FIRST website is an embarasment
 

Greetings,

I cannot tell you the level of frustration in dealing with our new website. I am about to quit FIRST due the summation of all the frustrations I have dealing with this horrible website. I am wits end.

Not only has it been a nightmare for registration for events, nor for trying to get people signed up, nor trying to find things, nor trying to navigate through it, but as a coach, it gets worse.

You cannot organize your team roster, export it to excel, and copy&paste it easy. Plus when new people sign up, they are randomly placed in the current roster making it very time consuming double checking each student. It might not be a problem with 10 students, but 50 it's very time consuming.

And then when you sort on "applied" students, you cannot accept them without going back to the full roster and scrolling through everything again.

Then trying to have people sign up in VIMS, especially if they are not computer savvy is a horror story.

It really is an embarrassment when you think people in robotics should be good at computers. Thank you for hearing my rant. It helps. I think.

GIVE US BACK OUR OLD SYSTEM!

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

Now it won't print the students with the full roster. YEAH! I have to do print screens!

I sure miss DOS>

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

I have given up trying to get the students signed up in STIMS. Even if we had a day where parents could come in and use the computers while I step them through it, I'm sure it'd be a mess. We've gotten a couple set up for awards submissions, but I'm just having everyone else do it via paper, and then I'll make copies for competitions.

It is an embarrassing aspect of FIRST, I agree.

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

At our demos we get asked all the time, "How can I contact a team near us so my child can join?" Good luck doing that with the FIRST website.

#YouHadOneJob #ImNotInspired

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

Hate to pile on... but one other fun one discovered recently.

When you give your attendance numbers for local kickoff registration, the maximum you can enter is equal to the number of people registered through STIMS/TIMS. Sure... it logically makes sense, but not every team is likely to have every student/mentor registered in STIMS/TIMS in October, especially with the issues noted.

I'm expecting having to follow up with teams individually to ensure we plan for the proper numbers for kickoff. As a PSA, if this happens to you, you might want to proactively contact your kickoff coordinator to discuss.

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

Yeah, FIRST definitely needs to check on how that system is operating. Things I've noticed this year:

1. I was good for YPP screening with my old team, but when I started a new team as a lead mentor, I wasn't good any longer. I thought YPP was about the individual?

2. Lead Mentor YPP changing unexpectedly. We registered for our second regional event a week ago, and both lead mentor YPP status was green. Now, one of us (not me, so it's not related to my #1 above) is no longer green. No change of team, no change of name, no change of address, just one week to the next.

3. Another local area team saw their parent invites disappear.

4. Texas is so big that if you search by ZIP code with the maximum radius for events, you often get no results. You need to leave the ZIP code blank to get the full state results. Ironically, providing extra information invalidates your search.

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

I don't even bother using the FIRST website to find events; Blue alliance is so much more easier to use, and quicker.

I cringe when ever I need to go to FIRSTs website...

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

I had to phone FIRST HQ to get the YPP to process properly. There was some data field that someone there had to manually type in (but it all looked okay from my screen).

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

I have tried to tell people where to go to find information on teams and other things like that. When I have done this they have not been able to navigate the website well. It is very difficult to figure things out. The website looks very nice but does not feel very logical to me. My biggest complaint is the amount of screens you have to click through to maybe find the information you are looking for.

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

The consent forms are annoying and pointless anyway. It's unfortunate that the online system makes them worse.

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

What if FIRST put out a survey asking everyone to respond in an evaluation of the website? Or what if everyone on Chief Delphi who has issues with the website responded on this Thread?

I suspect it would break every record of thread responses in the history of Chief Delphi. I've been annoyed about the website since they made the changes in the first place. FIRST, IF IT AIN'T BROKE, DON'T FIX IT! :mad:

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

What do you tell a parent?

"We keep getting an error. We contacted first robotics through an email for help with no response."

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

I've also had my issues with getting students signed up in STIMS. I think we're going to have to take a meeting or two and just try to get them through the process with someone looking over their shoulders. It'll be slow because we (the team) don't have that many computers.

Earlier in the year, I sent out a message with a specific link to STIMS. By the time some tried it, FIRST had moved the page. So not helpful.

