League Features Now Available On Android; Sign Up/Log In Via Email As Well!
When we rolled out the beta version of our league/tournament software back in February 2017, our tournament features were available on both iOS and Android, but league features were only available on iOS. As we continued building out our social and deal features for the past 10 months, we kept a close eye on the need to add our league features to Android, as well as improve the overall league features in iOS.
Today, we’re excited to announce that league software features are now fully functional on Android, and we have new and improved league features across both iOS and Android.
What exactly do our league software features entail? Well, it’s a pretty robust offering:
Managing Registration, Dues, and Payments
With our league software, there’s no more having to track down players for cash payments or accept paper checks. Players can automatically register and pay for their league dues with their credit card, right within the app. They can even choose which team they’re on, or indicate “find a team for me”, which will let league directors know that a new player is looking for a team. All of this comes with full notifications for all payments/registrations:
Setting and viewing schedules
League directors can choose how many weeks their league lasts, the teams that will be playing each week, and even which team is home and which team is away. Players can view their next upcoming match for just that week, or view the entire schedule by week. Any updates to the schedule that directors make will automatically get reflected in the app that players see. No more having to send out mass emails or scramble around when a scheduling change has to be made:
Adding/Editing/Deleting Directors, Teams, Captains, and Players
Anyone who creates a league is automatically designated as a director, and that director can add other directors to the league, create teams, and add captains/players to teams. Captains can add any players to their team who choose to pay dues directly to them (otherwise, players that pay by credit card on their own can automatically choose their team). Captains can also designate other players to be captains on the team, both permanently and temporarily:
Match play
For team matches, captains can set the lineup for their team during each week of play, as well as substitute players in and out. Any player in a particular match can mark the winner of a game, with directors of a league having all override permissions. Game winners can be selected with just a couple taps of a button. Players from outside of a particular match, but whom are still in the league, can view match play results for other teams, but can’t edit or set any winners, substitutes, etc. During the match, the team score gets updated in real time, as do the total team and player rankings in the league (see below). After the match is over with, a summary of individual results are displayed:
Team and Player Rankings
ZenSports keeps track of team and player rankings in real time, as matches are going on. Which means no more having to submit score sheets or do any data entry later on. Everything is updated as it’s happening, which is also great because players can see how other members in the league are doing in real time. This is particularly useful for leaves that are spread out across multiple locations. Want to see how another team or player is doing that you’re vying for first place with? Just go into the rankings or match screen for that team/player and check it out as it’s happening:
Prize Money
We give you a summary of all of the player dues received, and you can set prize monies to be paid out (if any) for players to view:
But wait, there’s always more :)
The second major feature that we rolled out today was the ability to create a ZenSports account and log in via your email address. Previously, we required a Facebook account in order to sign up and log into ZenSports. There were many reasons for why this was required, which we outlined in a previous blog post.
However, as we shift more to selling our membership pass/reservation software to sports facilities and our league/tournament software to organizers, our social media features become more of just a well-rounded feature instead of our core product like it was previously. So the need to require FB login is now less important. Although we still highly encourage users to sign up via Facebook because it’s a much faster signup experience, and there’s no need to worry about updating any of your information or photos, as those are automatically pulled from your Facebook account. Here’s how the new signup/login via email looks:
As part of this new sign up/log in via email feature, you can also add players to a competition without that player having to create a ZenSports account:
When you add a player to a competition that doesn’t already have a ZenSports account, that player will receive an email invitation, asking them to finish creating a ZenSports account. However, you do not need to wait for them to finish creating an account before you can begin managing them in that competition — you can manage them right away (and if they never finish creating an account, that’s fine, too).
We hope you love these new features as much as we enjoyed building them. Onwards and upwards. Game on!
