Court Reporting

After people have been recognized with awards, presentations have been gifted, announcements have been made, and performances have been enjoyed, it is time to record the events of the day. It is the Court Herald’s job to submit a Court Report. This is a Kingdom specific process, and the below article outlines the requirements for heralds in Caid. Please check with the local Principal Herald for information on reporting in other Kingdoms.

Caidan heralds can submit their reports through an online form accessed directly through our Kingdom Order of Precedence (OP). This article is a step-by-step guide in completing this form.

Timeline

At the time of writing, Court Reports are expected to be completed within 48 hours after an event – for most Saturday day tournaments, this means the following Monday.

The Form

Below is a screen shot of the form used in Caid to report Court proceedings. There are eight areas highlighted. If you need to skip ahead, please scroll to the corresponding header.

Section One – Herald’s Information

The first box asks for your SCA Name – this can be your name as registered, or your name and heraldic title. As long as we know who is submitting the report and can follow up with questions, this is flexible.

The second box asks for your email address – this can be either a personal email address or your staff email address, wherever you can be reached for follow up if needed. Please double-check the spelling, as this will not autocorrect and will cause email bounce backs if not properly spelled. Currently, this field can only support one email address.

Section Two – Event Information

The first box asks for the Event Name. This should be the name as it appears on the Kingdom Events Calendar.

The second box is a drop down menu. For territory specific anniversaries or sponsored events, please select the area that hosted the event. For Kingdom specific events like Coronation, Crown Tournament, Great Western War, Festival of the Rose, and Consort’s Champion please use “Caid”. For out of Kingdom events like West/An Tir War, War of the Phoenix, Gulf Wars, and Pennsic War please choose “Other/Out of Kingdom”.

The last box in this section is a drop down calendar. Please select the correct date of the event. You are able to scroll through different months and can choose from past years, as needed. If you are reporting for an event that has multiple days, there are two options – either submit a separate report per day using the correct day for which those awards were granted, or choose the first date of the event and note in Section Three any discrepancies (more on this in the next header).

Section Three – Award Information

REQUIRED INFORMATION AND FORMATTING

The information needed to track the awards is less straightforward. As noted on the page, there are some key elements from this section that are required to go in the OP:

Recipient’s Name
OP Information *Optional
Name of the Award
Award specifics, if applicable
Who gave the award (this is only needed on Head of State change over events, or some awards such as the Legion of Courtesy, Royal Champions or Reign/Signum awards)

Accuracy on these items is key in maintaining an effective and helpful OP. In order to avoid duplicate entries or duplicate awards, it is important to check the OP and other heraldic databases for existing records.

The reporting format for this section is as follows:

Recipient’s Name – OP information – Award Name (Additional information)

Examples:

Ariana verch Gwenllian – OP11356 – Laurel (Heraldry/Research)
Ariana verch Gwenllian – NO OP, Name as registered – Award of Arms
Ariana verch Gwenllian – NO OP, Not Registered – Serpent’s Flame (Heraldry/Illumination)

CHECKING THE OP

The easiest source to check is the OP. Unless a recipient is new, they will most likely already have an OP entry. You can use the menus on the left hand side of the screen (indicated with a yellow box) to search for a person’s OP entry:

The “People of Caid” menu item takes you to a page with names listed alphabetically;
The “Honors” menu item can be used to see who has received a particular award;
The “Search” menu item is a free form search box where you can type in the recipient’s name, partial or in whole.

PROTIP: Sometimes a name is not spelled as you would expect. If you do not find the full name, try searching for unique letter clusters and alternative spellings – this is where the alphabetical listings come in handy! Also, special characters can be tricky, especially with Norse names or names with accents. For names that start with such characters, this database puts these letters at the end!

If you do not find an entry for a recipient, you will also want to check the SCA Ordinary and Armorial (OANDA) Page, so that correct information can be used to create an OP page. Please see the next section for more information on using this database.

Once you have found their entry, you can use copy and paste that information into the court report. Below is an example of an individual’s entry in the Caid OP.

Area 1 shows the display name and the individual’s known territory. You can use this name spelling in your court report.

