Online Tennis Court Scheduler Overview
The TennisConnect online tennis court scheduler provides many flexible options to enforce your advance court reservation rules.  This article presents a summary overview of the options and capabilities.

• Administrative users, staff and employees, may access the back end of the court scheduler by logging in at TennisConnect.org.  Every court reservation is "stamped" with an audit trail of the person making or modifying the reservation.  The audit trail includes username, date, time, and IP address of the computer used to make the reservation.  Add Staff   |   Audit Trail

• Three things happen when a court reservation is made.  The database is updated in real-time, the facility receives an automated email confirmation, and the player receives and automated email confirmation.  You may use a "faux" email address for players not wishing to share their email address.  You control the content of the system generated confirmation email and you may use the real estate on that email to reinforce your cancellation policy, announcements, or even advertisements for your pro shop or other upcoming events.

• You may allow a "guest view" of your tennis court schedule on your web site if you so choose.  The guest view allows non-logged in web site visitors to see how the courts are booked.  The guest view provides a place of your to insert your own messaging, such as rates, availability, announcements, and even advertisements for your sponsors or upcoming activities and pro shop products and services.

• There are controls under "Player Access" that allow you to mask the player name on reservations and lessons if you so choose (staff and employees will still see player names but players will not).

• Generally administrative users, staff and employees are not subject to advance court reservation rules and can book courts as far in advance as needed to support organized programs such as league schedules, tournaments, camps, clinics, etc.

• Reservations can be classified into 11 different "types" such as singles, doubles, lesson, clinic, league, permanent court, etc.  This classification is useful for analysis when you download the court utilization data (to MS Excel).

• The 'Mass Court Blocker" allows administrators, staff and employees to block out multiple courts on multiple dates "en masse" so you do not have to block each individual time slot for all day events or recurring events such as camps and leagues.

• If you allow players to make reservations online you may also restrict which member types can book which court groups, how far in advance (hours or days), starting at what time of day, and for how long (duration of reservation for singles or for doubles).  TennisConnect provides several other abuse prevention controls such as allowing you to specify the number of future dated reservations a player may hold at any given point in time (maybe you allow reservations 7 days in advance but you want to restrict the number of future dated reservations to 3 in any 5 day period), and whether you allow "same day" reservations to be made online.

• "Designated Start Times" also allow you to prevent the piece-mail booking of courts during peak times.  This helps increase court utilization by forcing play to start at certain times during your busiest periods (example: if you close at 9PM and want to ensure that you can get two matches in every evening than you would establish a designated start time rule for "90 minutes at 6:00 PM and 90 minutes at 7:30 PM").

• TennisConnect recognizes one financially responsible person for a court reservation.  You may record the names of additional players in the comments section of the reservation form, but the software does not require additional names to make a reservation.

If you have questions or concerns, or want to discuss workarounds please feel free to call us.  We implemented the "require additional names" option in 2005 and it was a nightmare.  Users hated it, front desk staff complained about the time it took, and we had players "ghosting" the "other" player names.  So we retreated from the requirement (which sounded good in theory) and hold the reservation maker responsible for adhering to all other rules and applicable guest fees during the check-in process.

• You may set up any number of courts and court groups, and establish the hours of operation by court by day of the week.  Add a court  |   Set court times

• No Limits.  There is no physical limit to the number of courts you may establish, but there are several practical limits that need to be addressed if you have more than 24 courts, or if you have different advance court reservation rules for different member types across locations.  Please call us at 888-620-6696 XT 2 to discuss limitations and options.

• The Tennis Lobby View is an inquiry only "full screen" presentation of your tennis courts suitable for display on a kiosk in your tennis lobby.  The Tennis Lobby View presents all your courts across the columns of one page, allowing staff and visitors to see where they are playing and even who is playing before, after and beside them.

• TennisCollect customers may collect court fees online.  TennisCollect will properly "price" the court by court, by time of day, day of the week, reservation type, duration and member type.

TIP:  Some of the data required to establish your courts was set up in steps 4 and 9 of the 10 step setup wizard.

In step 4 you may have indicated the number of hard courts, soft courts, and indoor courts.  You will be able to re-address those settings here - so don't worry if they are not absolutely correct.

In step 9 you would have indicated the default hours for weekdays and weekends.  Note that these are simply the defaults to set the "earliest time" on a weekday and weekend, as well as the "last reservable 30 minute time slot" on a  weekday and a weekend day.  You will be able to set the exact times for court availability by court, by day of the week as you complete this section.


Basic Settings | Tennis Court Scheduler | Option #1 - Courts and Hours
This is a duplication of Basic Settings | TennisConnect Basics | Step #10 - Court Hours.  You can maintain this information from either menu choice.

Confirm your number of courts for each surface type and name your courts.  Note that we do not distinguish between hard and soft surfaces for indoor courts.  If you have a total of 12 courts (3 hard outdoor courts, 6 soft outdoor courts, and 3 indoor courts - do not duplicate the indoor courts as either hard courts or clay courts).



To set the hours by day of the week, choose Edit Court: