US Airways 2011 Grand Slam Promotion - Looking for beta testers participating in the GS promo (UPDATE: Program NOW LIVE)

Hi GSers - I've put together a website that allows you to manage your GS plan online and need a few FTers to put it through its paces. Would you be interested?

Why a website?
Because I was running into problems managing accounts for myself and my family with a spreadsheet on my office computer, on my laptop, and on my home computer. Often times whatever version I was using wasn't the latest. More than that, the website allows for data sharing amongst all users, so you can quickly see which hits are cheapest, fastest to post, etc.

What features would I find useful?

You create one account, but can manage multiple "scorecards" - e.g. one for you, one for your spouse, one for each of your kids/parents, etc.

Ability to share links to scorecards - so while you do the data entry, you can have someone else take a look at it (including hit selection, dates, costs, etc.) You could share the link here to ask for critiques, share it with friends, etc. You can change the link on demand or disable sharing at any time.

Ability to "tag" hits/partners - "Cheap", "Slow to Credit", "Quick to Complete", etc. A quick way for the community to see what to use and what to avoid.

Ability to sort all partners/hits by various criteria, like max hits, average cost, tags (see above), etc.

Currency conversion - enter your costs in your preferred currency and view others' costs in your preferred currency.

Warnings/Notifications - Maybe you planned for 32 hits but only have 31. Maybe you're late getting into this and have chosen a partner that will post with a "foul ball" activity date. The system also keeps track of how many hits you can have with a particular partner or within a particular category and will warn if you've planned too many.

I'm open to adding any other features anyone would find useful.



A couple of disclaimers:
The site is of course free to everyone, and will be open to everyone hopefully by Tuesday (after some quick beta testing is completed).

There is no warranty of any kind nor any guarantee of performance. It's free. It might not work properly. I certainly hope it will and am working to fix any issues, but things rarely work out the way you expect them to... :)

The site is not intended in any way to detract from FT or this sub-forum - it's only intended to augment/support it. It's supposed to be a dynamic resource that you could go to and quickly see the average/min/max posting times for a partner or the average/min/max costs for a hit. My hope is that it encourages more people to participate (both on FT and in the promo) and to do so more efficiently.

Registration requires you to provide an email address and a password. The password is encrypted, and no personally-identifiable information is recorded (no name, no account numbers, etc.). If the site is hacked, your (encrypted) password could be up for grabs, so pick something that you don't use for anything else (always a good idea).

So would anyone like to give it a go? If so, please PM me and let me know (or post here and I'll PM in the morning when it's ready to test). Have a question? Think this is a dumb idea? Please post here.

Thanks for reading! :)

Sean

I'd be willing to help.

Also, to correct your current situation, save your spreadsheet in your DropBox folder. It will be constantly updated, no matter where you access it from.

Also, to correct your current situation, save your spreadsheet in your DropBox folder. It will be constantly updated, no matter where you access it from.

What is a DropBox folder?

What is a DropBox folder?

Whoops, accidentally deleted the blurb where I explained DropBox (https://www.dropbox.com/). It's a free cloud service where you can keep files updated between different PCs, Macs, and smartphones ... whenever I save something to my DropBox folder, it automatically syncs it with the cloud, so when I'm away from my main computer, I can access the latest updated file.

If you're interested, if you sign up through a referral, you get more space for free, so you can PM me for that.

Also, to correct your current situation, save your spreadsheet in your DropBox folder. It will be constantly updated, no matter where you access it from.

+1


I'll be willing to help too.

Count me in, vysean. I was thinking about a similar thing myself, but haven't had the time to think about doing it.

I'd be interested in testing out the web site as well. Thanks!

Also, to correct your current situation, save your spreadsheet in your DropBox folder. It will be constantly updated, no matter where you access it from.

The dropbox idea is a great one, but it isn't as capable of widespread collaboration - one of the things I'm hoping the site does is to quickly allow you to check a given partner, see what the lowest/average/highest report cost was to complete the hit, and then to see what the fastest/average/slowest reported time from activity completion to mileage credit.

