Race Boat Management System HELP

Introduction

This Race Boat Management System is designed to make it easier for the Skipper of a Race Boat to manage a race program and to help build communication between skipper and crew and among crew members.

There are four major components to the system.

Home Page.
When you first log on to the system you will see the boat and skipper information. This is an easy way to provide the crew with contact information and boat location. To the left is a boat picture which can be replaced with the actual boat that you are racing.

Calendar.
The skipper can post events in the calendar which can be viewed by the crew. It also interacts with the auto email feature.

Forum.
The forum is a threaded discussion group. that is password protected for crew members and skipper only.

Email.
Maintains and email list for crew members and skipper. Crew or skipper can compose one message and select whom to send it to. Automatically emails crew before an event.

Calendar
The Calendar allows the skipper to post all boat related events such as races, maintenance and practices on the internet for view and printing by the crew. It also interacts with the auto email function emailing the crew before any event on the calendar.

For the crew the calendar is used only for viewing. There is a monthly calendar that displays the days of week and corresponding dates.

The skipper can post events to the Calendar by clicking on the "Post to Calendar" button. Before you post events you must select the date using the monthly calendar on the main Calendar page. Then once on the post events page select a time for the event and fill out the name of the event, notes and duration.

The Calendar feature works faster with Internet Explorer. Because of the heavy use of javascript to create the calendar, Netscape seems to take awhile to load the page.

Forum
The Forum is a easy way for the crew to communicate with each other and the skipper about boat related topics.

To start a new topic click on the "New Topic" Link at the top or bottom menu. Once on the New Topic page fill out your Name, Email Address and subject of the New Topic. In the message box enter your message. Underneath the Message Box there is a check box. If you select the check box any replies to your message will be email to you as well as posted on the Forum. Finally post your message.

You can view any message posted to the Forum by clicking on the Message Title. This will take you to a page that list the Author of the Message and the Date as well as the message itself. Underneath a Response to message box appears that will let you respond the the message above. This will show up indented and below the original message so that it will be an obvious response to the original New Topic.

When viewing the Forum listings you can select View Threads which will show the Title of the responses to the original New Topic posting. Once this is selected you can then Collapse the Thread by selecting that link on the top or bottom menu.

The Skipper has the option to modify or delete any posting in the forum.

Email
The email function is one of the most useful and will save the skipper many hours of time trying to contact the crew. This component will automatically email the crew a designated number of days prior to a race reminding them about the race and the time to be there. In addition it will maintain an email list of crew and skipper and allows users to select the persons to email and send a message to all simultaneously. The skipper maintains the email list and can add and deleted emails at anytime.

The email only features works if the skipper enters all the crews email addresses in the skippers email main menu. All the crew and skipper can then check which addressees they want to send the email to and compose one message send to all simultaneously.