Q: What is this thing? A: Fundamentally this effort is about getting trials clubs to start entering their local club schedules into some sort of calendaring program that allows automated integration to other calendaring programs so that all the events can be rolled into Regional Calendars making it easier for riders to see all the riding opportunities in their club, their region and around the country using one common tool. Riders can also link these calendars into their personal calendar so they don't have to enter it manually.
Q:Why? A: Most trials clubs publish their schedules using simple text format on a web page. So if a rider is planning a vacation or trip and wants to ride some events along the way they have to manually search out and find individual club schedules and cross reference all the data - pretty tedious stuff. The Central Region (KS, OK, MO, NE, TX) has their own regional series so it makes sense to have a common shared calendar which is where this project started.
Q:Are the schedules accurate and up-to-date? A: This calendaring tool is for planning purposes and is as accurate as the people that maintain it. You should always double-check with the local club as the event date gets closer as things can change at the last minute (floods, fires, gov't restrictions etc). Every club has its' primary method of communicating the status of their events (club web page / club facebook page etc) and riders should check those sites for the details.
Perhaps more than you want to know but, there are 3 categories of calendars:
TeamUp calendars - Some clubs make their data updates directly into the TeamUp calendaring tool and their schedules are instantly up-to-date in their Region.
Linked calendars - Some clubs maintain their calendars in another tool like Google Calendar or a WordPress Plug-In which is perfectly fine. In those cases, we use a ".ics" link to their calendar system and pull their data in automatically. ** Linked calendars update every 12 hours **
Manually updated calendars - Some calendars are duplicates of text-based calendars on a clubs' web site. For this early stage of build out, we've manually entered their club schedule here in order to jump start the club moving to a better system. Behind the scenes, we are working with these clubs to move to either a linked calendar or a TeamUp calendar.
Q:What are some of the key features of these calendars?
Click here for a quick screen shot slide show overview of the key features. More details below:
A1:FILTERS - You can hide\show the various sub-calendars by clicking on the color-coded club names on the left.
When you hover your mouse over the calendar name you will see an 'eyeball' - clicking that eyeball will hide all other calendars and show just the one you are interested in.
Also the "All" button acts like a toggle switch - Show All \ Hide All.
A2: VIEWS - In the upper right, you can show a 6-week, Month, Year, or List view. LIST view is the default and the 'next event' is always at the top of the list as the calendar will automatically go to the current date each time it is opened.
A3: DETAILS - In the LIST view you can show details for all events. It is up to the scheduler as to how much detail goes into each event. They can build out an entire flyer or just provide a link to a flyer back on their website.
A4: MENU - Next to the LIST button is the blue menu icon (aka the 'hamburger'). From here you can Print as well as do some other things like change the language (Bonjour Canada!)
A5: INTEGRATION - Also under the hamburger are Preferences/iCalendar feeds where you can get the ".ics" code to link any or all of these calendars into your personal calendar - no more manual data entry into your calendar! How cool is that? See more details on our Mobile page.
A6: PRINTING - Again from the hamburger menu, select Print.
Make any formatting choices, click Refresh, then Print.
A7: More... - Access this web page and other regions by clicking the link at the bottom left of any of the calendars.
A8: Hide or Show the sidepanel Click these icons in the upper left << to hide >> to show
Q: This calendar tool seems to have a lot of features - what zit cost? A: TeamUp does have a subscription model and while we embrace capitalism we also like free stuff. By using just the basic features of TeamUp and keeping the number of calendars in a region to 8 or less there is no cost. While there is no guarantee this won't change in the future, if a region wants to (or needs to) move to a paid model the cost for up to 12 calendars would be $96\year or $8\month ($1\club). The expectation is that the calendaring tool will prove its' value over time and a sponsor(s) in the region will cover that.
Q: It looks like there is a lot going on - how hard is it to implement on a club website? A: Since all the heavy lifting is already done, a club web admin just needs to insert one-line of code on their web page and the club scheduler receives a private URL that allows security access to edit \ maintain their clubs' schedule. So maybe 15 minutes to be up and running. See details here.
Q: Why not use Google Calendar, its' free forever? A: TeamUp is a "killer app" in this space. Relatively speaking, Google is splashing about in the kiddie pool.
Q: Can the regional calendars be combined into one calendar? A: Technically yes that is an easy thing to do. For now we're focused on getting clubs converted over from text-based to calendar-based tools so that the underlying data is good. There's not much value in rolling up a bunch of point-in-time data if it isn't any good. GIGO (garbage in - garbage out)
Q: Mobile what about mobile man - is there a mobile app? i gotta have my mobile... A: Yes there are options, options, options for mobile - see our Mobile page here.