CMA Scoring App
Good news from the technical front: the new CMA scoring app is up and running!
As you know, we all pay a membership fee for CMA. Although it's a comparably small amount, one might still wonder what is actually being done with it. One good example is this new tool that will greatly simplify the work for match directors, safety officers and for all shooters as well. How is that going to work? Let's see:
Current release
The app is available on the Google Play Store and can be installed and updated on Android phones and tablets as any other Android app.
The latest version contains the following main features and functionalities:
CMA scoring is predefined and the necessary base data such as for example divisions, classes, penalties and so on, is provided with the app. This eliminates a lot of the common difficulties we had to struggle with so far: match setup, template definition, copy-paste, ghost legacy data, match data errors, upload and download mismatches and so on.
Scoring of standard skills tests for handgun and rifle: skills test setups are predefined in the base data. Achieved classes are automatically calculated, once a shooter is fully scored.
Uploading of skills test results to the website with automatic update of license status. This makes the former upload by hand or by specially formatted files obsolete.
Creating and scoring of matches for handgun and 2-gun disciplines with custom definition of stages and squads.
Adding shooters including roles (shooter, safety officer or match director) as participants to a match. Organization of shooters in squads.
Uploading of match results to the website. This enables match count functionalities for all participant roles and automatic license renewal functionality according to match participation in the future. Uploading of match staff files is now obsolete; fiddling around with data exports and re-formatting of csv files is a thing of the past!
Standalone device or multi-device scoring and synchronization. The multi-device setup is along squads or stages with master and client assignments for the devices.
Offline scoring with locally stored results.
Synchronization is enabled when devices are connected with a common hot-spot or wi-fi network.
Match results uploading is enabled for standalone or master devices when an internet connection is available and the user is logged in with his or her CMA website credentials. Login sessions are managed and periodically reset.
Display of match results on the website with overall and division views as well as match and stage rankings.
Local backup and restore capability on the devices.
Click on the Goolge Play icon to go to the store:
Future releases
The app and the website integration have been tested intensively and used for skills test and match scoring in the last couple of weeks. There will be additional features and functionalities as well as enhancements coming in the future of course. It works well so far, but that's only the beginning!
Some of the points in the pipeline are:
Match registration on the website and download of the data to the app. This will integrate the existing events with automatic license checks and match definition on the scoring devices.
Migration of the old match staff history to the new database on the website.
Automatic (or at least semi-automatic) license renewal according to match attendance. For SO and MD renewals, the parameters are already defined. For shooters, it will need to be discussed by the founders team.
Numerous usability enhancements accorindg to user feedback.
Most of the functionalities are easy to use and self-explanatory, I hope. However, a user guide or help function of some form might be added.
iOS support is currently postponed. The app is working on Android and it remains to be evaluated whether the effort-intensive and expensive iOS support is worth the headache.
Conclusion
The latest news about the app will be updated on the ressources page on the website. It would be great if you could try it out and give feedback about the experience.
Thanks for reading, shoot straight and speak the truth!
Sincerely,
