wp-SwimTeam

This afternoon I uploaded v0.2.482 of wp-SwimTeam.  This release introduces the new Jobs module (aka Volunteers).  Please back up your database before upgrading as this version changes the structure of one of the tables and introduces two others.

Please let me know if you have any problems with this version.  I’ve done a fair amount of testing and I have it up and running on the MacDolphins web site.

The jobs module introduces two new short codes:

• wpst_job_descriptions
• wpst_meet_job_assignments

Example usage of these two new short codes can be found on the wp-SwimTeam demo site here and here.

There is also a new release of the phpHtmlLib plugin which wp-SwimTeam requires available.  This build addresses a minor issue exposed in Wordpress 3.0 beta testing.

Hopefully the new Jobs module will be helpful for your team, I know it will be helpful for mine!

Development, Release, download demo, download, jobs, volunteers, WordPress

I have update the wp-SwimTeam demo site with a preliminary version which includes the new jobs module.  I expect I will release it over the weekend at some point.   You can see what a sample page or post would look like for a swim meet.  From the Administrative perspective, a similar report is available but includes more details (e.g. phone numbers).

I had a chance to show this to the woman who coordinates volunteers for the MacDolphins and she was pretty excited about it.  It should make her job much easier and it will also make it much easier for parents to know when they have signed up to volunteer.

I want to do a little more testing on it before I release it but I am pretty confident it is working pretty well.

Development, Featured, demo jobs, MacDolphins, volunteers

This past week I have made quite a bit of progress on the jobs module.  Everything seems to be working, I just have some polish and testing to finish up before I will release it.  The basic job work flow works like this:

1. Define a job – title, description, duration, etc.
2. Allocate a job to a season or to one or more swim meets.  This action connects a job to a specific season or meet and defines the number of positions required.
3. Assign job ownership.  This can be done by either the administrator or by end users themselves.  End users cannot assign themselves jobs which are already assigned to another user.  An administrator can change the assignment of a job from one person to another.  Job assignment can be performed in couple different ways:
• Full or Partial Season long jobs can be assigned from the Seasons tab.
• Full or Partial Meet long jobs can be assigned from the Swim Meets tab.
• A specific job can be assigned from the Jobs tab.

The Swim Meet Report has been enhanced to include a Job Assignment section and a new short code has been defined to allow a meet specific job report to be added to a page or post easily.  The wp-SwimTeam demo site will be updated shortly to show some of the new features.

Development, Progress, demo jobs, volunteers

Over the last couple of days I have finally made some visible progress on the Jobs module. I am still not wild about the term “allocate” but it is the best I have come up so I am proceeding with it.

At this point I am able to define jobs, allocate a job and quantity required against a swim meet and make some refinements of the allocation. I also have the beginning of the assignment to a specific user GUI done but not the backend functionality. I am optimistic that I may finish a first pass this weekend.

Development, Progress Progress, volunteers

Progress on volunteers has been slower than I thought it would be.  It turns out that jobs, which is how I refer to the various roles that volunteers take on within wp-SwimTeam, is harder than I thought it would be.

The underlying data is fairly easy to manage but how to present the jobs, associate them with a season or swim meet, and then assign people to fill them has been a challenge.  I think the reason I am struggling with this is I am not happy with the terminology I am using.  There are three aspects to the Jobs functionality:

1. Definition of jobs:  Titles, descriptions, duration, etc. 
2. Allocation of jobs:  Jobs are allocated to either a season or a swim meet or multiple meets.  The number of positions for each job will vary.  For example, the number of timers needed is dependent on the number of lanes the host pool  has.  You might need four timers one week and then three the next.
3. Assignment of jobs:  Connecting a name to a particular job.  The Lane 2 timer at meet XYZ will be Betty Jones.  The Announcer at meet ABC will be Tom Burns.

I am ok with the “Definition” of jobs and the “Assignment” of jobs but I don’t like the term “Allocation” but I can’t think of anything better.  If you have a suggestion, drop me a comment!

