Team Management Documentation

Currently any member with a Regular or PRO account can found a team on the Teams page. Members with free accounts can join any existing team. In case you would like to create a team at Avec ou sans Bulles, but cannot afford the 9.95€ for the regular account, do not hesitate to contact me - I am willing to help anyway.

We recommend choosing a short team name, easy to memorize and type. The team name is used to create the sub-domain for your website, under the main domain apneabase.org. Accented characters, and other special characters not permitted in domain names can be used for the team name, but will be automatically converted or filtered, so that it complies with Internet standards.

You can use an abbreviation of your club name for the Avec ou sans Bulles team name, and can then enter the full name into the "short description" field in the Team tab of the team administration interface. The interface is accessible through the main team page, after clicking the link "manage". Link to the admin interface is also displayed in the bottom text menu in the footer of your team website. The link is visible and accessible only to the team founder, and to administrators that the founder can assign, through the interface.

Besides the name, and short description, you can also add a long description, or introductory text describing your team, or giving other details. This text will be displayed on the home page, in the left column. It can be plain text, but you can also use HTML for adjusting the formatting, or adding images.

You can also upload your logo that will be then displayed in the page header. Please respect the dimensions given on the admin interface. The logo need to be done with transparent background to blend properly into the header. Please ask a skilled professional for assistance if you are unsure how to achieve it yourself. Logos not matching the requirements will be removed or modified.

We reserve the right to adjust the formatting of any of your content (text and images), to better fit with our design, and doing so without prior notice.

We also reserve the right to remove any content not compatible with our policies, commercial content, advertizing, or content violating laws or ethics. Although we will likely consult it with the team founder, we reserve the right for editing the content, or even for shutting down the team website without prior notice, and with no right for refund for the founder user account.

Available features

Team website

• Independent website on own sub-domain at apneabase.org

  After founding the team, an independent website on own sub-domain at apneabase.org is automatically available (examples: sharkbait.apneabase.org, hawaii.apneabase.org)

• Hosting of own domains possible too (examples: cyrnea.net, acfidesien.com)

  Currently, independent domains need to be installed manually on our server, and changes need to be done also on the DNS authoritative for your domain - typically it is either at the registrar, at the host, and of course, we can take care of it too, and as well we can purchase and install a completely new domain name too. Please contact us if you are interested in the option.

User registration management

• Optional maximal member number limitation

  In some cases you may need to limit the maximal number of members who can join your team. When you specify the maximal number in the Administration interface of your team, as soon as the quota is reached, joining your team is deactivated automatically.

  You can also deactivate joining of your team manually at any time by checking the option "suspend applications"

  By default, members who request to join your team need to be approved by you or another administrator of your team. For doing so, enable the first checkbox next to the user name on the "members" page of the administration interface, and then click the "active" button at the bottom of the page. The search mode at top right need to be set to "inactive", so that you can see the members waiting for approval.

• Optional seasonal membership renewal registration required

  If you enter a date into the "End of season" field, all active members will be automatically deactivated at given date, and requested to confirm whether they want to renew or cancel their membership for the following season.

  When they confirm the renewal, a red label "membership renewal requested" will appear next to their user name in the "inactive" mode of the user list. They will become active only after you activate them (checking the box next to their name, and clicking the active button).

  You can also deactivate active members at any time manually, by clicking the "inactive" button (after selecting the respective member(s), of course). In the same way you can also reject a request for renewal.

  Inactive member will still remain listed under your team, and account for the total number of team members, and their photos may appear as the "user of the day" on the front page. The public user album, list, and map contains by default only active members, but the mode can be changed to "inactive" or "all" to see also past members.

  In contrary, Avec ou sans Bulles members who requested the membership for the first time and were not yet approved, or were rejected, will not be listed on the public page.

  There is also an option allowing a team accepting new registrations directly, and without passing the standard Avec ou sans Bulles theory test. This should facilitate clubs receiving new members who do not yet have good theoretical knowledge yet. Such members will not have access to the Apnea Training Manager, and some other functions, though (at least as long as they do not pass the test). This option is not yet available on the admin interface. Please contact me, if needed.

  An option for automatic approving of incoming membership requests, or renewals, is under consideration, but currently not available. If you think it would be useful, please voice your opinion on the Avec ou sans Bulles public support forum.

• Advanced registrations

  Electronic registration

  Paper forms

  Medical certificates

  Federation licenses

  Registration fees

  Payments

• Multiple federation affiliations

  License management

  Freediving levels

  Instructor levels

  Judge levels

• User database

  User data accessible in the team management interface

  Complete user data exportable in a CSV file format (for reading in Excel and other spreadsheet programs)

  Downloadable member eCards (electronic business cards)

• User list, album, and map

  Addresses, phones and other personal data visible to other team members but not to the general public. Each member has full control over the privacy level of his/her personal data

  Printable user album - especially at bigger clubs, it is very useful to print the album with user photos and names, laminate it, and hang up on the wall in the pool, or to give to every member - they can then easier memorize each other names and faces.

  User eCards (electronic business cards) downloadable into Outlook, and other email programs, or even directly into your cell phone. When communicating then with the members, their photo and personal details appear in the program or on the phone. Phones equipped with GPS will navigate you to the member's location or address.

Gallery - internal and external using Google Picasa Web

• Photos and videos
• Collaborative albums possible , where every member can upload photos and videos
• Easy and quick to use software for uploading the photos and videos

Calendar - internal and external using Google Calendar

• Training planning, diving trips and events scheduler
• Internal calendar connected with the Apnea Training Manager for efficient and quick training planning (in development)
• Trainers / instructors can sign for a training session (members see then who will train them, and what program he/she chose)
• Other members can sign for training (trainers then see how many freedivers come to the training session)

Forum

• Public forum - common with Avec ou sans Bulles
• Closed Team forum - accessible to registered members only
• Closed restricted sub forum for the club management
• Closed restricted sub forum for trainers and instructors

Polls (in development)

• Can be used for club election
• Useful for surveys, harvesting of opinions, for diving trips and event planning, etc.

Blog

• Integrated team blog - team founder and assigned members can post to the blog. Messages then appear on the homepage of the team website. All other members can then comment
• External blog - services such as Blogger, Blog-Spot, World Press, etc, can be used to feed the integrated blog. It can b also used in combination. Avoid the need to post the same message on multiple platforms (in development)

Twitter

• Instant short messages can be sent to the team home page from any computer via a Twitter account
• Messages can be posted also by SMS from cell phones - excellent for last minute alerts, or for live reporting from competitions or other events
• Members can create their own Twitter accounts connected to the main website account, and be so alerted by SMS any time there is a new message (excellent for example last-minute alerts about cancelled trainings, etc)

RSS

• News feed from external freediving sources - can be filtered by language, location, or keywords
• RSS feed of own team forum, blog, calendar, team, and task manager
• Used for the interaction with external services such as for the blog, gallery, and some other future planned features

Sea Watch (in development)

• Originally developed as a Vista sidebar "gadget" (http://AvecOuSansBulles.com/en/gadgets.html) for monitoring conditions at favorite diving location - includes information about weather, air temperature, wind strength and direction, water temperature, waves height and direction, time of the next high and low tide, live satellite weather map, and rotating snapshots from up to 6 chosen webcams. It will be soon possible to place the Sea Watch tool on the team website too.