Lottery Preparation Checklist (Step 2 of 3): Run a Mock Lottery in Sandbox

Learn how to run a mock lottery in your sandbox site

What's included in this article?

• Run Lottery Readiness Check
• Complete Pre-work for Applications
• Run Mock Lottery

Best Practice: Always check for the orange banner at the bottom of your sandbox site to confirm you are running mock lotteries in a test environment and not your production environment. 

Run Lottery Readiness Check

Found at the top of the Lottery Dashboard page, the Lottery Readiness Check allows you to confirm that key elements of a lottery are configured prior to running the lottery. 

Complete Pre-work for Applications

• Confirm that applications are marked as eligible to be included in your lottery
• Confirm if priorities on any applications require an override
• Confirm the count (#) of applications you are running through the lottery

Run Mock Lottery

Once you are ready to run a mock lottery, you will first need to submit a ticket to Zendesk requesting a Sandbox refresh. This will get all of your settings, applications, and updates from Production ready for you to test in your Sandbox environment. 

Once your Sandbox has been refreshed, it is ready for testing, and you can follow the instructions below.

• Lotteries icon in top navigation bar > Run New Lottery
• Determine the proper date range for your lottery run
• Determine the appropriate sorting method: randomly or by submission date

• Merge Waitlist: Do you run one lottery round, with one date range for all eligible applications? Or multiple lottery rounds with different date ranges?
  • If you will run a 2nd pool/round, do you want your 2nd round results merged into the appropriate priority group behind your first round results? Or do you want your 2nd round results added after all 1st round results?

• Check Save Waiting List if you want a waiting list created for this lottery run
• Select Programs
• Select Grades
• Determine placement order
  • Do you want the lottery to place students in lower grades before higher grades or vice versa? Consider if an entry grade might have more seats to fill, thereby possibly impacting more siblings applying. Does your lottery policy specify which grades to run first?
• Click Run Lottery for Selected Programs
  • Review your Lottery Run settings
  • To confirm, type uppercase: RUN LOTTERY

Completed lottery runs will display on the Lottery Dashboard. Your lottery results will remain in a Not Published state until you take the explicit action to publish your lottery run.

• This allows you to review all lottery results for accuracy before publishing and notifying families.
• Click View from the Lottery Dashboard to review your lottery lists (offered and waiting).

Continue to next article: Lottery Preparation Checklist (Step 3 of 3): Review your Mock Lottery Results