We are pleased to inform you that the intermittent issue with cancelling bookings — where lights remain on and the gate unlocked for coaching or competition bookings until the original end time of the booking — has been resolved. After testing and monitoring of cancellations, we can confirm that the lights and gate are now functioning correctly after cancellations.

Please be aware of a key change in the behaviour of the lights and gate following a cancellation: Previously, they would deactivate immediately upon cancellation, which contributed to the issue of lights remaining on and gate unlocked. Now, the lights will turn off and the gate will relock 15 minutes after a cancellation.

Important: If the lights do not deactivate 15 minutes after a cancellation, please reach out to our Customer Support Team via email: [email protected] or call 1800 752 983, as a firmware update to your system may be required.

This issue has now been resolved (as of 15/9). Please note, we’re still working on optimisations to the API integration to further improve the system.

We’re wanting to provide some information regarding a current issue where court lights may not be turning on for particular bookings, despite the booking pin being entered successfully.

The issue is related to the user (i.e. booking contact) not containing the correct access levels (i.e. booking data) that correlates with their bookings and is therefore not activating court lights.

For example:

John Smith has a booking from 7-9pm on courts 1-4

However, the booking data only contains access levels for 7-9pm on courts 1-3

This means that when John successfully enters his booking pin, only courts 1-3 lights will activate as the access level for court 4 does not exist.

We have escalated this with highest prioty to both our software provider (Clubspark) & hardware provider (Complete Security Solutions) to investigate and fix this issue as soon as possible.

Please note that this issue is not affecting every booking being made. Continue to report any booking issues to our team so we can investigate and confirm whether the issue is related to this or another factor.

You may decide to operate court lights manually if you’re being heavily impacted until the issue has been resolved. Alternatively, we’re aware that if you were to edit the affected booking (i.e. slightly extend the booking time), the correct access levels should be pushed through within a couple minutes to then activate the court light/s that were missed.

Example for “alternative workaround”:

Using the John Smith booking example above.

After realisation that court 4 lights did not activate, a club administrator can edit John’s booking (via the booking sheet) and change the end time from 9pm to 9:30pm. Once the booking is edited and within a few minutes, this will push an update to John’s access levels to include court 4 and the court 4 lights will turn on (re-entry of pin may be required).

Note: If there is not an available booking slot to extend the booking, you can look at changing the start time instead (e.g. from 7pm to 7:30pm).

If you have any questions regarding this issue, please reach out to our friendly Customer Support Team via email: [email protected] or call 1800 752 983.

As we continue to work with Complete Security Solutions to schedule dates to complete the API integration process, we’re wanting to share this with you as a way to know when the transition is to be or has been completed at your venue.

Click here to download the schedule.

THE API INTEGRATION PROCESS HAS BEEN COMPLETED.

Updated: Thursday 8 June 2023

For details on this process, check out our update here.

We’re wanting to provide you with the latest update and status on the gate/light issues being experienced by some ‘Book a Court’ venues.

Where can I find the previous update about these issues?

Click here to see our previous communication in March.

Latest update & current progress

Due to the positive feedback and overall system improvements we’ve seen from the on-going implementation of the API integration (ultimately the gate/light fix and reduction to the ‘booking delay’) we’re comfortable with extending this solution to all ‘Book a Court’ venues and concluding this as a “pilot”.

Venues will be transferred over to the API integration in groups of 15-20 which will occur regularly over the next few months starting week of 8th May (the transfer process will take 20-30 minutes per venue).

It’s important to note that while we’re comfortable with the current status of the API integration & system behaviour, our software (ClubSpark) and hardware (Complete Security Solutions) providers are still working towards further improvements to ensure the system is optimally performing and gates/lights are behaving desirably – these improvements will be applied to each venue as soon as they become available to us.

Is there any system “downtime” or impact during the transfer process?

During the transfer process there will likely be a 10-20 minute system downtime (specific to the venue) that will only impact users who make a new booking during this time (i.e. the booking pin won’t work). Additionally, any edits to existing bookings during this small window will also be impacted.

Bookings that already exist for the day will continue to work as normal. As part of the transfer process we will also be migrating all future bookings, so there is no requirement to re-make any bookings within the software.

Note: You may see a booking made by Complete Security Solutions on all courts at your venue, this is part of the testing process and required to verify that the correct booking data and access levels are being received. Eventually after the completion of the transfer, we will cancel this booking for you.

