InstantKB.NET

Remote controls sometimes stop working with laptops

Administrator — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:24:57 GMT

If you are using a laptop as your scoring computer, and you have to use a USB to serial cable to connect to the remote control receiver, you may find that from time to time the remote stops working and won't work again until the USB to serial cable is unplugged and plugged back in. This can be due to the power saving options of the laptop, and may be fixed by following the following instructions from the Microsoft website:

"USB Devices Quit Working Unexpectedly in Microsoft Windows XP

A USB device, such as a camera, scanner, or printer, loses its connection and stops working unexpectedly. The device may appear to work fine when Windows first starts up but later stops working. Use the steps (below) to resolve this issue.

Disable power management on the USB hub
To preserve power, Microsoft Window XP tries to disable USB when a device is not used. Under certain circumstances this function does not work and may cause USB devices to fail to respond when called. To resolve this issue, disable power management on the USB hub by doing the following:
Click Start, and right-click My Computer.

Click Properties, then click Hardware.

Click Device Manager.

Double-click the Universal Serial Bus Controllers branch to expand it.

Right-click USB Root Hub, and then click Properties.

Click Power Management.

Deselect Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power.

Repeat Steps 5 through 7 for each USB Root Hub.

Click OK, and close Device Manager."

Communication Templates

Administrator — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 21:33:25 GMT

You can set up communication templates within the Spawtz database to format all your emails that come from the system in the same way. For example, you may want to make all emails have your logo and slogan in the header, and all your contact details in the footer etc.

You can set up communication templates either via the "Communication Templates" link in the Config section or by clicking "Click here to view or modify templates" next to the template selection drop down in the Email/SMS section or the autotext configuration section.

Communication templates are set up in exactly the same way as you would create a standard email, but they MUST contain the text "{Content}" (without the quotation marks) somewhere in the body of the text. This is because this "{Content}" text is the text that is replaced with the ACTUAL content of your email or autotext item. So for example, the screenshow below shows the setup of a template for the Spawtz demo site:

In the image above, the {Content} text will be replaced with actual content when an email or autotext item makes use of this template.

When saving a template you can specify that it should be associated at the company level (if you have permission) or the venue level. Templates at the company level will be available for use by all venues, templates at the venue level will be available for use only by the venues specified.

Once a template has been created, it is ready for use. To use a template, select it from the template drop down list on the communication or autotext details page:

Once the template is selected, it will be used when the communication or autotext item is sent out. So, in the example above, when the email is actually sent out, this is what it will look like:

Confirmation of email addresses

Administrator — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:51:14 GMT

Whenever a user is added to the Spawtz database, their email address must be confirmed by them in order to ensure that the email address is a live, valid address. This is to ensure that:

1) The user can begin to receive fixture reminder or marketing emails that you wish to send out and
2) The email address is not an invalid one or the address of someone who is not expecting to receive emails from you and who may therefore flag your email as spam.

Whenever a user is added to the system, an email will be sent to them asking them to confirm their email address. The contents of this email may be customised via the autotext configuration section, but by default it looks like this:

The user must click on the link in this email or copy and paste the url into a browser in order to confirm their email address.

If the user does NOT confirm their email address, they will only receive ONE fixture reminder from the system. If they confirm their availability via one of the links in this fixture reminder email this will also serve to confirm their email address.

You can tell if a user has not confirmed their email address by looking in their profile. If they HAVE confirmed their email address, it will show the following:

If they have not confirmed their email address, their profile will show the following:

If they have not confirmed their email address you can resend the confirmation email by clicking the "Resend confirmation email" link next to their email address status. If they do not receive that email, you should

1) Check that their email address is spelled correctly
2) Ask them to check their junk email folder
3) Ask them to add "noreply@spawtz.com" to their list of allowed senders in their email account.

You should then send the confirmation email again, and if they still do not receive it they will need to contact their local IT support staff to diagnose the problem

Configuring ClickOn remote controls for use with the scoring application

Administrator — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:13:45 GMT

This article describes how to link up ClickOn remote controls and receivers and the Spawtz scoring application.

1) Plug the tranceiver in and ensure it is powered on correctly. The LED on the transceiver will be lit when the tranceiver is powered correctly, and the LED will flash whenever any button on the remote is pressed.

2) Connect the tranceiver to the computer using the serial cable provided. If your computer does not have a serial input you will need to purchase a serial to USB cable converter available at all computer hardware stores and then plug the cable into a USB port.

