Self Editor

Forum: base
Page 20012
Subject: On the Clock Changes: Make Your Voice Heard

Posted by: KrazyKoalaBears - [13243814] Mon, Mar 08, 2010, 15:44

To make a long story short, I'm working on a MAJOR redevelopment of the On the Clock Draft Manager. On the Clock started as a basic online form I used to manage a draft with some co-workers several years ago and has quickly evolved to what you use today. I have been working on a major redevelopment for over 2 years now and it's never felt "right" in terms of being able to release it; it's always felt like a bunch of bandages more than necessary fixes and improvements. I now know why.

The growth of On the Clock was so rapid that all the additions and modifications made over the years had to be made to the database and web pages that were already in place. Unfortunately, as long as those structures are still in place, a meaningful overhaul is not possible.

Because of that, I'm overhauling the entire system. I'm redeveloping it from scratch. That's not to say that what is in place is going out the window; just that I'm starting the thinking of how On the Clock works from scratch and whatever fits from what is currently in place will be kept and whatever doesn't will not be. I won't be constrained to the current structure and the new version will be built completely standalone from what exists.

With that in mind, I'm soliciting feedback for changes, additions, etc. that you would like to see in a new version of On the Clock. I already have PLENTY of my own ideas for what to do, but I'm not going to post them because I don't want to sway any ideas or conversation towards what I think is useful. I want to know what you, the users, think will be useful based on your own experiences. And because I'm starting from scratch, don't constrain your ideas to what currently exists. You can certainly use the current version of On the Clock as a reference, but please don't think something is not possible because of it. As ideas gain momentum, I'll chime in for more discussion.

To help make the feedback useful, please add a priority to any particular ideas you have. The following scale should help me get an understanding of ideas I need to really pay attention to versus ideas that would be nice to implement if possible.

1 - "Must Have!"

2 - "Should Have"

3 - "Very Nice to Have"

4 - "Nice to Have"

5 - "Take it or Leave it"

I can't promise to use all ideas provided, but I can promise that they will be very carefully considered. THANKS!!!

Perm Dude
ID: 5510572522
Mon, Mar 08, 2010, 15:53

1.: I'd like the ability to renew a league previously drafted. That is, to carry over the old settings for the new season and have an opportunity to send OTC draft invites to managers who are also coming back.

2. I'd like the ability to carve out protected prospects from the player universe when the draft gets set up, so that no one can accidentally draft any of them.

Great One
ID: 26234311
Mon, Mar 08, 2010, 15:56

I think a pretty important one is an easier way to organize Que Management (as currently defined in OTC). The ability to drag and drop would really help speed up the rearranging of names in my que. Similar to how i rearrange my movies in Netflix or Blockbuster, without moving a guy up in the order one click at a time.

Another that bugs me on OTC is not being able to see past the "The Next 24 Picks" or whatever those 2 rounds work out to.

Really, as it is now - On The Clock is a really good utility. Just these small things that would make it even better.

Great One
ID: 26234311
Mon, Mar 08, 2010, 15:57

The Que Management ordering system I consider a #1 Must Have adjustment

Building 7
ID: 471052128
Mon, Mar 08, 2010, 16:20

I'd lose that name kafenatid and change it to on-the-clock or something that makes sense. It may mean something to you, but it's tough to spell and remember. Plus, if it showed up in a google search with some other choices, I doubt I would pick the one that said kafenatid.

JeffG
Dude
ID: 01584348
Mon, Mar 08, 2010, 16:33

OTC is pretty solid as is for the slow draft format. A few things I have brainstormed, nothing that is a show stopper, all nice to haves.

For designated picker management when someone executes your queue, it would be helpful to the manager that left the queue open if there was an option to have the queue automatically go 'unavailable' after their pick is executed instead of staying open for the following round unless that was the manager's intention. As commissioner I have a tough time deciding whether or not to make a second pick for folks close to the turn that did not explicitly say one way or the other. If there are still players available for the person who set the queue, there have been a few times someone has been upset if I made the wrong assumption.

I would love to see separate to the alternate second email addresses the option to supply a cell phone number so OTC can send a text as an alternative to email (or both) when someone's turn is up (yes I know you can enter the phone number @ carrier in the second email).

Only the league commissioner gets to see some things. Like the time per pick and the projected draft finish time; the red and green, solid or empty, plusses and minuses; and stuff like that. Why not everyone?

I use my blackberry alot when I am not near my computer, especially draft time. The full web page is very tough to view on the berry, if there was a simpler mobile page as an alternative, that would be great.

This is probably Yahoo and ESPN side more than OTC but If I can dream, I sure wish there was a way for those sites to import an electronic file of draft results instead of having to enter them manually :)

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 13243814
Mon, Mar 08, 2010, 16:37

@Building7: I actually have something that will be MUCH easier to remember/type. It's been planned for usage since this whole redevelopment process started over 2 years ago.

Building 7
ID: 471052128
Mon, Mar 08, 2010, 16:43

Good move, especially if you're trying to make money. Is there a story behind the name kafenatid?

barilko6
ID: 429815
Mon, Mar 08, 2010, 16:45

Some good ideas here!

I too love this site, it makes slow drafts so much easier and convenient.

I will agree with GO that the number 1 new thing needed is drag and drop queues!

judy
ID: 9729212
Mon, Mar 08, 2010, 16:53

"Must have":
ability to drag and drop in the Q line. It takes forever for the changes to occur now since each
change seems to go back to the main DB file.

"Should have"
in addition to the email that it is your turn, it might be nice to send it to the next 2/3 managers
so they know that their turn might be coming up shortly. Kinda like: at bat, on deck, in the hole.
That would help the commishes as now I am sending emails to managers for whom the site is
blocked at work and those who check email rather than the site on a regular basis. Sometimes,
email is the only way to alert them that their turn is coming up. If the emails were automatically
generated for 2/3 positions, that would really help. (I realize that you might then get 3 emails
each time you are up to draft, but at least you would know it is your turn and it is easy to delete
them!)

"Would be nice"
just for the commish.
a drop and drag to set the draft order.
THEN, a PREVIEW button with the order from top to bottom so we can check it out
more easily, then a SUBMIT button to finalize it.

weykool
ID: 351422416
Mon, Mar 08, 2010, 16:57

KKB:

Much thanks to you for providing this service at a rediuslouly low price.
No on to the wish list.

A dropdown that would show players by position.
the postions would be unique to the hosting league.
For instance if it is to be a Yahoo league you could see the players based on yahoo positions.
If you need a 3B a single click would show all available players at 3B.

The ability to prerank players.

Picks made by DP should show who actually made the pick.

The ability to change your user name.
When I signed up it asked me for my name.
Now instead of being able to use my Guru ID I have to use my real name.

Thanks

JeffG
Dude
ID: 01584348
Mon, Mar 08, 2010, 17:00

On the idea judy has, I'd make it an option for each manager to be forwarned on deck, or double deck so it defaults to when they are up but they can select other choices (including something like 'email me after every 5 picks').

Perhaps when sending an auto email to the person whose turn it is (or optionally on deck or earlier), especially those who have the site blocked, perhaps it would be helpful if the email optionally listed all drafted players since the last time that person who is on the clock made their last pick. All based on the manager's optional flexible email settings.

mjd
Leader
ID: 501381415
Mon, Mar 08, 2010, 17:06

I agree with Go's statement in #3. I use the queue management
system not only for setting up queues for my DPs, but also as a
player watch system for players I might want to pick later in the
draft.

Sometimes that list gets very long and to be able to have the ability
to drag and drop the order of the players would be very time
saving.