I realize I got off to a late start this year with this, but as long as they run the promo next year, hopefully this will make it more convenient for us to see what's up with various partners. :)

I too would be willing to help. Sounds like a great idea!

You can save a spreadsheet with Google and access it from anywhere. Basically just save one of the premise spreadsheets for grand slam tracking and problem is solved. No need for a separate website.

You can save a spreadsheet with Google and access it from anywhere. Basically just save one of the premise spreadsheets for grand slam tracking and problem is solved. No need for a separate website.

I certainly won't argue that a "cloud" spreadsheet is convenient, but it doesn't allow you to quickly compare information or to see trends that can be seen when you have a large(er) amount of data to work with.

For example, what is the average lag time between completing an activity with Audience Rewards and having it post to your account? Or what about Dividend Miles Dining? If you've only got a spreadsheet to work with, you can manually compare the dates, but only after it's already posted (and then what's the point?). You can browse/search posts on FT, but what terms do you use?

Granted, the sample size is small, but as more people use the site, the data becomes increasingly more accurate and representative of what you might expect were you to perform a given activity.

Bottom line - it will take longer to enter information into a website than into a spreadsheet (hopefully not much longer), but the website can do something a spreadsheet can't - compare your information with others and make suggestions for how to avoid foul balls, cheaply/quickly bump to another level, etc.

The answers to the above questions: 4 days and 10 days, respectively (again, small sample size warning). :)

I'd be interested in helping out. I worked on the unofficial spreadsheet so I would be curious to see how this is different.

sH

Okay, after a few hours of coding a brief update is in order:

First, everyone who has requested access should have received a PM from me with the information you'll need - if not, please let me know.

Second, bugfixes and updates:

Reported Bugs Now Fixed:

Share Scorecard "Yes"/"No" text formatting improperly.
Hit posts to wrong scorecard. Scorecard dropdown doesn't default to selected scorecard.
The "New Scorecard" page is outputting SQL code.
Calendar on "Add Hit" covers up tooltips.
Qty. selector on bulk add hits page is cut off.
Calendar selectors are missing the next/previous month arrows.


The following updates have been made/new features added:

View Scorecard now has "Share This Scorecard" link which prints the full URL to the public scorecard.
Scorecards can now be edited (look for the "Edit Scorecard" link from the View Scorecard page).
Hits can now be deleted (click the [x] next to any hit while in the View Scorecard page).
Bulk Add Hit page has been significantly updated - new fields include "Miles", "Posted Date", and I've removed "Category" and put in its place "Avg. Cost". More importantly, the bulk add hits page now filters out hits that should not be added to your scorecard - so if you've already hit the max for hotel stays or car rentals, or already performed an activity with any one-off partner, those partner(s) or categories will be hidden from view so you don't accidentally plan too many hits. If for some reason you want to exceed the maximum # of hits for a given partner/category, you can still do so, but you have to click the "Add [Individual] Hit" link instead of the bulk add hit link.


Whew! I still need to add "Delete Scorecard" functionality and I want to spend most of tomorrow improving the Partners content so that you can see a lot more information on a per-partner basis (for example, low/avg/high cost, fastest/avg/slowest posting time, activity date warning, popularity, etc.).

Thanks so much to everyone who has shared feedback - I think we're getting very close. Please continue to post or PM me with any problems or suggestions, and if you're not already a beta tester and would like to be, please post or PM here.

Best Regards,

Sean

I'm in.

I'd like to try it as well. Thanks

I am game!

Jeff

I'm in too.

I'd like to try it as well. Thanks

And me :)

Please count me in

Thks

I would like to give it a go. Thanks for the work on this, it sound great!

I took a break from major updates yesterday but have some new treats in store... :)

Again, everyone who has requested access prior to this post should have received a PM from me with the information you'll need - if not, please let me know.

Second, bugfixes and updates:

Reported Bugs Now Fixed:

Mileage amounts greater than 9999 can not be added on the Bulk Add Hit page.
Column sorting doesn't work on the bulk add hit page.
Average Cost and Average Post Time were being improperly computed.