3) Open the Spawtz scoring application and select "Configuration Settings" from the main menu.

4) Select the "Remote Control Settings" tab.

5) In the "Remote control comm port" field, select the port that the tranceiver is plugged in to (if there is only one serial port on your computer this port will be selected by default)

6) Put the cursor into the "Remote serial number" field and then press any button on the remote control. The serial number should appear in the text box.

7) Click "Save"

The application should now be linked with the remote. Test this by pressing home team plus or minus or away team plus or minus (buttons 1, 3, 2 and 4 respectively on the remote) to try to move up and down on the main menu. If the linking was successful, the selected item will change as you move up and down the menu.

How do I delete every fixture for a league at once?

Administrator — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:27:40 GMT

To delete all fixtures for a particular season at a particular league, do the following:

Click "Fixtures/Bookings"
Click "List fixtures by League, enter quick results and update statistics"
Select the venue, league, season and if applicable, division that you want to delete fixtures for
Check the checkbox in the header of the fixtures table. This will cause the checkboxes next to all the fixtures to become checked.
Click "Delete" and when the system asks "Are you sure you want to delete these fixtures", click OK

Note that there is no undo when deleting fixtures, so make sure you have checked the checkbox next to only those fixtures you want to delete.

Standings Modification

Administrator — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:30:32 GMT

In some instances, you might want to manually alter the number of games a team has played, won, lost or drawn. You can do this via the standings modification page:

1) Go to Leagues
2) Click "Divisions/Teams" next to the league in question
3) Click "View / Modify Standings" for the division for which you would like to modify the standings.

You will then be presented with a table displaying the standings as they exist at the moment. For each team you will be able to add a correction for each entry in the standings table. For instance, if you want to add one to the number of games a team has played, enter "1" in the correction row under the "P" column. This correction will cause the number of played games to increase by one. If you wanted to decrease the number of games a team has appeared to have played, enter "-1" into this correction section.

On this page you can also cause a team's standings to be hidden on the external side of the website. You might want to do this if a team were behind in their payments, or if they are late filling in their registration card etc. To hide a team's standings simply check the "Hide" checkbox that appears below their name. This will cause the teams played, won, lost, drawn etc entries to be shown as "0" in the external standings table. If you prefer, we can show a message on the standings table next to teams whose standings are hidden - something along the lines of "Standings hidden - contact arena for more information" etc. If you would like this to be the case, please contact Spawtz and let us know.

How do I configure my PayPal account for use with Spawtz

Administrator — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 09:41:19 GMT

In order to use your PayPal account to accept online payments through Spawtz, you need to have a PayPal business account, and you need to turn on "Instant Payment Notifications". To do this you will need to follow these steps:

1) Log in to your paypal business account using the email address you registered with paypal with and whatever the password is
2) Click "Edit Profile" next to your name and email address in the "My Account Overview" Section
3) Under Selling Preferences click "Instant Payment Notification Preferences"
4) Click "Edit"
5) Check the checkbox and put http://{SPAWTZURL}/SpawtzApp/PaymentsAndStatements/PaymentGatewayCallback.aspx?g={GATEWAYID} in the Notication Url textbox. {SPAWTZURL} and {GATEWAYID} will need to be replaced with the actual spawtz url and the id of your gateway - these items will be provided to you by Spawtz support staff.
6) Click Save

How do I configure Spawtz to automatically update Twitter when a result is entered

Administrator — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:31:31 GMT

You can configure Spawtz to automatically "Tweet" any results that are updated in your league. To do this you must tell Spawtz the details of the Twitter account you want it to update. You can do this by following the steps below:

1) Click "Config" in the main menu
2) Click "Twitter Accounts" at the bottom of the screen
3) Click "Add" to add a new Twitter account

In the Twitter account details screen, fill in the following information:

Username
The Twitter username that you want to be updated whenever a result is entered.

Password
The password for the Twitter username you entered above. Spawtz needs this Twitter password in order to be able to update the status for that account.

Association Level
The association level for this account. There are three possible levels: "Top" which means that any update to any result anywhere in the system will be tweeted to this account, "Venue" which means any update to any result at the specified Venue will be tweeted to this account and "League" which means that only updates to results in the specified league will be tweeted to this account.

Venue or League
If Venue or League level has been specified above, you must also specify which venue or league it is that you want this account to be associated to.

