Dropkick Studios

One of the areas where we’ve received some customer feedback is with our assigning process.  We have pushed out several changes to the assign screen that should make it work even better than before.

Filtering on Available Referees

If you manage several hundred referees, it can be a challenge to pick out which referees are available vs. not available to work a game.

When we designed the drop-down list, we tried to build enough visual contrast between an available referee and a referee with a conflict, but it still wasn’t quite right.

We recently pushed out a new feature that allows you to filter the referee drop-down box to only show officials without a game conflict.

Assign All / Save All

Since assigning is done on the Games screen, we noticed that a lot of our assignors like to edit multiple games simultaneously.  That’s a lot of clicking just to get all of the referee boxes to show up. You can now click the Assign All button to open up all of the assign boxes on the screen, and click the Save All button to save all changes on the page.

Confirming Unsaved Changes

If you are assigning games, and you have changed an assignment without clicking the Save button, a dialog box will pop up asking if you are sure you want to navigate away from the page.  Any games that have changed will be highlighted so that you can see which assignment was changed.  Thanks to Jack Harris for this suggestion.

Ability Conflicts

The last change that we made was another usability tweak.  Some people do not use the ability ranking feature at all with assignr.com.  If you are not using this feature, all of your referees will show up as having an ability conflict.  From now on, if you are not using the ability feature with any of your referees, you won’t see an ability conflict indicator on the assign screen.

Better Support for Australian Locales

A few weeks ago we rolled out a change that would allow our customers in the UK to see date, time, and currency formats in a familiar format.  We have expanded this to our Australian customers as well.

We hope this will make things a little smoother with your assigning.  Let us know if you have any feedback.

This week we made a few changes to assignr.com:

Customer Forums and New Help Desk Provider

We have made a change in our Help Desk provider, we are now using a company called ZenDesk to manage support requests.

The change should be transparent to you. One added benefit is that we now have customer forums.  We encourage you to ask questions and share tips and tricks with other assignr.com customers.  You need to be a current assignr.com customer to participate in the forums.

If you reply to e-mails that were generated from the old system, the e-mails may bounce.  If you have a question, drop us a line at support@assignr.com or open up a ticket on the support site.

New Report for Assignors

We just released a new report for assignors that we are calling a “Referee Team Crosstab” report.  This report will allow you to see how many times a referee has worked a game involving a particular team.

You can get to this report by clicking the Reports link in the upper right corner of the screen. Click the Report Name drop-down, and choose Referee Team Crosstab.

E-mail Formatting Changes

We have also improved the format of the e-mails generated by assignr.com.  Let us know what you think of the new format.

We’ve just pushed out a couple of changes to assignr.com:

Game Comments

We have re-worked the Game Comments feature so that comments are now part of the game entry screen. You can add a comment by typing some text in the New Comment box when you add a new game or edit an existing game.

Comments are intended to be game-related information that might be helpful for the referee. If you have time-sensitive information that you need to get to the referee, we still recommend that you use the Messaging feature to send an e-mail message to the officiating crew.

Game comments will be sent along with the referee’s initial notification that they have been assigned to a game. They will also be sent via e-mail when they are reminded of their upcoming games.

HTML e-mails.

Up until now, all assignr.com e-mails have been plain text. We think the new e-mail format will make it easier to read, and will allow us some flexibility with providing useful information for your referees.

It is difficult for us to test on the wide variety of e-mail clients and mobile devices, so if you have feedback, please send it our way.

If you have any questions about these new features, or experience any problems with them, please drop us a line at support@assignr.com, or open a helpdesk ticket.

We just wanted to take a few minutes to update you on some of the happenings with assignr.com.

Changes to Assign Screen

We’ve spent a significant amount of time and energy over the last few months ensuring that assignr.com is performing well and providing you with the most accurate picture of your referee assignments.

Some of you may have noticed that, occasionally, the conflict indicators on the assign screen get mis-matched from the data in your site.  For example, a referee may have indicated they were available to work a game on June 25, but they were still showing up as being not available for a game occurring on that same day.

This was happening because we were storing conflict-related information separate from the rest of your data, and this information was being updated in the background.

