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:
- 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.
- 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.
I’ve had a request from my team, the MacDolphins, to be able to send e-mail to the parents of specific age groups. We do a number of activities that are limited to older kids or only for a specific age group so I’ve been aware of this need for a while. Unfortunately I don’t have an easy way to solve it.
I think the WordPress Roles and Capabilities functionality may be the answer to my problem. I could create a role for each age group and assign the users that have a swimmer in that age group to the appropriate roles. By doing this, I think I can continue to use the Email Users plugin to contact specific groups of users based on the roles defined.
I need to do more research on Roles and Capabilities. I’ve played with a couple plugins and they aren’t real straight forward.
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:
- 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.
- 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).
- 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.
This evening I installed the Simple:Press forum plugin. This forum should be used for questions, bug reports, and anything else related to wp-SwimTeam. I will try and add some information on installing and configuring wp-SwimTeam soon but I am also considering adding a Wiki for documentation. Click on the Forum tab along the top of the page to access the forum.
As I work on results functionality I have several ideas floating around my head. One is the ability to chart swimmer results over the course of a season or possibly several seasons. Charting over several seasons raises some issues (e.g. different age groups, event distances, etc.) but charting results for at least one season would be interesting.
I had thought about using the same functionality that the WordPress.com Stats plugin uses which is Open Flash Chart to plot results. Today while looking for something else, I may have found something which is a better solution: pChart – a PHP library for building charts!
Hopefully I will get to try it out in the next few weeks. I have been sidetracked by a WordPress project for my daughter’s soccer team so Swim Team will have wait a little longer.
We use WinSwim to manage and run swim meets for the MacDolphins and now that our season has started, I have been doing a lot of work with WinSwim and not too much with wp-SwimTeam. There are some things I need to fix but right now nothing is broken.
A year ago when I started using WinSwim I ended up creating a slew of custom reports mostly to deal with the fact that our pool is one of the few in the area which is a 25 meter pool – most are 25 yards. We needed times in both meters and yards and the reports which came with WinSwim didn’t really handle it. So I created a bunch of my own. The only real downside of using custom reports is it required a file that is installed with WinSwim (language.xml) to be modified. This was a maintenance headache as it would be overwritten with each WinSwim update.
WinSwim 4.0.21 introduced a new model for custom reports which removes the need to modify the language.xml file (yeah!). Now each report is paired with a corresponding XML file and they all reside in a directory called “custom” within the WinSwim installation tree.
The reports are mostly geared around Heat Sheets and end of year reports. To use the new reports, download the ZIP file and unzip into your top level WinSwim installation directory.
WinSwim Custom Reports – v07-05, last updated on 2009-07-06
For example. in my case, I have WinSwim installed like this:
When the reports are installed correctly you will have a new “Custom” menu available in the Report Viewer as a new top level menu item to the right of “Reports”. Note that the old “Custom” menu under the “Reports” but will still be there and will likely be empty unless you are using the old style of custom reports (which is still supported).