Disable
You can disable Twitter updates for a particular level by creating a "dummy" Twitter account and checking the Disable checkbox. This will then prevent Twitter updates for this level occurring. So, for example, if a Twitter account has been set up at the top level, but you want to prevent Twitter updates being sent for your netball league, you would create a dummy Twitter account, set it at the league level and specify the netball league as the associated item, and then check the disable checkbox. This would then prevent Twitter updates occurring for netball alone.

Once all the above information has been specified, you can click "Save" to save the account. At this point, the system will try to validate the account with Twitter - ie it will use the username and password you specified to try and log in to Twitter. It will not allow you to save the account if it fails (ie, you must enter the username and password correctly). The exception to this rule is if you have checked the "Disable" checkbox.

Once the Twitter account has successfully been added, any time a result is updated in the Spawtz application, the result will be tweeted to the specified account. Tweets take the following format:

{League name} - {Division name}: {Winning team} beat {Losing team} ({Winning team score} - {Losing team score}) {Standings link}

The information it the curly brackets ({}) is replaced with real information. Note that if an account is specified at the League level, the league name will be omitted from the format above.

The {Standings link} in the format above is a link to the standings page for the league that this result was a part of. People who are following your Twitter account in order to receive timely result notifications will also probably like to see what those results do to the table, and hence this link is provided.

Twitter can provide an excellent method of communicating with your players, and once people are following your Twitter account in order to receive these result updates, you can begin also to send marketing information to them as well ("Don't forget to sign up for next season! Registrations close next Monday!", "Free booking with every 10th booking during August!" etc etc etc). Hopefully this integration will provide you with another way to keep your customers coming back to you season after season.

Why do some teams who are not playing in this league/season combination show up in the team list?

Administrator — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 10:38:00 GMT

When filtering teams by the filter on the team list page, some teams may be displayed that you are not expecting. This is usually because a team has played in one league one season and then a different league in the next season. In these instances, the team may show up in a list of teams that you are not expecting it to. For example:

A team called "The Guns" plays in a league called "Wednesday Mixed" in the season called "2007". Then, they also play in a league called "Monday Mixed" in the sesaon called "2008". If you then search for teams in the league called "Wednesday Mixed" and in the season called "2008", you may not be expecting "The Guns" to show up in that list. However, they WILL show up in that list, as the search criteria are mutually exclusive. This means that the search is looking for "Teams in Wednesday Mixed" and "Teams in 2008" and displaying a list of all the teams that meet both those criteria. "The Guns" DO meet both these criteria as at some point they have played in the "Wednesday Mixed" league, and they are currently playing in the "2008" season (even though it is in a different league).

This issue may also occur when trying to send a communication to teams in a particular league/season combination.

The best way to see only those teams playing in a particular league/season combination is to click the "Divisions/Teams" button next to the league in question in the leagues list and then select the season in question from the drop down list at the top. This page wil only display those teams playing in this league in the selected season.

Why do all emails come from "noreply@spawtz.com"?

Administrator — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 08:46:00 GMT

You may notice that all emails that come from the Spawtz system have the from address set as noreply@spawtz.com. The name displayed in the from field is the one that you set, and the "reply-to" field is set to the email address that you specify as the "from" email address, but when the email is sent, the actual email address that is used is noreply@spawtz.com.

This from email address is used in order to lessen the chance of the email being regarded as spam or junk mail. Spawtz.com's email servers are marked as being servers that are allowed to send emails from addresses that end in @spawtz.com. However, they are NOT marked as servers that are allowed to send emails from addresses that end in YOUR domain name. When receiving mail servers see an email that came from your domain name but that was sent from a mail server that is not listed as a valid sender for that domain, in many instances they will use that fact as a flag to indicate that the email is probably spam.

To avoid this flag, all emails that are sent from the system come from noreply@spawtz.com. The "Reply-to" field is set to your email address though, so when people click "Reply", they will reply to you, not to noreply@spawtz.com.

If you MUST have emails come from your email address, you can do so by exporting all the email addresses out of spawtz (either via the export users to excel function, or by copying and pasting all the email addresses out of the last step of the communication process) and then send the email via your usual email client (Outlook, Thunderbird, GMail etc). If you choose to do this, it is highly advised that you BCC all your recipients (ie but their addresses in the BCC field, not the TO or CC fields). This way their addresses will be hidden from the other recipients.