But the site is great regardless.

judy
ID: 9729212
Mon, Mar 08, 2010, 17:18

NOTE TO RIXC COMMISSIONERS!

If you commish another RIXC league, such as football, basketball, send your managers a note
about this thread. They should be able to comment even if it is their off season!

Nerfherders
ID: 347242717
Mon, Mar 08, 2010, 17:25

I don't know that any site does this, so you could be the first:

Have the ability to pre-set every draft slot and allow for uneven rounds. In some keepers like the one I run, every one has a different amount of players to draft, so the rounds diminish in length. If I could go in and say "1st round, ABCDEFGHIJ, 2nd round ABBDEFHIJ." etc etc.

Also, as mentioned before, the ability to block out specific players (as taken) without having to start the draft and add them at the beginning.

Shooting for the moon, I know.

youngroman
Donor
ID: 02934823
Mon, Mar 08, 2010, 17:27

some ideas without preference:
1. setting queues for specific rounds only. (Prio 1)
2. add a feature to project league standings based on available projections off CBS, ESPN or CHONE. this would not only be helpful after a draft but also during the draft. (Prio 3)
3. show player position when drafting or setting up queues. does not need to be the eligible positions, rather the primary position. (Prio 2)
4. show cumulative clock time per manager. an addition would be to skip that manager when a defined mark is reached. (Prio 4)
5. support slow Auction drafts. (Prio 5)

Guru
ID: 330592710
Mon, Mar 08, 2010, 17:32

Have queues that are round specific. Or set up a queue, and be able to check off a box that says (do not use after round X.

Better flexibility to set up alternative draft orders by round. This is especially important for keeper leagues with lots of pre-draft trading of draft picks.

Philsphan
Sustainer
ID: 301442416
Mon, Mar 08, 2010, 17:37

One thing I've always wanted to see was average time per pick for each manager. It can let me know right away who is slow and I can work with them to speed up. I would categorize this a 1

Also, a penalty for "slow drafters". In other words, a manager continually abuses his time limit by either being skipped or too often picking at the end of his limit. It would be nice to set a policy of 'X' missed picks or averaging 'Y' in pick time, and his new time limit is automatically set to 'Z', instead of the time limit I select. Also, there would be an option to undo that based on improved performance. I would call this a 3-4.

Tosh
Leader
ID: 057721710
Mon, Mar 08, 2010, 17:42

I had a real struggle in the hoops draft trying to use kafenatid on my iphone browser. Tough to add/edit the queue.

revvingparson
ID: 721817
Mon, Mar 08, 2010, 18:15

First thanks for providing a well thought out slow draft site.

1. Queue management-drag and drop
2. In ESPN you have the ability to adjust queue round by round, and priority of wanted for that round...all can be done before all managers have been signed up for the league (I hate having to wait for everyone to sign up before I can set my queue)
3. Keeper leagues need to have the ability to keep prospects from being in the draft
4.Ability to have an Yahoo or ESPN eligibility draft

I'm sure there are others but these are priorities.

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 12353217
Mon, Mar 08, 2010, 20:23

RE #7: "Good move, especially if you're trying to make money. Is there a story behind the name kafenatid?"
Not REALLY trying to make money. It's nice side money about 4 times a year, but I'm not concerned about making it quit-my-day-job viable.

The name Kafenatid was used first for my web design business. At the time (about a decade ago or so), everything was decaffeinated. I thought of the idea of "Caffeinated: Wake Up Your Web Site." Unfortunately, caffeinated.com was taken, but the phonetic spelling, kafenatid, wasn't, so I got the .com and the .net. I used .com for my business and once I started doing fantasy sports stuff, .net was just sitting there and I decided to use it. That's really about it.

RE #14: "Shooting for the moon, I know."
Not at all. I can tell you that thanks to a suggestion made by Guru long ago (and again in #16), you will DEFINITELY have the ability to customize the picks for each round, including specific orders, specific managers, etc.

Like I said, don't constrain those ideas. :)

JL
ID: 16240820
Mon, Mar 08, 2010, 21:40

Drag and drop queue management is a must. It's really the only thing that I've found frustrating about the site.

Other minor things that would be nice:

Easy mobile version
Automatic emails/texts when you're on-deck

C1-NRB
ID: 401412422
Mon, Mar 08, 2010, 22:41

Level 2 Priority:
Managers "on the turn" in snake-style drafts should only get "Commissioner's Choice" for their time limit for their two picks instead of a double allotment. (A recommended default would be something like time-and-a-half.) In other words, if the manager on the turn misses his first pick the rest of the league shouldn't have to wait through another countdown before moving on.

On-deck and in-the-hole alerts would be a nice feature.

Level 4 Priority:
Commissioners should have the ability, at their discretion, to reduce the time allotted for a manager that has timed-out more than once.

Seattle Zen
Leader
ID: 055343019
Mon, Mar 08, 2010, 23:14

Completely remove Ryan Braun, RP, KC.

My idea is small. I'd like to see the overall number next to the round and pick number - the last pick of the fourth round would look like: 4.16/64.

Ref
Donor
ID: 539581218
Mon, Mar 08, 2010, 23:27

Could always add the Cumulative Time clock so everyone gets a total time throughout the draft and the elapsed time for each pick is deducted from his overall time. Works great for our deep 20/24 team leagues.

Mötley Crüe
ID: 6028177
Tue, Mar 09, 2010, 06:43

Priority 1: For keeper leagues, players should be able to be removed from the draft pool beforehand and assigned to any pick in the draft. In our keeper draft, it's nightmarish when a manager accidentally picks a kept player in later rounds if someone doesn't catch it right away, because we have to undo everything that happens immediately afterward.

Note that I marked that as a "Must Have". I'll likely continue to use On The Clock whether that feature is added or not, but man, it sure would be nice.

Great One
ID: 26234311
Tue, Mar 09, 2010, 09:46

Follow up.

Love the idea for the time tracking, Fred maybe check with Ref to see how the heck he does it for the G20 leagues.

I like the ideas of the "On Deck" emails -- would it be possible in these same emails to have the last 5 or 10 players that were selected as well? As mentioned some people are blocked and I think it would help them catch up if it was right there in the email.

Khahan
ID: 13126822
Tue, Mar 09, 2010, 09:47

Most of my ideas have been posted already but I'm going to copy/paste the ones I think would be most helpful just to add another voice to them:

1. The ability to drag and drop would really help speed up the rearranging of names in my que

2. Have the ability to pre-set every draft slot and allow for uneven rounds. *my own note* Pre-set is important. It seems every year I commished a league there was at least 1 tie from the year before. This meant in keeper leagues managers were flip-flopping picks each round. The only way to handle it now was to trade every other pick...which got really messy.

3. Better flexibility to set up alternative draft orders by round

and my own idea
4. On the commish side - have the ability to edit specific picks w/out deleting every pick made after.

Guru
ID: 330592710
Tue, Mar 09, 2010, 09:51

A very cool interface that would accommodate several of the suggestions above would be to provide a view of all picks listed sequentially - including picks not yet made (identifying the manager for each future pick) - and giving the commish the opportunity to pre-assign a player to any specific future pick, and also to reassign any future pick to a different manager.

Any player who is pre-assigned to a future pick would be excluded from the pool.

Any manager could use this to easily see who the next pickers were, and when his next pick is scheduled.

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 12353217
Tue, Mar 09, 2010, 10:56

The more I read, the more I think there needs to be some On the Clock account management for users (beyond the forums account). For those who like the idea of an "on deck" email system, would that be okay for ALL of your drafts, or would you want that different for each draft?