Area 2 lists the recipient’s existing awards. These awards are listed in Precedence Order. As you can see in this example, some of the awards have extra information. The information in parentheses designates the artform for which the recipient is being recognized and the information in brackets shows which particular Royal granted the award (again, this is only tracked in this manner on some awards such as the Legion of Courtesy, Royal Champions or Reign/Signum awards). It is a good idea to check here before an event to see if someone already has an award before it is repeated in court (unless this is intentional).

Area 3 shows the status of the recipient’s name and heraldic device, along with an emblazon (picture) of their heraldic device. Please note this section only shows the submission that is designated as their “Device”; no badges currently display on this page. If a recipient has known aliases, they will be listed just below this area. This area is not relevant to Court Reports, except to verify that the name listed at the header is registered.

Area 4 shows the recipient’s unique OP ID number. This number never changes. You should use this number in your Court Reports, so that the OP team can link the award record to the correct person. To the right of this number you can see their Precedence rank, or marching number, in Caid. While not relevant to the Court Reporting workflow, this is good information to know as a court herald!

PROTIP: If you use digital dockets, such as Google Sheets, and have set up your docket with this information before the event, you can cut and paste those lines into the report with minimal adjustments!

CHECKING THE OANDA

The Ordinary and Armorial is a database that tracks all registrations across the entirety of the SCA. It is updated monthly when Laurel Sovereign of Arms releases a Letter of Acceptances and Rejections (LOAR). This page is used to check for conflicts during registration, but also allows for anyone to look up the registered versions of names or blazons. The latter is the relevant use for court reports.

The OANDA contains several search forms. The Name Pattern Search Form will be the best one for reporting purposes. Below is a screen shot of this page:

The search function on this data base uses a string search. That is, it reads data from the data base from left to right and matches the query to it. It is NOT like Google search that references each word in the query and finds results that finds them in any combination.

As a real world example using the author’s name, you can do a quick search that will alphabetically list all registrations with these five letters.

Scrolling down, you will find the entry you are expecting:

From here, you can either copy and past the name into the report, or you can click on the name link to filter out only this individual’s registrations.

If you do not locate the expected name, there are several tricks you can use in the search bar – these will add “wild card” letters, search for letters in specific locations on a word, and other ways to better narrow down your query. In this instance, “Ariana” can be spelled in different ways – the most common is “Arianna”. You can repeat the search using that spelling, or you can adjust the search to include any of the symbols in the hints page. As noted in the OP search instructions above, it’s usually best to search for the portions of a name that are most unique to that individual. The Name Pattern Search Hints page will be your best friend!

If you cannot find an individual in the OP or the OANDA, please note that in the OP information. You do not need to do a further search.

Section Four – Additional Comments

This section is a free form box and is intended as a place to record additional information outside of awards. Examples of information that can be included in this section include:

Commendations for other heralds, or thanking other COH staff;
Non-tracked awards or honors (e.g. Baronial Champions);
Communication on limitations of your report (for example: if you are filing the Baronial awards for an event but another herald will be filing the Kingdom awards);
Officer or Head of State change overs;
Issues that you faced at the event, or recommendations for running heraldic activities at that event in the future.

This field is entirely optional, and is not required for the report to be considered complete.

Section Five – Submit Report

Once you have checked the information on the report for accuracy and completeness, and are ready to submit the report, you will click on the button in Section five “Submit Report”. A Captcha window will pop up as a safety measure. Please follow the instructions to prove you are indeed human. Once completed, you will be directed to a page confirming the report was sent and an email will be sent to the email you provided with a copy of your report.

FOLLOW UP

After you have submitted your report, it is a good idea to send a copy to the Chamberlain of the Head of State for which you ran court. This allows them to keep the award database up to date, and reschedule any skipped awards or double check that the awards you are reporting match their records.

Happy Heralding!

For further reading:

Caid College of Heralds, Caid Court Report Form

SCA College of Heralds, Online System for Commentary and Response

SCA College of Heralds, Ordinary and Armorial (OANDA)

Morsulus Herald, Name Pattern Search Hints (OANDA)