Spawtz Scoring Application System Requirements

Administrator — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 10:33:00 GMT

In order to use the Spawtz scoring application for scoring indoor cricket, netball or soccer fixtures, you will need the following hardware and software on each of your courts:

For each court, you will require:

1 x PC running Windows XP SP 2 or Windows Vista. Vista is preferable, and though there is no requirement on the amount of RAM required, as ever with computers, best idea is to get the most you can afford

1 x Screen for the umpires to view (ie a standard monitor. 15 or 17" flatscreen is fine, 19 is better!)

1 x Network card for each computer. Each computer should be connected to the internet, so it is up to you how you do this. Either you will need to get wireless network cards and run a wireless network at the arena, or you will need to run cat 5 cables up to each rostram so the umpire computers can get on to the local network, and from there on to the internet.

1 x Graphics card capable of running two monitors for each computer. It is much better if this is the case as then you can display just the score summary on the large screen scoreboards and the entire scoresheet on the umpire's screen. This is not 100% necessary - you CAN just run it so that the scoreboard screen and the umpire's screen show the same info, but it is much better if you can display different information on each screen. So you will either need a graphics card capable of running two monitors, or two graphics cards in each of the umpire's pcs.

1 x keyboard and mouse for each umpire computer.

Also, if you want to use the remote controls for running netball and 5 a side football fixtures (ie the umpire has a small remote control that they use to change the scores on the scoreboard while they are down on the court) then the computers will either need a serial port, or if they do not have a serial port then they will need 1 free USB port and you will need to get a USB to serial port cable (something like this: http://tinyurl.com/5bdbnm 9 pin only necessary).

And finally, if you want to have the computer signal the end of a quarter or half of a netball or football game with a buzzer or siren etc then you will need a soundcard in each computer and either some external speakers or a cable to output the computer's sound through the scoreboard's speakers (if the screens you are getting for your courts contain speakers).

Using the Spawtz scoring application

Administrator — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 10:15:00 GMT

This article briefly explains how to use the Spawtz scoring application.

The application allows you to score fixtures from three sources: Direct from the internet, via a fixtures file or it allows you to create new fixtures which do not need to exist anywhere else.

Choose which method you want to use via the Main menu screen which lists "Open fixtures from a website", "Open fixtures from a file" and "Create a new fixture" as three of its options.

Opening fixtures from a website

This is the best method for scoring fixtures. When using this method, fixture details are fetched from your online Spawtz control panel in real time and when they are saved, the results are uploaded to the control panel immediately as well.

Once you have selected "Open fixtures from a website" you will be presented with a screen that asks you to enter the website details: the website URL, your username and your password. The website URL will be something like "yourcompany.spawtz.com" where your company is your company name. For details on exactly what this URL should be you can contact Spawtz support staff on info@spawtz.com. Once entered, this URL will be saved in the configuration settings, so you will only need to enter it once and then the system will remember this value on subsequent occasions.

Your username and password are the same username and password that you use to log in to the online Spawtz control panel. HOWEVER, you should also note that the system will assume that the person who is logged in to the Spawtz scoring application is the person who umpired any fixtures which are saved during this session. As such, on a day to day basis, you should ask you UMPIRES to log in to the scoring application using THEIR usernames and passwords. That way the Spawtz online control panel will also immediately reflect who it was who umpired the fixtures so you can easily do any remuneration reports for umpires that you may need.

Once you have entered the required information click “Next” and the application will attempt to contact the server to verify your login details. If this verification is successful you will be transferred to the next step.

If you are the owner of more than one arena, the next step in the process will ask you to select which arena you are currently in. Be sure to select the correct arena based on the license that is loaded into the application (each arena requires a separate license and using the wrong license for the wrong arena will mean that only a limited number of fixtures will be displayed and no fixture information will be saved)

If you only have access to one arena, the arena selection step will be skipped and you will be transferred immediately to the court selection step. Select the court that this computer is on and either double click on it or select it and click “Next”.

Finally the system will ask you to select the date. Today’s date is the default value and you can just click “Next” to move to a list of the fixtures on this court on this date.

The information above is again stored in the configuration settings of the application, so on subsequent times when the application is opened, the arena and court information will be assumed to be the same, and the date will be assumed to be today’s date so you will immediately be presented with a list of fixtures for that court for that date.

You should now be ready to select a fixture from the list.

Opening fixtures from a file

If you prefer, you can download a fixtures file from the online Spawtz control panel and open those fixtures from the scoring application at a later date. You may need to do this if the scoring application is installed on a computer that is not connected to the internet.