I miss the old calendar. I use the archived usfirst.org site to find teams that are registered for an event. And I use Google to search for specific things on the new site because trying to find it in there is frustrating.

I wonder if the UX designers for this site know that FRC mentors typically don't have a lot of time to spend on the site. We need to just find targeted bits of information, not have a pleasant experience looking at great photos to inspire us. I'd pick easy to work with over pretty at this point.

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

While I've suffered my own frustrations with the site, I have to ask... do you really think this redesign was about making the site better for mentors? When I look at it, the intent I see is to draw in those not already affiliated with the program - new schools, students, sponsors, volunteers. That's why it's so picture-heavy. For people already involved, you wouldn't need any pictures at all. Heck, just give me a sitemap so I can find the link to what I want and I'll personally be happy. But such an interface may not serve FIRST's overall goals with the website.

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

You might be right but once FIRST has drawn in these new people (students, mentors, volunteers), the rest of the interface has to actually work or they will go away.

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

The new website certainly brings up the question of "who is this made for". It does not seem to be for the participants (students, teachers, and mentors) in FIRST, but rather for the sponsors.

I'd argue that while pretty and it would draw in a new person that for some reason stumbles to FIRST without knowing what it is, I don't find it to be helpful for them either. The design is there to be helpful - but clicking on "parents" "kids" or "educators" takes you to the same area. It does just enough to maybe convince someone they want to do it, but then provides no useful information beyond that. It's also pretty blatantly biased towards "starting a new team" rather than finding an existing team. I know I would never recommend someone to start a new team without first finding an existing team.

Seems to me that those 4 things of parents, kids, educators, volunteers should be something more like "new participants", "existing participants" and "volunteers"

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

I think the website is just another example of how FIRST is more worried about growth than it is about growing a sustainable, respectable program. They seen to forget (or not care) that this program is run by volunteers and many of them have full time jobs. We don't have time to try to figure out how something works this year differently than last year. They should be making every effort to make it as easy on the volunteers that are making the program work as they can.
If FIRST keeps going on its current Marketing heavy path and ignoring the volunteers that make the program work, it is going to suffer a huge drop in workforce.

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

Yep, once they have set the hook, you are food.

I agree with Ron. I brace myself every time I have to click on FirstInspires.
I know I am entering the rabbit hole of poor customer service.
A significant time vampire.

I am about to begin the STIMS process. Trepidation looms large.

I am choosing to soldier through this misunderstanding..... for now.

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

STIMS is terrible. Very hard to find information. Not intuitive at all. The old one was much better. I have used High school sites that are much better (not ours but..)

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

It's just more evidence that FIRST doesn't understand who their customers are.

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

Possibly.

Or they just don't understand that users shouldn't have to go through a maze just to get to what they're looking for! To get TO any given "end site", it takes several different clicks. That would turn off anybody.

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

Folks,

In my personal interactions with the folks at HQ, they do really care about each student, each volunteer, each teacher, each parent, and each team; but ...

Not everything they do is a home run. :rolleyes:

And, in some periods, it's all they can do to deal with the subjects that keep catching their hair on fire :ahh:.

It's not that the other subjects aren't important; it's that they get crowded out by subjects that are also important, and are even more urgent :ahh: :ahh: :ahh: .

Somewhere, there is a person, who knows a person, who knows the person at First HQ who is the live human that needs to both hear these complaints from a helpful squeaky wheel, and publish some work-arounds.

Maybe someone who is suffering through the processes can volunteer to pick up a phone, start playing the anyone-shoud-be-able-to-reach-the-President-in-N-or-fewer-phone-calls game, and make that person-to-person connection with HQ?

Whoever does it can then report to this thread what they find out.

Blake

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

We had an after school team meeting today. One of the parents drive in to pick up their child (who was going to carpool with another student) because they tried to sign up in STIMS and couldn't figure out what to do.

I'd almost be slightly more sympathetic if the interfaces that us more technical-minded used were a bit more 'difficult', but if you want to inspire the kids, you need the parents to buy-in and STIMS is anything but inspiring. In fact it's downright off-putting.

I think we may be going to an all-paper roster this year.

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

Fight to get 1 or 2 students into STIMS for awards, Per team. EVERYONE bring paper rosters this year. Make a statement.