Will there be any notice of when the transfer will occur?

Please click here to see the schedule for the venue transfers, we will aim to keep this up to date as best as possible. Due to the very small window of possible disruption, minimal-no venue preparation requirements and the flexible scheduling of undertaking the transitions, we won’t plan to provide advanced notice to venues.

What do clubs/venues need to do during this process?

Nothing. We won’t require you to do anything throughout the entire process. CSS will be undertaking the configuration changes and will also be completing their own tests to verify the transfer has been successful. We will continue to monitor the overall system performance and behaviour remotely.

In saying this, please provide any feedback in writing if you happen to experience any disruptions, notice or receive a report that something is not working as expected. Similarly, please keep an eye out to see if you observe or receive feedback that something is working better than previous (e.g. if the booking delay has been reduced) as we value your feedback to ensure we’re taking steps forward.

Additionally, you will need to be familiar with the changes & known limitations to the software as well as the gate & light behaviour once your venue has been transferred to the API integration, see these in detail below.

What changes will there be once our venue is transferred onto the API integration?

1. Bookings made under the ‘Closed’ category will now generate a user pin, which will provide access (gate will relock after a few seconds) and also activate lights
   • This is change to behaviour, previously a pin would not be generated for this category type
2. Bookings cancelled online will trigger lights to turn off “immediately” after cancellation
   • This is change to behaviour, previously the lights would be triggered to turn off 15-30 minutes after cancellation
   • IMPORTANT: There is a known issue (specific to the ClubSpark software, not the API integration) whereby the cancellation of a booking may not be successfully processed and is keeping the lights on until the original end time of the booking. This issue is not occurring for all cancellations.
3. The display of the Private & Public Site Pins, you’ll find this in the Booking Settings under the “Gated access and lighting providers”. To update the pins, simply replace the existing 6 digit combination with a new 6 digit combination, then click Save permission settings at the bottom of the page. For security reasons, we highly recommend using a combination that is not commonly used (e.g. 123456, 654321).
   Please DO NOT change the gate access provider, lighting provider or the site selector settings, as any changes will cause the Book a Court system to not work.
   
4. ‘Hardware’ tab for Courts, this was previously restricted from club admins. Please DO NOT change anything within this area, including adding additional courts or changing court names. Any changes made within this section (without first verifying with Tennis Australia) may affect your Book a Court system (gates and lights).
   
5. Temporary hard-coded pin (post code). If you still had the hard-coded pin active which was provided on the day of installation, this has been changed to include a 0 in the front. So if your temp pin was 1234 it is now 01234. The intention of this pin was to assist with the transition of access when the system was installed and then alternatively using the Private or Public Site pin moving forward. Please note that in the near future, it is likely that these temp pins will be disabled.
6. Any recurring bookings that were made with no end date have been edited to have an end date varying from 6-12 months from now. This was required to be completed to reduce the excessive number of bookings that had to be migrated across as part of the process, as bookings with no end date will exist in the system for up to 2 years – this is something that we will be looking to reduce at some time.
   With this in mind, please ensure that you’re monitoring your recurring bookings as the year progresses to make the necessary changes/bookings to block the courts out for these activities.
7. For bookings on the same court/s, the latest pin entry will validate the light end time
   • This is existing behaviour. We have planned works to change this behaviour which will commence once the API integration works are complete.Example:
     Coach booking on courts 1-4 from 5-7pmComp booking on courts 1-4 from 7-9pm

     Coach pin entered at 5pmComp pin entered at 7pm

     Coach pin re-entered at 7:01pm

     The lights on courts 1-4 will turn off at 7:15pm, as the Coach is the last to enter the booking pin and sets light end time

     Comp pin will be required to be re-entered to activate the booking again

8. Similarly to the above, for bookings made under the “coaching”, “competition”, “event” or “maintenance” type booking that overlap, the latest pin entry will validate the end time for the gate to remain unlocked
   • This is existing behaviour. We have planned works to change this behaviour which will commence once the API integration works are complete.Example:
     Coach Tom has a booking for 3-4pm on courts 1-3Coach Jerry has a booking for 3:30-4:30pm on courts 4-6

     Coach Tom enters pin at 3pm

     Coach Jerry enters pin at 3:30pm

     Coach Tom re-enters pin at 3:31pmGate re-locks at 4:15pm (lights will remain on for Coach Jerry until 4:45pm)

     Coach Jerry can re-enter the pin to re-activate the gate to stay unlocked

Support or raising queries

If you have any questions regarding this process or a general ‘Book a Court’ enquiry, please reach out to our friendly Customer Support Team via email: [email protected] or call 1800 752 983. 

