Spring 2022 – Many New Features! |
Hello %firstname% %lastname%,
Spring is finally here in Northeast USA and many are eager to get the covers off and splash. Our Australian friends are seeing the opposite weather transition. Back in January, Crew Manager 3.0.0 was announced and since then has been incrementally updated to 3.0.1. Since version 3.0.0 provided a new baseline, many improvements were made to provide consistency across the various screens and introduce new features. The Crew Manager news has been quiet since January because I’ve been head down finishing all the new features and updating the documentation. That is now complete. I’d like to provide special acknowledgement to Crew Manager subscribers EC Helme from J/92s Spirit and Dan Corcoran from J/109 Strider who helped me define and test many of the new Crew Manager improvements.
Included in this update are the following topics:
- New Features
- Bug Fixes
- Crew Manager Documentation (another Major update!)
New Features
- Common Screen Interface with the Date Badge for Most Pages: Just a little object but so much information! The Date Badge is the small graphical calendar icon composed of the month, day, year and day of the week located to the left of every event. Mousing over the date badge (or light finger touch on mobile devices) pops up a window with complete event information including the crew list. The pop-ups have been reformatted to display the most frequently used information near the top of the pop-up. Mousing or tapping outside the window closes the popup. The event may be opened by clicking the date badge or tapping with your finger on a mobile device. The date badge is now standard for upcoming events and for the following pages; annual calendar, regatta results, availability, assignments, regatta registration status, edit assignments by crew, and edit assignments by event. The Skipper may also access the edit event links inside the date badge. Just to the right of the date badge an area is reserved to display the event title (with link to calendar event), the location, times, recurring dates (if any), categories and tags. This same display format is used on most Crew Manager screens so you don’t need to get your head around what is shown each time a different page is opened.
There is also a common interface across screens to filter events. The filters and check boxes provided make it easier to drill down to the desired information if you have an extensive schedule. The picture below provides an annotated view of the new standard display with the date badge, event information area and common header with the filter options.
- Annual Calendar is New Default Calendar View: A new Annual view has been added to the Calendar and set as the default view when any user selects Calendar from the menu. The previous Agenda and Monthly Views are still available using a dropdown at the top of the calendar should that view be desired. The Annual view offers a streamlined approach to provide information quickly to viewers whether they be logged in Skippers, logged in Crew or guests visiting the site. Crew may easily check a radio button to enable entry for Availability and Crew Comments on each event and on mobile devices may initiate SMS text messages to crew scheduled on each event.
Skippers are provided all the Crew options with the ability to cancel events and also are provided a screen to enable common event maintenance tasks such as assigning tags and categories to multiple events at once, split and edit events, delete events, and initiate an email or SMS text to Crew schedule for an event. Skippers have a button to click so they may capture the URL from the address bar when filters have been set. This allows the link to be sent to Crew in an email or SMS text so they may instantly open the same filtered view (e.g. just display the one design events). The copy URL button is provided to the Skipper on multiple Crew Manager pages.
Annual Calendar Skipper Summary View (Phone)
Annual Calendar Skipper View (Phone)
- Selectable Default Calendar View: Users may set the default calendar view in their user profile if the previous Agenda view is preferred. Switching between views (Annual, Agenda or Monthly is available with a dropdown on the calendar page so that a different view may be selected whenever desired.
- More robust filters for categories and tags making it easier to group and search for events. New categories and tags may be added by skippers to help define event groups. These groups allow filtering. Some examples include:
- A Skipper has multiple boats (J/109 & J/70) that has different crew members. The J/109 events may be assigned as tag J/109 and the J/70 assigned a tag J/70. This allows anyone viewing the site to select either tag to view just those events that the respective boat is scheduled. The tags may be used by the viewer on Calendar, Results, Availability, Assignments, Regatta Registration Status, Edit Assignments by Crew, and Edit Assignments by Event.
- A boat races One Design, PHRF and ORC events. Anyone viewing the site may select individual categories to display only a single category or multiple categories (e.g. One Design or selecting two categories to display One Design and ORC events).
- Display of categories & filters on the event titles in the lists making them easily to visually see without having to open each event. See the screen shots above for examples.
- Creating a series, then splitting to individual events is now easier with the push of a button. Crew is automatically copied from the master event to and event that is split off. This is best done using the Skipper View with the Annual Calendar.
- Cancel Event Immediately has options to cancel a particular day, or the entire series. This is available for the Skipper logged in and displayed on both desktops and phones. See the phone display above as an example.
