HappyTC: Info

In early October Facebook made some changes to how other sites (like HappyTC) can send updates to the “Friend Feed” etc. As a result certain HappyTC actions that used to produce a Facebook update no longer do.

We have looked into the changes required to use Facebook’s new method, and frankly at the moment it isn’t worth the effort. As well, Facebook will probably change the method again anyway. Those Facebook updates are not a critical part of HappyTC, so we trust that most HappyTC/Facebook users will not even notice.

HappyTC corporate HQ has undergone its move, and normal customer service response times have been restored.

HappyTC Corporate HQ is moving locations in the approaching week.

There should be no effect on service since the webservers and other systems are NOT affected (they remain safely in the data centre).

However, our support staff and developers may not be able to answer questions as promptly as usual. We appreciate your patience.

Just released a minor enhancement to the HappyTC Facebook app, per GrSc’s suggestion: it now shows your opponent, location, and game notes on your Facebook profile (and on the HappyTC Facebook app “canvas” page itself).

New stuff…

A bunch of enhancements to how players can be contacted:

• Custom subject line (this is a much requested feature, too many people to credit).
• Option to send emails “High Importance”.
• Players can now contact all players (both who click to sign in, and those who have registered with user ID and password).

Enhancements to how LeagueRunner iCalendar info is used (using new stuff added to the LeagueRunner back-end by RiKr at TUC.org):

• The link/URL to the field location map is now included. (Many have requested this; thanks to RiKr for making that info available in the iCalendar feed.)
• The shirt colour of the opposing team (if known) is included too. Nice!
• Tightened up the synchronization reports a bit (reduced wordiness).

Some misc clean-up too:

• Emails now show who actually sent them (instead of always naming the captain… which was a hold-over from the old days, when only captains could contact the team).
• The “more info” links are now better highlighted when there’s stuff to see (FaNa mentioned).
• A bunch of wording tidy-ups.
• Tune up how email addresses are spam-proofed (RiKr’s shout).

Released an under-the-hood fix… affected one known team (RiKr’s, and he dutifully pointed it out)… to see the problem you would have needed to:

• use the History view
• AND be on a team playing an opponent whose name contains one or more accented characters (like à)
• and ALSO be on a team using the new iCalendar feature.

What happened? The history page pumped out an error message instead of showing the team history… the problem is gone, though! So you can’t see it anymore.

Teams in leagues using the LeagueRunner package can now automatically “synch” their teams’ HappyTC schedules with the official league schedules.

It’s simple:

• click “iCalendar”
• paste in the link to your team’s iCalendar feed
• click OK.

More detail and FAQs are here.

Currently the TUC flavour of LeagueRunner supports iCalendar… watch for the iCalendar mod to be incorporated into the main version of LeagueRunner, and ask your league about upgrading their LeagueRunner installation. Mad props to RiKr for doing the iCalendar LeagueRunner mod!

Other minor things released this morning:

• Minor wording updates
• Some under-the-hood rewiring to facilitate the eventual outsourcing of HappyTC development…

A few minor updates went out today, none of which will be noticed by regular users.

• A few polishes to the automatic league schedule synchronization stuff… released June 21st, it’s still invitation only. Five teams are participating. We expect to open this sought-after feature to the public within a week.
• New users are now sent the warm & fuzzy welcome email automatically, freeing up our tireless HappyTC gnome for more important duties.