Release 6 Details

Details about Release 6 are here! This release contains some useful functionality for admins as well as non-admin users. I’ll tell you about the changes we are implementing for non-admin users first.

I have been using Racing Club Manager to track Forza 5 data since before the site had even launched. In that 8 months or so I have recorded quite a bit of data and I noticed that the Series page was loading slowly. My club only has 3 or 4 active series in a given month so the sluggishness had to be coming from trying to load up all of the inactive series at the same time as the active ones. The quickest fix I could think of was to only load the active series first and to wait until the viewer actually wanted to see the inactive series before starting to load them. I added a button labeled “Show Inactive Series…” at the bottom of the active series rows. This is only a temporary fix for this issue and I will address the loading times at another time in the near future. Honestly the Series page could use some renovations.

The admins are getting some functionality tweaks on the Manage Races screen. First off, I am replacing the “Available Racers,” mutli-select control with a scroll-able div element. The reason for this is that multi-select controls do not work on some(all?) mobile devices therefore eliminating the ability to record results from your phone/tablet. Recording results from your phone/tablet is going to be a pain no matter what interface I come up with, but at least now admins will have the choice. As a side-effect of the user interface change, there is a bonus feature. Admins can select multiple available racers without holding control or shift(shift now doesn’t work) and the order you select the racers in, will be their assigned finish position. Before this change you could select, for example: 5 racers and move them all over to the results, but they wouldn’t necessarily be assigned a finish position in the order that you selected them. This cool new side-effect should make recording results just a little bit easier on the admins.

I’m going to schedule this release for Friday July 10th at 11:00am Eastern US. It should be complete and tested before then, but July 4th weekend and the days leading up to it are always hectic, so better safe than sorry. I would hate to tell you the earlier and then have to push it back a week.

Thanks for reading and using the site! Just wait until I reveal what I have planned for Release 7. STATS! STATS! STATS!

Release 5 Manage Club Members Renovations

Release 5 is finished and here are some screen shots and details not mentioned in the last post.

The menu has been update to include access to the Manage Members screen. As an admin you have a permission level, and you need permission level ZERO or ONE in order to access that page. Basically, if you have access to Manage Races then you also have access to Manage Members.

When recording race results there is an icon above the available racers section that you can click that will open the Manage Members screen in a dialog window. This is for when you need to quickly add or edit a racer while in the middle of recording results.

Above is a screen shot of the Manage Members screen.(showing as a dialog window) You can sort by name or by the last time a racer showed up to a race. I decided not to include the filtering option for active and non-active. It just didn’t seem necessary at this stage. Also, you can click a members name if you want to edit the name. You can deactivate a member at any time or even remove a member as long as they do not have any results recorded.

Thanks for reading!

Release 5 Details

Release 5 is already in development and now it is time to share what I have in store for you guys. This release will be purely for helping admins manage club members more efficiently, there will be no updates that a casual club member could see.

Right now the only way to get to manage your members is by clicking a small icon when you are recording your results. Release 5 will add a new admins menu option. The manage club members page is completely renovated and matches the look of most other pages on the site.

This newly renovated page gives you some new features that will allow you to manage your members better. You can filter your members by active and non-active, by default non-active members will appear at the bottom of the list so they are out of the way. You can sort the list of members by the date they last showed up for a race. This is my favorite new feature because I always have a hard time figuring out who hasn’t shown up for a race in a while. When recording results you have to sift through a list of available racers and sometimes that list can become overwhelming. When a member hasn’t shown up for a long time, you can mark them inactive which will get them out of the way and make recording results quicker.

Removing a member is only available if that member has never recorded a result before. If we were to remove a member that had results it would alter the outcome of every race they attended.

This release is fairly easy to implement and should be ready to deploy by next week. If you’re following me on twitter you’ll get even more up-to-date information on this release. Thanks for reading!

Ability to Dismiss a Request to Join

I published a small update that will allow admins to dismiss a request to join the club. The reason for this update was due to club members that had already been added to Racing Club Manager were submitting a request to join. In order for me to get rid of their request was to deny it, since approving it would create a duplicate racer for my club. When the racer gets an email saying they were denied, it creates an annoying conversation that needs to be had.

Now you have the option to dismiss a request to join, which removes the request from the queues, but does not send anything to the requestor. We still log who dismissed the request and when, but it is not a readily available report. If you believe your admins were involved in shenanigans, you can send me an email and I can look into it personally.