I'm thinking it makes sense to create an interface that has something like...

--- start

Send an email when:
- My pick is the current pick [Remove Rule]
- My pick is 1 pick away [Remove Rule]
- My pick is 2 picks away [Remove Rule]
[...]

--- end

Someone could add rules in a form like...

--- start

Send an email when my pick is [dropdown list with numbers up to the number of managers in the draft] pick(s) away.
[Add Rule]

--- end

Also, for adding in the most recent picks, a similar rule system...

--- start

Include the last [dropdown list with numbers up to the number of managers in the draft] picks in my notification emails.
[Submit]

--- end

In addition to that, the interface could allow for email options so that people could have more than two points of contact in a very similar manner. Thoughts?

I also like a lot of the other ideas being suggested, but they're a bit more straight-forward in my head right now, so no real questions about those... yet.

Guru, I swear you must be tapped into my brain on this. Your idea in #28 is VERY similar to something I was thinking about, both for the type of interface you describe as well as the new draft home page (a trimmed down version).

Great One
ID: 26234311
Tue, Mar 09, 2010, 11:52

I tell ya, most people nowadays have a "Vtext" email address, no? where its an email but it comes to your phone via text msg. Or is that just specific cell phone companies?

JeffG
Dude
ID: 01584348
Tue, Mar 09, 2010, 13:10

How about being able to assign OTC (autopick) as your Designated Picker instead of another manager or the commissioner. Same result would be having your pick chosen from the top of your queue if you make it available, but now you do not even need to wait for the DP to manually do it as the system would do it for you.

If this were an option, you'd definitely need the 'queue only available for one round' as an option.

Nerfherders
ID: 347242717
Tue, Mar 09, 2010, 17:03

I like the idea in #31. I always feel weird about letting another manager know what my draft plans are, even if there's not much he can do about it.

Kevin
ID: 331491710
Tue, Mar 09, 2010, 17:37

This year I am again in multiple kafenatid drafts at the same time. I typically like the same players (within similar league formats), and/or dislike the same players period. If I could copy my pre-ranked queue from one draft to another, it would definitely save time in organizing my queue, and/or making future picks.. Not to mention that year after year while juggling drafts, someone always slips through the cracks, since I forget to add someone to my queue, thinking they were already taken - Only to find that it was in the other draft, and someone else gets my guy.

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 12353217
Sat, Mar 13, 2010, 20:59

Here's a summary of the comments to this point. At this point, I've removed the ideas that would require working with specific fantasy sports sites (Yahoo, ESPN, etc.) because I simply don't have the resources to do so. If that changes in the future, I can revisit those ideas. Please feel free to add on more ideas. I just wanted to get a summary for now...

Admin
Renew a Draft
Carry over settings and managers from a previous draft to a current year's draft. Includes the ability to invite the previous draft's managers to the current draft as well as the ability to remove managers no longer participating.

Customized Player List
Allow draft admins the ability to remove players from the player pool. What happens with players I add to the system afterward? An email to all draft admins as an alert and then the ability to remove the player from their specific player pool?

Drag-and-Drop Draft Order
Allow draft admins the ability to set the draft order by drag-and-drop.

Preview/Submit Draft Order
Do a preview of the draft order before allowing the draft admin the ability to submit.

Customized Draft Orders
Allow the ability to have draft orders other than snake and non-snake. Each round should be able to be completely customizable.

Time-Based Drafts
Time-based drafts would allow draft admins the ability to do a draft where managers have a total allotment of time, rather than time per pick. It would also allow the system to automatically skip a manager after a set amount of time has passed for a manager. Another part of this would be setting a clock for each individual manager. This way, draft admins could penalize slow drafters by giving them a shorter clock.

Single or Double Clock Option
Allow the draft admin the option to specify whether a manager with two (or more) picks in a row gets a single or double clock.

Keepers for Any Pick
Allow keepers to be specified for any pick in the draft.

Draft Tools
No Limit for Next Picks
Remove the limit for how many future picks are available to view.

Show Admin Info to All Managers
Show the admin information (time per pick, queue status, etc.) to all managers. Allow a manager to turn off the information.

Show Players by Position
Give an option to view players by position.

Preranking Players
Give managers the ability to prerank players. The prerankings should be able to be copied from one draft to another, but should not be default since league settings can change rankings.

Show Player Positions Everywhere
Show player positions wherever a player's name/team are listed.

Show Cumulative Clock
Show the total time used by a player to make their picks.

Show Overall Pick Everywhere
Anywhere a pick number is listed, show the overall pick number as well.

Queue Management
Drag-and-Drop
The ability to drag-and-drop players to arrange a queue.

Round-Based Queues
Managers would have the option (along with being able to have an overall queue) to be able to set a queue for each future pick individually. This would also allow for auto-pick capabilities. The option to copy a queue from one pick to the next would make managing this easier. This should also tie-in with a manager's player rankings so that they can quickly add/remove players to/from the queue.

Manager Settings
Multiple Points of Contact
Allow managers to set more than two email addresses. (Unfortunately, I don't have the ability at this point in time to do text messaging).

Recent Picks in Email Notifications
Allow managers the ability to have the most recent picks sent to them along with their email notifications.

"On Deck" Emails
Allow managers the ability to receive an email a manager-specified number of picks before it is their turn. This would be in addition to the "You're On the Clock" email.

General
Mobile-Friendly Site
Create a mobile-friendly version of the site.

Perm Dude
ID: 5510572522
Sat, Mar 13, 2010, 23:21

What happens with players I add to the system afterward? An email to all draft admins as an alert and then the ability to remove the player from their specific player pool?

For a specific draft, a commish might simply let you know which players aren't already in the pool that they are trying to carve out of their particular draft. You could either add them to the player universe, telling the commish, and they can remove them from their draft. Or if they are obscure it won't really matter since they aren't being drafted anyway.

This would make the problem less likely to come up in later drafts.

Mostly this has to do with keepers, so I don't know that this would come up very often after the first few keeper drafts.

JeffG
ID: 47112621
Sun, Mar 14, 2010, 11:28

When on the 'draft home' page, you can only see the most recent selection for everyone else but the current person picking, and on the current selector, you see no historic pics. I know there are several options a click away to see prior picks (especially for those on the turn), but perhaps a mouse over of the manager's team name can show all their historic selections.

Great One
ID: 392321511
Tue, Mar 16, 2010, 15:56

Here is one that I think would be easy. A "note to self" section. I'd love to be able to jot some things down so I remember my focus for each league. Like "need some SB's" or "find a closer" or something like that. Especially when I multiple drafts going it would be of assistance.

Perm Dude
ID: 5510572522
Wed, Mar 17, 2010, 13:24

It might be good to see the future picks in graphical form to doublecheck that traded picks were done right.

A drag & drop graphical interface would be cool (or, in this case, a "drag & trade").

Khahan
ID: 391582715
Wed, Mar 17, 2010, 15:49

Let players submit 'que available time' In other words, the que is on, but it cannot be seen unless it has been your pick for 15, 30 or 45 mins.

holt
ID: 56217179
Wed, Mar 17, 2010, 16:32

re 37, just write it on your forehead and put a mirror above your monitor like I do.

biliruben
ID: 461142511
Wed, Mar 17, 2010, 16:51

Average picks - It would be nice to have a way to look just at keeper leagues.

When the league is set up, simply query how many keepers. Then only consider those picks post-keeper in your averages. Picks will differ pretty significantly between the two types of leagues, I would guess.

Perm Dude
ID: 5510572522
Wed, Mar 17, 2010, 22:22

Wouldn't mind seeing player positions next to their names in the queue list, so I can more easily group players by position.

