Category Archives: Progress

05.23.11
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What isn’t in v1.6.605?

The major feature that I had been working on which I didn’t complete is the ability to generate a Jobs vs. Commitment report.  The Jobs module allows each job to assigned some number of credits and there is a setting to set the minimum number of credits each user is responsible for.  By default the system will use zero which means there isn’t a minimum.  In the latest release, when a user looks at their My Jobs tab, it will show the jobs they have committed to and sum up the credits.  If the sum of the credits is less than the minimum, an error notification will be displayed for the user.

Right now this message is only displayed on the My Jobs tab but an administrator will also see it when view selecting the Jobs action for any user from the Manage->Users tab.  I had given some thought to displaying the notification anytime a user logged in but have conclude that would be too intrusive.  I may make it an optional setting at some point though.

The one thing I haven’t figured out is how to handle a situation like we have with our own team. On our team we ask each family to volunteer four times (four credits) for the season regardless of how many swimmers they have.  If both parents are in the system (primary and secondary contacts) right now they would be erroneously flagged if each signed up for two jobs because together, they have met our requirement.

Reporting  job commitments versus user is pretty easy and I will do that in the next few days but I have also considered reporting job commitments versus swimmer so that both contacts can be accounted for.  In speaking with some teams locally, they require two volunteer commitments per swimmer so that is yet another permutation to account for.  In the short term I will likely only report commitments versus users and leave it at that for now and revisit it after the season as there are some other things I need for our season which starts in three weeks:  Results, Meet Entries, and some work on WinSwim/Hy-tek interoperability.

05.23.11
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wp-SwimTeam v1.6.605 released

It took longer than I wanted and I didn’t get all of the features I wanted done, but I have release v1.6.605 of wp-SwimTeam tonight.  This release addresses a number of things my own team has been asking for, in particular with respect to jobs.  A number of our parents have asked how they can see which jobs they have signed up for and if they have scratched their swimmers or not.  A key new feature in this release is the Swim Meets report is now exposed to all users but the information presented to users is limited to their swimmers and their jobs.

  • Fixed bug when optional user and/or swimmer field count is zero preventing reports from running.
  • Added My Jobs tab for all users. User can now easily see which jobs they’ve signed up for.
  • Added e-mail field to user profile. Users are familiar with the swim team profile, easy to update.
  • Exposed Swim Meet report to all users allowing users to see their swimmer opt-in/out and jobs easily.
  • Added Dashboard widget.
  • Fixed quite a few minor bugs – too many to list!

This release is available now on the Download page and will be available from the WordPress plugin updater later tonight

05.20.11
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Potential Report Bug

There is a bug with the User and Swimmer reports which will manifest itself when either the User or Swimmer optional field count is set to zero AND the table where the optional fields are stored is completely empty.  I have fixed the bug and checked it but am not quite ready to do a release due to some other changes I am in the process of making not being finished yet.  The bug will also manifest itself when trying to export a list of users or swimmers as CSV.

If you run into this problem, let me know – there is a fairly easy work-around that will prevent it from happening.

04.12.11
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wp-SwimTeam v1.4.573 released

This evening I released wp-SwimTeam v1.4.573.  It can be downloaded from this web site or from the WordPress plugin repository.  The plugin auto-update will also update to this release.  New and fixed in this release are:

  • Fixed bug in Opt-In/Opt-Out e-mail confirmation which duplicated recipients.
  • Fixed bug in handling Country when set to US Only.
  • Added Club Profile initialization based on State or Province in Team Profile.
  • Added E-mail confirmation for Job Assignments.
  • Added Job Options tab on Options page to configuring Jobs module.

Make sure you visit the Job Options tab to configure your jobs module.  There is still work to be done to report the number of credits a user has signed up for and to flag which users have not met the threshold.  Hopefully that functionality will come in the next week or two.

Update: This release had a minor update due to a file missing from the WordPress plugin repository.  The missing file prevented the Jobs Options tab from rendering.  Other minor tweaks were also made to the Jobs Confirmation e-mails.

