Continual Sessions: Classes that are offered year round.

Currently in PeaShooter, a start and end Date must be added for each session. This allows the system to show visitors current sessions while maintaining a historical record of sessions, which has caused issues when a class ran all year long. The Continued Sessions check box fixes this. In PeaShooter, a check box is added underneath the Date selector. When checked, Date information is replaced with the message: “Continual Sessions” on the client side of the site. Since there is no end date, the session will never expire.

Time Varies Check Box: Classes that do not have fixed times

The first version of the PeaShooter system required start and end times to be added for each Session. This new feature allows a Session to be scheduled without time information. By checking the box labeled “Times Vary” when adding or editing a Session, the message “Times Vary” will be placed on the schedule instead of the standard start and end times.

Current Number of Sessions on Schedule

The first version of PeaShooter Manager displays the number of scheduled sessions for each class in the system. That's the entire historical record, not just the current and future sessions. This new feature displays the number of Current sessions and the total number of sessions stored in the system history. This shows up on the Program Schedule Manager, in the Categories and Classes list.

Detailed Approval Stamping

If you click on the Lists tab of PeaShooter, and then View Entire Program Schedule, one of the pieces of information displayed there is who entered each session and when. It is now possible to add what time that session was added along with the date. A separate column shows who approved it to go live and the date and time of the approval.

Recenter Map for Remote Child Care Locations

The Child Care map can be re-centered on remote locations that would normally be out of range of the main map on a Category by Category basis. Example: A YMCA Child Care site is located in another market like Yuma, AZ and the Association is in Phoenix. We can now have that category default to the city of Yuma.

Class Successful Session Link: Start scheduling as soon as a class is added to the system.

This is a convenience feature that should make adding and scheduling new classes easier. When a Class is added or edited in the system, this new feature automatically takes you directly back to that class so there is no longer a need to re-scroll down to continue entering schedules.

Current Number of Sessions for Contacts

This new feature is an addition to the Contacts for Program Schedule section that tells you how many times a contact has been used for sessions in the system. This information is supplied for both Current sessions and the total history of all sessions in the system. This information tells administrators if the contact is being used and how many times.

“Faux” Double Category Link: Managing Classes that can be in multiple categories

In instances where one Category could be placed in two separate Core Services, all of the Class and Session information has had to be added twice. This new feature creates a primary Category in one Core Service and a secondary category in the other. The Secondary category is a “Faux” category that redirects visitors to the primary category. This is similar to what happens when you look up “cars” in the yellow pages and you are given the message “see automobiles” except that PeaShooter now does it automatically.

This has the advantage of maintaining one set of sessions without remembering to add classes multiple times and avoids discrepancies between two schedules that should be identical.

The “Faux” Category has to be at the bottom of the list of Categories, so we recommend making the faux one in the least likely Core Service.

Information Request Forms

This online form is available through a link on the Membership Page and can also be linked to from the branch home pages. Users fill in their contact information, which can be collected by the YMCA, and a brief message. This information is sent to one email address within the Y so that a YMCA representative can answer their questions.

Alert Message

The Alert Message can be used in case of emergency or anytime urgent information needs to be delivered to members. It is completely controlled by the YMCA Association, and can be put up as needed.

Alert messages can have an expiration date or be manually taken down when they are no longer relevant. When in use, the message appears as bold, red text on the home page, above the main image.

Membership Type "Tool Tip" Information

For visitors new to the YMCA there is bound to be some confusion over the differce between a Full Membership and a Program Membership. To help visitors understand the difference, we have created what is commonly called a "Tool Tip." This is a pop-up window with additional information about what a button (or Tool) does. We've put this information on the page where the question is most likely to come up: the Schedule.

We've added large question marks next to the titles of the Full Membership and Program Membership columns. When a vistor places their cursor over the questionmark, a yellow box appears with a more detailed description of the membership.


The Technology
A perk of this feature is that it has been constructed using only CSS (cascading style sheet) techniques. This means that visitors will not need to have Javascript, Flash, or even images enabled to view the message.

Conditional Messages for Categories/Core Services

This feature is useful for delivering a message to site visitors that applies to all categories in a Core Service or all classes in a Category. Messages or icons can be added to the top of the Category and Class silos.

Hide/Delete Button

The “Delete a Class” button in version 1 of the Peashooter Schedule Manager was designed to let people delete classes when they were accidentally created or entered incorrectly. To protect database integrity, Classes could only be deleted if there were no scheduled times in the system. Unfortunately, this made discontinuing classes rather tedious as it required manually deleting all scheduled sessions of the class.

This system has been replaced with the new Hide Checkbox and Delete Button on the Edit Class page of Program Schedule Manager.

The new Delete button deletes the Class and all sessions in the history, completely removing the class from the database. This gets rid of the tediousness of removing all sessions before the class itself can be deleted. This deletion is permanent and cannot be undone without re-entering in the class and session information manually.

As an alternative to deleting we have added the ability to Hide a class. The Hide a Class Check box is useful for seasonal classes and keeps Classes from being displayed on the client side of the site without completely deleting them. Hidden classes can have Sessions added to them. So a Class could be added to the system and kept hidden until all sessions have been added and approved before going live.

Welcome to the Peashooter Update

We hope to use Blog (and Feed) to announce new features, technology upgrades and bug-fixes to the system as they become available. Stay tuned to see how we're making the PeaShooter System better all the time!