County Board Contacts Guide (full process) Follow
County Board Contacts
This section of a county board’s administration page allows administrators to manage their club contacts and provides greater flexibility for sending emails.
Club Contacts
The user can see a list of contacts for a given club or for a selected type of official across all clubs. The list of clubs is defined as a club which has an active Play-Cricket site and shares the same county as the county board. The user can also filter by the category attached to the club record - club, school etc. This list of possible categories and their association with the club record is maintained by the Play-Cricket helpdesk.
The entries in black are taken from the About Us section from the club’s site. If there are no details returned from the club’s site, the league administrator may add details if known, and use a questionnaire to get confirmation from the club.
Select Day to Day>Club Contacts>Contacts to get the following screen:
Make selections from the drop-down lists in each field for the roles that you wish to communicate with.
The screenshot below shows that the chairmen of all the clubs have been selected.
Note that if the club has created a position of ‘Club Chairman’, rather than ‘Chairman’, the details would not be extracted from the club site.
Where details are missing or contrary to your own information, click the Edit icon to add them yourself.
In the example below, the system has not found any communication details from a club site for the role of Chairman. Any details that you have should be entered in the right-hand column before saving them.
The details that have been entered by a county board administrator will appear in red.
If a club administrator updates the records for the club officials on his PlayCricket site, then that information will take precedence over any supplied by the county board.
The user can select the email option to create an email to any individual official, a copy of which will be stored in the county board’s email log. If an official has two entries (e.g. Abridge CC’s Chairman in above screen), the email will be sent to both versions of the contact to increase the likelihood that it will reach the right person. If an email address is not available then the email icon will not be displayed.
Send Emails
This facility makes it easier for a county board administrator to email several officials and administrators at many clubs in one go.
Before issuing emails, it is advisable to get your contacts list up to date using the Questionnaire facility – see below.
Select Day to Day>Club Contacts>Send Emails to get the following screen:
This is a list of clubs with an active site that share the same county as the county board. Choose the clubs that you wish to communicate with by ticking the checkboxes then click the Continue button.
Use the next screen to select the officials that you wish to contact.
You may also select an alternative official to contact if the original choice has no email details. In the example above, the first choice is the Chairman and the alternative is the Hon. Secretary.
The screenshot below shows the list of recipients that match the original criteria of Chairman (or Hon. Secretary if the Chairman’s details are missing e.g. for Ardleigh Green CC).
Contact names will appear in red if the details have been provided by the county board administrator rather than the club.
The club names in red are where the email address or contact details are missing for the officials requested.
Where details are missing and you have the information, click the Edit icon to add them yourself.
If multiple roles have been selected, and a contact fulfils more than one such role at a club, then they will appear with a position of “multiple” and will only be emailed once. This has occurred for Paul Cook below.
Click ‘Continue’ to proceed to the send email screen to create the email.
Once sent the user will be returned to the first screen listing the clubs which will show the original selection. At this point you may wish to use the Invert option to select all the clubs previously not selected and send them an email.
Notes:
- Sent emails will be saved in the email log.
- There may be instances where you have details for a club official which may or may not differ from the details from those on a club’s About Us page. In this case, both records will be listed.
- Where a person holds several roles for a club, the name will appear once in the recipients list and the ‘position’ will be listed as ‘Multiple’.
- Before issuing emails, it is advisable to get your contacts list up to date using the Questionnaire facility.
Questionnaires
The county board can define multiple questionnaires requesting the club to populate or confirm the details currently stored for various officials. Ideally you would send one at the start of the exercise, then an annual one to prompt the club to review their records.
Select Day to Day>Club Contacts > Questionnaires to get the following:
Click the ‘Add’ button to create a questionnaire.
Add a title to identify the questionnaire that you are going to send to the clubs in your league, and enter any notes to the club administrator(s).
When selecting the roles, please consider what information you really need rather than ask for details of every available role. A club administrator will need to spend the time completing the questionnaire so you don’t want the task to be too demanding.
You can specify mandatory fields by ticking the checkboxes.
Save the questionnaire until you are ready to send it. It will be saved as a template and therefore may be edited and re-sent as required.
When you are ready to send out a questionnaire, click the Send button against the appropriate line.
The next screen shows which sites may be selected to receive the questionnaire. Tick the Select All check box or use the drop-down list to choose the category before clicking the Send button.
The example below shows a category type of School.
You will get an acknowledgement that the questionnaire has been sent.
The receiving clubs get a ‘workflow’ item on their Admin Home page.
A club administrator should edit the missing items or any contact details which are incorrect and submit the completed form. There is an email button so that the club administrator may contact you in case of queries. This is what the questionnaire would look like for the receiving club:
On a county board site, the Admin Home page displays the status of the questionnaires that have been sent out.
When a questionnaire has been updated and submitted to you, the number of outstanding questionnaires is reduced and the contact information on your site is updated.
If a questionnaire is returned with any of the fields missing, then it will appear as a ‘Partially Completed Questionnaire’ and you may choose to accept it or re-send it.
Outstanding questionnaires may also be removed.
Tick the relevant box for the questionnaire to be removed, then click the Remove button.
If you wish to contact the club, then tick the relevant box and click the Email button to open the send email dialogue. The email will be sent to the main administrators for the club.
Upload Contacts
If you already have a list of contacts for your sites in a spreadsheet, then you can import this information into the Play-Cricket system so that the details are held in one place.
It is important that you only use the template provided and use the club IDs and official position names which you can download from Site Administration>Uploads>Club Contacts:
You will need to download club IDs, the position names and a template for the upload.
Note that the position names are fixed and must be taken from the downloaded list.
Here is an example of the template to be uploaded:
When the file that you have created is uploaded, you will see a summary report of successful and failed items, with the options to cancel or continue the import of the records that have passed the validation checks.
The example below shows some of the officials that were uploaded for a club.
The entries in black are the ones that are on the club site, the ones in red have been uploaded by a league administrator.
If the contact details are different you will see two lines.
To resolve the conflict, you would send a questionnaire to the club administrators asking them to confirm the correct details.
League Contacts
This function works in the same way as the Club Contacts but with a different list of possible official positions.