User Guide

Overview

The system manages everyone who signs up for the Zonta Cross-Mentoring program and helps the matching team find good Mentor–Mentee pairs. The program's first principle is cross-continent pairing; the second is whether both people want to talk about the same things (their WHY).

The system only suggests. A team member should always read both profiles before confirming a pairing. All scoring is done on the server with fixed rules; no participant data is sent to any external AI service.

Signing in and data protection

All three pages share one access password. Sign in on the Directory or Match Suggestions page; the Import page uses the same session and sends you to the Directory if you are not signed in yet.

• After 5 wrong attempts in a row, that network address is locked for 15 minutes.
• Use 🔒 Log out in the top-right corner when you finish, especially on a shared computer.
• Every action that saves something carries a security token. If a page has been open for a long time you may see “the form had expired”; reload the page and try again.

Directory

The cards at the top show total registrations, Mentors, Mentees, people Open to either role, and how many ⭐ priority people are still waiting. These numbers and all charts are always calculated from the whole dataset, so they stay stable whatever filters you use below. Withdrawn people are not counted.

The table lists each person's name and e-mail, role, country and city, district, position and organization, industry, primary expertise, meeting format, monthly commitment, industry matching preference, mentoring experience, registration year, pairing status, workshop attendance, and special considerations or accessibility needs. It shows 15 people per page.

Filters and search

Combine any of these filters: role, country, continent, Zonta District, industry, industry matching preference, mentoring experience, registration year, pairing status, ⭐ priority, workshop RSVP or check-in, and keyword.

• Keyword searches names, e-mail addresses, organizations and primary expertise. Some people sign with a nickname, so searching by e-mail is the most reliable.
• Continent is worked out from the country, and every spelling of a country (USA, US, United States of America) counts towards the same continent.
• Pairing status must be set to Withdrawn to see people who have withdrawn; otherwise they are always hidden.
• The workshop filter “Said "Will join" but did not join” finds people to follow up with after the kick-off.

Exporting e-mail lists

📧 Export email list above the table exports the e-mail addresses of everyone in the current filter result, in three ways:

• CSV file with name, e-mail, role, pairing status, country and registration year, to open in Excel.
• .txt list with one address per line.
• Copy straight to the clipboard to paste into the BCC field of an e-mail, separated by commas or semicolons.

Quick buttons export everyone, Mentees only, Mentors only, the waiting list, or everyone not yet paired. Withdrawn people never appear in any export.

Charts and pairing network

The 📊 Charts tab has seven charts: role, continent, industry, meeting format, monthly commitment, Zonta District, and workshop RSVP compared with actual check-in.

The 🕸️ Pairing Network tab draws each person as a dot. Confirmed pairs are joined by a line and waitlisted people have an outer ring. Hover over a dot to see the name and status; it is a quick way to show progress in a meeting.

Match Suggestions

This is the page the matching team uses most. From top to bottom it has: the priority queue, workshop RSVP and check-in, the person picker, the suggestions, the list of people still unpaired, and the list of confirmed pairs.

Priority queue

⭐ Priority queue at the top lists everyone with a priority marker who is not yet paired, longest-waiting first. Each person has two buttons:

• 🎯 Find matches opens that person's suggestions.
• Remove ⭐ removes the marker.

A priority marker is added in four ways: automatically at the end of the season for anyone unmatched, automatically when someone's partner withdraws, optionally when a pairing is undone, or by hand (for someone hard to place). It is removed automatically when the person is paired.

RSVP and workshop check-in

Open 📝 Kick-off workshop: RSVP & check-in and switch between two modes. Every click is saved at once, so nothing is lost if the page is closed. Click a selected button again to clear it.

The summary line shows how many people are in each state; click a number to show just that group. You can search by name, and in check-in mode the people expected to attend are listed first.

Choosing a person and mode

First choose who you are matching for: Mentee (find a Mentor) or Mentor (find a Mentee), then pick the person. The lists only contain people who are not yet paired, with ⭐ priority people first; people Open to either role appear in both lists. Then set two options:

Who can be suggested

• Everyone: all unpaired people (default).
• Expected: RSVP Will join or Maybe, or already checked in; anyone marked Not joined is left out.
• Joined: only people who checked in at the workshop.

Cross-continent mode

• Strict (default, recommended): cross-continent candidates always come first. Only if there are fewer than five does a separate, clearly marked same-continent fallback list appear.
• Weighted: one mixed list in which cross-continent is 35% of the score.

Then click Show Top 5 Matches.

Personal settings (Finding matches for)

The chosen person appears in a banner with country, continent, industry, meeting format, commitment, and the topics found in their WHY answers (💼 professional, 💬 personal). Any special considerations or accessibility needs are shown in full in a highlighted box; please read them before matching. Below the banner are three panels you can open:

🚫 Topics to avoid

Tick topics this person does not want to discuss, such as Family & Caregiving. Candidates whose WHY or challenges answers mention these topics move to the bottom of the list and are marked 🚫. This works in both directions and is remembered for future seasons.

