HappyTC: Info

A few under-the-hood changes were just released:

1. Imports of tournament calendars from FFindr.com, the definitive directory of ultimate frisbee tournaments on the web, will now be handled in a custom way. The change on HappyTC goes hand in hand with work at FFindr by Christian Jennewein, creator of FFindr — and the idea to collaborate with HappyTC was his, so props to him! (More on this collaboration to follow…)
2. Minor maintenance on the HappyTC database, which caused a few minute unavailability this evening.

Just released a fix to a problem affecting the “get your sched link email” function on the HappyTC sign-in page. Thanks to user JoZo for reporting it.

Also released some under-the-hood enhancements in preparation for translation of HappyTC into French.

Appreciate the heads-up from GrSc of tuc.org — an upcoming change to how tuc.org exports its LeagueRunner iCalendar feeds would have added some “junk” to the locations of games imported from TUC. (It’s to do with tuc.org improving how its schedules look in Google Calendar… an enhancement that will presumably be propagated to OCUA and other LeagueRunner users.)

Made a quick behind-the-scenes adjustment to handle that in HappyTC, and no one will be the wiser when tuc.org’s change is released!

Very small release just now — tidied up the subject lines of player-sent emails.

Before they always had “some team business…” stuck on the end. Now, that’s only there if the player doesn’t type in their own subject: keeps the subject line tidy & uncluttered.

Props to FaNa for the idea.

Just released a couple of new features of interest to those who export their HappyTC schedule to Google Calendar (or other applications supporting the “iCalendar” format):

• To specify an event (game) description different than the default (which is the team name and opponent), enter a “note” for the game that starts with ‘!‘ (exclamation mark); for example, “!Tournament XYZ“. That will force the iCalendar export to use the note as the start of the event’s description and summary (so it will show up that way in Google Calendar).
• To indicate that an event spans multiple days, click the game’s “more…” link. Anywhere in the “more game notes” area type in the end date of the event as follows: “[end_date=2009-06-21]” (using date format YYYY-MM-DD). This will force Google Calendar to treat it as a multi-day event. (Normally teams attending multi-day tournaments create just one “game” in HappyTC and a note (e.g. “goes to Sunday”), or else create a “game” for each day of the event… but this makes it show up nice in an external calendar.)

Props to AnSc for the ideas.

A few minor updates today that most users won’t even notice… for the technically inclined who may be interested:

• Added a request header to the iCalendar sync job (good idea from DaON @OCUA) so that web masters can know it’s HappyTC requesting calendar info, and not the forces of evil
• Other minor tidy up in the iCalendar engine (handle missing uids for ITSportsNet feeds; stop worrying about duplicate games if they’re in the past; etc.)

Just released some very minor changes as part of preventing recurrences of Monday June 1st’s problem.

All emails sent from HappyTC should now contain instructions on how to opt-out (”unsubscribe”) from ever receiving further HappyTC emails.

The vast majority of HappyTC emails have always included an “opt-out” link that automatically places the receiver’s email in our “do not email” table. In cases where such a link is not included, instructions indicate to email “unsubscribe (at) happytc (dot) com“. Sending to “spam (at) happytc (dot) com” has the same effect.

HappyTC does NOT send unsolicited email, nor have we received any complaints from recipients as to our email practices. Nevertheless, it is important to include opt-out information to avoid running afoul of spam filters.

Minor tweaks & enhancements released today:

• Both iCalendar import and export now accessible via the “iCalendar” menu item
• Added one-click “export to Google Calendar” (saving you having to copy/paste a link)
• Renamed “Fans & more” menu item to “Share & more” (more exaplantory we hope!)
• Rebranded the “sync” feature (dropping the “h” since “sync” is how all the cool kids spell it)

You can now export your team schedule in the standard “iCalendar” format.

That means you can import your team’s schedule into your Google Calendar (or other app supporting the iCalendar format).

Simply click the “Fans & more” link in the top-right corner, and then click “Export schedule“.

Click "Fans & more", then "Export schedule"

Tip o’ the hat to MaPr for the idea.

Also: the guest-view (for fans) is now available for all “views”. (Previously it was only available for players clicking their email links to get in.)

You can now let your fans in on your team schedule, without letting them change anything!

This way you can post a public-access link to your team schedule.

Just click your normal schedule link (in an email), and then click the “fans” link in the top right corner:

Other things included in this release:

1. Added a way captains can regenerate all players’ schedule links (in case players have posted their links all over the place, allowing miscreants to muck with the schedule). It’s under “Team Settings” on the new “advanced” tab.
2. The automatic daily iCalendar schedule synchronizer no longer sends an email to the captain if the league’s schedule is empty, and no changes were made to the HappyTC schedule.
3. Various under-the-hood maintenance and enhancements.