We have since rewritten this entire process, so that when you click the assign button, you are always getting the most up-to-date picture of who is available to work a specific game. In the process, we also found and fixed a problem that was causing the site to occasionally slow down.

New Feature: Show Unassigned Games

For assignors, you can now allow your referees to see a list of games that are unassigned.  By default, this feature is turned off but you can turn it on.

This feature was provided as a part of Referee Assistant Web Services, and we’ve had a lot of people ask about it, so we are providing this to you as a new feature in assignr.com.

We put together a quick screencast showing how to set this up.

If you want to turn this feature on:

• Click the Account link
• Click the Edit Settings link
• Change the View Unassigned Games drop-down box from No to Yes
• Click Update

As an assignor, you won’t notice any changes when you login.  For your referees, they will see an additional tab called Unassigned.  This tab will have a list of unassigned games, with the assigned referee names masked out.  Only published games will be visible from this tab.

Earn Site Credit

Do you know someone who might be interested in using assignr.com to manage their assigning?  If so, you can earn credit if you refer them to our site!

To generate an e-mail with a referral link

• Click the Account link
• Click the Referrals tab
• Click the Invite an Organization link

If you refer someone who signs up with assignr.com, we’ll credit your account with an amount equivalent to 10% of their service fees.

Thank You!

Thanks so much for your support of assignr.com.  We appreciate your business!

If you ever have any questions about assignr.com, feel free to get in touch with us via e-mail or Twitter.  We would be happy to talk to you about your assigning, and how assignr.com can help you make it easier.

We are pleased to announce a terrific opportunity for paying subscribers. You can now earn credit through our new Referral Program!

When a customer signs up for a paid plan using one of our referral codes, your site will receive a 10% credit for every game they are charged for their first year of paid customer service. There is no limit to the number of organizations you may invite.

Inviting other organizations to join takes less than a minute. Each organization you refer will receive an email invitation with a link and a referral code. All they have to do is sign-up with the referral code and become a paying subscriber.

More details can be found on our referrals help page.

Please take a minute to review our Terms of Use for additional information on our Referral Program.

If you have any additional questions, please send them to us.

Some time ago we wrote up a blog post for iPhone users who want to sync their game schedule over-the-air with their phone.  If you are a referee using assignr.com, and you have a Blackberry, you can do the same using Google Calendar as the go-between for assignr.com and your Blackberry.

Unfortunately we can’t offer individual support on setting up your Blackberry, but these instructions should help you if you want to do so.

Here’s how to get started:

• Login to assignr.com and navigate to the Games page. This page should show your assignments.

• Right click the iCalendar download link and choose Copy Link Location or Copy Shortcut

• Go to the Google Calendar page.  If you don’t have a Google account, click the Create an Account link and follow the prompts
• Once you are on the main calendar screen, find the box on the left labeled Other Calendars.

• Click the Add button and choose Add by URL

• Type Command – V (mac) or CTRL – V (PC) to paste your unique assignr.com iCalendar URL into the URL box
• Do NOT check the box labeled Make the calendar publicly accessible.  This will make your game schedule visible to anyone searching the Internet.
• Click Add Calendar

• You should see the new calendar in the list of Other Calendars.  Google will give it a random name, so you will want to rename this to something more meaningful.
• Click the arrow next to the new calendar, then click Calendar Settings

• Change the name of your calendar to My Assignments or whatever you want to name this calendar.
• Click Save

The rest of these instructions will be a little ambiguous for us, since none of us here at Dropkick Studios own a Blackberry. These instructions are shamelessly ripped off the Google help pages for Google Sync for Blackberry.

Here are the relevant links:

• Main help page for Google Sync
• Installing Google Sync application
• Day-to-Day Use

First, you’ll need to download and install Google Sync, complete the following steps:

• Point your BlackBerry browser to: http://m.google.com/sync. Once the page is open, you’ll see a Download Google Sync link.
• Click the jog wheel or BlackBerry menu button to open the menu, and select Get link. This will take you to a download page.
• Click Download.