Using this method you would select “Open fixtures from a file” from the main menu and then browse to the file somewhere on your hard drive or network drive when asked to. Once you have selected a valid fixtures file the system will display the list of fixtures that are included in that file, and you can select one.

Creating a new fixture

If you want to run a social game or a game that is not currently scheduled on your website, or if for some reason the internet access to the scoring computer fails and you need to quickly score a game, you can create a new fixture via the “Create a new fixture” menu item on the main menu.

If you select this item you will be asked to fill in the home and away team names – by default these will be “Home Team” and “Away Team”. Once you have entered the home and away team names you will be able to begin the fixture

Shirt colours

Once you have selected a fixture via one of the methods above, the first step is to indicate what shirt or bib colours the home and away teams are wearing. The colours that are available are modifiable via the configuration settings section (accessible from the “Configuration Settings” menu item on the main menu) and the colours that are selected by default are also configurable in that section. You can also choose to skip this step if shirt colours are not important.

Once you have selected the home and away shirt colours, you will be ready to start scoring the fixture.

Scoring the fixture

The following buttons on the remote are used to score a fixture:

· Button 1: Home team score +

· Button 2: Away team score +

· Button 3: Home team score –

· Button 4: Away team score –

· Button 5: Start/Stop the clock

· Button 6: Menu

The menu that is accessed via button 6 allows you to change the time, the period and to save the fixture.

At the end of each time period, a noise will sound from the application to indicate the period is over. There are 5 possible noises that can be sounded, and which one is used can be specified in the configuration settings section.

Between periods and after 5 seconds with no buttons being pushed on the remote control, a “Screen saver” image will be displayed on the scoreboard. The image that is displayed is configurable via the Scoresheet settings configuration item in the config settings section of the online Spawtz control panel, as are the default lengths of time for each period and the amount of time between periods.

At the start of a new period, another noise will sound to indicate that time is on. This sound is again configurable via the configuration settings section.

At the end of a game, the umpire would bring up the menu (button 6) and then select “Save this fixture and exit”. The fixture will then be saved to the following locations:

· Fixture loaded from website: Saved directly to online Spawtz control panel

· Fixture loaded from file: Saved into that file

· New fixture: Saved to a file called “{HomeTeam}{AwayTeam}{DateTime that fixture started}.xml” where {Home Team} and {Away Team} are the team names. So for instance if you created a new fixture and set the home team and away team names as “Guns” and “Barracudas” respectively, and the fixture started at 18:00 on July 4^th 2008, the fixture would be saved as “GunsBarracudas200807041800.xml” in the folder specified for new fixtures in the configuration settings section (c:\temp by default)

Register your license in the Spawtz scoring application

Administrator — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:26:00 GMT

1) On the main menu select "Add License" or select "Configuration Settings" and then select the license tab in the config settings

2) EITHER open your license file and copy and paste all the information into the textbox, OR browse to the location of the license file and select it.

3) Click "Update License". The application will report "License successfully updated" if the license file was valid.

4) Click "Close"

How do I specify who officiated a particular fixture?

Administrator — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 12:50:00 GMT

Within the Spawtz application you can indicate that certain of your users are people who are available to officiate (umpire, referee etc) fixtures within your league.

To note that a user is available to officiate at a particular venue, do so via the "Official" checkbox within the security section in their profile, as seen in the image below:

To specify that a particular user officiated a fixture, do so via the fixture details screen, or via the duty report.

On the fixture details screen, the "Officials" section at the bottom of the screen will contain a list of all the users who may officiate at the venue the fixture was played at. Select the user or users who officiated and move them into the right hand box, and then click save:

On the duty report screen, fill the officials selection box by clicking "Add" next to the fixture in question. Clicking Add will bring up a popup containing a list of all the users who are available to officiate at the venue in question. You can then select one or more users and click one of the links below the selection box to add them either to that fixture alone, to all the fixtures on that court for that day (as it will often be the case that one particular user officiates all the fixtures on one court on a particular night) or to every single fixture that occurred at that venue on that night. See the image below:

Once officials have been selected for fixtures, you can run reports to see how many fixtures each user has officiated etc via the "Fixtures" group of the "Reports" section.

Fixtures or standings are not being displayed

Administrator — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 08:34:00 GMT

Fixtures, results and standings are only displayed on the external side of your website (ie the part that is visible to your players) during the season to which those fixtures and standings apply. Spawtz decides whether to display the fixtures and standings based on the start and end dates of the relevant season.

