Brandan Glendenning Posted March 5 Report Share Posted March 5 Hi. Many years ago, my dad started TPR Baseball (a USSSA organization), and about 8 years ago I built an umpire management system for them. Last year I started Glendigital LLC with my son, and began work on a replacement service, Official Manager, that allows management of officials for any sport. I'll give a brief tl;dr of the service, then an introduction for anybody interested in more information. managers create locations managers invite officials to their organization managers can invite administrators to their organization administrators can perform many managerial tasks on the site managers create events with dates and event information different types of events are supported (currently tournament, league, and training) date input supports individual days and date ranges officials receive notification emails for new events officials sign up for events can provide date and time restrictions so managers know when they can be scheduled can leave notes for information such as who they want to work with and which fields they'd like to work managers receive email notifications of new signups managers approve signups approval can be done from the signups list or within the scheduler application if approved from the list, signups receive an email approval notification managers create schedules two workflows are supported manual schedule upload for UICs who prefer to create these themselves officials are automatically notified via email when a new schedule is uploaded the scheduler application allows the manager to create schedules using drag and drop interface with a variety of useful features manager can choose to have the service notify officials via email when the schedule is created organizations and officials can message each other both receive email notifications when a message is received helps to prevent having to track conversations across text, phone, and email Introduction & Motivation TPR's requirements were simple. They needed an application that would let their UIC create events with dates, locations, descriptions, etc. Their officials would then receive notification about newly posted events, and would be able to sign up for the events. The UIC would be notified of signups, and could approve & notify umpires to work the event. The TPR UIC preferred to do all scheduling manually. Official Manager maintains the functionality of TPR's system. TPR has been using Official Manager for 3 months, and the old site has been phased out. The goal for Official Manager is to serve the needs of those who manage officials by keeping things simple and oriented toward managing officials. Last November I attended the USSSA national conference and spoke to various umpires and UICs about the service. A few UICs were very helpful with recommendations for what would help their workflows. I came away from the trip with the need to add scheduling to the service, so in between other projects I've been working on a scheduling application. My goal was to launch the scheduler before reaching out to more organizations about the service, and today it was completed. Official Manager differs from other services in that it is geared solely toward managing officials, and it is created, developed, and maintained by a small business with strong principles about privacy, security, and usability. Why I'm Posting on Umpire Empire I'd like to demo the service for anybody interested. TPR's umpire manager served them very well for almost 8 years, and Official Manager offers many more features with an improved user experience. The goal of the service is to minimize the time managers and officials spend communicating and organizing events, and my hope is that through demonstrating the service I'll get some customers and feedback about how to improve. We have a very small team that can quickly get new features, improvements, and fixes out. We aren't held back by the bureaucracy of large company logistics and management. Pricing We tried to be fair with service pricing. We offer a free trial for organizations that allows them to get a feel for the service to determine if it suits their needs. On principle, we do not send out marketing email, and have a strong respect for privacy of our users. If you like the demo and want to try the site, we may follow up with you about your experience, but we won't badger you with template emails trying to sell the service. The base subscription price is $10 per month for up to 100 officials. This means if your organization has 0-100 officials, you will only be charged $10 per month. It's an extra $0.10 per official per month for any number of officials over 100. This means that if you have 150 officials, you will be charged $15.00, if you have 300 officials, you will be charged $30. Subscriptions can be canceled at any time. Contact If you're interested in a demo, please reply to the thread or message me. You can also use the contact form on the Official Manager site. A demo takes about 30 minutes, but I'm happy to spend as much time as anybody needs showing or talking about the service. I'm not a sales guy, I'm just trying to provide a good service and make a little money doing it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SeeingEyeDog Posted March 5 Report Share Posted March 5 Competition in any marketplace is good for all. There have been long standing issues with the current offerings and I'm sure I speak for everyone at all points of amateur sports when I say I wish you the very best of successes with your venture! ~Dawg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brandan Glendenning Posted March 5 Author Report Share Posted March 5 Thanks, Dawg. I don't anticipate being much competition for the establishment, but I do think we have a really solid service for people who want something simple, inexpensive, and focused explicitly on managing officials. One other thing I'd like to mention is that my company is focused on software, web, and game development. We have two active projects, Official Manager and a game called BC Piezophile that we were contracted to provide programming for. That game will be launching a demo soon, which I'm excited about. The full release on Steam should be some time this year. The point being that if anybody has questions about the world of software development, is looking for a developer to do some work, wants some guidance or insight about development projects, or just wants to talk shop, please feel free to reach out. I have many years of professional experience, and my son is a very strong programmer working toward his computer science degree right now (paying for it doing work for a local structural engineering firm). