open the Team Management Dashboard

• Select your active trip context from the global Trip Selector dropdown in the navigation header.
• Open the sidebar navigation menu and select Manage Teams under the Trip Setup section.
• To protect active workflows, entering this console locks the global trip selector to prevent accidental data desynchronisation while edits are in progress.

Step 2: Customise the Leg Participation Mode

Trips feature a flexible parameter to control how teams compete across different stages of the itinerary:

• Uniform Mode (Same teams for each leg): Teams remain unchanged throughout the entire event. This is the default option and hides unnecessary complexity.
• Granular Mode (Different teams per leg): Toggle this option on if you require leg-by-leg control over team compositions, allowing participants to dynamically join, switch, or leave teams at different checkpoints.

Step 3: Manage Competing Teams

Organisers can manage the team grid natively inline within the dashboard view:

• Add a New Team: Click the Add New Team action link to inject an empty team card into your active trip grid.
• Team Names & Branding: Type your chosen team title directly into the solid black input field. Click the integrated MediaUpload block on the card to assign a custom team avatar or logo, which will be saved securely to the cloud directory.
• Delete a Team: Click the Delete Team button inside any team card to remove it from the active lineup.

Step 4: Invite Team Participants via Email

To add members to a specific team card:

• Locate the participant list area on the target team card and click to add an entry.
• Input the participant's Email Address along with an optional Display Name.
• Identity Resolution Engine: When you add an email, the system automatically runs a server-side lookup:
  • If the email matches an existing registered user, their canonical profile metadata (UID, display name, and avatar) is instantly linked.
  • If the email is unregistered, the system automatically creates an unauthenticated Placeholder Profile with a unique inviteToken.
• An automated, branded email containing a secure setup link will be dispatched via the platform's SMTP relay, allowing the invited user to claim their placeholder profile seamlessly upon first sign-up.

Step 5: Configure Guest Access (Read-Only)

If you want to grant third-party observers (such as friends, family, or sponsors) real-time visibility without write permissions:

• Locate the Trip Guests log section on the dashboard.
• Open the Add Guest dialogue form and enter the guest's email address.
• The system will issue a dedicated server action to assign a read-only 'guest' role to that email string for this trip. Guests can see overall dashboards and logs but are securely blocked from modifying race data.

Step 6: Commit Your Grid Changes

• Once you have completed your inline team creations, edits, or removals, click the Save button located in the global dashboard navigation header at the top right.
• Atomic Master Save: The system executes a high-privilege Firestore batch operation to recursively sanitise your payloads, strip out any malformed data, and atomically synchronise all roles and team rosters across the database collections.
• Exiting Master Edit Mode automatically unlocks your global trip selector header.