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PostPosted: 04 Apr 2019, 18:45 
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There's an interesting debate raging in England at the moment around the provision of league management software, cost of membership and the value added by the TT365 website.

I'm not going to take sides in this.

Bottom line seems to be TT365 who provide the league management / membership software which leagues affiliated to TT England can use, want to up their charges to TT England (and therefore indirectly it's members). TT England don't want to pay all the increase, but do want to up their membership fees. TT365 website will be pulled by the suppliers from 1st August 2019 from general TT England usage.

TT365 did publish a news item about why they felt the need to up their prices but I can't find this on their website now. TT England also published their take on the matter and I can't find that either. It seems act in haste, repent at your leisure applies here or maybe a fear of legal action, not sure which. Either way, it's a bit of a mess at the moment with lot's of unknowns, half knowns, uncertainty and questions being asked about

1. What do day to day league players/members of TT England get for their annual subscription
2. How can the cost of subscribing to TT365 have jumped so much and what will be the charging per player be, especially if a player plays in more than one league
3. What are the alternatives to being a member of TT England AND what are the alternatives to using the TT365 website (other league management software)

Mmmmm....


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PostPosted: 04 Apr 2019, 19:17 
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PostPosted: 04 Apr 2019, 20:14 
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TTE put the membership software contract out to tender and TT365 didn't win it, losing them some £45k a year iirc. This led to an income shortfall and given they have 4 employees and can't run at a loss needed to be made up. Only way to do it was to increase the fees. TTE disagreed with this and basically said we'll stop using you and find somewhere else, impossible in budget and within the time frame. They almost certainly didn't consider these factors when tendering the membership software costs. TTE want to have their cake and eat it too essentially. Getting discounted tournament software only possible when using the same company for management software. Once you pull the plug on one you can no longer receive the discount. They didn't see it that way. Lots of lack of foresight from all involved.


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PostPosted: 04 Apr 2019, 20:30 
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A quick google search shows quite a few pieces of software out there for managing sports leagues and tournaments. I doubt they will have the flexibility to allow "rankings" across leagues that TT365 has but I've yet to speak to a local league player who rushes out to know their ranking within the league or across leagues. Most seem to want to have a league table, with individual player averages and upcoming fixtures. Admins want something that is easy to update and maintain.

If TT England can't deliver and TT365 at £7 per player per league is too much (for our league with over 150 members that's an annual bill of nearly £1000), what are the alternatives that people have actually used in their league, which work and are easy to maintain?


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PostPosted: 04 Apr 2019, 23:08 
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Debater wrote:
What are the alternatives that people have actually used in their league, which work and are easy to maintain?


I wrote something myself that tracked matches and percentages, and produced formatted league tables. What it didn't have was a website, or the kind of instant updates that tt365 offers.

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PostPosted: 05 Apr 2019, 00:42 
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One of our members designed and created our website for free. It was hosted on another members business server and we paid about £50 a year for that hosting. The tables were updated using excel spreadsheets that were imported in to the website somehow. Ultimately the point is, with the good will of a league member we had something that worked very well for us and was substantially cheaper than that proposed by TT365. It wasn't as easy to maintain, but it was functional. We migrated over to TT365 with the move to membership payments and records being linked to TT365. Prior to that we had to complete records manually on a database each year which was on a CD and then send them off to TT England which was a very labour intensive and boring job to do. One of the strengths of TT365 is it's membership management option - one of it's weaknesses the clunky interface for updating news items, importing photo's and creating tables of information. I've lost count of the number of times the formatting went wrong when I was created tables (not league tables) which I populated with our records of winners etc.

Problem now is we have masses of records (going back to 1928) and photos etc uploaded to the TT365 website and no idea how to migrate them efficiently to another platform, be that the simplified version TT England are promising to deliver in time for next season or a basic website designed in-house by any helpful member with the right skill set.

Moral of story, don't operate without a contingency plan and don't put all your eggs in one basket. :(


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PostPosted: 05 Apr 2019, 15:46 
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If all the data is available on a Webpage with numbering and all, should it not be easy to setup Google Docs or some similar service to pull the data and generate PDFs ?

You could then simply develop your solution on Google Docs using Spreadsheets and Google "Forms" or whatnot to start submitting new entries and keeping track that way.

Eventually you just want historical data to become searchable PDF archives ... that way old data is still there ... and new data has a pathway to become an archival document.

Don't ask if I have done it ... I havent :-P :-D

Edit: I found it very simple to create some kind of trivial form .... forgive the formatting to prevent spammer bots :-D
Hech Tee Tee Pee Ess :// docs dot
google dot com /forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdfd4ewXyQ5ZVInvGPluOh4rW16tZ8TZBUV7C0JkFRx_O_zMQ/viewform

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PostPosted: 11 Apr 2019, 06:26 
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And the plot thickens - only time will tell

Here's an open letter from TT England outlining their position

https://tabletennisengland.co.uk/wp-con ... .04.19.pdf

I have admin privileges for TT365 for my league and there is a downloadable PDF file with TT365's position on this - I'm not sure though if it's meant for public viewing or just league admins so I've not included it. TT365 are requesting a response to their proposal to each league by 17th May 2019 and on 20th May 2019 they will announce the future of TT365.

My question stands. TT365 are looking to charge an individual membership scheme fee of £7 per senior player and £4 for juniors - pay one and you can play in as many leagues affiliated to TT365 scheme as you want (there was a concern it would be £7 per person for each league they played in but this has been dispelled).

For a league with 36 teams and 144 members that would be £1008 a year. Is that a lot to pay for an annual subscription to league manager software?


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PostPosted: 11 Apr 2019, 07:57 
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Yes, but how much was TT England paying on each player's behalf, and how much was the league software price subsidised by the other portions of the deals between TT England and TT365?

Being a total outsider with no dog in this fight, I suspect that someone somewhere is being penny wise but pound foolish.

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PostPosted: 11 Apr 2019, 20:10 
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Yet another exit scenario played out on british soil. Perhaps TTE and TT365 should ask the Britsh Parlament for advice on how to manage such... :rofl:

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PostPosted: 12 Apr 2019, 23:20 
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Perhaps my "free" Google forms solution is the answer?

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