Issue 22 - 12/08/00

This is the Schedule Star and HighSchoolSports.Net weekly newsletter.
Tips and tricks for using Schedule Star to your best advantage.


*** Have you made a backup today? ***


In this Issue...
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SCHEDULE STAR: IT'S ABOUT VALUE
SCHEDULE STAR VS. SCHEDULE NET
PA ELIGIBILITY TIPS
MAKE A BACKUP TODAY?


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SCHEDULE STAR: IT'S ABOUT VALUE


Over the past few weeks, we have spoken with many Athletic Directors throughout the country who have spent hours upon hours arduously using a web-based interface to input games and scores to an Internet site that subsequently disappeared.

How many hours of your valuable time do you want to gamble with a startup that may or may not have enough financial backing to last through next week?

Here's a highly abbreviated list of those that have cumulatively taken MILLIONS of their investors dollars, hundreds of thousands of hours of Athletic Directors time, and produced few, if any results:

www.nscsn.com
www.sportshuddle.com
www.statmaster.com
www.schoolathletics.com
www.studentathletelink.com
www.net2itive.com

All of these companies made fairly significant promises, came into the business with a big splash, and promptly disappeared. The news is full of "dot-com" companies that did not make it. The real victims were the Athletic Directors who bought into the "flash" and spent hundreds of hours entering information, only to have the dot-com go away.

Many of these dot-coms have minimal security as well, exposing you and your school to a tremendous amount of potential ill will. A school in the Northeast was using a dot-com where the security was poor. One of the students easily broke into the system, and the next thing the Athletic Director knew, he was receiving call after call at home about several false, obscene competitions scheduled for that afternoon. Worse, it took DAYS to get these events removed from the Internet site.

Face it... this is YOUR schedule, YOUR responsibility and YOUR reputation on the line.

Schedule Star and HighSchoolSports.Net is a 37-year-old company. Nearly FOUR DECADES of serving Athletic Directors and ONLY Athletic Directors.

Schedule Star is the premier Athletic Director's time saving, scheduling program. It's Internet enabled, posting your schedule to the Internet with just a click of a button.

This reliability and stability is very much like your time. It comes at a price. Unlike your time, the price is very modest. Less than the cost of a cup of coffee each day. The annual subscription cost for ScheduleNet is $225. Less than 62 cents each day, a pittance to keep your students, their parents and the community from being bombarded with advertisements that may conflict with your local and loyal boosters (who have been with your school for years).

For what amounts to pennies, you will always have the latest version of Schedule Star; the ability to upload to the Internet with the touch of a button; the piece of mind in knowing that your schedule on the Internet is complete, correct and concise... and secure.

Schedule Star and HighSchoolSports.Net is leading edge technology, not just another over-hyped website that may or may not be there tomorrow.

The choice is yours: Endless struggling with a slow web page, or Schedule Star.

Schedule Star... It's the only way you can "Schedule Once, Use Everywhere".


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SCHEDULE STAR VS. SCHEDULE NET


We receive numerous questions regarding the differences between our Schedule Star and Schedule Net software.

The ONLY difference is Schedule Net is equipped to upload your schedules to our HighSchoolSports.Net website. Schedule Star does not upload.

From a user's standpoint, the software is IDENTICAL. On Schedule Star, the UPLOAD TO NET button on the main calender screen is disabled, and the three uploading-related buttons in the Utilities Menu do not function. Those are the ONLY differences. All other aspects of Schedule Star and Schedule Net are THE SAME.

Both Schedule Star and Schedule Net are networkable across a Local Area Network (LAN). The "Net" in Schedule Net refers to uploading to our Internet site. You do not have to install Schedule Net to network the program on an LAN.

Schedule Star is a one-time purchase and operates as a stand-alone program. It includes one year of free upgrades, after which a fee is applied for upgrading to a newer version.

Schedule Net is available only as a annual subscription. It includes unlimited uploading capability to HighSchoolSports.Net and unlimited free upgrades for as long as you are subscribed.

For more information about cost and purchasing, please refer to the following link:

http://www.schedulestar.com/Purchase.htm


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PA ELIGIBILITY TIPS


Several of our users in Pennsylvania are taking full advantage of Schedule Star's built-in eligibility features. After assembling teams and setting eligibility options, you're just a few clicks away from printing a completed PIAA eligibility.

A few items to remember if you are having trouble printing the forms:

1. For wrestling eligibility, the last column (certified minimum weight class) is pulled from the Minimum Weight field on the Participation Information screen. If the weight you entered is not appearing, click TEAMS, bring up your wrestling team, highlight and athlete, and click MODIFY. Make sure you entered the weight into the MINIMUM Weight field and not the Weight field.

2. If you are getting the message "No eligible students found" when attempting to print, go back to the Participation Information screen and make sure the "Other" eligibility flag in the bottom right corner of the screen is set to "Yes."

3. For Pennsylvania installs of Schedule Star, the Date of Enrollment for Current School Year comes from the Sport Eligibility 2 flag under Eligibility Settings in the Utilities menu. The Date of Enrollment in the student directory is ignored for Pennsylvania.

4. Schedule Star can fill in the "to be contested at" field if you enter the facility for the event on the Sporting Event screen.

Please note that the Date of Enrollment is set globally, so the date you sent in the Sport Eligibility 2 field will apply to ALL athletes. However, a problem may arise if your team includes an athlete that transferred to your school after the beginning of the school year and therefore has a different enrollment date.

We now how a patch available to correct this situation and allow you to enter a different enrollment date for certain athletes; however, it must be applied carefully. If you need this patch, please email zach@schedulestar.com , or contact tech support at (740) 633-8804.


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MAKE A BACKUP TODAY?


It's Friday once again. Another week has gone by. Another Schedule Star Newsletter has been emailed out. And you made another Schedule Star backup today...RIGHT?

Unfortunately, we still receive at least one call every few weeks from a school that lost EVERYTHING in Schedule Star because a hard drive crashed and they never made a backup.

This past week, one of our users was having serious computer hardware problems but assured us that he made a backup...THREE WEEKS AGO. He was not sure if he had added anything to Schedule Star since the backup. And there was no way to know what changes he might have made.

We spoke with another school recently that lost their networked copy of Schedule Star. Apparently, their system administrator was either unable or unwilling to recover the program from their server's backup tape. They effectively lost ALL of their Schedule Star data.

Think you don't need to make backups because you're running from a server? THINK AGAIN.

If you didn't do it already. Do it right now:

1. Insert a disk.
2. Click on UTILITIES, then BACKUP, then FULL DATA BACKUP.
3. Click OK.
4. When the backup is finished, remove the disk from your drive.

Think of this newsletter as your weekly reminder. Every time it arrives in your email, go make a backup before reading it. Don't find out about the importance of making backups the hard way. Make a backup NOW, BEFORE the unexpected occurs. It's the best form of protection for your data.

This newsletter is part of our Friday routine...making a backup should be part of yours.


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http://www.schedulestar.com
http://www.highschoolsports.net