My club permits sailors to sail more than one class in a series. Reasons are obvious - crew not available, jump in a Laser, still get a result in the series, that sort of thing.
We also run a moderately complicated personal handicapping series using aliases for the alternate scoring. Sailwave does this beautifully, and I just need to construct a master file at the beginning of the year with all the aliases in, although it is a bit of a pain in the neck to go through and set up all the aliases.
The real nightmare comes if someone sails an alternate boat in the personal handicap series, since I need to first look up the sail number for the real boat, go into the result, look up the handicap for the alternate boat, set the this race handicap for that boat to the other class, then make a note “Sailed X on dd/mm” in the notes column, then go to the alias, and repeat the exercise. Then at the end of the season we have to untangle all the alternate boat results before I do the calculations for new personal handicaps and before we submit the results to the PYS online system.
I guess the first question is whether anyone has found a better way to do this?
The next question is whether this is an issue that many other clubs struggle with, and if so whether anything could be done about it? I’ve given it a bit of thought, and what I wondered was whether something analogous to the alias system could be created if there was sufficient need. It could perhaps work in a similar way: perhaps call it “Alternate Boat”. The alternate boat could be entered in the series in the same way as any others, but in the same way as we now create a link for the aliased boat, we would create a link for the alternate boat. Then the results calculation would need to merge in the alternate boat’s placings with those of the main boat in the series display table, although individual race tables would need to display the alternates.
The other thing I would love to have would be a way of importing aliases from a csv file I have a big spreadsheet that kicks out all my potential series entrants at the beginning of the year, and it would be good if I could get in the alias links instead of having to do it manually. Is there a way of doing that?
regards, Jim C
Hi Jim,
You don’t say which version of Sailwave you are running. But the later ones do have "New competitor Aliasing " option on the Edit menu (assuming you have the competitor aliases enabled in the Setup)
There is a video of it here if you have not seen it already (links are already in the User group)
http://www.screencast.com/t/EAwpgCSBB
This makes creation of Aliases very quick and easy
You can see more info here http://www.sailwave.com/version-2-7-2
Note they are listed in the create table in the order that they are sorted on the main screen and the competitor hightlighted in the main screen is also highlighted in the create table. You can also use Shift and click to mark a block
May be the Excel interchange program I’m working on might help you with your special needs - Although that has been delayed by the ISAF interface which is the main active development at the moment and the NHC changes which will need doing shortly.
Do others do anything similar?
Jon
Jon Eskdale
Sailwave
03333 443377
07976 709777
···
On 4 December 2013 12:09, yho@devboats.co.uk wrote:
My club permits sailors to sail more than one class in a series. Reasons are obvious - crew not available, jump in a Laser, still get a result in the series, that sort of thing.
We also run a moderately complicated personal handicapping series using aliases for the alternate scoring. Sailwave does this beautifully, and I just need to construct a master file at the beginning of the year with all the aliases in, although it is a bit of a pain in the neck to go through and set up all the aliases.
The real nightmare comes if someone sails an alternate boat in the personal handicap series, since I need to first look up the sail number for the real boat, go into the result, look up the handicap for the alternate boat, set the this race handicap for that boat to the other class, then make a note “Sailed X on dd/mm” in the notes column, then go to the alias, and repeat the exercise. Then at the end of the season we have to untangle all the alternate boat results before I do the calculations for new personal handicaps and before we submit the results to the PYS online system.
I guess the first question is whether anyone has found a better way to do this?
The next question is whether this is an issue that many other clubs struggle with, and if so whether anything could be done about it? I’ve given it a bit of thought, and what I wondered was whether something analogous to the alias system could be created if there was sufficient need. It could perhaps work in a similar way: perhaps call it “Alternate Boat”. The alternate boat could be entered in the series in the same way as any others, but in the same way as we now create a link for the aliased boat, we would create a link for the alternate boat. Then the results calculation would need to merge in the alternate boat’s placings with those of the main boat in the series display table, although individual race tables would need to display the alternates.
The other thing I would love to have would be a way of importing aliases from a csv file I have a big spreadsheet that kicks out all my potential series entrants at the beginning of the year, and it would be good if I could get in the alias links instead of having to do it manually. Is there a way of doing that?
regards, Jim C
I don’t think new competitor aliasing doesn’t really help me, because I would still need to go through all the new aliases and change settings on every one manually, but instead of linking up aliases I would need to be changing handicaps or whatever.
The spreadsheet I am importing as a competitor list spits out the revised handicaps for every competitor and all the class and boat details including the fields used for fleets. So when I do the import every field is set correctly on every competitor and alias. I don’t need to go through and change handicaps fleet or anything, just make the link.
Is there a way of selecting multiple competitors and making a field change globally on all of them? That would be helpful.
Hi Jim,
The New competitor aliasing should help you as all you need to do is select the ones you want an alias for and it will create them all in one go and will link them to the one that it was aliased from. You will have to modify anything that is specific to that individual new Alias, but I can’t do much about that. If there are more than one to be changed you can make the changes to the whole group at one time, using the Tools - Set competitor field. This is demonstrated in the Video.
Your last question - Yes there is - this should be answered in the above paragraph and in the video.
Jon
Jon Eskdale
Sailwave
03333 443377
07976 709777
···
On 4 December 2013 13:14, yho@devboats.co.uk wrote:
I don’t think new competitor aliasing doesn’t really help me, because I would still need to go through all the new aliases and change settings on every one manually, but instead of linking up aliases I would need to be changing handicaps or whatever.
The spreadsheet I am importing as a competitor list spits out the revised handicaps for every competitor and all the class and boat details including the fields used for fleets. So when I do the import every field is set correctly on every competitor and alias. I don’t need to go through and change handicaps fleet or anything, just make the link.
Is there a way of selecting multiple competitors and making a field change globally on all of them? That would be helpful.
I’m obviously failing to communicate Jon, I must try harder!
What I want to do is to avoid having to edit competitors by hand. I agree there is nothing you can do to modify things that are specific to the individual new alias, but I already have all those specifics set by my spreadsheet and sitting in a CSV waiting. What I do is import them all twice, once with the “default” settings, and once with the revised settings which my spreadsheet has calculated for me. I then have to go through and touch each competitor to match up all the aliases, but I don’t have to change anything else at all, so its relatively easy. There are 3 or 4 fields that need to be changed so using new competitor aliasing would be a much more arduous task. In an ideal world I’d have a field on the csv import so all those aliases could be set up automatically, and I wouldn’t need to touch the competitors at all. However if I’m in a tiny minority doing this sort of import then clearly there’ no value in providing the facility.
I hadn’t spotted that you could use the set competitor field option for that purpose, I suppose I keep looking at selecting multiple users as if it were a spreadsheet rather than going for the menu dialogue. Thanks very much for the headsup, I’m sure it will come in useful at some stage.
thanks, Jim C