Chapter 3 took the shortest path through the wizard. This chapter tours everything you stepped past. None of it is required, and all of it can be set lottery by lottery, right up until the moment you schedule.
Note: Remember the golden rule from Chapter 3: everything is editable until you click Schedule and lock, and nothing is editable after.
Scheduling for an exact date and time
If your program rules call for a drawing at a specific moment ("10:00 AM on the first Monday"), schedule it exactly:
- On the wizard's Schedule step, choose Pick a date & time instead of As soon as possible.
- Pick the date on the calendar, then choose a Start time from the dropdown (times are offered in 15-minute increments).
- Times are shown in your local timezone; the screen states which one it is using. Behind the scenes, times are stored unambiguously, so daylight saving changes will not trip up your drawing.
- Click Schedule and lock and confirm, exactly as in Chapter 3.
Two boundaries apply:
- At least 4 hours of lead time. A lottery cannot start sooner than 4 hours from when you schedule it.
- At most 28 days ahead. If your drawing is further out, wait and schedule it when the date is within 28 days.
Tip: The scheduled confirmation email (Chapter 3) states the start time in UTC, the international reference time. The lottery pages in your Account Center show times in your own timezone.
Understanding "Safe" copies (read this before the toggles)
Every lottery produces two kinds of output:
- Full versions for you: the Agency Report and complete results files, containing everything.
- "Safe" versions for the world: the Public Record Report, public-safe logs, and the registry record, with sensitive information removed.
The column toggles below decide what lands in each. That is all they do, and it is why they matter.
The three column toggles: Sensitive, Results, Emphasize
On the wizard's Columns step, each column card has a Sensitive checkbox. Two more toggles, Results and Emphasize, are tucked away because their defaults suit most lotteries: click the additional options button on the columns toolbar to reveal them.
Sensitive: keep a column out of the Safe copies
A column marked Sensitive is removed from every public-safe output: it will not appear in the Public Record Report, public-safe logs, or any public record. It remains fully present in your own Agency Report and full results.
- Your applicant identifier is Sensitive by default. Names, emails, and the like should not be in public records, so the wizard protects that column automatically. If your identifiers are already public-safe (say, anonymous application numbers) you may uncheck it.
- Mark any other column Sensitive the same way: incomes, unit sizes, anything you would not post on a bulletin board.
Results: which columns appear in the results files
Controls whether a column appears in the results files at all. On by default where it should be; you rarely need to touch it.
Emphasize: make a column stand out
An Emphasized column is bolded in the results output. Handy for the one column readers will scan for, such as the applicant identifier or ticket number.
Ticket numbers and privacy: one special rule
Ticket numbers are how results are matched to entries, so they must stay visible in public-safe records. Because of this, a column assigned the Ticket # role cannot be marked Sensitive; the wizard disables that checkbox on purpose.
If your own ticket numbers are themselves sensitive (perhaps they encode something private), there is a clean solution:
- Leave your ticket column's role as Pass-through (no special role) instead of Ticket #.
- Mark that column Sensitive.
- AuditDraw then generates brand-new random ticket numbers for the drawing, while your original numbers ride along privately: present in your full results, absent from every Safe copy.
Weighting: giving some applicants better odds
Some programs award extra chances, for example one extra chance per year on a waitlist. To run a weighted lottery:
- Add a weight column to your applicant file before uploading: a whole number for each applicant (1, 2, 3, and so on). An applicant with weight 3 has three times the chance of an applicant with weight 1 at each draw.
- On the Columns step, make sure that column's role is Weight. The wizard usually detects it from the header on its own.
- The lottery's details page will show Weighting as enabled, and your reports reflect the weighted draw.
Important: Weights must be whole numbers, and your program rules should define them before you upload. If you are unsure how to translate your policy into weights, ask us first (Chapter 10). We are happy to sanity-check your file.
Other columns the wizard may recognize
The wizard also auto-detects a few specialized column roles used by certain programs: Priority Value (draw ordering by priority tiers), Applicant Group (grouping entries, for example by household or unit type), and Ticket Link (tying pre-printed physical tickets to entries). If one of these lights up on your columns step and you were not expecting it, simply set the column back to Pass-through. If your program genuinely needs them, contact us before your first weighted or tiered drawing and we will walk through the setup together.
Small comforts worth knowing
- Layout switch: on the Columns step, the toolbar lets you flip between a horizontal and a vertical card layout. Purely cosmetic; use whichever reads better with many columns.
- Replacing the file: until the lottery is scheduled, you can return to the Upload step and replace the applicant file; your column confirmations are re-checked against the new file.
- Resume anytime: half-finished lotteries wait patiently under Pending Setup on your Lotteries page, with a Resume setup button. Nothing runs until you schedule it.