2021 RaceDay Development Recap

As we enter a new year, we are producing multiple blogs that give a full 2021 Product Recap, a 2021 Business Recap, our 2022 Product Roadmap, our Vision for 2022 and Beyond, and this one  – which focuses on our RaceDay Advances in 2021.

2021 was a busy year for the RaceDay Development Team! We had some pretty lofty goals coming into the year, and we were able to accomplish what we set out to do. We released 44 versions of RaceDay Scoring, and pushed out releases for both the RaceDay Checkin App, and released the GiveSignup Ticket Checkin App.

This past year also represented a return to racing. Between The Race Director and RaceDay Scoring software users, almost 12 thousand Races were timed, with a total of over 2 million participants!

Below you can find details about some of our favorite things implemented in the past year.

• RaceDay Scoring
  • Cross Country Scoring Support
  • Lap Race Scoring Support
  • Improved Segment Setup and Visualization
  • Non-Binary Scoring Support
• Checkin Apps
  • GiveSignup Ticket Checkin App
  • Volunteer Mode for RaceDay Checkin App

RaceDay Scoring

Cross Country

RaceDay Scoring V3 was released in May 2021 that included support for traditional Cross Country displacement rules, TFRRS posting, Athletic.NET exports, FinishLynx integration, Team Roster Reports, and more.

This particular release required major changes to our software and involved adding or updating 110,000 lines of code over the course of 4 months.

We’re happy to now be able to offer Cross Country scoring support to our RaceDay Scoring users as we progress towards incorporating all of the features of Race Director into RaceDay Scoring.

This release also saw the implementation of the new RunSignup Team Results functionality for Cross Country events, which provides more intuitive navigation between individuals and their team standings.

Lap Events

In November we launched support for Duration-Based Lap Events with version 3.1.12, opening the door to RaceDay Scoring for those Timers who needed support for events like 6-hour ultramarathons, or 24-hour mountain bike events. This particular feature requires that athletes be ranked based on their total distance completed first, then by the fastest time over that distance. This again required some major changes to our system as we have to reconfigure much of our code to support this new method of sorting, as well as provide features that are required by these types of events including:

• Support for multiple Lap options (for instance, a short and long Lap).
• The ability to build Laps from specific Segments. For instance, laps that must include reads at a check mat, or Laps that must have certain Segments completed in a certain order.
• Skipping every other lap completed in order to not count rest periods.
• A variety of settings to control who is counted or not counted as a finisher based on the total time.
• Relay Team and Aggregate Team Lap Results
• Lap Summary and Lap Detail Reporting.
• Lap Result publishing to RunSignup.
• Fastest/Slowest Lap Time Fields

Improved Segment Setup and Visualization

In December we released a few updates that improved the setup of multi-segment events like Triathlons, giving Timers the ability to rearrange Segments, and made the setup screen cleaner by collapsing Segment Setup Panels and providing the important data points in a summary for each Segment.

Here is what the Segment Setup used to look like. As you can see, you would only be able to see at most two Segments at once, so checking your Segment definitions could be really difficult as you have to scroll through a lot of setup.

We now collapse all the Segment Panels by default and give you the most important information upfront – the Segment distance, and what Timing Location and Occurrence each Segment starts and finishes at, making Race reviews much more simple.

In addition, you can now drag and drop Segments in your setup in case you need to quickly add a Segment on the fly in the middle of your course. Prior to this change you would need to delete existing Segments if you wanted to insert one higher in the list.

Non-Binary Support

At the end of December, we released our first version of Non-Binary scoring in v3.1.37 which included a few major changes to our system. This functionality followed shortly after RunSignup enabled improved Non-Binary Support for Registration in November. This is an important step forward to providing a product that can support a variety of gender options. In the future, we are planning on adding even more flexibility with Gender by giving Timers a way to configure a set of Gender Options that they can configure on a race to race basis, based on the needs from each event they work with.

We have added a new Gender option for “Non-Binary” that will be shortened to “X” in some fields.

Age Groups can now be configured for Non-Binary athletes:

And results on RunSignup display these Non-Binary Categories:

GiveSignup Ticket Checkin

In June we released the first version of the GiveSignup Ticket Checkin. This app includes a variety of features critical for Ticket Events and nonprofits including:

• Ticket and group names are now displayed for each ticket, making it easy to manage advanced event check-ins with multiple ticket types.
• Tickets can be un-checked in, making it easy for volunteers to fix mistakes.
• The Ticket CheckIn App can be locked for volunteers.
• Nonprofits can now add a start and end date for when they want the CheckIn App enabled.
• The Individual Tickets report shows checked in status so you can easily report on which attendees were checked in.

We had a few followup releases that added additional features including:

• Information Presets and Configurations
• Custom Questions and Stats
• Store Purchases

Volunteer Mode for RaceDay Checkin

In October we released a major update to the RaceDay Checkin App which added support for the RunSignup Volunteer Platform. Event organizers are able to set up volunteer categories and teams with descriptions and any special qualifications,  the number of volunteers needed for a specified role, and dates and time slots needed. Volunteers then sign up for various open roles from the event’s website. In addition, event organizers can then use the platform to communicate with volunteers any instructions and important information and monitor areas needing additional resources. 

Summary

2021 was a year full of new and exciting features for our RaceDay Development team. We have added some key features to RaceDay Scoring that Timers rely on, as we make our way towards sunsetting support for The Race Director software in 2023. We think that we are on track to make RaceDay Scoring even better in the next few years as we transition our current users of The Race Director to RaceDay Scoring.

In addition to the amount of work that we have done in improving RaceDay Scoring, our team also took over responsibility for the RunSignup Checkin Apps. We are happy with our first releases for these products but are excited for the potential we have to make them even better and to provide more apps for things like point of sale in the future.