What’s the secret to getting it to work consistently? It logs me out all the time. It’s quite annoying when I’m trying to get tasks done. I know this happens to many people, no matter the browser. Is there a secret phrase I’m supposed to use? Magic words? In any other aspect of life, I would not continue to do business with a company with such a flaky website, but we have no other options here.
There’s no secret. Expect it to log you out twice immediately after you log in, and then it’ll mostly leave you alone. It’s been bad for years, and will be bad for more years. FIRST is aware, but has stated there won’t be any updates to this website. They’re launching a new version in… 3-5 years, ish?
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I was able to log in for about 1 hour straight earlier in the day. No kicks, no lag.
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See now i’m jealous lol
As a Canadian, FRC’s websites in general are difficult to use. Dashboard has the login error, the timeouts, the express reg issues and the double login for rookies issues.
For registering a youth, there’s also this interesting thing where you can’t register for a team not in your nation. Which is pretty difficult for us to deal with as I teach at an international boarding school. Nobody can enter their parent’s address properly without being kicked from the team. You have to just reregister with a new email. There’s few resources for translation for languages commonly spoken at FIRST events, and the only update to FIRST’s sites in my 13 years of experience has been renaming it from USFIRST dot org.
But at least the merch site updates regularly, right?
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I remember back in 2015 I had to use a VPN to get through the registration because that YPP video was hosted on youtube and it’s not accessable from Mainland China. Since moving to Canada my accessabilty had gone way batter but it is still buggy. I have to do TIMS for some mentor using their password (with their consent) using my Canadian internet because without a VPN the Dashboard is pretty much not accessable. It would take minute to load or just straight time out. This is not ideal and probably not compliant but we don’t have any workaround especially when you’re trying to get 20+ students and parents registered all at once in 2 hours. Sometimes I had to get on the phone with the other mentor (in China, with studnets and some of them don’t speak English) and he would tell me what action to do during registration because we’re not in the same country. So bizarre.
What I always do is 1. Always use a computer instead of phone, 2. Don’t use Safari (on mac) but always use Chrome, 3. use incognito if any problem arise.
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This sounds pretty familiar for us on 9062. Thanks for sharing the tips, I’ll be sure to tell the students to use chrome instead of safari if on a mac. Not the first time I’ve told them to avoid apple for FRC
The rumor I have heard is that, while the front end was updated a few years ago, it was mostly a visual change. The reason that it keeps appearing to log you out is that it needs you to log into the different legacy back ends (VIMS/STIMS/TIMS).
I highly recommend you email FRC Team Advocate ([email protected]) and let them know this is a problem for your team.
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My dashboard has issues where I cannot remove old sponsors. I am able to update or add new ones, but cannot delete some old ones from the previous year. I keep getting error messages. I tried this a few weeks ago and the issue still exists. Wondering if anyone else is having this issue.
I sent an email to FIRST, but still waiting for a response.
The kick-out seems to depend on the time of year or even day used. Sometimes I can log in first try (usually summer months), others I have to log in three or four times before I can manage to get anywhere inside the Dashboard.
Makes me think of the days when we had dial-up internet and if someone picked up the phone line, you got kicked off the internet.
So maybe only one person can be logged in at a time and we keep kicking each other off?
This is the most relatable CD thread I’ve read in a while.
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I haven’t had this issue before, but have you tried replacing the body text and name of the old sponsor with a new sponsor’s details? It would be like overwriting the sponsor’s info manually, rather than adding a new one and deleting an old one.
It is not ideal, but in theory it avoids the delete command
You must be talking about our team’s website that I am working on 
I wanted to follow up on this. FIRST got back to me and acknowledged that this is an issue. They manually went in to delete it for me and I made sure to be careful not to add anything I didnt want anymore.
I hope the next season its resolved.
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After CA and MN go to districts.
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They’re really going about it all wrong. They just need an award for “Team who does the best re-implementation of the FIRST Dashboard.” It’ll be done by April.
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I’ve found that if I make sure to log out when I’m done with my session I will not usually have an issue the next time I login. Whenever I leave or close the page without logging out I’ll inevitably have issues the next time I login.
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I find if I lay out 5 candles in a star pattern around a burned out bag motor, the website won’t log me out 20 times.
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