Feature Requests

Feedback from the weekend

mattchristenson — 2009-06-08T20:05:03Z

This weekend I added the "Staff Manifested" Window which allows you to sort by instructor or flight and see which instructors on on which flight without any other information. At this point the window is read only and does not support drag-drop so you'll need to continue to use the "Available Instructors" window to actually manifest them, however after I receive feedback on the design of this window I will consider adding the drag-drop functionality as well.

Please let me know how this window seems to work for you.

whitney wrote

Manifesting Tandems:

If we could think about highlighting the tandem instructors names on the loads on the manifest overview. When manifesting on paper, we look at the prior load to see who was on it...and I know that they are highlighted on the side as to who is available, but it just seems easier and more efficient to be able to show departed loads and get a quick, highlighted view of the instructors who were on the prior load.

Manifest Monitor

whitney — 2009-05-09T22:00:50Z

I have had some feedback, particularly from the loaders, asking if we caould have numbers next to the names on the manifest monitor, in order to see how many are on the load total. Thanks Matt

Deposits

whitney — 2009-04-16T17:47:09Z

Hi Matt...

when taking a deposit on the phone, could you make a radio box asking if it is partial payment or in full.

Also:

David would like some type of quick report for tandem totals, video totals, afp jumps within a selected period.

Thank you!!!

Large moving message LED displays

RealSkydiving — 2009-01-21T00:36:19Z

One critical feature that the television displays provide is the ability to list flight manifest information, for students and instructors; this is how information is communicated from the office to the tandems, students, and instructors about who is jumping with each instructor, and on which flight. The amount of information required to be displayed here is in excess of what would fit on a moving LED display.

That having been said, from the fun-jumper perspective having each fun jumper displayed publically may not be as important to the dropzone. If someone running RealDropzone™ wanted the ability to just display flight numbers and call times, and to do so through a moving LED Display, this feature could be added without much trouble. If a RealDropzone™ subscriber wanted to add this feature it would be fairly easy to do so, and I would add it at no additional cost however I would require them to loan me their device so that I wouldn’t end up with another unused electrical device on my shelves.

I think that the PA system is an important aspect of a dropzone and I would not want to see a display device such as this replace PA announcements of flight and call information. I had considered adding the capability for prerecorded mp3s to be played at different call times automatically, but felt that it would not be a feature that dropzones would use because having a machine make your announcements takes away from the ‘personal’ feel that most dropzones want to provide.

I do believe that having the ability to see visually what the calls are is a great complement to the PA announcements because jumpers who missed the PA announcement or who have just arrived can quickly check to see where the planes are without having to ask staff in the manifest window.

As always, thanks very much for your suggestions and feedback.

Blue Skies,

Matt Christenson

P.S.

Here is a link to the referenced dropzone.com discussion.

NSL judging abilites

RealSkydiving — 2009-01-17T23:28:04Z

Excellent suggestion!

I have looked into this a bit in the past, and it’s something that I would like to be able to provide, as the OmniScore product being used for Nationals at this point is outdated, for sure. That being said, it’s a system that works and so it’s hard to convince someone to front the resources that would need to go into building a new product. The fee paid for a single Omni Score judged event isn’t enough to cover the development of a new product, but the use of such a product could pay for its development time over a number of years.

After I’m able to get enough dropzones using RealDropzone, I could look at re-investing some of the license dollars coming in to be able to create a module that allows for real-time video judging, and sharing the results on a webpage – but that will likely be at least a few years out to fit into our budgeting.

If we created a solution that used wireless laptops as the judging interface, it would eliminate the need for custom hardware, which would mean that ANY dropzone could use the product ANY time for ANY event they would like to host – from NSL events to just local competitions… and at no extra cost.

If this is something that a lot of dropzones would be interested in then it could be officially put on the road map for future capabilities, but it will be the RealDropzone subscribers that would need to indicate that this is one of the new capabilities they would like their license fees to support. After we get a decent users group (over 10 subscribing dropzones) we’ll start to have open discussions on these forums about what new capabilities are most important to everyone.

In the meantime if someone wanted the solution as a stand-alone product and was willing to front the initial development, it could be created as a separate product. One of the first things that we would need to do in either case is to establish exactly what the requirements of the product are going to be – so that we can have a better idea of what it would actually cost to develop.

It would be great to get some more specific details about what such a product would need to be able to provide to be used at competitions of all sizes. Perhaps if you are very familiar with the process you can help to define those requirements are.

To get you started – what is the workflow of how a competition would be judged. How much of the workflow dictated by using OmniScore needs to be maintained and how could it be changed to be improved?

There are a number of different steps:

Event Definitions
Team Definitions
Competitor Definitions
Video submissions.
The judging process (user input)
Result communication (displaying judging results real time, and recording electronically for online sharing)

What have I missed, and how can these steps be more fully defined? Also, what are the peiced of data that need to be collected and organized, and how do they relate to each other? For example:

What do we need to know about an event?
What do we neeed to know about a team?
What do we need to know about an individual in a team?
What do we need to know about a judge?
What do we need to know about a video?
What information do we need to collect from a judge about a particular video?

Perhaps we can get some others to jump into this conversation and get some idea going about how the product could be architected...

Blue Skies,

Matt Christenson