The following updates have been made/new features added:

Configured New Hit, Bulk Hit, Edit Hit and Edit Scorecard to automatically redirect to the "View Scorecard" page after a one second delay if the add/edit was successful. This makes it much faster if you want to edit a bunch of hits.
Added "Popularity" column to the "Partners" page. Rank is computed by number of hits for the partner and, where ties exist, average cost (lower average cost is preferred).
A new "Partner Details" page has been created which should help anyone who is concerned about a hit turning into a foul ball - this page gathers all of the reported hits for a vendor and breaks down min/avg/max cost, posting time, and more importantly shows you the days of the week that postings are made and if there is a deviation between completion date and activity date - I think this is a really helpful feature.


So I still haven't added "Delete Scorecard" functionality, and I need to improve the homepage and add some fun statistics to the "Stats & Reports" page. If anyone has suggestions on what to put there I'd very much appreciate it!

Thanks so much to everyone who has shared feedback - I think we're getting very close. Please continue to post or PM me with any problems or suggestions, and if you're not already a beta tester and would like to be, please post or PM here.

Best Regards,

Sean

A request to current beta testers:

Could you help to prioritize the following:


Stats & Reports Page
Bulk Edit Hits Page (like add hits, but with existing data pre-populated)
Additional Data Columns (e.g. Planned Miles vs. Actual Miles, Hit Date, Item Delivery Date, etc.)
Edit Account (change email address, password, default currency)
Delete Scorecard
Something Else???


Post or PM with your preference. I'm debating another few hours' work tonight or streaming my money's worth from Netflix... ;)

Sounds cool, I'd like to try.

I'd love to test it out as well.

Looks good.

It wouldn't be as big a problem using this from the get-go but doing data entry mid-stream reveals the time-suck that is web-based data entry. Yours is about as good as I've seen lately (and I do this for a living). A couple things: it would be nice to edit items directly on the scorecard (such as price or dates). for the multi-hit page, instead of a 1-6 dropdown for hotels, have 6 lines and a drop down for the hotel (same for car rentals).

I like the drill down info on the hit partners. I will use this planning the next few hits. 4 rental cars to hit 36? Or something else?

You might want to add a link on the homepage to this thread.

One cool feature would be "clone scorecard". At least for me, since I'm doing me and my spouse, a majority of hits are near identical.

Looks good.

It wouldn't be as big a problem using this from the get-go but doing data entry mid-stream reveals the time-suck that is web-based data entry. Yours is about as good as I've seen lately (and I do this for a living). A couple things: it would be nice to edit items directly on the scorecard (such as price or dates). for the multi-hit page, instead of a 1-6 dropdown for hotels, have 6 lines and a drop down for the hotel (same for car rentals).

I like the drill down info on the hit partners. I will use this planning the next few hits. 4 rental cars to hit 36? Or something else?

You might want to add a link on the homepage to this thread.

One cool feature would be "clone scorecard". At least for me, since I'm doing me and my spouse, a majority of hits are near identical.

Thanks a lot for the feedback - I really appreciate it!

I'm about 20 minutes away from releasing a "bulk hit edit" page which I believe will do what you want - all hits listed on a single page with most fields editable (cost/dates/miles/name - the only fields not editable here are notes and share).

I'm not going to be able to do clone scorecard tonight as I'm leaving first thing in the morning for a hiking/camping trip but will do so on Sunday when I get back.

I'm also planning to offer an export functionality to allow you to export your data as a CSV file in case you want to do something with it offline, but I'm not sure if my hosting provider will support my normal file management code.

Please keep the suggestions coming, and thanks again for testing it out! :)

Sean

me too please!

sounds interesting.

Hey I'd be interested too !
Thanks !

google docs is another option. you can have a spreadsheet in the "cloud" that you can edit from any computer and it updates in real time. you can even import an existing excel document and it'll understand the formulas, etc. this is what i'm using to get around the problem the OP mentioned of having multiple tracking spreadsheets... i just took the one provided and turned it into a google spreadsheet and now when i update it it doesn't matter which computer i'm using

Hi All - Just a quick update. Everyone that has requested access should have it now.