04.02.11
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wp-SwimTeam v1.2.552 now available

This morning I posted wp-SwimTeam v1.2.551.  This release fixes a couple of bugs and adds a couple minor features and addresses one major issue.

  1. Prior to this release a new user could add a swimmer without completing their swim team parent/guardian profile but a warning was displayed.  The warning is now an error and no further action can proceed until the profile information is completed.
  2. Throughout the wp-SwimTeam dashboard much of the information is displayed in a widget that can be searched, sorted, and paged through.  The number of rows that is displayed is now controlled by a setting on the Options->Miscellaneous tab.
  3. A couple of minor bugs have fixed with respect to reporting.
  4. There was a serious bug which occurred when the number of User or Swimmer optional fields was set to zero.  This has been fixed and the ability to essentially “turn off” optional fields for users or swimmers now works correctly.
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03.09.11
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wp-SwimTeam v1.1.546 available

I have posted an update to the wp-SwimTeam plugin.  This version addresses a few bugs, one of which was fairly critical as related to optional fields for users and swimmers.  This version also adds infrastructure to provide Contextual Help for all of the forms although only the Jobs forms have detailed help so far.  Help will be updated for other forms as time permits in upcoming releases.

This version also adds a new choice when defining a Job’s location.  Previously the location was limited to Home, Away, or Both.  A new choice, N/A, has been added to account for some jobs not being tied to a swim meet.  An example of this would be a job such as ‘End of Season Banquet Coordinator’.

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03.02.11
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wp-SwimTeam v1.1.533 now available

I have just posted v1.1.533 of the wp-SwimTeam plugin.  This version includes the first pass of Contextual Help for all plugin screens and forms.  I have added and/or clarified some of the information to (hopefully) make it more clear what particular areas of the plugin are for and the actions which can be performed.

This version also fixes a number of minor bugs that I encountered, most were due to typos in the SDIF constants that were exposed when I turned the WP_DEBUG flag on.

I added one significant new feature:  It is now possible to configure the Opt-In/Opt-Out system to support opting in or out of Full, Partial, or Both types of swim meets.  Control over this setting, which defaults to BOTH, is on the Options page under the Swim Team tab.

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02.28.11
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Adding WordPress Contextual Help

WordPress 3.0 introduced a concept called Contextual Help.  Contextual Help provides a mechanism for plugins to hook into the standard WordPress Help system.  This is pretty cool because it provides a way to provide Help that is consistent with the WordPress Dashboard.

I’ve had something I’ve called Guidance on almost every page and tab through the plugin and while helpful, it tends to clutter up the interface.  I had a question from our swimteam’s volunteer coordinator about adding more help to the page and I was worried about adding even more clutter.  I tried a couple experiments with a jQuery Dialog solution but I wasn’t happy with the results.  It was then that I wondered if I could make use of the existing Help button in the Dashboard as it is always there on the Dashboard.

After a bit of reading and some experiments I was able to have custom content displayed within the Swim Team Dashboard pages.  However, trying to have different content for each tab was a little more of a challenge.  I ended up solving this problem using a simple jQuery script to swap the default content with some tab specific HTML.  Awesome!  Elegant Help solution achieved!

I am now in the process of retrofitting this new model for every page and every tab which will take a little while.  I expect I will have a build available in a few days but in the mean time, here are a couple screen shots to get an idea of what this new Help model will look like.

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02.24.11
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wp-SwimTeam v1.0.516 available, fixes Jobs bugs

I have just uploaded a new build of wp-SwimTeam which addresses the bugs in the Jobs module I posted about last night.  The bug would partially allocate a job but it would fail resulting in incomplete data in the database.  The build fixes that bug.

If you had allocated jobs and can’t see them to sign up for them, the database records in the job allocation table may have to be removed manually.  If you need help, contact me.

wp-SwimTeam plugin – updated 2/24/2011 @ 17:21
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