MikeV
SuperDude
ID: 25924115
Wed, Mar 24, 2010, 20:05

On the cumulative clock, would it count if the queue if full and available?

When participating in more than one draft, it would be helpful if the home screen updated as the individual draft screen does.

Electroman
ID: 565182111
Sat, Mar 27, 2010, 07:23

Don't know if it has been suggested, but being able to leave a queue for specific rounds if you expect to be away for a couple of picks.

Guru
ID: 330592710
Sat, Mar 27, 2010, 12:44

How about adding a "placeholder" option, so that you can pick an unlisted player without having to wait, (or without having to find an otherwise undraftworthy player)?

If you want to pick someone who isn't currently listed, just pick the placeholder option. That would then lead to an automatic request for the name to be added, and insert that name. You could then review the name and add it permanently (or send an email to the drafter and tell him how that player's name is actually spelled).

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 517068
Mon, Jan 24, 2011, 14:43

Almost a full year later and I'm happy to report that I officially have a "beta" version ready!

I haven't been working the entire time on the update (holidays, vacations, work, etc.), but there has been a lot of work put into this new version and I'm quite happy with it.

Now I need some beta testers!

I'm going to try to get this new version pushed out for Baseball 2011, so the testing timeline is going to be pretty short. Thus, I'll need people who can commit to being relatively active in drafting.

If you're interested in being a beta tester, please contact me and let me know your Kafenatid.net username.

First priority will be given to users who have been admin for a draft in the past.

judy
Leader
ID: 7771722
Mon, Jan 24, 2011, 17:58

HI Fred,

I sent the message out to my RIBC 2010 managers. Hopefully you will hear back from some of them!!

If you know the other commishes, maybe you could let them know -- maybe GURU has the list.

wolfer
ID: 190562019
Mon, Jan 24, 2011, 20:44

email sent.

Nerfherders
ID: 347242717
Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 11:28

email sent.

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 517068
Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 11:49

Room for one more... :)

wolfer
ID: 190562019
Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 21:25

I hope you saw my email I sent tonight.

judy
Leader
ID: 7771722
Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 22:55

Is the website "off"? I got on this am, but it went "out" when I did a link and now I cannot get on at all...

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 517068
Wed, Jan 26, 2011, 09:37

@judy: It may have just been a temporary outage. They happen from time to time, but it looks like everything's working now.

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 517068
Wed, Jan 26, 2011, 09:46

FYI, I have all the beta testers I need at this point.

For the beta testers, we are still waiting on a few people to sign up for the test draft. I sent an email to request they sign up ASAP and we will start the draft as soon as we can.

judy
Leader
ID: 7771722
Wed, Jan 26, 2011, 09:47

I just tried again and am getting this message:

Safari can’t open the page “http://www.draftime.com/” because Safari can’t connect to the server “www.draftime.com”.

It's never happened before last night.

judy
Leader
ID: 7771722
Wed, Jan 26, 2011, 09:50

just tried firefox browser --no luck there...

Khahan
ID: 373143013
Wed, Jan 26, 2011, 11:00

Judy,

I had an email from kkb with 3 links in it. The first two links were (insertpagename).com and (altnernatespellingofpagename).com Neither of those worked.

But further down there is a 'reporting issues' section with a link in it. That link works fine.

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 517068
Wed, Jan 26, 2011, 11:56

The alternate page should be working in 24-48 hours. I figured out that I had screwed up the forwarding.

The weird part is that the first two links and the "reporting issues" link should have been the same and worked the same, other than the specific page it was pointing to.

Seattle Zen
ID: 10732616
Fri, Jan 28, 2011, 16:49

I never got an e-mail telling me it was my turn to pick. Does Khahan even know the draft has started?

Khahan
ID: 373143013
Fri, Jan 28, 2011, 17:07

No I didn't. Doing so now.

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 12353217
Sun, Feb 13, 2011, 17:50

The new version is launched! And it's now called Draftime Fantasy Sports Draft Manager.

Thanks to everybody for all the feedback and suggestions. I wasn't able to incorporate everything, but I was able to pack Draftime with a lot while also building a structure that will better support future enhancements.

¤ Mario LeMoose ¤
ID: 101341317
Sun, Feb 13, 2011, 18:39

KKB:

• Do you plan to offer draft discussion forums, as you did with On the Clock?
• Have the On the Clock draft discussion forums been purged? If not, will at least last season's for each sport be transferred to Draftime?

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 12353217
Sun, Feb 13, 2011, 19:05

RE: 63

I'm working on a way to offer the draft discussion forums without having it be as cumbersome of a process as it used to be. I'll likely just set up a "Draft Discussion" forum and allow anybody to start a topic there. Give me a couple of days.

Sorry about the old discussions. I didn't think about needing access to the old threads. Thankfully, they were just hidden, so I've made them visible again.

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 12353217
Tue, Feb 15, 2011, 18:59

RE: 63

Added! Let me know if you have any problems using the new forum. I've set the permissions to try to avoid spam and am not 100% certain I got it all correct.

¤ Mario LeMoose ¤
ID: 381332614
Sat, Feb 26, 2011, 15:36

Another suggestion/request: Have you considered including an introductory paragraph and link on the Kafenatid home page redirecting traffic to Draftime?

Oh, and there's no "Make a Donation" link on the new site.
;-)

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 12353217
Sat, Feb 26, 2011, 16:54

RE: 66

I'll probably just leave it at the On the Clock home page for now since the schedule tools and NASCAR info will still stay at Kafenatid.net... though there is a banner coming that will likely go on the home page.

Because Draftime is paid software. Since I charge for usage, there's no need for a donation. Kafenatid.net will continue to be free and if people find the tools valuable, they can donate as they desire.

:)

¤ Mario LeMoose ¤
ID: 31202823
Tue, Mar 01, 2011, 00:20

KKB: Just sent you a message regarding the second appearance of user name "Anonymous" on the manager info list for league ID #3.

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 517068
Tue, Mar 01, 2011, 09:21

Thanks for the heads up. Looking into it. I'll stay in contact via email.

Khahan
ID: 373143013
Tue, Mar 01, 2011, 13:05

KKB, possible issue you may know about or not anticipated with 'average draft picks'

It seems as if keeper input is affecting 'average draft pick' Not sure how, could be a couple of things (either they are inputted as a round 1 pick 1 or they weren't keeprs but the first off the board)?

Either way the average draft pick is showing very curious results.

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 517068
Tue, Mar 01, 2011, 13:31

RE: 70

I think this might be the result of a misunderstanding about how Keepers should be entered...

A particular draft has allowed managers to keep a certain number of players. Rather than entering them all as "Standard Keepers" and reducing the number of rounds for the draft, the keepers were entered as the first several rounds of the draft.

For instance, if every manager keeps 5 players and you need rosters of 20 players, then the admin SHOULD use "Standard Keepers" and a 15-round draft. This draft used a 20-round draft and used "Replacement Keepers" for the first 5 rounds, thus making the weird Average Picks.

I think I may have to modify the explanation of "Replacement Keepers" to make it more clear.

Meanwhile, the Average Picks will just look weird until all the other drafts get started.

Khahan
ID: 373143013
Tue, Mar 01, 2011, 14:58

just a suggestion but maybe make it so that any keeper league doesn't affect average pick? I'm just thinking from a quality standpoint that the keeper league stats can really throw off your draft. New prospective users coming in are sure to view that. If they see a site listing clayton kershaw as a top 20 pick, they may question the validity of the site.

