wp-SwimTeam

I have uploaded an early release of 1.9.646 to the Downloads page.  This new version has the ability to send out Job Assignment reminder e-mails.  There is a new action available from the Manage->Swim Meets tab called “Job Reminders”.  This action will pull all of the job assignments for the requested meet and send a reminder e-mail to each person.

The MacDolphins are testing this functionality this weekend for our Time Trials on Tuesday and barring any problems, I’ll make it available via the WordPress plugin repository later tonight or early tomorrow.  If you want it early, download it and install it manually from the Download page.

Several clubs, including my own, have asked if I would add a feature to send out reminder e-mails to people for the Jobs they have signed up for.  Today I implemented this feature and am in the process of testing it on the wp-SwimTeam Demo site.

The Job Reminder e-mail will look fairly similar to a Job Sign Up e-mail and will be sent when the Admin chooses to initiate the action.  E-mails can be controlled to limit who receives them based on the Job Duration (Full Meet, Partial Meet, Full Season, etc.).  In most cases, the Reminders need to be sent out to the people working the Meet Jobs.

Look for this update in the next day or so after I’ve done a bit of testing with it.

This evening I finished the Job Commitment Report.  I am not sure why but I had a tough time getting going on this one.  It will appear as a new tab on the Reports menu and will report the total number of credits a user has committed to for the requested season.  The report is limited to the users who have swimmers registered for the specified season.

While working on this new functionality I also found a couple of minor bug which I have also fixed.  One of the bug failed to account for a swimmer unregistering for a season so they still would have been seen as active.

I hope to have a release  out in the next day or so.

The major feature that I had been working on which I didn’t complete is the ability to generate a Jobs vs. Commitment report.  The Jobs module allows each job to assigned some number of credits and there is a setting to set the minimum number of credits each user is responsible for.  By default the system will use zero which means there isn’t a minimum.  In the latest release, when a user looks at their My Jobs tab, it will show the jobs they have committed to and sum up the credits.  If the sum of the credits is less than the minimum, an error notification will be displayed for the user.

Right now this message is only displayed on the My Jobs tab but an administrator will also see it when view selecting the Jobs action for any user from the Manage->Users tab.  I had given some thought to displaying the notification anytime a user logged in but have conclude that would be too intrusive.  I may make it an optional setting at some point though.

The one thing I haven’t figured out is how to handle a situation like we have with our own team. On our team we ask each family to volunteer four times (four credits) for the season regardless of how many swimmers they have.  If both parents are in the system (primary and secondary contacts) right now they would be erroneously flagged if each signed up for two jobs because together, they have met our requirement.

Reporting  job commitments versus user is pretty easy and I will do that in the next few days but I have also considered reporting job commitments versus swimmer so that both contacts can be accounted for.  In speaking with some teams locally, they require two volunteer commitments per swimmer so that is yet another permutation to account for.  In the short term I will likely only report commitments versus users and leave it at that for now and revisit it after the season as there are some other things I need for our season which starts in three weeks:  Results, Meet Entries, and some work on WinSwim/Hy-tek interoperability.

I have one more feature to add to the Jobs module before I consider it complete.  I have a request to be able to send out Reminder Notifications on a per swim meet basis which should be pretty straight forward to implement and I hope to have it done in the next day or two.

Once that is complete, I need to decide what to do next.  I have a couple of choices.

1. I’ve had a couple requests to be able to import a roster into wp-SwimTeam.  I don’t think this will be too difficult technically but it does require a couple decisions.  Since swimmers in wp-SwimTeam are connected to parent or guardian users, what WordPress userid would the imported swimmers be connected to?  The obvious choice is the Admin user or user running the import.  Swimmers could then be updated at a later time to connect them to the appropriate WordPress user if/when it exists.
2. Import results.  This has long been on my to-do list because the MacDolphins need it.  I’ve been working on processing results off an on as a side project (see Flip-Turn) with the intent to fold that work into wp-SwimTeam when it is functioning and useful.  I already have a lot the functionality working and the GUI will look familiar to wp-SwimTeam users but I have yet to tackle relays and really push the robustness of the SDIF parsing.
3. Hy-tek/SDIF compatibility.  This is also something I need for the upcoming season.  Anyone who has read much of this blog knows that I am not a big fan of Hy-tek and their goofy checksum and weak support of SDIF.  Since it isn’t likely to change and lots of teams use Hy-tek, we need to resolve the data exchange problem.  This issue may be the highest priority for me personally and I’ve debated whether to build some functionality into wp-SwimTeam to try and resolve sharing data with Hy-tek teams.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.  I try to incorporate suggestions quickly if I can.

I have just released wp-SwimTeam v.1.5.579, you can find it on the download page and shortly, via the automatic plugin updater.  This release fixes an issue which has bothered me personally for a long time.

There was a problem in the E-mail Confirmation code for both registrations and opt-in/opt-out.  This same code was used for the new Jobs module so it existed there too.  For a long time the confirmation e-mails were duplicated and if a swimmer had to two contacts, only one of them would receive the e-mail.  I have finally found and fixed this problem so e-mail confirmation should be cleaner and sent to the appropriate people.

I have posted an update to the wp-SwimTeam plugin.  This version addresses a few bugs, one of which was fairly critical as related to optional fields for users and swimmers.  This version also adds infrastructure to provide Contextual Help for all of the forms although only the Jobs forms have detailed help so far.  Help will be updated for other forms as time permits in upcoming releases.

This version also adds a new choice when defining a Job’s location.  Previously the location was limited to Home, Away, or Both.  A new choice, N/A, has been added to account for some jobs not being tied to a swim meet.  An example of this would be a job such as ‘End of Season Banquet Coordinator’.

There are a couple bugs in the jobs module that I became aware of today.  I have fixed them in my development tree and plan to post a new release tomorrow after some additional testing.

I just uploaded a minor  update to wp-SwimTeam.  This release adds enhancements to the reporting for jobs and the opt-in/opt-out system.  A new field called “Notes” was added to the Jobs definition.  This field is reported when viewing the Job Assignments for a swim meet.

The time stamp for opt-in/opt-out is now included when generating a swim meet report.  The time stamp can also be displayed via the short code by adding “timestamp=’y'” to the short code.  Reporting the time stamp will allow you to easily see exactly when users submitted their request.

A new version of wp-SwimTeam has been posted.  This releases fixes a couple minor bugs which prevented display of swim meet information in certain situations when scratching or registering from a swim meet.  This version also introduces two new features:

1. Open or Close the registration system. When the registration system is open, users can register their swimmers for the current season.  When the registration system is closed, only an Admin or Editor can register swimmers.  This setting appears on the Registration tab from the Options sub-menu.
2. Enable or disable user sign ups for jobs. When the job system is set for user sign ups, a user can sign up for any open job.  When the job system is set for admin sign up, users with either Admin or Editor roles can sign users up for jobs.  This second mode is good for teams where a paper or Excel list is used for job sign ups.  This setting appears on the Swim Team tab from the Options sub-menu.