New Availability Features Make It Easier to Track Your Roster

When I interview customers about how TeamSnap can improve, the feature they most want to talk about is Availability, which is fun for me, because as the team manager of my daughter’s club soccer team, it’s where I spend most of my time, too.  I’m constantly nagging the parents to answer that seemingly simple question, “Will Tina be at the game Saturday?”  Well, at least I’m constantly nagging Tina’s parents with that one….

So to help us managers get what we need from our players, we’ve added a few new Availability features to the web app, now available for all TeamSnappers on a paid plan.

First, for players who always show up for everything, we’ve added the ability to mark all undecided events with the same status with just one click on the website. Players can look for the button right beneath their name on the Availability page. No more complaining about one-at-a-time updates!

Second, we have a new button viewable only to managers on the Availability page that will allow them to easily send a reminder to members who have not yet set their availability for a specific event. This is a duplicate of the “Send Sign Up Reminders” button that was hidden on each individual event’s page. I say “hidden” because I was a TeamSnap user for three years before learning of this button’s existence. I had been sending manual “availability nag” emails for years, so you can imagine my excitement when I stumbled across it as an employee. Nirvana!

Third, for coaches and managers who prefer to assume every member of the team is automatically coming to every event, we have a new setting in the Preferences tab that will set all roster members’ availability to “yes” by default for all newly created games and events (team members will still be able to manually change their availability for any event).

While this has been an oft-requested feature, here’s a word of advice you may want to heed before turning this on: don’t forget to inform all members of your team that you’re doing so! You certainly don’t want to be surprised on game day when players who you think are coming don’t show up.

Of course, you may have to have that one awkward conversation with the player who didn’t let you know.  But to me, one tough talk reminding someone about the importance of filling out one’s availability is a lot better than having to nag them every … single … week!

Now, this feature may not be right for every team.  Adult teams may want to stay away, as who’s got time to make everything these days?  But for youth teams where participation at every event is the expectation, not the exception, this may be just the trick for you.

So that’s all for now, but there’s more improvements coming online soon that I can’t wait to tell you about.  I hope these new features will help you get those availability deadbeats in line!