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 517068
Tue, Mar 01, 2011, 15:21

The way it is now, only Keeper Leagues that use the Replacement Keepers are affecting the Average Picks. In that way, it would remain valid. Someone keeping a player with their pick in the 5th round still represents a valid value for that player.

I'll have to see how many other drafts use this incorrectly to determine whether or not to keep Keeper Leagues in the Average Picks. If it's widespread, I'll remove Keeper Leagues, like it was with On the Clock.

Perm Dude
ID: 5510572522
Thu, Mar 03, 2011, 17:21

For the Gurukeepers draft, I tried to copy over the pre-ranked players, but received the error message:

"ERROR: Pre-Rankings Emtpy for Baseball 2011"

Not sure what to do here--

Khahan
ID: 54138190
Thu, Mar 03, 2011, 18:08

In queue, players are listed as either OF, p, C or Inf. I noticed this during the beta draft but assumed it was set up t hat for that draft to make it quick and easy. But would nice if players in queue could have positional eligibility listed instead of just 'inf'

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 12353217
Thu, Mar 03, 2011, 19:07

RE: 74 Looking into it.

RE: 75 I'm limited by my data source: MLB. They group all the infielders, so that's the only (reasonable) way I can import them for now.

TD
ID: 51116811
Mon, Mar 07, 2011, 14:16

The draft changes are a great improvement.

One suggestion. Send an optional email when all players have been removed from an auto-pick queue.

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 517068
Mon, Mar 07, 2011, 15:56

RE: 77

Good idea! I'll add it to the "to do" list.

Nerfherders
ID: 347242717
Mon, Mar 07, 2011, 20:00

This is mostly a quality of life issue but it would be nice to have an intermediate status between 'keepers loaded' and 'draft start' that acts like the draft but before the draft actually starts, so that teams can review their keepers, the draft order, and set up queues before the draft starts.

I kind of had to just go on faith that I had everything set up properly before I started the draft.

Also, shooting for the moon, but prospect support would be awesome - like all minors players. ;)

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 12353217
Mon, Mar 07, 2011, 20:43

RE: 80 You don't trust yourself?! ;)

I'll add it to the list.

Minor league players aren't really a problem. I just have to get them. I have one draft that usually sends me a list of players to add and a lot of them are minor leaguers. But, they usually add late, so other drafts don't have to worry.

One down side to minor leaguers is that a lot of drafts don't want them, meaning they'd have to remove them. Kind of on the fence about that one...

Perm Dude
ID: 5510572522
Mon, Mar 07, 2011, 20:45

Can't you tag the minor league players, and then just taken them out (or just not have a particular draft read those players) when that happens?

darkside
ID: 928138
Mon, Mar 07, 2011, 21:41

On the queue management page...another arrow, one for move to bottom (between the down arrow and remove link), would be good. I actually think I'd like the layout better that way, too.

Does there exist, or is there any way to add, a display name? I create all internet accounts using the same name, but would prefer that in my drafts my rotoguru handle be what's displayed.

Thanks for the great site!

blue hen
Dude
ID: 710321114
Wed, Mar 09, 2011, 10:55

KKB, the emails keep going to my spam mail. Will try to figure it out on this side, but the old "from" address was much easier to deal with.

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 517068
Wed, Mar 09, 2011, 11:52

RE: 84 You should be able to add @draftime.com as a Safe Sender in most email programs and that will take care of all emails coming from the site.

My current problem, which I'm still working on, is that I'm getting EVERY single "Out of Office" or bad email, etc. Still trying to figure that one out...

JeffG
Dude
ID: 01584348
Wed, Mar 09, 2011, 12:09

In the manage queues portion, the top player shows up in one row. Every player afterwards shows up in these bulky multi-line boxes so I can only see three players until I use the scrollbar. It also makes the drag and drop feature tougher to use since I cannot see that many queue players at once. This does not happen on my blackberry, where each queue item is nicely showing on one row, so it may be browser based. I am using IE at work. Is there anything I can do to get it to show better.

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 517068
Wed, Mar 09, 2011, 12:44

RE: 86, What version of IE are you using?

JeffG
Dude
ID: 01584348
Wed, Mar 09, 2011, 12:49

[86/87] IE 7.0

blue hen
Dude
ID: 710321114
Wed, Mar 09, 2011, 12:59

KKB - that worked. Thanks.

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 517068
Wed, Mar 09, 2011, 13:51

RE: 88, It may be an IE7 issue, but I'm surprised it doesn't work in that version. Do you have the ability to download/install IE8? (IE9 is launching in a week or so).

Alternatively, can you use Firefox or Chrome?

Great One
ID: 47252711
Wed, Mar 09, 2011, 14:26

I hear there is a portable version of Chrome you can put on a memory stick and can bring to work. I am looking into that. Cause its using Explorer that has caused my other issues with security etc.

JeffG
Dude
ID: 01584348
Wed, Mar 09, 2011, 15:12

IE8 did the trick, we have to use Explorer in the office. Thanks!

barilko6
ID: 1528916
Wed, Mar 09, 2011, 17:08

Is there a way that the commish can force enter a player for a manager without being a DP?

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 12353217
Wed, Mar 09, 2011, 19:23

RE: 93, No, but the admin can skip the pick.

blue hen
Dude
ID: 710321114
Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 09:33

The thing from 93 would help. Pete set a queue but forgot to turn autopick on. He texted me his pick but I had no way to enter it.

On a related note, in league 12, pick 63, Pete missed his pick. He later came in and made it. I think the red bolding is a little excessive after the pick is in. I'd put a little M (for missed) next to the Pick Time.

blue hen
Dude
ID: 710321114
Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 09:36

Also, I noticed that a bunch of our prospects aren't in the player database, starting with Shelby Miller (P, STL). I can submit each of those individually, but it might be a good idea to go through one of the top 100 lists and make sure all of them are added.

Great One
ID: 47252711
Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 09:36

Fred - is there a way to subtract the Draft Pause from the time elapsed for a pick? It makes the time elapsed tricky, cause the picture its giving you is say it took me 9 hours to make a pick, but I made it at 9 AM right when the clock was flipped back on.

Great One
ID: 47252711
Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 09:37

And on side note, everyone is loving the new draft site, we are just throwing out ideas of things as we come across. Great work.

blue hen
Dude
ID: 710321114
Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 09:41

Agreed with 98. Good work.

100

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 517068
Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 10:59

About...

Admin Picking
It's on my mind, but I'm not likely to implement anything right now. Part of it is pushing people to use the new tools properly and part of it is not wanting to mess with the most important part of the software right now. Still, it's on my mind.

Red Missed Pick
I'll look into it. Probably something I'll look more into when the season is over unless I have a solid idea to implement. It's part of a lot of pages, so I'd want to make sure any change has some real benefit.

Prospects
Good idea! Don't have the time this weekend, but will add them when I get some time.

Draft Pause Time
Believe it or not, I've gone back and forth with myself on this one. On one hand, draft pauses are meant to pause the clock. On the other hand, it did actually take that amount of time to make the pick. Probably what I'll do is to implement a "real time elapsed" and "clock time elapsed" because I can see benefits to both. This, too, would be an after the season change.

Thanks for the ideas! I always say it's a good thing when people are nitpicking because it means the overall software is working smoothly. :)

101

Nerfherders
ID: 347242717
Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 12:50

So far, so good with my draft. 60 picks in 3 days, and also a few prospects picked using the enter-it-yourself method. I am not certain though that my managers understand that the new site can take autopick queues, because Ive been designated DP for several picks.

Perhaps autopick should be the default and we check it to turn it off?