I'm planning to officially release the site tomorrow.

Items on my fix list for tonight:


Edit Account (change email address or password)
Copy Scorecard (copy only hit partners or partners+cost+planned date+url+notes)
Bug Fix: Remember column sort selection after new/edit.
Feature Request: Floating header on tables


If I have time, I'll create a few more stats entries (a detailed listing of posting days, activity lag, and posting lag by partner) - and of course anything else that you'd like to see.

Thanks to everyone who has checked the site out so far and shared feedback - it is very much appreciated, and I hope you're finding some of the stats and aggregate data to be helpful in planning any remaining hits.

Hey,
First of all a big thanks for putting together this site. Had a first look tonight and looks quite useful !

I had a quick question that may have been answered somewhere but could not find.
What value do people use typically as the "cost" of the hit? I know I've been using two different values which are:
- actual cost of getting the hit (e.g. hotel cost)
- net cost to me (e.g. $0 in case company's paying for it)
I'd be interested if everyong has a similar definition.

One other small comment: in the "Bottom 10: Least accurate activity date" section, #3 and #5 are both OfficeMax. There may be a slight error there.

And finally, it might be good to add the definitions of each column somewhere (maybe I just haven't looked hard enough though !) as I was not too clear on all dates.

Thanks again !
^

Hey,
First of all a big thanks for putting together this site. Had a first look tonight and looks quite useful !

I had a quick question that may have been answered somewhere but could not find.
What value do people use typically as the "cost" of the hit? I know I've been using two different values which are:
- actual cost of getting the hit (e.g. hotel cost)
- net cost to me (e.g. $0 in case company's paying for it)
I'd be interested if everyong has a similar definition.

One other small comment: in the "Bottom 10: Least accurate activity date" section, #3 and #5 are both OfficeMax. There may be a slight error there.

And finally, it might be good to add the definitions of each column somewhere (maybe I just haven't looked hard enough though !) as I was not too clear on all dates.

Thanks again !
^

As to costs, what I've been doing is putting in the real cost of the hit in the "Cost" section and then selecting "Ignore Cost" if I don't want it factored into the total cost and average hit cost.

For example, if I was going to stay in a hotel anyway but it just so happened to coincide with this promo, I wouldn't count the cost of the stay towards the cost of the hit, so I'd enter the cost (say $180), but choose "Ignore Cost".

On the other hand, since I really don't need a "how to deal with death" book or a toilet lock, I'd count that cost (plus shipping) as the cost of the hit.

The reason why both options are there is to allow people to get a better feel for what the true cost of a hit might be if they don't otherwise need to do it, and to make sure that the accounting adds up correctly for you (e.g. in the case of work reimbursement).


I'm aware of the duplicates in the two bottom 10 lists and am debating whether to fix that or not - on the one hand, when you see a partner in there multiple times it may reinforce that they're a bad one to deal with. On the other hand, you already know they're bad, so maybe we should show a few others. As you can see, even though a partner may be listed multiple times, the values next to the partner are different.

For definitions - yes, that's a good idea. You'll find them now on the bulk hit edit page (top of page), the partner view page (bottom of page), and as context-sensitive help when adding or editing a hit, but it might be nice to just have a page of terms as it relates to the website and the Grand Slam Promo.

Is there a better place to put them? Do the definitions make sense? Do you have a preference on the "Bottom 10" lists as to show or hide multiple entries from the same partner?

Thanks for checking out the site and sharing your feedback - I really appreciate it! :)

Thanks for the reply. I had not actually seen the individual hit pages, which are obviously a lot more detailed.
I just noticed that there seems to be an error with the "hit counted" column. When I change it to "yes" it reverts back to "no" on the summary page, though it still shows the associated bonus miles thresholds...

Thanks again for the great tool !

Thanks for the reply. I had not actually seen the individual hit pages, which are obviously a lot more detailed.
I just noticed that there seems to be an error with the "hit counted" column. When I change it to "yes" it reverts back to "no" on the summary page, though it still shows the associated bonus miles thresholds...

