We've recently added templates for Wrestling, Track & Field, Water Polo, and Golf. You can find them and all our new templates within the "Customize" folder under "Site Appearance in your eteamz admin. We'd love to hear your feedback on these or any of our templates. Not finding a template that matches your sport? Follow the link at the top of the Customize page to suggest templates we should add.

We're launching a new feature on eteamz today that alerts your site members via email when you make updates to the site. When you update your calendar or upload a new album your members will automatically receive an email with a link to visit the website to view the updates.

Now you don't have to spend extra time sending an email to everyone to check out the site for updates - we'll do that for you.

If members aren't interested in receiving these emails, they can simply unsubscribe at any time from within the email. It is currently set as "on" for all members. We do hope to come out with an on/off feature so that if you don't want your members to receive notifications you can set it to "off."

Coming soon: Notification emails sent when posting new messages on the Welcome or News pages.

When are emails sent?

1) If you add a new album, a notification email will be sent. It does not send when you add individual images to that album.

2) If you add a Game Schedule, Event Schedule or Practice Schedule. It will not send an email if you edit a game for example. Just when you add the schedule.

3) When you Import games, practices and events. Only one email is sent per import file. If you import 100 games for example, your members won't receive 100 emails.

The site will be down Wednesday, March 18th starting at 11 pm through Thursday, March 19th at 3 am PST.

Our IT group will be doing routine maintenance.

Hi,

Brad from the SmartMessage Center team and I hosted a webinar last week for our focus team members and have made it available to everyone. We went over 5 tips to start your season:

• Save time with the SmartMessage Center
• Plan for your New Season
• Recruit and Train Others
• Use the Tools Each Week
• End the Season Right!

The site will be down Thursday, March 5th starting at 11pm through Friday, March 6th at 3am PST.

Our IT group will be doing routine maintenance.

If you’ve been a part of a team or league for even a short time, you’ve probably already seen it. An administrator, coach or parent decides to send an announcement or ask a question via email to the entire team or league. There may be ten people on the distribution list. Or there may be 1,000. Almost always, though, there is at least one person on the list who decides his or her response or comment is worthy to be seen by everyone else. So, he or she opens the email and clicks the handy “Reply to All” button and off it goes.

This one action kicks off what is sure to be an endless stream of questions and comments and replies from everywhere across the league or team and the administrator is pulling out his hair trying to put and end to it all. For a few minutes, hours or even days, everyone is distracted. Everyone’s time is wasted. The team or league experience just became a little less rewarding and, worse yet, someone is embarrassed or has hurt feelings by comments made and viewed by tens or hundreds or thousands of people.

In light of this very real problem, maybe we should encourage leagues to ban the “Reply to All” across all team sports? Recently, in government and the corporate world, we’ve seen well-intentioned folks do just that. The State Department recently sent out an edict that banned employees from sending reply all messages and included "disciplinary actions" for diplomats who send them. And in the corporate world, ratings giant Nielsen decided to go even further by removing the reply to all button altogether on their corporate Microsoft Outlook application for 35,000 employees worldwide.

Seems like a good idea, yes?

No, not really. Just read some of the comments from Nielsen employees to see their reaction. And for teams and leagues, what about legitimate and useful questions or replies that the rest of the league or team could benefit from seeing? How else can coaches and admins collect valuable information and feedback like contact information or feedback on the team banner or setting practice schedules or picking a location for the awards dinner?

So what else can you do to cut down on inbox clutter? If you haven’t already, please visit the link in your site’s navigation called “Team Messages” (for team sites) or “Group Messages” (for org or league sites). Here you’ll find your new “SmartMessage Center” .

We’re striving to make SmartMessages not only an alternative to “Reply to All” emails, but also just an easier and much better way to communicate and share information across leagues and teams of any size. You can send one message to any distribution list--from your eteamz list, your own personal list, your Yahoo and AIM IM contacts --and everyone can respond to one shared “results page” that shows all the replies and comments in a very organized and sharable way.

We'd love to hear any of your “Reply to All” horror stories (no specific names please) and how your using the new “SmartMessage Center” - just comment on this post below.

Chris

GM -eteamz

Domain Direct, our partner that provides custom domain names, recently changed their name to Hover. They contacted all members via email last week regarding the name change. Some of you have contacted us wondering if the email you received is legit.

If you have questions you can contact Hover (formerly known as Domain Direct) at http://help.hover.com.