102

Khahan
ID: 373143013
Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 13:45

kkb, another idea with the pick clock is to not have run until the draft actually starts. A lot of commishes would use this clock to monitor manager activity but its difficult right now because the clock takes into account time before the draft started.

103

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 517068
Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 14:29

Perhaps autopick should be the default and we check it to turn it off?
Honestly, too dangerous at this point in time. If they don't know enough about auto-pick to turn it on, they likely won't know enough to turn it off either. And then, when the computer makes a pick for them... well, let's just say it would be a problem, I'm sure. :)

its difficult right now because the clock takes into account time before the draft started
I assume you mean the difference between starting with no clock and starting with a clock. If I add in the "clock" time (along with "real" time), then it will take this into account.

104

Ref
Donor
ID: 539581218
Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 14:58

Personally, I don't care much about real time. Clock time is everything though.

105

JeffG
Dude
ID: 01584348
Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 15:26

I'm loving the improvements. I am in two drafts and my goal is to set an auto-pick round based queue when I am one or two picks away and never make a manual pick on the clock :)

A few nit picky things I'd classify as nice-to-have, nothing is a red-flag or show stopper:

- For the alternate emails, can there be a switch for each on to be turned on or off. I'd like it set up so I only get the email to my phone when I am not in the office because I'll go over text message overages otherwise. Right now I remove and re-load.

- One of the managers in one of my drafts has draftime.com blocked (It got classified as a gambling site). He's on the turn in a 12-team league and we get through about 2 rounds a day so he is hesitant to set up two auto-queues so far in advance so he is using the tried-and-true designated picker approach. His DP is currently sending him an email update every 6 picks. Perhaps he would benefit from an alternative to the on-deck email (with a variable number of previous picks) because of the number of picks made between each of his. He'd benefit from an email option that will send him a status update every X number of picks (from either his last email or his last selection).

- I am in the Eastern time zone but the clock times on all the picks are showing up to me as an hour later (Atlantic time). Is that adjustable based on my personal time zone settings or can it be?

- I see that auto picks do not have a position and do not appear in the pick matrix until their position is updated by the person drafting that player or the draft commish/admin. I think I see you mention earlier about not having position from your data source. It would be nice if these players could appear on the matrix somewhere until updated - perhaps a new column that only shows when there are unassigned players. Also maybe allow anyone in the league to optionally do the housekeeping and update the position if none has been assigned yet.

- I miss the old green plus and minus signs that showed the commish/admin who had a queue filled and who was set to available for the admin or DP to pick. I do love the new little computer desktop icon that shows which picks were auto-picked. Maybe that icon can appear for all future picks for all to see as well that currently are set to auto pick.

106

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 517068
Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 16:39

Thanks for the feedback! I've added stuff to the "to do" list. :) Here are some comments...

Perhaps he would benefit from an alternative to the on-deck email (with a variable number of previous picks) because of the number of picks made between each of his.
He can choose to receive ALL the picks made since his last pick as part of the "Recent Picks in Notification" option.

I am in the Eastern time zone but the clock times on all the picks are showing up to me as an hour later (Atlantic time). Is that adjustable based on my personal time zone settings or can it be?
I'm guessing it's your DST setting for your account. Unfortunately, you have to set that manually and there's not much I can do about it...
Edit Account > Edit User Account > Board Preferences > Summer Time/DST is in effect

Maybe that icon can appear for all future picks for all to see as well that currently are set to auto pick.
I'm a bit confused by this one. Everybody -- not just the admin -- sees the icons now. The little person/computer icons took the place of the plus/minus signs in an effort to be more informative.

107

JeffG
Dude
ID: 01584348
Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 16:59

The DST adjustment worked :)

For the icon I was referring to aditionally indicating which future picks are currently set to autopick. We only see the icon now on past picks.

108

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 12353217
Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 20:39

RE: 107 You should see future picks set to auto-pick as well. It shows up in the "Queue" column in the Draft Home and if you hover over it, you'll see if it's Instant or Delayed. I'm seeing it for you in RIBC AAA PCL. Doesn't look like anybody's using it yet in your ACS Hackers draft.

109

Perm Dude
ID: 5510572522
Fri, Mar 11, 2011, 09:36

KKB: Is Draftime iPhone compatible?

pd

110

twilson
ID: 221142214
Fri, Mar 11, 2011, 14:34

Is there a way to see drafts from previous years? I like to reference the past RIBC drafts to refresh my memory on the runs and player valuations.

111

blue hen
Dude
ID: 710321114
Fri, Mar 11, 2011, 18:43

Re: 109. Yes, please. It works on the iPhone but it's not optimized.

Oh and my favorite feature: being able to look forwards and backwards better. The old pick listing was a bit convoluted.

112

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 452301120
Fri, Mar 11, 2011, 21:31

RE 109: Sort of. It'll show up, but it's definitely not mobile-friendly... yet. I'll be working on that a lot between baseball and football.

RE 110: All of YOUR old drafts are still available at Kafenatid.net. I took down all the other pages to avoid confusion.

113

loki
SuperDude
ID: 4211201420
Sat, Mar 12, 2011, 10:08

I have set up a general queue for a particular round. Is there a way to have this apply only to this round and to turn it off for subsequent rounds? If I set a pick based queue for this round, I assume that the general queue will still be active for future rounds unless I have computer access to turn it off.Thanks.

114

Perm Dude
ID: 5510572522
Sat, Mar 12, 2011, 10:19

You can used the pick based queue if you want, and set up that as an auto pick for only those players you want.

The settings for the pick based queue would not change your general queue I believe.

KKB: I'm going to set up a league for the political forum league draft. Can settings for the league be carried over from our old OTC drafts, or would I need to start fresh? I think the latter but I wanted to check since the managers and settings are all the same this time around.

115

loki
SuperDude
ID: 4211201420
Sat, Mar 12, 2011, 11:44

Yes, but after the pick is made from the pick based queue, the auto-pick is still in effect for the general queue for the next round necessitating computer access to turn it off.

116

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 452301120
Sat, Mar 12, 2011, 15:16

loki, you will want to stick to pick-based queues. A general queue auto-pick only turns off when you turn it off through the interface.

pd, this year you'll have to enter it all in. Next year, you will have the ability to "renew" the draft.

117

loki
SuperDude
ID: 4211201420
Sat, Mar 12, 2011, 19:22

Yes, but unlike the general queue when the pick-based queue is used, the unpicked players have to be re-entered for the next round which is somewhat of a hassle with a long queue.

118

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 452301120
Sat, Mar 12, 2011, 20:18

loki, If you load the players into Pre-Rankings, you can copy to each of your pick-based queues and the system will automatically ignore any drafted players. If you go ahead and copy into several pick-based queues, the system will also remove players from those queues as they're drafted. Should make life a bit easier until I can implement the copying between general and pick-based queues

119

loki
ID: 372441221
Sat, Mar 12, 2011, 22:44

Thanks.

120

blue hen
ID: 266191021
Sun, Mar 13, 2011, 21:50

KKB, Frank Francisco is still listed on TEX. Should be TOR.

121

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 517068
Mon, Mar 14, 2011, 09:16

Updated

122

Barilko6
ID: 391392820
Mon, Mar 14, 2011, 10:28

Another thing I've noticed is that for the Dirty Dozen league the program keeps giving crappy players to Blue Hen's team.

123

Khahan
ID: 373143013
Mon, Mar 14, 2011, 10:29

Another thing I've noticed is that for the Dirty Dozen league the program keeps giving crappy players to Blue Hen's team.

rofl! I nearly spit out my orange juice.

124

Great One
ID: 47252711
Mon, Mar 14, 2011, 10:33

I noticed that too.

