Sportsynergy

We heard from one of our clients that during Prime Time hours people would make back to back reservations, thus clogging up the courts.  They described another case when people would make a singles reservation looking for a match, then not have anyone sign up, then not show up.  Both of these scenarios might be okay for sometimes but not when court time is at a premium .

Enter the new and improved Sportsynergy Clubpro Scheduling Policy.  With this release that we just installed there are two additional options when creating a scheduling policy.  The first is called “Allow Back to Back Reservations,” the second is called “Allow Looking for Match”.  For those courts or times of day that people shouldn’t be making these back to back reservations or shouldn’t be making reservations looking for a partner, this new  breed of scheduling policy will enforce these rules.  If you are not familiar with Scheduling Policy, check them out under System View in Club Preferences.

That’s right, here at Sportsynergy we are looking out for you…in a way. With this latest Clubpro release we installed a few updates that hopefully will make your life (when using our world class court reservation system) a little easier. For starters, on the main reservation page we swapped the days drop down and the date. After conducting extensive usability studies we concluded that this is a much more intuitive layout…. Actually, that’s not true. We just think it looks better. The other update we made was for reserving doubles courts. We changed doubles reservation page by adding more description. We think that this is going to help.

Enjoy!

One of our clubs just called up and reported that in attempting to reserve a court for 12:00 on Monday that the system called them a “Query.” From those of you reading this not from the U.K, aparently this is not a good thing. More specifically this error mentioned:

Can’t execute query

SELECT tblReservations.usertype
FROM tblReservations
WHERE (((tblReservations.courtid)=26)
AND ((tblReservations.time)=1.2366E 9))
AND tblReservations.enddate IS NULL

MySQL Error: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ’1.2366E 9)) AND tblReservations.enddate IS NULL’ at line 4

This script cannot continue, terminating.

In any event, this has been fixed. We can assure you that here at the Sportsynergy galaxy headquarters, no harm was meant by this.

An emergency fix was applied and normalcy has been effectively restored…at least in using our software.

Doubles Ladders

You asked for it so here it is.

To follow up with our singles ladders which was introduced last month, we are unveiling a Doubles Ladder.  The doubles ladder works in the same way as the singles ladder but for doubles *.  Here is how it works.  Lets start out with a doubles ladder that looks like this:

1. Jim
2. Walter
3. Jack
4. Tina
5. Nadia
6. Derek
7. Sam

Lets say that Jim and Walter lose a challenge match against Nadia and Sam.  After recording this score the ladder will be updated to look like this:

1. Nadia
2. Sam
3. Jim
4. Walter
5. Jack
6. Tina
7. Derek

You get the idea, right?  Basically, if you win a Challenge in doubles you are guarenteed to move up past both players in the opposing team.  Enjoy!

Limited Access Players

One other thing we also added with this release is the concept of  a Limited Access Player role.  You can assign this role to anyone who you don’t want making reservations.  You see, Limited Access Players are just like regular Players, but they are restricted from making their own reservations.  Some clubs may use this role to restrict juniors from reserving courts, for example.  When a limited access player attempts to reserve a court they are politely told that they are not allowed.  To update a players role, log in as a club administrator and head right over to the Account Maintenance.

* no s#&t.

A few of the clubs out there have suggested that we add a Club Ladder. After thinking about it for a while, we actually agreed, this isn’t that bad an idea.  So, in the latest version we included what we call Club Ladder.  A Club Ladder is a ranking of players based on how well they have done in their challenge matches rather than just their ranking.  So here is how it works: If you sign up to play with some one else in the ladder and select Challenge Match as your match type when making your reservation your results will be reflected on the Club Ladder.  If you beat some one ahead of you in the Club Ladder, you will take their spot and they will slide down one spot.  Lets run through an example.  Before any matches are scored here is how the ladder looks:

1. Bill
2. Bob
3. Sue
4. Jimmy

Sue and Bill play a Challenge Match and somehow, she beats him.  After they score this match now the ladder will look like this:

1. Sue
2. Bill
3. Bob
4. Jimmy

You can add yourself to the ladder by going into Player Rankings screen.  After viewing the ladder you will see a link that will allow you to add yourself.  As as side note, when you add yourself to the ladder you will be added to the bottom of the list regardless of your current ranking.   If you want to be on the top of the ladder, we’re not just going to give it to you, you got to earn it.

Ok, so we just recently moved to the Gridserver.  This was going to be a great way to kick off 2009, you know with a whole new level of system stability.

Wrong.

It looks like our new hosting company has had a “Hundred Year” crash today around noon CST.  Hopefully this didn’t cause you to miss too many matches.  If it did…well, you can blame us.  For you, the good news is that our team of highly skilled scientists will not be let out of their lab until we have the system stability problem fixed once and for all.

You may have noticed a breif interuption in service tonight.  In addition to installing a new version of our software, we also moved to a new server…a brand new, shiny Gridserver.   Gridserver technology (in case you don’t know) is a cluster-based, modern hosting service powered by hundreds of servers working in tandem.   This is going to be a much faster, more reliable server than what we were using before.    As always, if you do have any questions of problems with this, drop us a line.

We like to call this the holiday release.  In this one we have something for just about everyone.  Now, we have something for the administrators to set that will “encourage” people to record their scores called a ranking adjustment.  What this thing is, is a setting for how much of a percentage drop a player’s ranking will be adjusted if they don’t record a score within thirty days.  Players will be sent a warning email a week before this happens and another email when it happens.

The other main thing here  we got in is an update for recording scores.  You see, before administrators weren’t able to specify the match type like Practice, Challenge, and Box League on the Record Scores screen in the System Administrators menu.  Now they can.  On a related note, with another one of these updates Administrators can now set restrict members from recording their own scores with a new Club Preference.

Other than these two things we squeezed in quite a few random odds and ends.  So gather up the kids, put another log on the fire, and snuggle up to the latest clubpro release.

Greetings. I hope you enjoy reading our new blog.  In the coming weeks we hope to launch the next version of the Sportsynergy web site.  With this new version we will have a lot more interactivity going on.  We are going to be posting all the goings on right here on the our blog.  Actually, we have a lot to talk about.  We are working on a new product called Extend which will eventually replace our existing Clubpro offering. While this puppy is still in development we are excited about it.

Stayed tuned