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

I am an veteran volunteer and mentor. I could not find the following information:
(A) Volunteer for an Event.
Goto FRC, click on 'volunteer' and you get a helpful message about volunteering, but no where is there a button that takes you to VIMS. Try typing 'VIMS' in the search box, and you get a bunch of links, but none are the VIMS website. I wound up typing FIRST VIMS into google.

(B) Confirm that I am registered with my team for this season. Am I ? Who can tell.

(C) Find the FIRST calendar. (google: USFIRST calendar)

UI and UX designers test interfaces by taking novice users and giving them a task or two on an App. I defy FIRST to do the same (1) Find a team in my area for my student. (2) Volunteer with a team. (3) Volunteer for an event.

If experienced users in FIRST cannot do it, how can we attract any new people ?

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

Ok, I know I'm just as guilty of "venting" about STIMS/TIMS/VIMS/website/registration and everything but the kitchen sink... but maybe we should set an example and change the direction of discussion:

How can we help fix this?

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

My gripe lately is the Kick Off registration. How can the list of locations not be in some order? It seems random or in order of location creation. We are still waiting for our location to get listed. Or regional coordinator said they are working on the details still.

Yes we too gripe about getting the kids registered and the whole event registration process.


Angel from Team 3161 put together a tutorial to sign up in STIMS. Its worth a look.
https://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/s...38&postcount=9

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

I read upstream that searching for an event in Texas is a range bigger than a ZIP code or a 100 mile circle (which to this small state of Massachusetts is :ahh: ).

But come on -- I'm in a District. If I want to compare events to volunteer I have to click-click-click re-enter all the info to go to different states within the New England District, then click-click-click back again. Can't we have a District list choice? The way I think the order is in is by Name. So you have to know the name of the event to learn what the event name is. Or scroll thru the entire list.

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

What if FIRST uploads the website code to GitHub and makes it open-source so whenever someone has some free time they can help out. And GitHub already has the owners vet each commit before making it a part of the website.

Also, some of the old game documents need to be easier to find. If you're trying to look through old KOP lists to figure out what something is, it gets difficult. And only some of the links on the archived site still work - so if you get to the right page, you still might not be able to get the files. IIRC, there was a Google Drive folder that had all of the game documentation going back to 1992. I don't remember where it was, but I saw it here on CD about 9 months ago. Really, we need to make the resource library more user-friendly. And make finding useful pages a lot easier. Maybe like the wpilib site.

TL;DR - FIRST should make the website open-source and make historical and current non-game manual and non-KOP list game documentation easier to find.

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

Technokats History Project. Speaking of which, if any of team 45 happens to read this, last time I tried to use it I couldn't get more than one layer into any given folder, so more publicly-available depth would be vastly appreciated.

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

I think you have to realize that the website is not the highest priority at FIRST right now, you could argue that it should be, however, reality is reality.

Personally, I think it would best if we just created a list outlining specific issues, in order from most important to least, and let FIRST know, this could help alleviate some of the load. You have to realize that FIRST is a non-profit organization, they may be a tech-based company, but they don't have the resources of a multi-billion dollar company, but they have the needs of a multi-billion dollar company(a bit exaggerated, but you get the point). Yes FIRST's website is horrid to use, yes VIMS and STIMS and TIMS are hard to use, but I don't think that FIRST has the resources to make drastic changes to those workflows, they tried to modernize it, and it failed, but they don't have the resources to do it again.

So if you really want to see changes, rather than say how terrible the website is, or complain about issues that can be annoying, start compiling them, list them by importance, maybe provide a solution, and meaningful feedback, then post it here, and email it off to FIRST, and maybe it'll get better, one small bit at a time.

Also, you people complaining about searching through unorganized lists, simple quick fix would to just use Cntrl-F and search the page for whatever you are looking for, such as a particular name, or the location of an event.

TL/DR
We get it, FIRST website is bad, fix it by making a good list of issues, provide solutions and descriptions of the problems, and then submit it to FIRST. Plus some ranty stuff :)

Just my 2 cents....

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

If someone has time to set up a web site that has reasonable search and navigation into firstinspires, and only send you to the backend when necessary, that might do it. Might.