125

blue hen
Dude
ID: 710321114
Mon, Mar 14, 2011, 10:55

... said the guy who just drafted Chipper Jones.

126

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 517068
Mon, Mar 14, 2011, 14:22

RE: 77, The functionality is now in place, thought it's automatic instead of optional.

127

blue hen
Dude
ID: 710321114
Mon, Mar 14, 2011, 14:30

That's a good one - thanks.

128

blue hen
Dude
ID: 710321114
Mon, Mar 14, 2011, 17:03

Slight bug with the queue-empty functionality. I had four players in my queue and the 4th one got taken, and I got an email. The other three are still in my queue.

129

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 12353217
Mon, Mar 14, 2011, 21:55

RE: 128, Should be fixed now.

The system wasn't deleting old pick-based queues and it was those queues (for picks that were already made) that were erroneously causing the emails like the one you received.

The fix will only work for picks moving forward, so there may still be a few "empty queue" emails for old picks, but it should be a quickly decreasing number from this point on.

130

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 517068
Tue, Mar 15, 2011, 14:17

RE: 97 (and others), the Manager Picks page now shows "Elapsed Time," "Elapsed Clock," and "Total Clock"

The "Elapsed Clock" only functions correctly as of approximately 12 pm today!

For all picks before 12 pm today, the "Elapsed Clock" was set equal to the "Elapsed Time."

131

Khahan
ID: 54138190
Tue, Mar 15, 2011, 19:51

Hey Fred, somebody had a post earlier up about the big red band when a pick is missed and how they didn't like it. I wanted to add that I actually like it as it makes it very easy as a commish to determine when picks are missed. No looking at clocks or anything. The red band of death is awesome.

132

¤ Mario LeMoose ¤
ID: 11240169
Wed, Mar 16, 2011, 10:49

Ditto to Khahan's post #131. In the leagues that I commish, managers who run the clock twice without making a pick are subject to a "slacker" penalty (a time limit reduction for a specified number of rounds). The red band of death is very helpful, as it provides visual evidence of those infractions.

133

astade
ID: 78462922
Wed, Mar 16, 2011, 23:50

KKB, we just finished a draft. I can't find the 'grid' feature anymore. That would be helpful to compare teams/draft results. Any insight?

134

Khahan
ID: 373143013
Thu, Mar 17, 2011, 10:09

When auto pick chooses a player they are not assigned a position and do not go into the grid.

Makes tracking by grid difficult, especially with a lot of autopicks.

We do have a work around in the meantime, you can go to your team and pick the player and edit his position manually. But is it possible to make it so autopick does this?

135

Perm Dude
ID: 5510572522
Thu, Mar 17, 2011, 10:13

Good point. Maybe they can automatically be assigned UTIL (when batters) or P (when pitchers) if those positions are being used in the draft.

136

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 517068
Thu, Mar 17, 2011, 10:27

RE: 133, Should be available now. It's in the main draft nav, where it is while the draft is running.

137

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 517068
Thu, Mar 17, 2011, 11:06

RE: 134, I have a fix coming up that will included Auto-Picked players who have no position in the Draft Grid.

Realistically, Auto-Pick just can't assign positions because of the various positions a draft may use and how managers may want to assign a player.

It's set up now so that managers HAVE to update the auto-picked player's position before they can do anything else, so that's about as tough as I can get on the topic.

If I auto-assign a position, it takes the responsibility away from the manager, where it belongs (and increases the number of emails asking why so-and-so was assigned to a position).

138

jaydog
ID: 6228217
Thu, Mar 17, 2011, 11:10

Love the idea of having both a general queue and a pick based queue. One suggestion though would be to take a pick based queue and either carry it to the next pick, or promote it to a general queue.

There have been a few times in my draft, where I wanted to set a pick based queue, but then after that pick is up I would like to carry the remainder of my queue over to the next pick.

Thoughts?

139

jaydog
ID: 6228217
Thu, Mar 17, 2011, 11:16

I'd also love to see an average draft position broken down by league. I'm in an AL only draft this year, and it would be helpful to see an AVG draft position for only AL players. By position would be very helpful as well, but I don't think you have position data.

140

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 517068
Thu, Mar 17, 2011, 11:46

RE: 138, you could probably do that with the Pre-Rankings as the Pre-Rankings would stay from pick to pick and would only copy in players who haven't been selected.

That said, I'll be implementing a General to Pick-Based and vice-versa copying capability in the off-season.

RE: 139, By league shouldn't be a problem. By position probably won't happen in the near future because a lot of leagues use different position settings.

141

Tree, not at home
ID: 3910441615
Thu, Mar 17, 2011, 11:56

KKB - the poli draft seems to be "stopped".

can you help us out of this?

142

Perm Dude
ID: 5510572522
Thu, Mar 17, 2011, 12:08

Fixed, tree.

143

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 517068
Thu, Mar 17, 2011, 12:21

RE: Unspecified position players in Draft Grid

It's been fixed! :)

There's now a column on the far right called "No Position (Auto-Picks)" and it will list all players that have been selected, but don't have a position specified yet.

There's even a tally at the bottom that can be useful for draft admins who want to keep an eye on how many of these players exist in the draft.

144

Khahan
ID: 54138190
Thu, Mar 17, 2011, 12:48

awesome kkb, thanks!

145

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 517068
Thu, Mar 17, 2011, 13:45

RE: 139. Done! :)

146

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 517068
Thu, Mar 17, 2011, 15:37

Bit thanks to bh for pointing out that the "Queue Empty" emails still had an issue. I've put the fix in, so it should be resolved.

As with before, the fix will only work with picks from this point on. You still may receive a few "Queue Empty" emails for picks made in the past.

147

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 517068
Thu, Mar 17, 2011, 15:53

Should be "Big thanks to bh" :)

148

Guru
ID: 330592710
Thu, Mar 17, 2011, 16:50

nah... - bit thanks are ample....

149

Khahan
ID: 373143013
Fri, Mar 18, 2011, 12:17

functionality request with the queues.

In the general queue, can we get a button put in that will let us add a player directly to a specific queue? this would make the round specific queues much easier and quicker to set up.

150

judy
Leader
ID: 7771722
Sun, Mar 20, 2011, 00:31

for the draft grid -- can you use a smaller font so more of the grid shows at once?
It works that way on the iPad and I can see the whole thing (mostly).

It makes it easier to scroll through.

Also, could you put the position at the bottom of each column as well as the top?

151

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 12353217
Sun, Mar 20, 2011, 12:05

RE: 149, I think that will be much easier once I implement the copy between queues functionality in the off-season, so I'll hold of for now and see if that helps once football rolls around.

RE: 150, I'm leaning towards implementing a font size chooser during the off-season that will be universal for the site, including the Draft Grid.

The position at the bottom is an easy fix and I'll get that worked up soon.

152

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 12353217
Sun, Mar 20, 2011, 12:52

Positions are now at the bottom of the draft grid, too.

153

Guru
ID: 330592710
Sun, Mar 20, 2011, 13:17

[150] You could try hitting "[ctl] -" (control minus)

That often shrinks the display. Control + increases. I sometimes do that for the grid.

154

Guru
ID: 330592710
Sun, Mar 20, 2011, 13:19

KKB - when putting in keepers, it would be useful if we could view all keepers on one page as a final review before finalizing. Now, in order to double check the entries, I had to cycle through all managers, one by one.

Perhaps you could show the draft grid with all keepers inserted? If nothing else, that would help to spot check to make sure no manager was missed.

