Category Archives: Progress

09.26.13
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Roster Export Improvements – Coming Soon!

Here is a tease of some improvements I am making to the Roster Export functionality.

wpst_SS_05

 

Currently when the roster is exported there is no control over which swimmers are included.  All active swimmers are always included.  Similarly, each format must be exported separately.

This new functionality will allow the ability to export gender specific rosters and/or multiple formats at the same time.

The next release of wp-SwimTeam will also require an update to phpHtmlLib which I had to make in order to properly implement this functionality.

Stay tuned!

06.25.13
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wp-SwimTeam v1.40-beta-1 now available

I have uploaded a preliminary build of wp-SwimTeam v1.40-beta-1.  This build introduces new functionality to support mixed gender and combined age groups.  It also fixes a number of small bugs I encountered along the way.

I have not done thorough testing on it as I don’t have access to MM and TM right now to validate the changes.  However, I am reasonably confident that the changes I’ve made will have little to no impact on Hy-tek compatibility.

If you run into any issues, let me know and I’ll get them fixed as quickly as I can.

wp-SwimTeam Beta (2418 downloads )
06.25.13
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Changes to Age Groups

I am working on some new functionality to support mixed gender events.  While I am at it I have decided to fix a limitation with the current Age Groups where the need to define overlapping age groups works but causes some discrepancies on the roster and other reports.

I have enhanced the definition of an Age Group so it can either be “Standard” (which is what it has always been) or “Combined”.  A combined age group can support mixed genders and/or age ranges that span multiple age groups.  By differentiating two types of age groups it cleans up the issues with overlapping age groups too.

Here are a couple of screen shots of what the changes look like.  I am running through some testing now to make sure everything still works.

wpst_SS_03 wpst_SS_04

06.24.13
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Supporting Mixed-Gender Events

It turns out adding support for mixed-gender events isn’t as simple as I thought it might be.  Because so much of wp-SwimTeam revolves around age groups, I haven’t made it very easy on myself to add this enhancement.

Events are tied to age groups so in order to add a mixed gender event, I need a mixed gender age group to associate it with.  A mixed-gender age group doesn’t really make any sense although it is similar to another feature which isn’t easy to support – age groups which are supersets of other age groups.

I have learned that some leagues have “special” events which are open to swimmers from multiple age groups.  For example:  The league my niece and nephew swim in has open freestyle events at the end of the meet.  There are two age groups (10 and under, 11-18) for each gender.  The wp-SwimTeam definition of an age group doesn’t work well for these groups either although it isn’t as problematic as a mixed gender event it.

After noodling around with a few ideas I think I have come to the conclusion that I need some sort of Age Group classification to allow defining a group which spans ages and/or genders.  I am struggling with nomenclature for these groups but I believe the fundamental idea is sound.

For now I am referring to these special age groups as a “Combined” age group.  They will not be counted in swimmer population numbers but will be used for Events and Entries.

08.29.12
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wp-SwimTeam v1.36.973 released

This morning I released v1.36.973 of wp-SwimTeam.  This build addresses a bug which prevents Users from signing up for job from the Jobs tab.

Yesterday I released v1.35.971 which addressed a problem when there were zero swimmers (aka a new installation) in the system.  This bug caused some of the pages to display oddly for the Roster and list of Swimmers.  Lastly, I enhanced the registration email such that it includes the Optional Field data defined for a swimmer.  This enhancement is only included when using HTML formatted email.  The Plain Text email continues to be very brief in nature.

You can find the latest version of wp-SwimTeam on the Download and  Installation page or in the WordPress Plugin repository.  I also released an update to phpHtmlLib yesterday which addresses the very odd situation which resulted in blank pages within the wp-SwimTeam Dashboard.

07.09.12
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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.

06.30.12
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wp-SwimTeam v1.32.931 now available

After a few days of testing on the MacDolphins site without any issues, I have decided to go ahead and release v1.32.931.  There are no changes between this build and the beta build except the version number and the removal of the beta tag.

The primary feature in this update is new SQL which addresses performance problems when working with user data, particularly when is relates to swimmers.  The Job Commitment Report was particularly noticeable in how slow it was (4-5 minutes) if it completed at all.  The SQL addresses that performance problem however since it used extensively across the plugin I wanted to make sure I hadn’t broken something else.

You can find the update on the Download & Installation page or in the WordPress Plugin Repository.

06.28.12
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Beta build of v1.32 available

This evening I posted an early build of wp-SwimTeam v1.32.  You can download and manually install it if you would like to try it.  This build introduces new SQL to address some pretty serious performance problems querying user data as it relates to swimmers.

For several weeks our Swim Team Chair has been telling me there is a problem with the Job Commitment Report.  I have been chasing this problem only to have it “go away” and start working correctly.  I finally figure out that it was related to the large number of users registered with the site (we have almost 300).  I was able  replicate the problem by creating a large number of dummy users in my development database.  The manifestation of the problem was most evident on the Job Commitments Report.  The page would “go away” and give the appearance of a hung process. In some cases the report would finish but might take 4-5 minutes (ugh), in others it would timeout and return an error.

I had to solve a similar problem for the Email Users plugin last week so once I figured that one out, it dawned on me what the problem with wp-SwimTeam might be.  Fixing it in wp-SwimTeam is a little more involved because of the database table relationships are a little more complicated.  I’ve learned a lot about JOIN ON this week and this beta release represents completely new SQL for querying user data.

I’ve been through all of the tabs and forms at least once but there is a chance I’ve missed something.  I am running this beta build on the MacDolphins web site and if I don’t run into anything over the next few days, I’ll go ahead and release it.

Download:  [download#14]

If you run into any problems, please let me know.  I’d like to release this update in the next day or so.

06.19.12
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wp-SwimTeam v1.31.918 now available

This morning I released an update for wp-SwimTeam.  This version addresses a few issues and completes the Hy-tek Team Manager Roster Import functionality.  You can find it on the Download and Installation page or through the WordPress Dashboard and the Plugin Repository.

  • Completed Hy-tek Roster export. All fields that can be mapped into some sort of logical Hy-tek Team Manager field are now supported. TM supports up to three custom fields in the roster import file, if optional swimmer fields are enabled, the first three (or fewer) will be mapped into the corresponding TM custom field.
  • Fixed bug where in some instances, the first name would be blank.
  • Fixed alignment (right instead of left) of Swimmer Id field on SDIF F0 records in entries export.
  • Fixed minor white space issue in PHP source code which in some cases seems to cause the Job Commitment Report to hang.