In addition to the TechnoKats (linked above), there's also http://www.first-a-holics.com/ which has a good selection of game rules and such through 2004. Much of the more recent stuff (and overlapping) is on http://archive.usfirst.org/; this is the official first copy of the web site prior to the "upgrade".

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

A list of issues you say?

Some of the things from that thread actually have been fixed, but some issues still do remain.

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

So I was googling to see about an off-season event that I'm at for official rankings and I came across this site that I never remember seeing before! It's SUPER mobile friendly! Check it out: https://frc-events.firstinspires.org/

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

I totally agree.
Thanks to all that provided links. I expect the one to the old site will be very helpful.

I'm trying to get a new programming mentor up to speed and was requested to send some links. I had a bit of searching to find code examples, wiring examples and kit of parts info. (This used to be easy stuff to find).

Recently I went looking to see what teams were going to attend the same district events as my team. I found the page but it only had 6 teams when I know there are at least 30 teams. Neither event had my team listed. If First cared about not wasting our time, they would have spent the money and fixed this a year ago!

Dave
Build Mentor in PNW

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

I guess I must not be seeing what your seeing. I can a access every folder on the history project and the sharing settings appear correct. Certain folders have less content, such as 2002, but every folder should still be accessible.

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

Might have been me not being used to the new Drive format. Seems to be working now. (I was, in fact, hunting up stuff from the first Game That Shall Not Be Named.)

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

I just sent the Chief Delphi link to a new team. I really hope they skip over this thread. This is not what we would want new teams to think of FIRST.

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

Disclaimer: THIS IS MY OPINION, so take it with a grain of NaCl.

FIRST as a whole may not have a lot of money being a non-profit (or the majority of their 50mil/yr budget actually going to teams), but they do have a whole raft of competent technical people willing to help.

If FIRST was to partner with TBA developers, GitHub, Google, or basically anyone with decent knowledge of client-server development, they could either just clean it up in house or make it open-source and have contributions count towards Chairman's :P Community Service for all of FIRST teams might help, or at the very least incentivize it.


The way I'd tackle it regardless is pretty straightforward. Rewrite TIMS / VIMS / STIMS from scratch, and import the existing data via a data dump. They started off as one system (as evidenced by a single piece of paper I found in 1257's file cabinet from 2004) and fragmented it. To clean up the legacy cruft everyone *knows* is there would fix a majority of the problem.

On top of that, not having it written in ASP.NET would be a enormous improvement imho. Nginx and Apache are cheaper to host, plus you don't have to fight with Microsoft lisensing.

I digress. If you don't have a way to register a team, students or volunteers, you don't have them at all. Technology should not be a barrier to entry into a *technology* competition.

Best of luck to all, teams to register students, volunteers to do that awesome thing you do (sacrifice your personal time for robots), and to FIRST if they ever want to move away. It's getting more and more difficult...

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

I think that it's clear that it's not aimed at mentors and I hope you didn't think that I was implying that mentors should be the primary focus for the website. But there are times when I do have to use it. And I did say that I'm using Google to search the site as a workaround when I'm not using a specific FRC database access point like STIMS within the site. I would have assumed that the site designers would have taken the needs of various stakeholders into account. As you've so clearly pointed out, the end product demonstrates their analysis of those needs and wants.

As so many other posters have also pointed out, it would be terrific if we could bring enough resources together to help.

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

I put this together over the weekend to help with searching for teams and events. It has some small bugs right now, but they'll get ironed out shortly.

https://www.thebluealliance.com/nearby

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

Eugene - does this mean that TBA has zip code/more granular location data for team? If so any chance that gets exposed in the API?

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

I've wrote something that gets more granular data and it's used for "Search Nearby," but we don't store it anywhere else yet and thus can't serve it in the API. I'm working on making use of it elsewhere in the site and will expose it in the API.

For those curious, to get granular location data I make guesses of what a team's location could be by combining city/state/zip/country with different parts of a team's full name (which usually starts or ends with the high school or title sponsor), hitting Google's Maps API to check for validity, and then making sure the results Google gives back have the same city, state, zip, etc. as what FIRST says the team's location is. Then the best result is normalized (To fix CA vs. California, typos in FIRST's database, etc.) by hitting Google again.

TLDR: Yes TBA will expose an API for detailed street-level addresses for most teams. Hopefully within the month.

