wp-SwimTeam v1.34.963 available for download

This afternoon I fixed a couple of minor bugs and pushed out v1.34.963.  The primary new feature in this release is the ability to export Meet Entries to Hy-tek Team Manager.  I have had lots of requests to support Hy-tek over the years so I am happy to say I can finally support it!

As anyone who has read my postings over the past few years knows, I am no fan of Hy-tek.  Between the closed data format and the awful user interface, it amazes me that their products have become the defacto standards for Swim Team and Swim Meet management but they have.  If you want to play in this space you need to interface with Hy-tek.  Fortunately some smart guys decoded the HY3 checksum and through lots of experiments some other people have figured out the HY3 file format so building on the work of others, I can now export a roster and meet entries in HY3 format.

I would appreciate feedback in this area as I have tested what I can but there is no such thing as too much testing and I may not have envisioned every scenario.  There is also a very strong possibility that some of the fields in the HY3 format may not be in the right place or contain the right data.

I also fixed a number of issues when browsing Parents, Swimmers, and the Roster where the Search function wasn’t working correctly.  Most of these problems were due to the SQL changes I made to address performance issues but a couple of them were due to allowing search against fields which are computed as opposed to extracted from the database.

7 thoughts on “wp-SwimTeam v1.34.963 available for download

  1. Hi Mike,
    I’m in the process of building a wordpress site as extension of our main http://www.aquawaard.nl site.
    As you may guess from that site, we are a swimming/polo club.

    Your swim team plugin appears to be a very promising solution for team management.
    After installing, I rushed to add a team, but ran into an issue on the two required fields below the City name field.
    They are required (drats.. I don’t need them)
    The fields seem to test for a particular format of input, I can’t just add ‘n/a’ or any other generic data in it.

    Not being a coder myself, it wouldd help if you could let me know what format those two fields should be, so I can populate them with fictitious info and move on.

    As request for enhancement, I kindly suggest to make these non-required and indicate their use/format in a newer release

    Thanks,
    Leo

    • Take a look at the Swim Team -> Options -> Swim Team settings form. If you set “Geography” field to “International” the error checking for the “State or Province” and “Country” fields is much looser than when set to “United States” or “European Union” where there is some knowledge of what those fields are expected to look like. Can you see if that will alleviate your issue? The full address (city, state, country, etc.) is used for supporting Google Maps so if you don’t enter useful stuff in them, make sure Google Maps support isn’t enabled.

  2. Hello

    My daughters are involved in a swim team and I have been asked to look at updating their website. I have some coding experience and have recently started dabling with WordPress. I founf the SwimTeam Plugin and installed it as I think it is ideal for what they are looking for. I am no expert in any of the areas, including swimming, be though I would give it a go.

    I was just wondering if there is a guide for what the different fileds are that need to be entered. I have activated the Plugin and it seems to be working but what are the steps – i.e. how do I set up the team, enter swimmers, enter times, enter meets etc. The guides on the site seem to stop after a successful instalation, but I could be just blind!!!

    If there are other post you could dirsct me to that would be great.

    Thnaks
    Hugh

    • Hugh –

      I admit documentation is a bit sparse. The best thing I can offer is my Two Minute Setup Guide. Based on what you’ve described above I think you can start at Step #3. My suggestion is to play around with all of the tabs and create some data (swimmers, swim clubs, swim meets, events, etc.) so you get an idea of how it works before turning it on to a large group. The biggest challenge we faced with our team was getting parents to use the site for more than just registration. There is also some information on the various short codes the plugin supports on my Demo Site.

      This season we had the majority, probably upwards of 90%, of our scratches entered via the web site instead of via email or text. We didn’t see the same level of usage for volunteers but it did improve over last year.

      Now that our season is over I will try and write up some more detail information but I have some other neglected things to address too with the Soccer Team plugin I am working on.

  3. There are several good reason why swim teams use Hy-Tek, scoreboard support, 24 hour emergency support (4 hour response time), and super easy setup. WinSwim is great for a summer swim team but for USA swimming and Masters, Hy-Tek is where it’s at. Not to say I don’t have complaints but to say Hy-Tek is a bad product is an insult! The “bad” interface has greatly improved in MM 4 and it still LOOKS the same but it is much easier to use. So before you proclaim that Hy-Tek is bad software, use it for a while and you may like it. Also SDIF is pretty much dead to USA Swimming, Even SWIMS uses a Hy-Tek developed format for Imports.

  4. This plugin looks great. I’m just digging into a WP site to replace the site my kid’s team has been using.

    I’d love to look at the dashboard of the demo site – can I register? It said I needed a code.

    Thanks.

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