Arbiter, et al
 

Has anyone else noticed an Arbiter exodus by their assignors? In the past month I've had two flip to ZebraWeb and one go to Blue Zebra. Last season I had to worry about closing dates in three programs (Arbiter, Presto and RefTown). This season I have four (Arbiter, Blue Zebra, RefTown and ZebraWeb).

Nope!!

I wish the would but we pay for it.

Peace

I've picked up several over the last few months, some coming from Arbiter....they're thrilled with what they're finding! :D

What do you have that Arbiter doesn't? (aka feature comparison)

I'm curious as well to see the differences between the various programs on the market.California is and always will be an Arbiter state.

I think lots of assignors left after that server mess-up last month where everyone lost all their games.

Ahhhhh, that would explain it. I remember seeing something about a server problem but I didn't have an issue with the games on my schedule. I did have a problem receiving notification about some games. One of my supervisors put up two assignments but I never received an email/text. I happened to see them because I went to Arbiter looking for something else.

We did not have any such problems. And we have the largest group in the country in both basketball and football from what I am told. I wish that had happened, but we didn't. Daaarrrnnnn!!!!

Peace

I don't actually use Arbiter. All orgs I officiate with use Reftown. So, my comparison with Arbiter's specific content is not form direct knowledge but from what I've been told it has or doesn't have. I like to keep it that way so I can't be accused of copying something they have.

I have a lot of things related to running an organization beyond the basic game assigning stuff. I offer a lot of flexibility in how you can do things and customization options in how things work, apparently more than is commonly found.

There are several communications options such as feedback/evaluation forms, surveys, ballots, some basic media support. We have payroll calculations with true direct deposit and 1099 creation/e-distribution. We have several export/import options including the ability to export many types of data out to Excel, modify it in mass, and then bring it back in.

While it isn't a full featured web site hosting system, we also provided a way for you to customize the site's content in a way that it can replace a general website for many organizations. You basically make your own pages with whatever you want on them.

You can keep past season's data around while not being restricted on how you change your configuration for a new season.

More than anything, what I often hear is how much easier it is to use, even from people that are new to it after coming from from another system they have used for a few years. The site organization is, according to what I hear from customers, far more intuitive that others. The ability to move around the site from one piece of data to another is extensive....things are heavily cross linked. The workflow is efficient and orderly.

I've also been told that our pages load faster. That isn't a big deal for the average official but it is for an assignor.

AND...we're a LOT cheaper.

R.I.P., AssignByWeb. Anyone remember it? I thought it was better than Arbiter (still do), but it didn't have the working capital to keep up and eventually folded.

That left Arbiter with a monopoly and they have not handled it well (not enough servers, issues with security, frequent outages and data loss, etc.). No surprise that competitors have flooded the market in the last few years.

The OhioHSAA is moving toward using Arbiter for all contracts at all levels, both regular season and post-season) within the next two years.

MTD, Sr.

Reftown, from what I'm told is, in style, is similar to AssignByWeb. I picked up a bunch of the AssignByWeb clients....even a couple that went to Arbiter first then left. I don't think I've lost any by their choice. Most found the transition very easy.

I welcome anyone to give us a try....no hassle, no obligation. Those give us a try almost always stay and are very happy.

“Always” is a long time :)

What do you mean Rut?

Let me know how we stack up. We are always working to improve and make things as easy as possible for officials and coordinators. Appreciate any feedback you have…drop me a line at [email protected]

My first basketball assigned used that. He moved to Arbiter and then Reftown. I didn't use Assignbyweb very long but it didn't strike me as anything special.

They made some *very* poor decisions in how to handle money when they started doing payments and got in trouble. I’m not sure how much of it was a “working capital” issue versus money mismanagement. They also got sideways on some banking laws and got into some legal trouble. More info on that here: http://www.nacua.org/documents/Commo...mentsFirst.pdf http://www.nacua.org/documents/Payme...tAgreement.pdf

I met with the owner as well as the main programmer many years ago, as we were talking about doing some business together. The owner struck me as pretty shady. We didn’t do business together.

Sure, I'll let you know. The BZ assigning is interesting. It's only being used by one of my supervisors but I'm able to work schools in all five of his leagues. Hopefully I'll get a decent number of games from him to compare :)

Well, I know who you are talking about, but not sure who you are :) … Definitely please drop me a note. I know there are some things we need to improve and sometimes there is confusion coming over from Arbiter or other systems—and I want to get that confusion eliminated.

I've not heard of Presto before. Which one is that?


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I think it was only associated with the ECAC as a subset of Presto Sports. They moved to Arbiter this season.

Okay, first question: How do I set things up so I receive an email/text when I get an assignment? Knowing me I probably just vapor locked and missed something when I was setting up my info.

Sorry, missed this question earlier.

Email notifications come at the discretion of your coordinator. When they make a change, they have the option of sending or not sending a notification.

Generally speaking, at this point in the scheduling process you'll be getting emails from any change in the schedule.

As for text message notifications, it isn't something we've set up yet, but we have plans in the works to address this area.

Hope that helps!

Ah Brad! Thank you for helping me out with my BlueZebra login issues after my company's firewalls blocked the initial email! The resend of login credentials with change of password info was the fix and I can now login directly! Looking forward to seeing how it works out this season!

JetMetFan hope we get to work together in one of those five leagues.

I don't leave this to chance, that's why I went to personal GMAIL accounts for my basketball business.

Walt, I'm anxiously waiting - and hoping - for more games!

Me too! As for the email address, I have changed it now for all my accounts. I also got my own personal smartphone (so I now carry two phones, UGH!) because I used to use the company phone and address because I had it with me, as required for my job, all the time. Lesson learned.

You know you can have multiple email addresses and email accounts on one phone. And, that additional email address doesn't depend on your company for anything.

I would not want to rely on a company cell phone for my personal business. I could be fired tomorrow, or they could ask for all their phones back for whatever reason.

If you have a GMail account, you can use the GMail app. The messages are stored in the cloud. If you get fired or have to give the phone back and are unable to remove the app before returning it, you change your password and they can't access your account.

I have never had the issue before (8 years). The way our phone accounts are set up, and the way the internet is monitored and tracked, and other reasons, I could not access other email accounts on the phone. Now the problem has been address with my own personal phone. Unless you worked here, you woul dnot understand. :)

Sounds like they track your web and email usage like I do for my kids!!

Yes, they could. You definitely would not want to be dependent on the company email address and system. But, we're talking about accessing an independent email account on a company phone. In such a case, it really isn't tied to the company phone in any meaningful way. I can get to my Gmail (or just about any number of other providers) from any other phone or computer just as easily as the company phone. If I had a company phone, I wouldn't lose access to my personal email at all. In the event you no longer have the company phone, you could get your own in about 30 minutes and log into the email account.

If you're talking about phone numbers, it isn't much different. There is no need to spend your money on a personal phone to have a stable number. Just get a Google Voice number (free) and use that for all of your personal calls. Have it routed to the company phone and if you ever lose access to the company phone, have it routed to somewhere else.

Set things up right and save the money.