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.

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 June or click here to see our initial communication in March.

Latest Update:

We had hoped to provide you with an update expressing further progress to the resolution of the gate/light issues, however we’ve come across some barriers preventing us from doing so. The barriers are related to the complexities of ClubSpark (software) changing the booking data files and meeting the necessary requirements and rules set out by Complete Security Solutions (hardware).

In our previous update we advised that testing of the fix had commenced, however our results of the fix were not satisfactory (i.e. gates/lights would not operate as per current functionality). After several changes and attempts to get it right, we unfortunately were not getting the results we required.

With these results and further discussions with ClubSpark and CSS, our approach and plan to deliver this solution has pivoted. We will now work towards an Application Programming Interface (API) integration between the two parties to send/receive booking data. Our current method for sending/receiving booking data is via File Transfer Protocol (FTP) – which the formatting and process of the files is where the underlying issue is.

Moving from FTP to API integration is quite a big shift and may then take us more time to deliver the permanent resolution, however all parties have agreed that this is the required step to take to not only fix this issue, but also for future improvements and enhancements of the Book a Court system.

Our early discussions with the API integration is quite promising in regards to the opportunities that it will be able to provide when we get this right. With the API integration, we’re likely to significantly reduce the “booking delay” more so than what we could’ve achieved via FTP.

Another helpful part to this pivot to API integration is that ClubSpark have previously worked on an API integration (Tennis NZ) with the same system utilised by the hardware, so provides us with some confidence that we will be able to push pass the barriers and deliver what is required. In saying this, the requirements for the integration used in Tennis NZ is not like-for-like and therefore will still require ClubSpark to design and build to our specifications (to ensure we retain all existing functionality), which is where a lot of time can be spent.

This week, CSS have commenced building the “test” environment for the API integration, which is likely to be completed before the end of next week. This will then allow ClubSpark to start pushing their existing API integration (used for Tennis NZ) to that environment and then be able to understand the work involved (and timelines) to build the integration to our requirements and the framework provided by CSS.

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 previously mentioned in our last update, 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, 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 an update on the ‘Book a Court’ issues we’ve previously identified & initially shared with you in March.

What were the issues?

1. Lights turning off prematurely or at incorrect times for bookings
2. Contacts being issued a booking pin of ‘0’

Where can I find more details about these issues?

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

There has been some progression to resolving the issue specific to lights turning off prematurely or incorrectly. These works are still being finalised and tested in our Staging environment, though there are still a number of outstanding items flagged with ClubSpark for them to deliver. In addition, there is also around a week of work to “tidy” the environment before releasing, which includes work related to security, authentication, user-interface and user-experience.

As we’ve previously communicated, the timing of this resolution has far exceeded our expectation of delivery, so we’ve been discussing alternative options or work-arounds with Complete Security Solutions (CSS) that might alleviate some pressure and inconvenience for your club with the hope to provide an improved playing experience with no interruptions and to reduce the admin burden from operating lights manually.

It has been suggested that this alternative option first be utilised at a couple of venues to verify that this actually provides clubs the benefit that we’re looking for during this time, before we offer this as an interim solution to other clubs. The alternative option involves court lights being programmed to automatically come on/off at set times each day and is not dependent on the booking data (where we have these issues) and therefore is not dependent on players entering a booking pin. With that in mind, clubs will need to consider the possibility that lights will be turning on when there is no bookings/play.

If your club has been heavily impacted by these lighting issues and you want to know more details about this alternative option, please email [email protected] and we can discuss the possibilities of providing you with this option.

As we continue to progress with these works, we will continue to provide necessary status updates using the same communication methods via the ClubSpark software – see below examples. (i.e. Home page of admin area & as a once-off pop up for administrators).

A reminder to report any issues for our team to investigate and confirm that it is related, 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 an update on the ‘Book a Court’ issues we’ve previously identified & shared with you in March.

What were the issues?

1. Lights turning off prematurely or at incorrect times for bookings
2. Contacts being issued a booking pin of ‘0’

Where can I find more details about these issues?

Click here to see our previous comms in March.

Firstly, we want to apologise for the amount of time it is taking to rectify the issue specific to lights turning off prematurely or incorrectly. This has exceeded our initial expectations for resolution and we will work with our Software and Hardware providers to improve this in the future, however there has also been reasons out of our control (i.e. resources contracting covid) that has also contributed to the delay in delivering a resolution.

We want to assure you that this work is our main priority and has been escalated to the highest level possible with all stakeholders.

Over the last couple of weeks, ClubSpark (software provider) have further progressed with this piece of work and Complete Security Solutions (hardware provider) have been able to complete the file mapping and testing of the data imports that include the booking data generated from the Booking module within ClubSpark.

Today, we have started initial testing of this piece of work in our staging environment, which includes replicating ‘real-life’ booking scenarios at venues and validating the gate and light behaviour. Although our testing has commenced, there are still outstanding items on ClubSpark’s end that requires further work to be completed, which we then have to re-test. There will be numerous times of back-and-forth between ClubSpark, CSS and TA to get this right, and we also need to perform regression testing to ensure that this piece of work hasn’t negatively impacted any other functionality of the ‘Book a Court’ system.

We wish we were in a position to provide a timeframe of when the issues will be fixed, however as we know, the complexity of the issue and the work involved is difficult to estimate. The following might help to provide some context;

Work completed by ClubSpark – unknown/TBC

Complete Security Solutions validation of data from ClubSpark and provide TA with green-light for testing – 2 days

TA testing in stage environment & provide ClubSpark and CSS with green-light to release to live environment – 2 to 4 days

Release to live environment – 1 to 2 days

Please also note that this work is also to be combined with further improvements to reduce the “booking delay”.

If you have any further questions on the information provided, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the Team. We hope to provide you with good news in the coming weeks, in the meantime if this issue is frequently occurring at your venue, you may decide to operate lights manually until a resolution is available. To report the issue for our team to investigate and confirm, please ensure you provide the following 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”)

In regards to the second issue of contacts being issued a booking pin of ‘0’, the work for these pins to be replaced with a standard 4-digit pin has been delayed due to the resources and priority being assigned to the lighting issue. It is likely that this won’t be completed until the lighting issues are first resolved. As previously stated in our March comms, the ‘0’ booking pin doesn’t not provide users with any issues in regards to granting access or activating lights, so there is no user impact here.

If you have any further questions or need to report an issue, please contact our Customer Support team via email on [email protected] or call 1800 752 983 with all the necessary information.

Thank you for your understanding!