155

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 12353217
Sun, Mar 20, 2011, 15:43

RE: 154, added to the "to do" list for the off-season. I have some other changes I'm going to make to Keeper Entry that should help make it a bit speedier of a process, so a review page makes a lot of sense.

156

Great One
ID: 48281723
Sun, Mar 20, 2011, 15:47

FYI - for comparison, Yahoo has what I would call a holding area... you click the player name and it pull them out of the main list and puts them on a separate list to the right. Then you have that list of 7 guys or whatever -- and you hit submit once for each team.

157

judy
Leader
ID: 7771722
Sun, Mar 20, 2011, 20:09

{153} for the MAC?

158

judy
Leader
ID: 7771722
Sun, Mar 20, 2011, 20:36

{153} Aha I can do zoom out, but have to do it 3 times each time I open the grid...

159

Ref
Donor
ID: 539581218
Mon, Mar 21, 2011, 13:31

KKB, I am impressed with drafttime. Nice work!

160

Khahan
ID: 373143013
Mon, Mar 21, 2011, 15:02

For snake drafts, I thought I remember choosing a field to have the turn picks not get a double clock. We jsut had a turn pick time out and it started a new 4 hr clock for his second pick.

Either I filld in the league info wrong, or this feature isn't working, but I cannot find an option under admin to change this now.

161

Perm Dude
ID: 5510572522
Mon, Mar 21, 2011, 15:07

It has been mentioned elsewhere but not here, I don't think, and so it is all in one place:

Admin should have the ability to pick for any manager after the draft starts, regardless of whether the manager has a queue or selected the Admin as a DP. We've had a couple of cases in which a queue was empty or unavailable to others and the manager phoned or texted in a pick that no one could actually make.

162

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 517068
Mon, Mar 21, 2011, 16:12

RE: 156, I've seen that in action and it's a good system. Not sure I'll go with something like that, but the whole keeper entry piece will get simplified in some manner. :)

RE: 159, thanks! :)

RE: 160, which draft?

RE: 161, if the queue is empty, the admin has the opportunity to make the pick. It's only when there is a queue with players and it's marked as unavailable that the admin doesn't have the ability. That will change over the off-season and the admin will have the ability to make ANY pick in the draft.

163

Perm Dude
ID: 5510572522
Mon, Mar 21, 2011, 17:00

But that ability doesn't occur if the Admin is not the DP, right?

164

Khahan
ID: 373143013
Mon, Mar 21, 2011, 17:09

162 - KKB, this is in the RIBC AA Underdog league. I used the skip pick feature to keep us on track. Again, you have options in there for a work around.

I agree with Ref, this is a great site you have. Thanks!

165

Guru
ID: 330592710
Mon, Mar 21, 2011, 17:14

[163] PD - if the queue is empty, the admin should be able to pick even if not setup as a DP. That's how it's been working for me.

166

Perm Dude
ID: 5510572522
Mon, Mar 21, 2011, 17:18

Hmmm. I'm just getting a "Queue Unavailable" message next to the manager's name.

167

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 12353217
Mon, Mar 21, 2011, 19:09

RE: 164, I'll look into it. My guess is that the culprit is the skipping of the pick. If the clock had run out, it should have jumped past the manager for both picks, but skipping the pick resets the clock for the next pick and I'm assuming I didn't take into account whether or not you specified double or single clock.

RE: 166, that means they have a queue and have it marked as unavailable. In that instance, nobody has access to it. If it was empty, it would say "Queue Empty" and would give the admin the opportunity to make the pick.

168

astade
ID: 78462922
Mon, Mar 21, 2011, 23:21

Just a thought...If there is an Auto-Pick/Delayed it might be nice for other managers to do a mouse-over and see the timer that was set. That way they can 'check back in' at the appropriate time.

169

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 517068
Tue, Mar 22, 2011, 08:45

RE: 168, great idea! Should be able to implement that sooner rather than later as it's a simple text display deal.

170

Perm Dude
ID: 5510572522
Tue, Mar 22, 2011, 18:38

KKB, can you eliminate the emails to the DP when the manager has an auto pick and a non-empty queue?

171

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 12353217
Tue, Mar 22, 2011, 19:08

RE: 168, added!

Also added some functionality bh pointed to. You can now click the Time Per Pick amount in the Draft Home page and get detailed info of Total Clock, Total Time, and Time Per Pick for every manager in the draft. The columns are sortable.

RE: 170, shouldn't be a problem. I'll add it to the "to do" list.

172

Bh
ID: 426111516
Tue, Mar 22, 2011, 21:51

How about a c clock? G20 has that. If your running time is over 12 hours, you lose clock privileges and get zero for each pick. Better set those queues!

173

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 517068
Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 09:42

RE: 172, already on the "to do" list thanks to numerous suggestions.

It's definitely an off-season addition/modification, but I'll have to see how it works out. When I implement the idea, I want to give it enough flexibility to work for most drafts that want to use it, so it may take longer than just this off-season. We'll see.

-----

If you're experiencing issues with the drag-and-drop functionality, particularly with IE9, make sure you clear your browser cache and then re-access Draftime. I've installed the latest version of the code that makes that work and it included a fix for that issue.

174

blue hen
Dude
ID: 710321114
Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 11:11

KKB, this is great - the time per manager. However, it's not available in G20 (league 28). Any idea why?

175

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 517068
Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 12:04

RE: 174, should be working now. It was an error when dealing with the "Custom" draft type.

176

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 517068
Thu, Mar 24, 2011, 15:21

RE: 170, you shouldn't receive any more emails as a designated picker when the next pick is set for auto-pick.

177

Guru
ID: 330592710
Thu, Mar 24, 2011, 15:31

I wish there was an option for a pick-based queue that prohibited it from rolling over to the general queue if empty.

My general queue has a bunch of names which are sometimes not fully researched and sequenced. If I set a pick-based queue, I'd like to have an option that says if the pick-based queue is empty, then wait for a manual pick.

179

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 517068
Thu, Mar 24, 2011, 16:42

RE: 177, if you do not have your General Queue set to auto-pick, the system will not rollover to your General Queue.

The Queue Management section of Help details this...

1. Pick-Based Queue for current pick, if auto-pick is turned on
2. General Queue, if auto-pick is turned on
3. No Auto-Pick

Of course, I can be more explicit and state it as: "General Queue, if General Queue Auto-Pick is turned on"

I'll update that.

180

Guru
ID: 330592710
Thu, Mar 24, 2011, 17:43

[178] Thanks. When all else fails, read the instructions...

181

GoatLocker
Leader
ID: 060151121
Thu, Mar 24, 2011, 18:10

Great Job KKB.
Really like the changes and improvements you have made.
Just really stream lines everything.

182

GoatLocker
Leader
ID: 060151121
Thu, Mar 24, 2011, 22:43

KKB,
Quick question on the Auto Delay.
Is there a max time it can be set to, and is that tied to the Pick Clock?

183

KrazyKoalaBears
ID: 12522422
Thu, Mar 24, 2011, 23:52

RE: 182, technically, there's no max time, meaning your pick could timeout and be missed if your delay is longer than the pick clock.

184

revvingparson
ID: 35213277
Sun, Mar 27, 2011, 08:13

KKB as others have said it's a very nice set up now and makes drafting and administering the draft a lot easier. Being able to able to eliminate prospects from the draft pool was a welcome addition.

As always it's the human element that can be frustrating. Even with the queue management this year if a manager doesn't take advantage of it things are still slowed down. (I know nothing you can do about that part :) )

Forum: basePage 20012Subject: On the Clock Changes: Make Your Voice Heard

Forum: base
Page 20012
Subject: On the Clock Changes: Make Your Voice Heard