- Buttons are available to copy URLs to the clipboard for filtered events on the various Crew Manager generated pages . This makes it easier to send a link to crew for things such as “update availability for One Design events”, or “Check out our finish results for the ORC races”.
- Skipper Send Email now retains what was sent (or attempted to be sent) on the screen so that it may be easily sent to another group, or if a mistake was made, can be edited and resent.
- Skipper Send Email is accessible with buttons on Annual Calendar with the crew group scheduled for the event. This makes it easy to click the button, which opens the Skipper Send Email page and the To Group pre defined. The button is annotated with the number of email recipients. See phone display screen shot above as an example.
- Custom Reports have more fields available to include in reports and events may have crew sorted in the same order as shown on the calendar crew lists.
- Admin screens now include prominent buttons to easily navigate in the admin section, or back to the site home page.
- Photo upload capability improved for adding to comments made by crew on posts and events
Please Clear Your Browser Cache!
Many of the new features include scripts and styling that are cached by your web browser. These need to be manually cleared by all users for the new features to work properly.
Bug Fixes
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Saving Updated Crew Assignments Removed Skipper: John Brynjolfsson from TP52 Saga in San Diego reported on 9 February 2022 that when he assigned crew positions using the Skipper menu Edit Assignments by Event, his name would sometime drop off the crew list. When this was reported in early February I was not able to reproduce the problem, thus didn’t know how to fix it.
On 0930 on 24 February John reported that it happened again. I was unable to reproduce this problem on any other site, so John helped troubleshoot by taking a screen shot and sending it to me with a detailed explanation on what he was doing when it occurred. Thanks to John’s complete documentation of the issue, I was able to reproduce the problem, diagnose the cause and implement the fix. The fix was incorporated on all sites 4.5 hours after John made the report on 24 February.
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Bug that had Work Around for Split & Edit on Calendar Display has incorrect dates: Previously before version 3.0.0 it was found that when a calendar page displays only a portion of the repeating events (e.g. events span across a month), the Split & Edit links create the separated event on the wrong day. This has been fixed with the introduction of the new Annual Calendar.
Crew Manager Documentation
A major rewrite of Crew Manager documentation was completed. It includes a searchable table of contents and index to make finding information easier. This is available on all sites by mousing over Support and clicking on Crew Manual or Skipper Manual as desired. The support forum will still be used for feature announcements, bug reports/fixes, and FAQs.
Planning the 2022 Season helpful hints: The 2022 Crew Manager master calendar has been populated with a number of 2022 events that are already scheduled and most include a tag with the geographic region to filter for your area. If you find events that should be added so multiple subscribers may copy them to their own calendar, please email the information to me. Creating your 2022 schedule should be much easier this year with the following tools:
- Smart Copy Events from Past Seasons
- Copy Events from Other Crew Manager Sites (improvements made!)
- Import Events from Excel
- Split & Edit Recurring Events (improvements made!)
Included from a past email update is the following as still a useful feature given the pandemic. The Covid-19 situation has a number of organizing authorities requiring Skippers to submit Crew contact tracing information as part of race registration. Some new features have been added to Crew Manager to make this task easier. Custom Reports is available on the Skipper menu with the Crew Information Report available to produce a report with desired fields as described in the Skipper Manual at this link.
Support documentation is always available from each site menu and on the Crew Manager Support Forum. Anyone may read the forum but you need to create a forum account to post. The forum is easily reached via the boat website menu where the following choices are provided.
- Crew Manual – available from each site menu that provides complete reference for Crew members with descriptions and screen shots
- Skipper Manual – available from each site menu that provides complete reference for Skippers & Admin members with descriptions and screen shots
- Documentation and FAQs – Crew & Skipper manual links and answers to frequently asked questions
- Crew Manager User Discussion and Questions – If you have a question or want to discuss something post it here.
- Report a Bug – If you find a problem report it here so it can be addressed.
- Request a Feature – We are open to suggestions, additions or changes to Crew Manager that will make it better for everyone!
Crew Manager LLC is a low budget operation with website hosting expenses and RI Small Business tax filing expenses. If you like it, please help recruit boats by forwarding this email to your friends. The Annual Subscription for New Sites and Annual Subscription Renewal options are the best deal. I hope you find Crew Manager as a useful means to organize your schedule and crew. If you have suggestions on how it can be made better, feel free to post on the Support Forum.