Dec
4
Written by:
Southern Trails
4/12/2010 9:20 AM
This article is mainly about using the website for trip bookings. Now that well over 100 members have requested logon details, we are getting a good feel for what is working well, and where you, in general, are having difficulties.
Quick trips
Last month Greg Taylor decided to postpone his South Coast Forests trip because of a bad weather forecast. However the itch to get outdoor overcame him shortly afterwards, and on the Tuesday he decided to do a recce the following Sunday. He thought some club members might like to tag along, so after talking about it for a few seconds, we decided to make it into a club trip. Believe it or not, he got seven vehicles, and the sun shone on them from Cooma onward. Did you find out about this short-notice trip?
Event Subscription
35 or so folk have registered to receive automatic notifications of new trips as emails sent by the website. This means we can put on very short notice trips where appropriate, but if you have not subscribed to notifications you probably won’t find out until it is too late!
My congratulations to the following who have subscribed: Aggie Zubowicz, Alan Fraser, Anne O'Hara, Bill Crispin, Charlie Montesin, Chris Harris, Christo Filmalter, Dan O'Hara, Darryl Alexander, David Evans-Smith, David Hay, David Holbeck, Di Archer, Don Wiltshire, Frank Wolf, Graham Kitchener, Greg Taylor, Ian Delaney, Jim Anderson, Jim Raleigh, Jo Delaney, Lindsay Jones, Malcolm Parker, Mark Hornby, Mark Pritchard, Mark Young, Michael Patrick, Phil Henderson, Phil Rayner, Richard Brand, Rob Dobson, Rob Donaldson, Simon Moyle and Warren Shardlow.
Subscribing is not hard – once you have logged on to www.st4wdc.org it takes just two mouse clicks, the first to display the Trip Calendar from the Trips menu, and the second to select “Notify me”. Of course you must have a valid email address on the website for this to work! If you are not on this list (generated on the 3 November) please consider the benefits of subscribing.
Training notifications
We are not using the website to fully manage training events, but you can still subscribe to be emailed about new training events. It is not obvious, but a separate sub-calendar is used for training, with separate subscriptions. So far only the following have subscribed: Darryl Alexander, Greg Taylor, Richard Brand and Robert Moore. Once again two clicks will get you there – you display the Training Calendar from the Training menu and click “Notify me”.
If you want to get a jump on other members when exciting new training events like Winching are added to the training calendar, you now know what to do.
Person limit versus vehicle limit
Why are some events vehicle-limited while others are person-limited and others have no limit at all? The simple answer is because that is what we need to effectively run the events program. Most trips are vehicle limited to ensure convoys are of manageable length, and maybe to ensure there is enough space for everybody to camp. Some events are limited by available seating, like pre-booked restaurants, river tours and some commercial training courses. Other events are free-for-all affairs, like general meetings and the Christmas party.
How does this affect you?
If you want to make a booking request for a vehicle-limited event, either partner can make the request. The vehicle and partner details are pulled from the Membership List – the ‘unofficial’ one on the website which you can all see, as opposed to the ‘official’ one you can’t see. By default, the member and partner, the first vehicle and any trailer are added to the Participants List. If this does not reflect who or what is going, email the trip leader or me and we can change the Participants List entry.
On the other hand, for a person-limited event, the logged-on user makes a personal booking request. If a partner also wants to attend, they should log on in their own right and make another booking request. After logging on, this should only take four mouse clicks. The first is on the menu item “TRIPS > Forthcoming Trips”, the second selects the event, the third is on “Event Details” and the fourth is on “Make a booking request for this event?”
Why doesn’t the Booking request option always appear?
You can probably guess why – either bookings are not required, or the event is fully booked! For most trip leaders, “fully” means the trip is well and truly over-subscribed and there is a healthy reserve list. To achieve this effect the limit might be set to say 12 when in reality only 8 will be Placed with 4 Reserves.
Why are some emails near instantaneous and others delayed?
Again you can guess why. The quick ones are automatically generated, and the slow ones require somebody to do something before they are sent. An example of a slow email is when you request a logon password. This is because I want to keep track of who has asked, and check out some details (especially email addresses) before generating the password automatically. For non-club members, website registration is fully automatic but an amazing number do not follow the instructions on first and last names so I might have to make this moderated (more emails to me!)
Requesting a booking is slow, but this is because of the way the standard DotNetNuke works for limited events. When a request for a new trip or booking is made, the system emails the coordinator (me), who approves the booking request using the website when he can get a round tuit. This generates an email to the trip leader, who then accepts or rejects the booking request. Conversely, if the event is unlimited, you are accepted straightaway.
My Bookings
In a rather obscure spot on the front page of the website is a link to “My Bookings”. With a single click you can see your event bookings. For this reason we prefer most events to have bookings enabled, whether or not they are limited. This is the only place you can unbook yourself, too, apart from contacting the trip leader. I hope this encourages you to participate in more club events, whether as a follower or a leader!