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MadMax Posted March 5 Report Share Posted March 5 @Brandan Glendenning – export to iCal / GCal? Push notifications? I wouldn't expect this to handle payment; that tends to overcomplicate and bloat Arbiter (and the corresponding ArbiterPay). However, is there the means to ledger whether a game (or event, as you call it) was paid or is still pending? Examples of data field entries would be: Paid in Person at Event Paid in Person at Event Completion (these two would include cash or check, issued by the Event Director / host) Payment Pending / Not Paid Yet (the worst entry) Paid via E-method 03/05/24 (Zelle, Venmo, CashApp, PayPal, RefPay, etc.) Paid via Check issued 03/01/24 As an umpire, I need to see which games have been paid and which are still pending (thereby prompting me to start blowing up someone's phone). On any given week, I've worked not only multiple games, but using several different methods of payment. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Man in Blue Posted March 6 Report Share Posted March 6 Please, please, please take a bite out of Arbiter's pie. I f###ing hate Arbiter with a passion. It is one of the things leading me towards retirement. I know my beef isn't fully Arbiter's problem, some of my disdain comes back to how the assignors are using it, but Arbiter's very UNFRIENDLY user interface is hot trash. It may be great for an assignor, but as an official, I think it sews socks in hell. 3 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kevin_K Posted March 6 Report Share Posted March 6 58 minutes ago, The Man in Blue said: Please, please, please take a bite out of Arbiter's pie. I f###ing hate Arbiter with a passion. It is one of the things leading me towards retirement. I know my beef isn't fully Arbiter's problem, some of my disdain comes back to how the assignors are using it, but Arbiter's very UNFRIENDLY user interface is hot trash. It may be great for an assignor, but as an official, I think it sews socks in hell. Arbiter is generations ahead of the dog 💩 assigning interface of Zebraweb. If Arbiter vexes you, Zebra-dung would send you over the edge. Thanks NJSIAA! 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brandan Glendenning Posted March 6 Author Report Share Posted March 6 @MadMax I agree with you about payments, and I don't want to get into the swamp of financial records-keeping obligations. I spoke with UICs, and some wanted payments, but others were pretty clear that just being able to track games officiated would be beneficial enough. So, to answer, that's the next major feature I will be working on. I hadn't considered it from the official's perspective, but I will definitely make it possible for the official to track payment status, as well. Regarding exporting the calendar, I think that's a great idea, and would like to implement it. I spent some time last night reviewing Google's API, and it looks like a big chunk of work just to support Google Calendar, so I'm going to put it on the long-term road map. Essentially that means I'm going to be researching implementation, and when I feel comfortable with a viable approach I'll begin development. I really appreciate you bringing all of this up. In my planning and preparation I've talked to a lot of UICs, but hearing about what an official would like to have is very valuable. @The Man in Blue I've heard a lot about Arbiter and ZebraWeb, and I understand the concerns I've heard. One of the benefits of being in my position is that this service isn't rigid. By 'rigid' I mean that things can be changed and evolve with minimal effort without breaking. Larger companies with established services have to juggle a plethora of concerns when making changes. We don't have that force working against us right now. My goal for the service is to keep it simple, trim, and light, so that we can stay agile, while providing essential tools to make people's lives easier and less frustrating. I want to provide enough functionality to be beneficial to users, without introducing unnecessary complexity that harms the experience. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HokieUmp Posted March 23 Report Share Posted March 23 On 3/5/2024 at 7:57 PM, The Man in Blue said: Please, please, please take a bite out of Arbiter's pie. I f###ing hate Arbiter with a passion. It is one of the things leading me towards retirement. I know my beef isn't fully Arbiter's problem, some of my disdain comes back to how the assignors are using it, but Arbiter's very UNFRIENDLY user interface is hot trash. It may be great for an assignor, but as an official, I think it sews socks in hell. In the "Dogpile of Hot Garbage" category, I'd like to nominate the official software of Satan: DragonFly. Everything about that software is painful and dumb - and I was an IT person in the US Government for 3.5 decades. (And I just found out yesterday their payment system is hackable, and was for at least one person I've worked with.) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ousafe Posted March 23 Report Share Posted March 23 2 hours ago, HokieUmp said: In the "Dogpile of Hot Garbage" category I nominate one of my catchers last night who thought actually catching the inside pitches was optional... 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Man in Blue Posted March 23 Report Share Posted March 23 No experience with Dragonfly, but I've heard it is a steaming contribution to society. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
834k3r Posted March 25 Report Share Posted March 25 On 3/23/2024 at 9:46 AM, HokieUmp said: In the "Dogpile of Hot Garbage" category, I'd like to nominate the official software of Satan: DragonFly. Everything about that software is painful and dumb - and I was an IT person in the US Government for 3.5 decades. (And I just found out yesterday their payment system is hackable, and was for at least one person I've worked with.) I won't disagree with your DF assessment...but it's a welcome respite from Arbiter IMHO. Yes, I think Arbiter is just *that* bad horrific. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aging_Arbiter Posted March 26 Report Share Posted March 26 Arbiter is the DOS of the iCloud world 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
834k3r Posted March 26 Report Share Posted March 26 6 hours ago, Aging_Arbiter said: Arbiter is the DOS of the iCloud world https://media.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExOHVjdmdoaHRmeGN3cWs2d2c5cmc3YXZkdTZqaXVjMTJ6MDhscmg1byZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/tnYri4n2Frnig/giphy.gif Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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