Thanks again for the great tool !

Thanks for the head's up - I hadn't caught that and hopefully it's now fixed. :)

So the update for tonight - not as much done as I wanted to, but I've got a flight to catch in 5 hours and need some sleep.

New Additions:

Edit Account (change password, email address, etc.)
Forgot Password/Resend Verification Email functionality now in place.
Changed header to a drop-down menu - hopefully everyone finds this more useful.
I updated the sort order of "Bulk Hit Edit" to be the same sort order as the default for "View Scorecard", so it should hopefully be less confusing.
Added New Report - "Posting Days By Partner" - which shows reported days that a given partner posts. If you'd like, I can reverse it and show a day of the week and which partners are reported to post then - just let me know.
Added new row to "Possibly Useful Stats" on the "View Partner Details" page - it will now list min/avg/max activity lag, which will be increasingly important as we near the final days of the promo. Any partner with a high maximum activity lag value should be avoided, or at least carefully considered.


Bugs Fixed:

Bulk Hit Edit doesn't update the "hit counted" field.
Bulk Hit Edit hit names aren't being updated/are being deleted.
Date values - you can no longer provide an activity date without a post date (and vice versa), nor can you supply an activity or post date without a "complete date". For any existing data that violates this, I'll work one-on-one with the person who entered it to update it as appropriate.


Still to do:

Add Copy Scorecards functionality - FEATURE
Remember sort order when creating/editing items (right now it reverts to default) - BUG
Attempt to implement "floating header" on long list pages. - FEATURE
Add Export functionality - FEATURE
"Wizard" - Builds a sample scorecard for you based on your time/cost/hassle preferences. Ideally it will make suggestions for existing scorecards too.


If anyone would like any other reports or information or if you have a suggestion for a feature or a bug report, please post here or PM me.

Thanks for your patience and support!

Sean

Please add the Twitter Hit that @USAirways did the week leading up to the beginning of the Grand Slam. You had to tweet them a baseball picture of you holding up a GS sign and many people were given hits for it including me. Great site by the way! Keep up the great work.

Please add the Twitter Hit that @USAirways did the week leading up to the beginning of the Grand Slam. You had to tweet them a baseball picture of you holding up a GS sign and many people were given hits for it including me. Great site by the way! Keep up the great work.

Sorry for the delay in my response. This will probably be my last post in this thread as the site is going to be officially launched in my next post.

I've made the following updates since my last post:


Twitter hit has been added (and marked inactive), so it's viewable and can be added on the individual add hit page, but will not appear as an option on the bulk add hit page.
I added a number of new reports, including "Partners by Posting Day", "Activity Lag by Partner", and "Costs by # of Hits". Some could use some love, so I'd appreciate any suggestions anyone might have as to how to make them more useful.
Implemented "Partner Notes", which allows any registered user to add a note for a partner (e.g. "great customer service", "XX item is the cheapest", etc.)
Implemented "Report (Note/Hit)", which allows you to report/flag any note or hit which appears to be inaccurate or which otherwise should be reviewed. If, when looking at a partner's details page, you see a hit which is skewing the data (say someone mixed up completed date and activity date), you can use this mechanism to let them know.
Added "Edit" option to individual hits listed on a partner's details page, giving you another way to quickly update your hit details.
Added "Copy/Clone" Scorecard option in case you're managing multiple accounts and they are all targeting the same or similar levels/hits. Copy/Clone will copy the following hit information: Partner, Hit Name (if provided), cost, currency type, URL (if provided), notes (if provided), ignore cost flag, share information flag. It will NOT copy any dates or mileage earned values, so you must update those separately. Sorry, there had to be a compromise somewhere... :)


Aside from a remaining bugfix for remembering column sorting after creating/editing certain information, I believe everything that has been asked for has been implemented.

Please let me know if I missed anything, and thanks to all who volunteered to test and who shared feedback throughout the process!

look very nice ! Great work ^

If you still need people - I would do it.