Thanks again for your on-going patience and support, we look forward to making positive changes and improvements at your venue.

We’re wanting to provide you with the latest update and status on the gate/light issues being experienced by some ‘Book a Court’ venues.

Where can I find the previous update about these issues?

Click here to see our previous communication in December.

Latest update & current progress

The implementation of the API integration (ultimately the gate/light fix and improvements to the ‘booking delay’) is well underway with 50 venues currently on the pilot and around 20 more venues to be added in the next week.

The feedback we’ve received from majority of the venues is positive with previous lighting issues no longer being experienced. We have also received feedback of significant improvement to the booking delay with reports of pin activation in under 10 minutes at times.

It is important to note that during the pilot we had encountered a couple of issues that were resolved and are still working towards further improvements to the API integration to ensure the system is operating as expected and gates/lights are behaving correctly. These improvements will be applied to the pilot venues (in small groups) and are scheduled to take place over the next few weeks.

The results of the pilot to date have provided us with confidence that we will very soon be able to expand the API integration to every other venue with the Book a Court system, which is likely to occur after the Easter holidays.

Further updates will be provided in due course confirming the commencement dates for the implementation to the remaining venues.

Are you being heavily impacted and need an interim solution?

As per our previous updates, if your venue is being heavily impacted by these lighting issues we have the option to automatically activate lighting for fixed days/times (set by the club) that may alleviate some pressure/inconvenience being experienced by you as a volunteer/admin. For more details about this alternative option, please email [email protected] and we can discuss the possibilities of providing you with this option.

Support or raising queries

A reminder to report any issues for our team to investigate and confirm that it is related to this issue, please ensure you provide the following information to our Customer Support team via email on [email protected] or call 1800 752 983 with all the necessary information, including:

• Your club and contact details
• Explanation of what happened (e.g. “court 1-4 lights went out at xx, but should have remained on, light switches were correctly set to AUTO”)
• Details of the booking impacted (i.e. booking contact, times, dates)
• Other details we may need to know (e.g. “no other booking was impacted” or “lights worked perfectly on court 1”, “this occurs only on a Monday”)

Thanks again for your patience and understanding of this matter.

We’re wanting to provide you with the latest update and status on the gate/light issues being experienced by some ‘Book a Court’ venues.

Where can I find the previous update about these issues?

Click here to see our previous communication in November.

Latest update & current progress

The implementation of the API integration (ultimately the gate/light fix and improvements to the ‘booking delay’) had commenced last Thursday (24th November) to a small pilot group of 11 venues with a second group of 15 venues being implemented today (1st December).

The decision to implement the API to the remaining venues will be based on the results of this pilot over the next week or two. At the same time, with the holiday season around the corner we’re conscious of implementing to more venues when there will be limited support and resources available during this time, also with majority of coaching/competition bookings coming to an end for the year (which is where we’ve experienced issues with lighting), we want to ensure that the pilot venues have been tested with these booking scenarios in play and over a reasonable period, so may decide to continue the implementation when all parties return in January.

Further updates will be provided at the conclusion of the pilot to confirm that the changes have been successful and improvements have been made, at the same time we will likely confirm the commencement dates for the implementation to the remaining venues.

Are you being heavily impacted and need an interim solution?

As per our previous updates, if your venue is being heavily impacted by these lighting issues we have the option to automatically activate lighting for fixed days/times (set by the club) that may alleviate some pressure/inconvenience being experienced by you as a volunteer/admin. For more details about this alternative option, please email [email protected] and we can discuss the possibilities of providing you with this option.

Support or raising queries

A reminder to report any issues for our team to investigate and confirm that it is related to this issue, please ensure you provide the following information to our Customer Support team via email on [email protected] or call 1800 752 983 with all the necessary information, including:

• Your club and contact details
• Explanation of what happened (e.g. “court 1-4 lights went out at xx, but should have remained on, light switches were correctly set to AUTO”)
• Details of the booking impacted (i.e. booking contact, times, dates)
• Other details we may need to know (e.g. “no other booking was impacted” or “lights worked perfectly on court 1”, “this occurs only on a Monday”)

Thanks again for your patience and understanding of this matter.