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

Does http://frclinks.com suffice?

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

Works for me :) Thanks!

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

Cool, glad to know I'm not the only one that is finding dealing with the location data painful.

I've been using Mapzen to do it and ended up slicing up the location data TBA does return to remove the country from the end. Due to a quirk in how Mapzen does location searches Flint, MI will return weird stuff but Flint, MI, will return exactly what you'd assume. I've also started experimenting with restricting to the country that is reported for team. I've not had much luck with that yet though.

I'm using it to generate geojson files for team travel to events such as https://github.com/schreiaj/frc-team...7mimid.geojson (they exist for all events, some of them just render funky because teams got coded to the wrong place)

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

See, there's your problem. It Shall Not Be Named, so they didn't name it!

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

My parents are having a terrible time! Also, I have to accept a member before the parent signs the consent??? What kind of crazy is that. I want the old site back also - this is taking way too much time. A Google form would be easier to manage.

I think we need to send this to FRC - they need to fix this -FAST!

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

I've noticed that the zip code and town for my team are different. The town is our physical location, but the zip code is for a town with the school we used to be affiliated with. While not a huge deal, how would this be fixed?

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

The zip code is what FIRST provides. http://www.firstinspires.org/team-ev...team?id=521725

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

This is nice and very useful. I've never understood the mileage limit on the FIRST web site search. We only get one event for FRC, ever, with that thing, and it's two miles from our school. It's pretty useless.

My only suggestion is to add a button to turn off championship divisions and exclude zip code 00000. Right now, if I set the limit to 500 miles, I get 25 hits in the results. 14 are championship divisions, 10 are regionals, and 1 is the Michigan State Championship (listed as zip code 00000). I used an OKC zip code (73109).

Thanks for providing the service!

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

If what you're talking about is STIMS, here's something to help you and your parents get through it until FIRST puts out a better way.

http://nutrons.com/wp-content/upload...te-STIMS-1.pdf

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

They're sorted by state/region, with the unapproved events at the top. While I would prefer each column to be sortable, it does kind of make sense.

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

As the lead coach, I am unable to register my own son for my own team.
When I log in as mentor, there is no option on the dashboard to add a member.

The only way, is if i create another email account just to register my own son.
:ahh: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

You do not need to have been accepted to the team to complete the consent form. You just need to have applied to the team.

You can register a youth member under your primary account as well. On your dashboard, click "I want to... +" to expand the same set of buttons "regular" users see, including "Complete Youth Member Registration."

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

I just typed in a bunch of FLL parent's emails to invite them to the team. After digging them all out of my email and pasting them into the invitation list on the team management page, I hit "enter" on the last one instead of clicking the button at the bottom that says something like "send invitation".

Basically, it refreshed the page, lost all of the emails, and didn't send out the invitations.

This "improved" web site is very very frustrating.

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

Kudos to Nutrons team for creating Slideshow and PDF.
I join my voice of frustration to say how awkward the STIMS interface is. It is not user friendly. Nutrons shouldn't have to be in position to create a manual of how to use STIMS in the first place.
Only one parent on my team (besides myself) persevered and finished registration online, rest gave up and asked for paper forms.

Another problem I have is that while I am a Lead Coach and Administrator, I still cannot see parent information in STIMS.

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

I am sensing a theme here

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

Thank you so much for this!!!!

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

Nice site! But it has one of the same problems the whole site has. What if I want to find all the events in Ohio? No state names associated with events.
Also, many events do no have a city name associated.
So, if I want to find the event in Cleveland, searching for 'Cleveland' or 'Ohio' gets no results. I have to know it is 'Buckeye.' And now there is 'Miami Valley' to deal with.
A newcomer would have a real pain trying to figure out which events in their state or nearby states they can attend.
The old site had them all in one long list and including the state. Piece of cake.
Also, the phone friendly version doesn't get enough info on each page.
If someone is making a list of gripes...
End rant.

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

DOH! Thx!

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

The new FIRSTInspires website is the reason FIRST should have kept the website award around :D. Perhaps it needs competition.

Re: FIRST website is an embarasment
 

Alternatively, you can use The Blue Alliance for that here:
https://www.thebluealliance.com/nearby

Just choose "Events"