Progress documentation, volunteers

I had done some work on volunteer management last year but put it aside to focus on other features.  I have picked it back up and found that one of the assumptions I had made last fall was completely wrong.

I concluded over the weekend that volunteers is three phases:

1. Definition of volunteer roles which are referred to as “Jobs” within wp-SwimTeam.  The definition of a job includes the title, description, type of job, duration, where it is needed (home, away, both), and a few other details.
2. Assignment of jobs to a season or meet.  Some jobs span a season, some are only for a meet.  The number of people needed to fill the jobs will differ from team to team and from pool to pool.  You might need 3 timers for a 6 lane pool but 4 for a 8 lane pool (assuming each team provides half the timers).
3. Assignment of people to the jobs.  Once all of the jobs are defined and allocated for each meet and season, people need to sign up (or be assigned) to the jobs.  Initially I expect to only implement assignment and will add sign up later.

I’d be curious to know if anyone can think of a scenario that this won’t work for.  I’ve got phase 1 completed already and will start on phase 2 this week.

Development, Ideas volunteers

I have not done much work on wp-SwimTeam over the past few months but about a week ago I dusted off my virtual machine (have I ever mentioned how much I love VMware Workstation?) in preparation for the upcoming season.  Since I last worked on the project there have been numerous patches for Windows XP (my development area is an XP VM) and WordPress has moved from 2.7 through the 2.8.x releases and is now on 2.9.1.

All new work will be done against 2.9.1 (for now) so I have upgraded WordPress and the plugins that I use in conjunction with wp-SwimTeam.  There are two areas where I will focus on immediately – importing results which I never finished last year and volunteer management.  I’ll probably finish the portion of results I am working on right now and then move on to volunteer management since we’ll need that functionality in March when the MacDolphins do registration.

News, Progress, WordPress registration, results, VMware, volunteers

I was out of town last week for work and thought I might have some free time to work on the plugin but other than my plane ride home, I had none.  So I didn’t make much progress but this morning I was able to finish up the admin side of the Swim Team Jobs and Volunteers.

Most swim teams rely heavily on volunteers so having a system where parents can sign up to work meets and practices is really important, at least I think so.  I know it is important to the MacDolphins.

Because all volunteer jobs aren’t equal, I decided to allow a value to be assigned to a job.  This way a report can be generated which reports the amount of volunteer contribution associated with each swimmer.  Some teams may elect not to use this and I will end up making it a configurable setting at some point but for now, it is on.

Now that I can define all of the jobs, I need to let people sign up for them – that is next on the to-do list.

Development, Progress volunteers

Over the last couple days I have been thinking about how to manage the volunteer system.  I suspect most teams are like the MacDolphins and the parents of the swimmers are required to complete some level of volunteering in the plethora of roles required to run a swim meet.  But how do you account for the dramatic difference in time each role requires?

I am leaning toward implementing a system where the roles are defined and then assigned some sort of unit value.  Each parent would be required to volunteer for some team specified units and the system would track how many units people worked.  For example, a timer might be 10 units and pizza selling might be 5 units.  If a parent volunteered as a timer at one meet and sold pizza at another meet, they have completed 15 units of volunteer time.  The units per role could be assigned such that the season long jobs (e.g. chair person) might be worth 50 units.

Just an idea, we’ll see where it goes.

Development, Ideas idea, volunteers

This afternoon I was able to get event loading working for individual swim meets.  The system allows the definition of a standard set of events.  These events can be loaded into a swim meet to seed the swim meet and then tweaked for the needs of the specific meet (e.g. running the 6 & under groups early).

In the process I fixed a couple other broken things, the most important one being the controls on the GUI Data Lists widgets didn’t work on the ones which had a drop down menu.  Now that the events are loaded, I can start working on bringing the results of a swim meet back into the system

Before I do that, I will probably work on the volunteer system as that is something I need for our own swim team soon.

Development, Progress events, results, volunteers