We’re wanting to provide you with the latest update and status on the gate/light issues being experienced by some ‘Book a Court’ venues.

Where can I find the last update about these issues?

Click here to see our previous communication in September.

Latest update & current progress

The delivery of the API integration (ultimately the gate/light fix and improvements to the ‘booking delay’) is on-going though we’ve taken big steps forward in recent weeks. We’re nearing close to commence the implementation process hopefully in the coming week or two.

Right now, we’re undertaking tests of the latest works that were released overnight to validate that everything is working as expected in terms of lights turning on, remaining on and turning off at the correct times. Once we’re confident with the gate and light behaviour, we will commence the roll out to a small group of venues (in various States) to pilot, which we will closely monitor before expanding to a second small group a week later. Following these two phases, we’ll implement the API to the remaining venues which will potentially take a few weeks to complete.

Further communication and updates will be provided when the implementation process is going to begin.

We want to assure you that we’re doing everything possible (within our control) to deliver this solution as early as possible and we apologise for the inconvenience this may be causing you and the players at your venue.

Are you being heavily impacted and need an interim solution?

As per our previous updates, if your venue is being heavily impacted by these lighting issues we have the option to automatically activate lighting for fixed days/times (set by the club) that may alleviate some pressure/inconvenience being experienced by you as a volunteer/admin. For more details about this alternative option, please email [email protected] and we can discuss the possibilities of providing you with this option.

Support or raising queries

A reminder to report any issues for our team to investigate and confirm that it is related to this issue, please ensure you provide the following information to our Customer Support team via email on [email protected] or call 1800 752 983 with all the necessary information, including:

• Your club and contact details
• Explanation of what happened (e.g. “court 1-4 lights went out at xx, but should have remained on, light switches were correctly set to AUTO”)
• Details of the booking impacted (i.e. booking contact, times, dates)
• Other details we may need to know (e.g. “no other booking was impacted” or “lights worked perfectly on court 1”, “this occurs only on a Monday”)

Thanks again for your patience and understanding of this matter.

We’re wanting to provide you with the latest update and status on the gate/lighting issues being experienced by some ‘Book a Court’ venues.

Where can I find the last update about these issues?

Click here to see our previous communication in August or click here to see our initial communication in March.

Latest Update:

The delivery of the API integration (ultimately the gate/light fix and improvements to the ‘booking delay’) is still on-going, although hasn’t progressed as much as we hoped since our previous update and development works remain with ClubSpark at this point in time.

Some initial testing has been completed with mixed results, thus requiring further development in order to meet the required booking rules and logic for the gates and lights to behave as they currently do now.

Good news is that with our testing to date, we haven’t been able to replicate the issue of lights turning off prematurely for bookings so we’re confident that this has been rectified. In addition, there is positive signs that the “booking delay” will be further improved, with our aim that this would be at least under 15 minutes, although we won’t be able to provide a definitive answer to what the reduced delay will be until it is deployed into the ‘live’ environment as our testing environment only has 2 “venues” configured and isn’t a true reflection of the systems processing time as there are over 300 venues live with ‘Book a Court’.

To provide further detail on a couple of the key outstanding items being worked on, this includes:

• Gate schedules – bookings made under the coaching, competition, event or maintenance category are not keeping the gate unlocked for the duration of the booking
• Cancellations or modifications to bookings – booking pins are successful and lights are activating, however when the booking is cancelled or modified during play (e.g. remove one court or cancel booking early), the light schedules are not updating to reflect the changes; therefore lights remain on for original booking time

There are also regression tests that need to be completed for our other integrated access & lighting solutions (Igloohome lock & BCS lighting) to ensure they haven’t inadvertently been affected by the changes being made to ‘Book a Court’ as these other integrated solutions are “linked” under the same feature structure.

In relation to the move to use an API for the process of sending/receiving the booking data (which offers more benefits and opportunities for enhancements), it has been flagged by Complete Security Solutions (evidence from other venues that have integrated the hardware with another software provider via API) that there is possibilities that this move will result in more data downloads per month and therefore the current 500mb data plan may be required to be increased to 1GB for venues that have a high volume of bookings to avoid paying excess fees (as per venue agreement).

Note: Some venues are already exceeding their mobile data plan and in the back-end CSS are upgrading the plan to the next level as the cost to upgrade works out to be cheaper than paying the excess fees. In majority of cases we believe CSS have been absorbing these costs in good faith.