So, for example, if the date today is the 5th of January and the season for the fixtures you are interested in begins on the 10th of January, those fixtures will not be visible on the external part of the website until AFTER the 10th of January. They will continue to be visible there until the END of the relevant season. Say the season ends on the 5th of March, on the 6th of March the fixtures and standings will cease to be visible on the external part of the site.

If you wish to extend the time during which the fixtures and standings are visible, increase the length of the relevant season.

Note that the season start and end dates can either be set in the season itself (via "Leagues" / "Seasons" and the clicking "Details" next to the season in question) or directly within the league details screen for the league in question (via "Leagues" then clicking "Details" next to the league in question and then by selecting specific start and end dates for the season in question within this league).

Getting started with the Spawtz scoring application

Administrator — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 22:12:00 GMT

The Spawtz scoring application requires you to download a fixtures file from your online Spawtz control panel before you can score a game using the application.

You can download these files from the Fixtures/Bookings section of the control panel.

Once you have downloaded the file, follow these steps in order to score a game:

Start the Spawtz scoring application
When prompted for a location, click "Browse" and browse to the location of the fixtures file you have downloaded
Once you have located the fixtures file, click "Open"
The Spawtz application will then present you with a list of all the fixtures contained within that file
Double click on any fixture to score that game

All images, colours and game settings are configurable within the scoring application. To modify the configuration, click "Config". You can then change the number of balls per over, players per team, the sponsorship image and any other images.

To score a game, first select the team that is batting first from the first team drop down list. Then, select the names of the first pair of batsmen from the batsmen drop down lists. If the player's name does not already appear in the list you can add it by selecting "New player..." from the drop down list and then typing the player's name in. That player's name will then automatically be added to all the other drop down lists for that team. Similarly, you can select the bowler's name from the bowler drop down list and enter a new player's name in that box if the name does not already appear.

The timer that is displayed in the application has a default time of 60 minutes. To change this time, simply type the number of minutes into the timer textbox. Click start to start the timer. Once the timer reaches zero, the time will appear in red and the timer will continue counting into negative numbers so you can penalise the bowling team for not completing their overs in the required time.

As you score the game, the application automatically enters the scores that you enter to the fixtures file that you opened. At the end of the night, you can upload this file to your Spawtz control panel to automatically upload all the players' stats and the fixture results.

Add an advertising banner to fixture reminders

Administrator — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:31:00 GMT

To add a banner to the fixture reminder emails:

1) Click Config

2) Click Auto Text Configuration

3) There are two entries for the fixture reminders: "Fixture Reminder Email: Day After" and "Fixture Reminder Email: Day Before". The day after email goes out the day after fixtures reminding about the fixture next week, the day before reminder goes out the day before asking for confirmation of availabilities. Select whichever one you want to update (and if you want to update both, just do the following steps for both entries)

4) All auto text entries can be configured at a venue level. There is a "Company wide" version and a venue version for each entry. As an administrator, you can udpate all the versions, and you can also choose to have the company version override all the venue versions. However, if you have the company version override all the venue versions you must be aware that any venue specific information that venue managers may have entered into their version of the auto text will be overridden as well (such as venue contact details, venue event information etc). You may choose to add the banner to EVERY version of the autotext. Although this is more time consuming it will mean that you are not overwriting venue level information.

5) Select the version you want to update from the Version drop down list

6) Above the text that goes out in the fixture reminder emails is a tool bar. In this toolbar is an icon that says "Source". Click this icon now to go into source mode.

7) You will notice that the text in the section below becomes the actual HTML source of the text. This is what you are going to modify

8) Prepare the html that you want to add to the reminder. This will probably be an image which links to a page on your website. The html for this takes the following format:

Where THE URL TO LINK TO is the url of the page you want users to go to when they click on the banner and THE ADDRESS OF THE IMAGE is the web address of the banner image that you want displayed.

For more information on HTML tags, see one of the many HTML tutorials available on the Internet, such as http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_examples.asp

So for example, the html you might want to add may look something like:

There is some additional formating information in this html that is not in the earlier example, but you can ignore that for now.

9) Copy the html that you want to insert to the clipboard (Highlight it and press Ctrl + C or click "Edit/Copy" from the toolbar of whatever you are using to prepare it.

10) Position the cursor in the fixture reminder exactly where you want the banner to appear.

11) Paste the html from the clipboard by clicking Ctrl + V or Edit and Paste in the internet explorer toolbar

12) Click the "Source" icon again. This will take you back to "WYSIWYG" (What You See Is What You Get) mode. You should now see the banner in the autotext.

