Robolyst Robolyst
Help

Short answers first. Then the long version.

9 answers to what teams ask in their first week, 17 guides for the work behind them, and a person on the other end if neither covers it.

Answers

The questions that come up in the first week.

Claiming, verifying, who can change what, and where the numbers come from. Each one ends at the screen that does it.

Getting started

4
How do I get my team onto Robolyst?

Find your team and claim it. That creates your group and starts verification.

Claim your team
Do I need an account to look up teams?

No. Team profiles, rankings, records, award pages and event results are public and need no sign-in. An account is for running your own team’s work.

Browse teams
What does verifying do?

It proves your group controls your FTC team number, which is what makes you the owner of that team’s public profile, website, and sponsors. You place a one-time link in your FTC coach dashboard’s Team Website field, then change it back to your own site once you’re verified. (FIRST removed the Robot Name field we used to use, so it’s the website field for now.)

Verify your team
How do I get my teammates in?

Invite by email, share one join code, or add placeholders now and invite them later. Placeholders can all be invited in one go.

Go to Members

Running your team

3
Who can change what?

Owner, Manager, and Member ship configured, and 20+ permissions can be mixed into custom roles: a build lead who approves parts orders but can’t touch the website, for example.

Roles and permissions
We don’t use half of this. Can we hide it?

Turn any workspace off under Settings → Features. Nothing is deleted. A feature you turn back on returns with everything still in it.

Turn features on and off
Does any of this cost money?

No. Every workspace is free. Fiscal sponsorship (a team finance account under our 501(c)(3)) is optional and takes 4% of what flows through it.

About fiscal sponsorship

The data

2
Where do the numbers come from?

Every event, match and award page is built from official FTC results and updates as they post. OPR and the derived metrics are computed from those match scores, for every event, including the ones you didn’t attend.

What each metric means
Something on our team page is wrong.

Results and awards come straight from the official record, so a wrong score is fixed at the source. Anything else (the wrong logo, a stale roster, a duplicate team), tell us and we fix it.

Report it
Guides

The long-form ones, next to the workspace they happen in.

Each guide is a job your team has to do (a budget, a build plan, a portfolio, a scouting system), written out in full, then linked to the part of the portal that runs it.

Starting out

4
Your first season, week by week Kickoff to your first qualifier, for teams who have never done it
Choosing your events How qualifiers, leagues and championships fit together, and how to pick Schedule
Recruiting and onboarding members Where members actually come from, and why the first month decides who stays Members
Who does what on an FTC team Real roles, what each owns, and splitting a team of eight versus thirty Members

Playing the game

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How to scout an FTC event What to record, what to ignore, and how to pick an alliance partner Stats
How to plan an FTC build season Kickoff to your first qualifier without the last-week panic Tasks
How to read a new game manual First-pass extraction, the sections rookies skip, and building a scoring table
Turning a game into a strategy Points per cycle, why density beats totals, and deciding what not to build
Picking a drivetrain Mecanum, tank and swerve, honestly, with the maintenance cost nobody mentions

Judging and awards

3
How to write an FTC engineering portfolio What judges are looking for, and what they see instead Documentation
How FTC awards actually work Every award, how judging happens, and which you can realistically win year one Documentation
Outreach that wins Connect and Inspire What counts, what judges see through, and documenting it as it happens

Running the team

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How to get FTC sponsors Who to ask, what to ask for, and why most letters fail Public Site
How to budget an FTC season What it costs, where it goes wrong, and how to hand it over Finance
Running a meeting that isn't wasted Agendas, standing items, and ending with assigned work Schedule
Safety and tool training Shop rules and training records, for coaches and mentors Checklists
Handing your team over What to write down in May so the team survives graduation
Copyable templates → What the toolkit does → Scouting metrics →

Still stuck?

Bugs, feature requests, and “how do I…” all go to the same place, and a person reads every one of them.

Contact us