We will continue to work with CSS on these possible requirements for changes to the data plan and will communicate to each venue once we have a better understanding of what is involved with this and how we can possibly support each venue (for example, we don’t want a blanket rule that every venue requires a 1GB plan if they aren’t currently exceeding the existing 500mb on average).

We want to assure you that we’re doing everything possible (within our control) to deliver this solution as early as possible and we apologise for the inconvenience this may be causing you and the players at your venue.

As per our previous updates, if your venue is being heavily impacted by these lighting issues we have the option to automatically activate lighting for fixed days/times (set by the club) that may alleviate some pressure/inconvenience being experienced by you as a volunteer/admin. For more details about this alternative option, please email [email protected] and we can discuss the possibilities of providing you with this option.

A reminder to report any issues for our team to investigate and confirm that it is related specifically to this, please ensure you provide the following information to our Customer Support team via email on [email protected] or call 1800 752 983 with all the necessary information.

• Your club and contact details
• Explanation of what happened (e.g. “court 1-4 lights went out at xx, but should have remained on, light switches were correctly set to AUTO”)
• Details of the booking impacted (i.e. booking contact, times, dates)
• Other details we may need to know (e.g. “no other booking was impacted” or “lights worked perfectly on court 1”, “this occurs only on a Monday”)

Thanks again for your patience and understanding of this matter.

We’re wanting to provide you with the latest update and status on the gate/lighting issues being experienced by some ‘Book a Court’ venues.

Where can I find the last update about these issues?

Click here to see our previous communication in July or click here to see our initial communication in March.

Latest Update:

The delivery of the API integration (ultimately the gate/light fix and improvements to the ‘booking delay’) has reasonably progressed in recent weeks, however, there is still a lot of work to be done in this space and we hope to be in a better position in the next week or two to be able to share specific timelines.

Complete Security Solutions (hardware provider) have completed the build of the ‘test’ envrionment for the API integration, which is where we will be testing the changes made by ClubSpark and confirming that the issues have been fixed, before rolling this out in the ‘live’ environment to every venue.

ClubSpark (software provider) have deployed multiple releases to the ‘test’ envrionment and early validation/testing by CSS has begun where the basic integration has been reached (i.e. access levels/courts are being populated), however ClubSpark now need to work towards the more complex requirements such as user-validation and modifying/cancellation of bookings during play.

Another challenging requirement that is being raised is the support for existing bookings within the software (e.g. recurring bookings), as only new bookings are included in the data, ClubSpark will need to also build functionality to push through the existing bookings and their associated access levels (i.e. booking pins) when we’re ready to implement the API integration in the ‘live’ environment. As the solution for this support is being worked through and in addition to some other items and processes, we’re anticipating a staged approach when implementing the API integration to venues in the ‘live’ environment. For example 10-20 venues per day for ‘x’ weeks. As we progress further, we will have a clearer understanding of the processes and approach, which will be made known to each venue closer to date.

As a result of these works, there will be changes to the looks in certain areas of the software platform specific to the hardware integration, which may be of relevance to you as a club admin. These changes are minor, so won’t require any formal training and once these changes are finalised we will provide a simple support documentation explaining the changes and its relevance to the system. As an example of these changes, the Public and Private Site Pins will be located in a slightly different area.

Again, we want to assure you that we’re doing everything possible (within our control) to deliver this solution as early as possible and we apologise for the inconvenience this may be causing you and the players at your venue.

As mentioned in our previous updates, if your venue is being heavily impacted by these lighting issues we have the option to automatically activate lighting for fixed days/times (set by the club) that may alleviate some pressure/inconvenience being experienced by you as a volunteer/admin. For more details about this alternative option, please email [email protected] and we can discuss the possibilities of providing you with this option.

A reminder to report any issues for our team to investigate and confirm that it is related specifically to this, please ensure you provide the following information to our Customer Support team via email on [email protected] or call 1800 752 983 with all the necessary information.

• Your club and contact details
• Explanation of what happened (e.g. “court 1-4 lights went out at xx, but should have remained on, light switches were correctly set to AUTO”)
• Details of the booking impacted (i.e. booking contact, times, dates)
• Other details we may need to know (e.g. “no other booking was impacted” or “lights worked perfectly on court 1”, “this occurs only on a Monday”)

Thanks again for your patience and understanding of this matter.