Replaces a badminton league team’s shared Excel sheet. Team members report their availability on their phone, the captain sets the line-up (or lets the app share it out fairly), and the treasurer keeps track of the team kitty.
A web app that replaces a badminton league team's shared Excel sheet, where not everyone could colour in cells on their phone. Now every team member opens one link, picks their name and marks with a tap whether they can play each match. Three teams use it so far, in Dutch or English.
What it does
- Availability per match: available, rather not, unavailable or unknown, each with its own colour. The table stays calm: just a
1for whoever plays and a?for anyone who hasn't filled anything in yet. - Three tabs: Team shows the full schedule, My schedule shows your own matches as cards, and in Edit the team itself enters the matches, players, dates, times and opponents.
- Today stands out: today's match gets a warm colour and a today label, while past matches turn grey.
- Team captain: only the captain sets the final line-up, so nobody can put someone else in by accident. Without a captain, everyone with the link can fill in everything.
- Automatic line-up: one button creates a proposal that lets everyone play about equally often, spreads home and away matches fairly, takes into account who prefers not to play singles and never selects someone who is unavailable. The captain can generate a new proposal or confirm it.
- Substitute arranged: if a player can't make it but has found a stand-in, the schedule shows that, with the substitute's name. That way you can see per match how many people are going, which helps with transport.
- Who buys the round: for each opponent you record the arrangement for drinks after the match. It sits behind a small ⓘ and still applies next season.
- Team kitty: a fixed amount per season, an amount per (home) match played, or set freely. Treasurers track contributions, expenses and advances, and can give someone their own rate where needed. At the top you see straight away how much will be left at the end of the season for a team outing.
- New season: one click copies the team with all players and arrangements to a new season with a new link. The old season is kept.
Design choices
- Everyone sees the same screen. Not every team member is equally at home with technology. A button that nobody has is better than a button that only one person has.
- Mobile first. Three tabs fit exactly on a phone screen, so new parts such as the kitty sit behind a small button in the header.
- A calm screen. Colour instead of symbols, and functions that could break something are not up front.
- Default first, exceptions second. A different rate is set where you need it, not in a separate admin screen.
Administration
The administrator only creates teams, shares the link and chooses how a team's kitty works. Matches can be pasted from Excel in one go. There can be several administrators, each signing in with a password and a code from an authenticator app such as Proton Authenticator. The app generates the QR code for this itself, so the key never leaves the server.
A diagnostics page and a backup and migration function make moving to another server straightforward.
Technology
PHP 8 with MySQL or MariaDB, without frameworks, so it runs on ordinary shared hosting. Bilingual (Dutch and English, set per team) and built so another language is easy to add.