Arbiter buys ABW
 

Just got an e-mail from assignor who heard the news. Anyone else catch this?

Yup, saw the announcement on one of my ABW pages. Just got an email as well from one of my assignors saying they will look at all options before making a decision.

Doesn't the NCAA own Arbiter?

ABW? :confused:

Assign By Web

Must be same assignor.......JL

JL?? Does he have a famous football scorecard?

That would be correct

Yes. And the cost went up even though collegiate assignors joined on.

The announcement on the front page of their site doesn't really sounds like ArbiterSports bought ABW. It sounds like ABW threw in the towel, but made arrangements with ArbiterSports to transition their clients there.

I just read their main page and agree with BITS.

This should be interesting. About 90% of my games are with ABW.

I heard they will go out of business on December 31.

Peace

Jeff,

According to the letter posted on their website, that is correct.

https://www.assignby.net/main.php

Once you're up to speed on Arbiter, you'll never look back. Far superior in every aspect IMHO

One of my close friends and partner uses this site. He was contacted directly.

I already use the Arbiter and used this program first. I cannot stand ABW because of the fact everyone sees your assignments. I can limit that on the Arbiter. I am glad that they would have to use the Arbiter over ABW any day.

Peace

Zebra Web
 

One of my assignors switched to Zebraweb.org from ABW.
Very similar to ABW.

From the perspective of one of the grunts in the field. I've been getting games using the arbiter longer than ABW. Arbiter is far superior. IMHO.

Not 'far,' but better, yes.

No, far better. :D

Peace

No, you're both wrong....
 

Arbiter isn't just better, or far better, it is far, far, superior!:D

I'd say it's GRRRRRRRREEEEEEEAAAAAAAT!

Tony the Tiger!
 

Thanks Tony the Tiger!

You and your love obsession with breakfast foods. You don't happen to like green eggs and ham by chance? :)

Neither here nor there.

Dr Seuss is in the House!
 

He will not eat them with a goat, He will not eat them on a boat.
He will not eat them with a coach, He will not eat them on a couch.

Sorry, the best I could do. Couldn't think of anything that rhymes with Coach!

Poach.

Ok....
 

Anything that makes sense that is! Smarty Pants! :D

Roach! :eek:

Ok
 

That makes sense and doesn't make me lose my lunch!

Can you poach a roach? You can poach an egg.

Only if you bag over your limit of roaches.

Add one far to the above..........

I just picked up an ABW customer from the NH/Mass. area on RefTown....got all of his stuff converted and ready to roll in a just a few hours.

I've also spoken with an assignor from Chicago who is part of a group of assignors and hope to speak with them some more.

All I can say is that that RefTown is always comes out favorably when givean a true comparison with any other product.

I'm also offering a full year free for anyone converting from ABW. Why? I know they'll be satisified and stay. I've pick up other ABW customers in the past and they have never looked back.

Smooth Transition Vowed; Minions Double Over Laffing
 

When the IT people promise a smooth transition in a conversion from one program to the other, cover the young 'uns ears, because it usually isn't and the language is about to get very colorful

Indeed; I saw the message the other day and informed our Assignor. This will be chaos during the transition between the two. I can see it now. And that's if I assume correctly, that we are going with the other company.

From my experience in the IT field, it's usually not the IT folks making these promises, it is the people in sales. :rolleyes:

Do You Have A Pointy Haired Boss ???
 

You've been reading Dilbert.

And they're often told what to say by the managers who made the original deal, who seem to understand IT approximately as well as my cats.

I have used RefTown and Arbiter. I can say that RefTown blows Arbiter away in every way from a user perspective.

Now if Cam could just link calendars from different associations so that availability if updated across your user account instead of per association, that would be cool! ;)

But, I really prefer RefTown over Arbiter any day of the week. FAR easier for the user to understand.

Reading? I live it! :eek:

Sounds about right. About as annoying as the managers that view IT simply as an "expense".

Every major assignor in Chicago area that was using ABW just signed up with Arbiter............Yeh!

I don't know who you are but thanks for the kind words.

Released that upgrade last night...to a degree. When you accept a game in one association, you can optionally have it mark you as not available for that date for your other associations. You choose which ones get updated. For example, you could accept a HS game, have it mark you out for rec leagues but leave you open for a possible college assignment.


Making the calendars all in one seems like a good idea until you realize that they often end up with different info. You don't want your calendar to show you as not available on the association where you have a game. You might wish to reserve dates for one assignor by blocking out the others until your preferred assignor gets their schedule entered.

I might look at an extra layer of caledars....one that applies globaly but that just might get too complicated for most users to comprehend given that RefTown availability calendars already have the most flexibility of any I've seen.

For those on ABW, I just created an custom import routine where I can upload data exported from ABW in less than an hour...possibly as little as 15 minutes in some cases....all rosters, games, assignments....just about every thing a group would need to be running in less than a day. And I'm offering a free year just to try it out. A no-lose situation.

I totally disagree with this statement. I am an IT person and we dont make such promises. The sales people sell stuff and we have to make it work.

Our sales people pull the same stunts here.

You say that RefTown is better than the Arbiter in every way then right away say something that you wish RefTown did that the Arbiter does....:confused:

Well, RefTown now DOES it. ;) I knew Cam would have something like that coming soon.

Cam, you can figure out who I am by remembering a recent email I sent concerning my disapproval of a college group I belong to changing to another assigning program. I was also in your first year class in the PBOA last year.

I just seen that update about marking a date unavailable. Now, if you could do something to the effect of the accepted game time range being marked unavailable, that would be awesome.

For example: I belong to two associations that assign via RefTown, and both do similar level of games (in this case, the NWOLLC and the THBOA). I accepted games for NWOLLC. It would be cool if I could mark THOSE TIMES as being unavailable with the THBOA, plus an additional hour after the last game. This way, if say, I only had 2 games at 9am and 10:30 with NWOLLC in the morning, I could still be shown as available for games from 1pm and later with THBOA. This is not an unlikely scenario! You could safely assume that a game will last at least 1.5 hours and add an hour (for travel) to the end of that last game as unavailable times.

I am not sure that Arbiter can even do that. I don't have any overlapping associations with Arbiter.