13) Format the banner however you want (center it etc) using the toolbar above the text (To center, click the image and then click the centre button in the toolbar)

14) Click "Update"

15) If the system warns you that some fields are missing from the autotext, check to see what fields they are. The system will warn you if you have accidentally overwritten some fields that it looks for to replace with real informaiton (such as "First name" or "Team Name" for example). If you have overwritten something that you think you shouldn't have, click Cancel and correct the problem, otherwise click okay.

Repeat the above process for all the venues that you want to display the banner (by selecting the venue name in the version section and modifying the html again) and then repeat again for the Day Before reminder as well.

Where can I find the user guide?

Administrator — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 11:57:00 GMT

For more information regarding teams, seasons, leagues, divisions, statistics, payments, line items, statements, users, fixtures, fixture generation etc, please see the Spawtz user guide at http://www.spawtz.com/userguide.doc

How Do Conditions work exactly when generating new fixtures?

Administrator — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 09:04:00 GMT

You can create fixture conditions to make the system try to ensure that all teams play a certain number of games at a certain time or on a certain day etc.

So for example, if you create a fixture condition on step 6 of the fixture generation process that states "All teams must play fewer than 3 games on any day at 21:00", the system will try to ensure that no team plays more than 2 games at 9pm.

Fixture conditions take precidence over team preferences, and if the system cannot ensure that all teams adhere to the conditions (say because there are not enough playing areas available, or because some conditions prevent others being satisfied) it will warn you of that fact on the suggested fixture list.

You can also add conditions to a league via the "Conditions" button next to the league in the league list. Adding conditions to the league means you do not have to add them every time you generate fixtures - they remain in place at all times.

Resend all fixture reminders for a particular league

Administrator — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 20:13:00 GMT

In some instances you may wish to resend all the fixture reminders that would have been sent out for a particular league on a particular date. This is especially useful if you create your fixtures only one week in advance, or when you are creating your finals series. In these instances, you may be creating the fixtures at a later date than the reminders would have been sent out, so often the first reminders do not get sent. To remedy this situation you can resend all the reminders for a particular league by following the following steps:

1) Click "Leagues"
2) Click the "Reminders" button next to the league you are interested in
3) Above the fixture reminder schedules for the league is a link entitled "Resend reminders for this league for a particular date". Click this link.
4) You will be presented with a screen that looks like this:

Select the reminder type and date that you want to resent reminders for from the textboxes at the top. This screen will then show a list of all the teams that will be sent the specified reminder on the specified date. Note that if the fixture about which they would be reminded is in the past, or if they have the specified reminders turned off (see the team's details page to change that setting) the screen will inform you of that fact and indicate that reminders will not be sent.

Once you are sure that the reminders that will be sent are the reminders that you want to be sent, click the "Send Reminders" button at the bottom of the screen. The system will send the reminders and report a list of all the recipients of the reminder.

For information on how to send or resend fixture reminders for a specific fixture only, see the article entitled Resend fixture reminder emails for a particular fixture

Resend fixture reminder emails for a particular fixture

Administrator — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 20:12:00 GMT

There are two possible methods for resending fixture reminders. The first is to send the reminders on a fixture by fixture basis. To send reminders for a fixture, follow these steps:

1) Browse to the fixture you wish to resend reminders for. You can do this either in a team's fixture list, or a league's fixture list or via the calendar.
2) Once you are viewing the details of the fixture, click the "Reminders" link that appears along the top:

3) Once you have clicked this link you will be presented with a screen that looks as follows:

This screen shows a schedule of when the first and second fixture reminders were/are due to be sent, and also shows if the reminders will NOT be sent for any reason. In the example above, you can see that the second fixture reminders will NOT be sent for the team "Usual Suspects" because they have their second reminders turned off.

This screen also shows a list of all the reminders that have ALREADY been sent for this fixture. In the above example, no reminders have been sent, but if reminders had been sent you would also be able to see what the date and time of the fixture was at the time the reminder was sent. This is useful to ensure that teams have not been reminded about a fixture that has subsequently changed date and or time.

To resend the first or second reminders to either or both of the teams involved in this fixture, select which reminder you would like to send from the drop down list in the bottom section of the screen, then check the checkbox next to the teams to whom you would like to send the reminder and then click "Send/Resend Reminders". All players in the selected teams will subsequently receive the approriate reminder, and a log of that resend will be recorded in the "Reminders that have already been sent for this fixture" section.