💛 Preferred continents

Use this when someone asks for a counterpart from a particular region, for example a Mentor who writes that she would love a Mentee from Asia. Tick Asia and save. Then:

• When matching for her, candidates from Asia move up by 10 ranking points (ordering only; the % shown does not change) and carry a 💛 Requested continent chip.
• When matching for a Mentee from Asia, this Mentor also moves up, with a note that she asked for a match from Asia, so the wish is never missed whichever side you start from.
• If you tick the person's own continent, a reminder says this would not be a cross-continent pair.

🚪 Can no longer take part?

Use this when the person cannot continue; you can add a reason. See Statuses and markers.

Suggestion cards and confirming a pairing

Each card is one candidate. The total score and a bar are on the right; the breakdown is in the middle:

• 🌍 Cross-continent; same continent or same country is shown in a warning colour.
• Percentages for WHY match, industry fit, time-zone feasibility, meeting format, time commitment, and mentoring experience (when choosing a Mentor).
• ⏰ more than 8 h apart: a reminder to agree on meeting times early; it costs only a few points.
• 🗣 Different first language: information only, a chance for cross-cultural learning.
• Shared professional and personal topics and keywords, plus both people's considerations and topics to avoid.

When you have decided, click ✔ Confirm this pairing. The confirmation dialog reminds you if the pair is not cross-continent or has a topic conflict. Both people become Paired, leave the suggestion lists, and any ⭐ is cleared. If two team members work at the same time, the system prevents anyone from being paired twice and asks the second person to choose again.

🎬 Reveal plays a short announcement animation, useful when projecting pairings live at the workshop.

Below the cards, “other ⭐ priority candidates” lists priority people who did not make the top five, and a summary lists anyone moved to the bottom because of topics to avoid.

Undoing a pairing

If a pairing was confirmed by mistake, or a pair does not work out, it can be undone. Open 🤝 Confirmed pairs near the bottom of the page. It lists every confirmed pair this season (Mentee first, then Mentor), flags same-continent pairs, and can be searched by name or country. It opens automatically right after you confirm a pairing.

Click ↩ Undo on the pair. Both people return to Unpaired and appear in the suggestions again. Tick the ⭐ next to the button first to also give both the priority marker (reason: “Pairing was undone”), which helps when a pair falls apart mid-season and needs to be re-matched quickly.

Closing the season

The “Still Unpaired This Season” list updates as pairings are confirmed. When matching is finished, click End of season: Waitlist + ⭐ everyone left. Everyone still unpaired becomes Waitlisted with a ⭐ marker and a season counter, so they are matched first next season. Use this button once per season.

How the score works

The score combines six or seven criteria, weighted in the order of the program's priorities:

Ranking adjustments

These only change the order of the cards. The percentage on each card is always the real compatibility score.

• ⭐ Priority marker: +4.
• 💛 Preferred continent matches (asked by either person): +10.
• 🚫 Topic to avoid: always moved to the bottom.

Import sign-ups

Whenever you export a new Excel file from the sign-up form, import it here. The system only adds new people and updates people whose answers changed. Everything the team has recorded stays exactly as it was.

Three steps

1. Upload: choose the .xlsx file and click 🔍 Check the file. Nothing is saved yet.
2. Review: the preview shows new people, people with changed answers (each change as old value and new value), unchanged people, skipped rows, and people in the database who are not in this file. Untick anyone you do not want to import.
3. Import: click 📥 Import ticked rows. By default a backup is made first; afterwards you see who was added and updated.

Import rules

• People are recognised by e-mail address, so each person keeps the same record and confirmed pairings stay linked.
• If someone submitted the form twice, the submission with the newest form date is used.
• Skipped automatically: test rows named TEST, rows without a valid e-mail, and rows that look like spam or phishing (a web link in the name, an unusually long name, or a number as the country).
• Country names are saved in a standard spelling (Deutschland becomes Germany, USA becomes United States, Taiwan (ROC) or Hualien becomes Taiwan) so filters and charts group them correctly.
• Multiple-choice answers (industry, mentoring goals) are split at line breaks and saved separately.

Never overwritten by an import

RSVP, workshop check-in, pairing status and partner, ⭐ priority marker, topics to avoid, preferred continents, and withdrawn status.

In the database but not in this file

These people are not removed automatically, because the export may simply be incomplete. Check each one, and if the person has really left the program, click Withdraw on that row. Rows rejected as spam that were already in the database also appear here, with a note. Participants from earlier seasons are not listed.

Statuses and markers

Pairing status

Marking someone as Withdrawn

When someone writes that they can no longer take part, mark them as Withdrawn instead of deleting them. You can do this in two places:

• On the Import page, under 🚪 Someone can no longer take part: choose the person, add a reason and submit.
• On Match Suggestions, in the person's banner: open 🚪 Can no longer take part?.

The person then disappears from matching, the Directory, charts and e-mail exports, and stays withdrawn even if a later Excel export still contains them. If the person was already paired, the partner automatically returns to Unpaired and receives the ⭐ marker with the reason “Previous match withdrew”.

To undo, open the Withdrawn list at the bottom of the Import page and click ↩ Restore. The person becomes Unpaired; an earlier pairing is not restored automatically and has to be made again.

All markers at a glance

Common situations