Czar is how we keep track of puzzles and people. The main Czar page shows a list of puzzles with links to the puzzle on the Mystery Hunt site, to our spreadsheet for solving, and metadata about the puzzle. It also shows the current Puzzle Czar and Comm Czars. The Who page shows a grid of people and activities - puzzles and things like "sleeping" or "out getting food."
The first time you start Czar, you will see a box at the top that says "Who are you?", and any buttons on the page will be labeled WhoRU. Choose your name from the menu. (If your name isn't there, click "Back to Who", enter your name in the "Add person" field, and then return back to the main Czar page.) Once you've updated the "Who are you?" menu to all the buttons that previously said WhoRU will now say something more meaningful like "Start" or "Do This".
You will also need to authenticate with Google to ensure you have access to the team's shared Google Drive folder. As such, the first time you load Czar, you will see a button that says "Authenticate with Google to enter a new puzzle". Click that and log into your Google Account that has access to the shared folder. If you can't access the folder, ask someone else on the team to add you, since it will be necessary to view the puzzles linked from Czar as well. Note that if you see a field that says "Click to enter new puzzle name", you've already authenticated and don't need to worry about this step.
Now you're ready to start using Czar!
You are expected to keep Czar up to date with what you're working on at all times, and your local Puzzle Czar is expected to nag you if you don't.
There are two types of activities on Czar: "exclusive" activities (e.g. puzzles, sleeping) and "non-exclusive" activities (e.g. Puzzle Czar, Comm Czar). The reason we make a distinction is that everyone should always be assigned to an "exclusive" activity, and Czar will give you a big scary warning when you aren't assigned to one. It is fine to be unassigned between puzzles while you are looking for what to do next, but if you are unassigned for more than say, 15 minutes, you should start thinking about updating your status with a non-puzzle activity, or just pick a puzzle already. :)
By far the most common exclusive activity will be working on puzzles. To signify that you are working on a specific puzzle, simply click the "Do This" button next to the puzzle you are working on and it will turn green and start a clock keeping track of how long you've been on the puzzle. This simple action will automatically remove from your previous puzzle (or previous exclusive activity) and update your "Current activity". When puzzles are solved (as signified by getting the "solved" tag - more on tags below), everyone working on that puzzle will be kicked off the puzzle and will need to choose their next puzzle (or exclusive activity). If you really want to keep working on a solved puzzle for some reason, just click the "Do This" button on that puzzle again, but why are you still working on it?
Note that to ensure your status is current, your green counter button next to the puzzle you are working on will eventually turn red. If this happens, please just hit the button again to reset your clock. This is a signal to everyone that there is still a live human working on the puzzle and you haven't fallen asleep or left.
For some of the most common non-puzzle exclusive activities, like "Sleeping" or "Away" (running errands), there are some buttons on the main Czar page at the top right. Just click on the activity, and you'll be removed from your current exclusive activity and be moved to that one. This is especially important when you are not going to be puzzling for a long time. Don't just abandon ship and leave yourself assigned to a puzzle that isn't finished, because that will look to the rest of the team like someone is working on it. Note that you can't click again to leave the activity from Czar; if you're not doing it any more, then you must be doing something else.
Contact the Czar manager (currently Wei-Hwa) if you feel an activity is common enough to go up there on the list.
For less common exclusive activities, you'll need to visit Who to update your status. On the Who page, just click on the intersection of your name and the desired activity, then select the green "Exclusively" button, which will unassign you from your previous exclusive activity (if any) and assign you to the new one. (You may need to create the activity on the Who page if it isn't there already.) Once you pick an exclusive activity from Who, if you go back to Czar, you'll now see that activity in your "Current activity" field.
Some activities don't require all of your attention, and you'd like to do those along with whatever puzzle you are currently working on. The most common cases of this are the rotating jobs of Puzzle Czar and Comm Czar. You can indicate you are in those roles directly from the main Czar page, at the top right. When you start a Puzzle Czar or Comm Czar shift, simply hit "Start" next to the appropriate shift and your name will be added to that section for all to see, and will be shown in your UI as your "Current job". When you finish your shift, hit "Stop" and your name will be removed. It is generally good practice to help ensure the incoming PC/CC starts their shift when yours ends so there is never a gap. Note that starting and stopping the jobs in this manner is independent of your puzzle status, because these jobs are generally treated as non-exclusive, though if you want to dedicate your full attention to one of these, feel free to make your assignment exclusive from the Who page, as described above.
For any other activity that you'd like to add as a non-exclusive activity, you'll need to visit Who to update your status. The process is the same as described for selecting exclusive activities on "Who", except that you would choose the purple "Non-Exclusively" button, and this won't remove you from any other activity. To remove yourself from a non-exclusive activity, again click on the corresponding cell in Who, and choose the "No longer" button.
To add a new puzzle to Czar, you first need to be authenticated with Google as described in the Getting started section above. Once authenticated, you will thereafter see a field that says "Click to enter new puzzle name". Simply type the name of the new puzzle into that field, which will generate a new puzzle entry in Czar, and a new spreadsheet will be automatically created with the same name, and the "sheet" field for the puzzle will be updated to link to the newly created spreadsheet.
Finally, you will need to manually link to the puzzle itself from the newly created puzzle entry. Simply click on the "puzzle" field and paste in the URL of the puzzle itself (usually hosted from a site we don't have knowledge of until hunt day.) There's a shortcut for this -- when you type in the puzzle name in the previous step, hit space and paste in the URL. Czar will strip off the URL from the end of your puzzle name and automatically make the link.
Click on the puzzle name or status field to change them. Tags can be added to label puzzles by wave and status. Once we learn the structure of the Hunt, we'll decide on an appropriate naming and tagging scheme for puzzles.
The Who page shows both puzzles and non-puzzle activities, such as "Sleeping" and "In Boston." Non-puzzle activities are shown in orange at the bottom of the list. You can add a new non-puzzle activity on the Who page with the Edit control near the bottom, Add activity. You can change the name of an activity by clicking its name in the grid.
Puzzles have tags, and a tag is just a string (lowercase letters and numbers only). You can add or edit tags on the Czar main page by clicking the list of tags. Tags are separated by commas; you can have multiple tags per puzzle. We expect we'll tag puzzles with their wave (if there's a wave structure), their meta, and whether they've been solved, and other things as we see fit.
Both the main and Who pages have a means of filtering puzzles by tags. Specifically, these pages show only those puzzles that match all of the checked tags (if no tags are checked then all puzzles match). Checking the "invert" box shows "the other puzzles."
There are two tags that have special meaning in czar. Use "solved" to indicate that a puzzle has been solved and use "meta" on any metapuzzles.
Czar is known to work with Firefox and Chrome and known to not work with IE. There are some reports of working with Safari as well. But Chrome is awesome, you should use Chrome.