FRC Blogged - FIRST Choice 2014

[MechEng83]

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...ST-Choice-2014

FIRST Choice will be back for the 2014 FRC Season!

There are a few relevant FIRST Choice dates about which you should know.

•11/25/13: FIRST Choice will open for window shopping. Teams will see the parts available and how many credits each part will cost.
•12/9/13 (noon, Eastern): FIRST Choice log-in information will be available in TIMS for registered and paid teams. Teams use this information to make sure they can log-in to the AndyMark FIRST Choice system. We are posting log-in information before ordering starts to allow test logins and help identify any issues prior to the rush to order parts.
•12/14/13 (noon, Eastern): FIRST Choice will open for ordering for registered and paid teams. Please note that this is a Saturday. We received a lot of feedback that opening FIRST Choice on a weekday caused excessive stress on Mentors ordering parts while at work. We hope that, by moving the opening date to a Saturday, we will alleviate some of this stress.
We’ll be giving thorough scrutiny to the credit value for each part. We will also be using item limits more regularly. Our goal is to give more Teams access to the most desirable items available.

We’re so grateful to our partners at AndyMark, a Crown Supplier, for their continued work to improve the execution of FIRST Choice each year. AndyMark redesigned the ordering process over the summer and made the notable changes below.

•FIRST Choice will now be hosted on its own site to eliminate confusion on logging in with your team's FIRST Choice account vs. logging in with your AndyMark account.
•Shipping costs will now be paid only via Credit Card.
•Items in your Cart will be reserved for a short period of time while you shop and checkout. This means those specific items can’t be claimed by someone else while you work on your order. However it also means that you won’t be able to park items in your cart for an extended length of time.
While they’ve done extensive internal testing on the changes to the site, AndyMark would like you to sign up to help them Beta test the changes to the site externally. Beta testers will be asked to run the new site through its paces to help eliminate issues on opening day. To help test these new features and the new ordering site, please fill out the form located at http://bit.ly/HwD86u and you will be sent more information. The beta test should take between 15 and 30 minutes. Thank you to those of you who take this effort on!

Glad to see they revamped the system. Time will tell if the system is better.