Club Level Data Downloads

As you know, you've always been able to download the entrant data from a number of reports or the event data feed, however this data has always been event specific. So if you wanted to send everyone an Christmas Card that registered for a regatta in the past year, you had to aggregate the data from several events, and then "clean" the data to remove duplicates.

We've added another club level applet that will allow you to create a registrant data file from all you events within a user selectable date range. This file looks for duplicates based on First Name, Last Name and Email. So if someone registers with their G-mail address one time and their work email the next time, they will be counted as 2 entries. So it's not perfect, but it should cut down on the time required to build your mailing or email list.

Closing Time

Not the Lyle Lovett song, but closing time for registration. You can now set the closing time for registration to a specific date and time. On a new or existing event, simply select edit event information, and the time dialog box is immediately below the last day to register. As always, the server is in Central time zone, so adjust your closing time accordingly.

Club Level E-mail Consol

A new feature available in your Regatta Network club account is the club wide e-mail console.

The club e-mail allows the user to send bulk e-mails to all participants in multiple current or past events through your club account. The feature may be used as a marketing tool for future events by e-mailing past competitors reminding them of your upcoming schedule. The club email settings can be changed to include registrants from one or more event, one or more fleets in a specific event, and also allows the option to email the crew as well as skipper.

The club console can be found on the Web Applets and Tools page under the Club Management menu on the left side of the club account page. The user then will select the Launch Club E-mail Console option. In the console, choose the event and settings specific to the e-mail that you want to spend, type you message and send the e-mail. The system will delete duplicate entries for any one email, and uses a bulk email server to send your messages. (No more waiting for the system to complete sending).

New Look to Entrant Lists -- An "Avatar"

As an option, you can now let registrants upload a picture of themselves or their boat when they register for an event or a regatta. To use this option when you are setting up your next regatta, enter the information about what type of photo and other details in the Additional Race Documents to be Uploaded section on the Edit Event Information page, and let us know that you’d like to include a photo record with your event.

Adding these instructions in the “Additional Race Documents to be Uploaded” text box enables registrants to upload documents that you require as part of the registration process. The registrants will be prompted to upload the document after the initial registration page and before the complete payment page. And naturally they will be able to come back and edit their registration and complete the upload process later if they wish.

Please click HERE for a short demo.

PHRF Divisions

As you may know, ordinarily Regatta Network supports multiple starts, and distances for individual handicap fleets, with each fleet scored independently from the others. Recently several clubs have requested the ability to have a PHRF event scored both as individual sub-fleets or divisions (PHRF A, PHRF B, etc) and as a single fleet for an overall winner on corrected time.

To accomplish this, obviously all classes would need to sail the same distance, however you can set up a single master class(PHRF for instance), and then assign sub-fleets through the Manage Fleet Divisions console. If you are going to have separate starts for each sub-fleet, let us know so we can enable the recording of division start times.



Then when you're finished scoring, the results page will be include the option to view the division results or the overall results.



See the sample of the the separate results HERE (Scroll down to the PHRF Fleet for the division results.)

For the past year, we've offered the option to upload event documents to your event. This feature can be used for event logos, waiver/release forms, burgees, and NORs. In the past, this was a four step process --

1. Upload the document as a PDF, JPEG, or GIF file


2. View the newly uploaded document


3. Copy the URL for the document and


4. Paste it into the Event Information console

This multi step process confused a lot of users, so we have recently taken steps to streamline the process. Now when you upload a document, you can choose from the standard document types for uploaded documents, and the system will automatically copy the URL into the appropriate field for the document selected.

One of the frequent questions we receive is, "Why can't I upload MS Word documents directly to the site.? The answer is simple: There are a number of know virus' that can be carried in MS Word macros, and to avoid the security risk to you and your entrants, we decided to block .doc or .docx uploads.

Of course any word document can be converted to a pdf for free online at adobe.com or with a free program called Primo pdf (http://www.primopdf.com/) or saved as an web page using the "Save As" option.

Adding Graphics to your Forms

As many of you know, there are two graphical areas on the standard registration, entrant list, and results pages generated by Regatta Network. The club burgee space is generally in the top left hand corner and is set in the club information area of the console. And the event logo, which is set on the Event Information page. as shown below:

The alternative would be to show the sponsor's logo in one slot and the event logo in the other with the club burgee incorporated into your entry form comments, like the entry form from Long Beach Race Week...

But if you have dual sponsors, or a major sponsor, you may want to go with a full width event logo, and disable the club burgee. The ideal size for a single banner event logo is about 650 pixels. The Gulf Coast Sailing Clubs's Porsche Cup is a good example of a single banner logo:

While we're on the subject of image sizes, I've found that Burgee and event logos seem to work best if they are about 150 pixels tall. If you need to size an image or photo, there are a number of free utilities that can resize images from your desktop. Windows used to offer a "Power Toy" for XP that would resize one or more photos within windows explorer.