Installation will happen automatically upon the completion of the download. After installation, you can find the Google Sync icon on your home screen. To start using Sync:

• Click the icon (you’ll see a screen with a login form).
• Move the cursor to the login section, and type the full email address of your Google Account and your password.
• Press Login and Google Sync will sign in to your account. Once you’re successfully signed in, please read the information on the Welcome screen carefully. If you wish, you can make changes to the default settings by clicking on the scroll wheel and selecting Options from the menu.

By default, your Google contacts and only the “main” Google calendar will sync.  This screen will allow you to also sync your assignments calendar, or specify what you want and don’t want to sync.

Both Calendar and Contacts syncing are enabled by default for new users. (If you’re upgrading from the previous Calendar-only version of Google Sync, you’ll need to enable Contacts sync.)

• Click the Sync Now button at the bottom of the Welcome screen.

The initial synchronization will take some time, depending on the number of events you have in your Google Calendar and the number of contacts in your Gmail Contacts. Please be patient; you can allow the synchronization to take place in the background as you perform other tasks on your BlackBerry device.

To use Google Sync, click the Google Sync icon on the home screen of your BlackBerry. Alternatively you can open the calendar application on your BlackBerry and click the thumb wheel once to pop up the menu. You’ll find the “Google Sync” entry at the top of the menu

Did this work for you? Let us know in the Comments if it works, or if we’ve missed anything

We are pleased to announce a new “beta” feature for assignr.com: text messaging! If you are a referee using assignr.com, you can now sign up to receive game updates and reminders via text message on your cell phone.

Our job is to make it easy for assignors and officials to communicate.  We are thrilled to be able to add this as a feature in assignr.com.

Assignors and referees are encouraged to go the assignr.com “Help” link and read the section on SMS text messaging for details on how to set up your phone to accept assignr.com text messages.  It is a simple and straight forward process.

If you are a referee using assignr.com, here’s what you get with text messaging:

• If a game is changed withing 24 hours of the start of the game, you’ll get a text message
• Your game reminders will be delivered by text message, in addition to via e-mail
• Normal notifications via e-mail will continue to work as always

We believe that this feature is ready to go. Having said that, we’re calling this a “beta” feature because we have limited capability to test out this service on the wide variety of mobile carriers.  If you encounter issues, please open a support ticket and we will address the issue.

As you might expect, if you choose to use this feature of assignr.com, additional charges from your mobile carrier due to sending and receiving text messages are your responsibility.

Thank you to all our clients for your support and continuing business with us.

Creative Commons Photo Credit: Frank Spin

The assignr.com iCalendar feature makes it super-easy to keep your schedule up to date with any calendar program that supports iCal.  Did you know that the iPhone and iPod Touch support iCalendar feeds?  You can keep your game schedule synced with your iPhone calendar over-the-air any time you have a connection to the Internet.

On your iPhone, login to assignr.com, click the Games tab, then click the iCalendar subscription link.

You’ll be asked if you want to subscribe to this feed, just click the Subscribe button.

You’ll then be prompted to View Events or Close.  Just click Close.

Click the Settings application, then click Mail, Contacts and Calendar.

You should see an entry labeled assignr.com, with the sub-heading Calendars.  Click this entry.

Under the description, change the description to something more meaningful, like “My Games”

Exit to the main menu and click the Calendar entry

You should now see your game schedule in your calendar.

The red bullets are calendar events from my Exchange calendar that I already have on my iPhone.  The orange bullets are games from assignr.com.  Periodically, your iPhone will connect to the assignr.com website and pull down your games and update your calendar.

Our web service provider has discovered a potential security exploit that has a severity level that warrants emergency maintenance. The maintenance involves the installation of a security update.

They have scheduled this to happen some time between 11:00 PM and 2:00 AM Eastern (GMT-4) on Friday, October 30, 2009.

assignr.com will be offline for a period of 10-20 minutes some time during this maintenance widow.

We apologize in advance and thank you for your understanding.

Thanks for stopping by! We’ll be using this blog to post about assignr.com, our new web-based referee assigning service from the makers of the Referee Assistant desktop database.

If you haven’t checked us out yet, you should!  It only takes a minute, and you can set up your own 14-day free trial in a minute.

Have a question?  Drop us an e-mail at support@assignr.com and we’ll get right back to you.