For information on how to resend all the fixture reminders for a particular league for a particular date, please see the article entitled Resend all fixture reminders for a particular league

Fixture reminder emails were not sent out

Administrator — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 19:30:00 GMT

Fixture reminder emails are sent at approximate 8am in the morning. If a team or teams have not received a fixture reminder email, then the reason is probably one of the following:

1) The team's next fixture was created after the fixture reminder script ran. For example, if the team played a fixture last night but at the time that the fixture reminder script ran (approximately 8am) there was no next fixture for them in the database, no fixture reminder email will have been sent. Even if a next fixture is subsequently created for them, the reminder email will not be sent automatically, so you will need to manually inform the team of their next fixture.

2) The team's email reminder checkboxes may not be checked. Each team can chose to turn on or off fixture reminder emails. They can turn on or off the day after reminders, the day before reminders or both. To check if they have done this, look in their profile (click "Details" next to the team name in the team list or click the "Details" link after doing a quick lookup for the team). There are two checkboxes - "Reminder email on the day after fixtures" and "Confirmation email on the day before fixtures". If these checkboxes are unchecked, the corresponding reminder emails will not be sent.

3) The players' email reminder checkboxes may not be checked. Each player within a team has the ability to turn off fixture reminders for any or all of the teams they are associated to. If they turn them off, they will not receive reminder emails. To see if a player has turned off fixture reminder emails for a particular team, look in their profile (click the "Details" button next to the user in the users list or click the "Details" link after doing a quick lookup for the user). Next to each team that they are associated to will be an "Email Reminders" checkbox. If this checkbox is unchecked, the player will not receive fixture reminders pertaining to that team.

Note that you can modify the fixture reminder schedule to have reminders go out on a different date than the default date. For more information about this, please see the article on changing the fixture reminder schedule

If none of these appear to be the issue, please email your Spawtz support contact for more help.

How do I change the fixture reminder schedule for my league or venue (including turning reminders off)?

Administrator — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 19:30:00 GMT

By default, players are reminded of each fixture twice: once on the day after a fixture (regarding their next fixture) and once on the day before a fixture. This way players have two opportunities to inform their team captains of their availabilities, and you as the venue or league managers have two chances to communicate with the players to inform them of their fixtures and any other information you want to tell them.

In some instances, you may wish to turn on or off these reminders, or you may wish to have the reminders sent on a different schedule. This is useful if for instance you create your fixtures only one week in advance. In these cases, reminders that go out on the day after previous fixtures may be no good, as the next fixture may not yet have been created, so the reminder will be skipped.

To modify the fixture reminder schedule for a venue, follow these steps:

1) Click "Config"
2) Click "Scheduled Task Configuration"
3) Click on the reminder for which you want to modify the schedule

You will then be presented with a screen that looks like this:

To change the fixture reminder schedule for a particular venue, first select the venue from the "Version" drop down list (note that if you are an administrator, a "Top Level" item will also appear in this list, and this is the item that you should modify if you wish to change the schedule for ALL venues). Then, you can change the schedule using the options in the "Schedule Details" section. Note that in most instances, it will be sufficient to inherit the fixture reminder schedule from the parent of this item.

To modify the fixture reminder schedule for a particular league, simply click the "Reminders" button next to the league in question in the leagues list.

How do I get The printer version invoice not to print the url of the page at the bottom or top of the printout?

Administrator — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 13:53:00 GMT

This is a printer setting, not a Spawtz issue. To exclude the url when printing from Internet Explorer, do the following:

1) Click "File" (Or the arrow next to the printer icon if using Internet Explorer 7)
2) Click "Page Setup"
3) Delete all the text in the "Header" and "Footer" textboxes
4) Click "OK"

Now, when you print, the printer should not print any header and footer information.

Send a communication to all players of a particular sport

Administrator — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 09:28:00 GMT

To send an email to all the players of a particular sport, you need to add League Criteria to the communiction. Do this as follows:

1) Click "Email/SMS" in the main menu

2) Click "Add League Criteria" in the Recipients section

3) Select "Sport" from the first drop down

4) Hold down CTRL and click the names of all the sports that you want to send this communication to

5) Click "Add"

This will cause a criteria of the type "Sport is one of Netball, Cricket" to be added to the communication, and in this instance, only Netball and Cricket players will receive it.

Click "Next >>" when you are done and complete the communication as normal.