Golfgraffix wrote: » but to be fair the past few weeks have been crazy for all suppliers the sheer number of traffic is massive.
For reasons known only to BRS they decided to release a revamp to their booking system during a period of high demand and sensitivity. The resulting additional demand on their server, coupled with golf clubs releasing timesheets for every day of the week
FixdePitchmark wrote: » Fair enough , well explained. But they just caused a major issue with no waiting list. Unless this is sorted quickly enough Seems extraordinary we have lost our much loved and needed waiting list.
GolfNut33 wrote: » Maybe I'm missing something but the waiting list is working for me on the new website.
youcancallmeal wrote: » Yeah working for me as well except that I can't figure out how to remove myself from a waiting list on the app, not a big deal though as it works on the website. With regards why it was updated I would guess it's an IT manager/consultant of some sort needed to use up budget/get a promotion and this process started well before coronavirus. I've seen it so many times before, websites or apps that are working perfectly fine getting updated(often very poorly) for no apparent reason. The consultancies that do the work are only too happy to oblige for a hefty fee, sometimes the budget means not everything can be brought over from a legacy site/app in the first phase so of course the end user loses out and the consultancy gets to keep the project going longer.
thewobbler wrote: » With respect. The old BRS system was designed before mobile phone browsers (iPhone, Android) came to prominence. I’d expect that upwards on 80% of BRS traffic is now on mobile devices. Minor patches have been made to cater for this over the past 10 years, but they have been minor. If you believe that only reason to rebuild software made for 18” screens, is “consultancy, commission, promotion”, then you shouldn’t be speaking on the subject. You may have gotten used to working it in mobile to the point that it felt normal. But for new users and irregular users, on mobile devices, it was a far, far from optimised experience. And a competitor could explain this to a golf club in less than minute. This redesign has been long overdue.
youcancallmeal wrote: » So they had a website designed for laptops/monitors and a mobile app for ios and android devices. If they had traffic analysis that indicated most or even a large proportion of users were trying to use the website on a mobile device(Instead of the app) then doing a responsive redesign would be much easier and cheaper than a complete overhaul of the platform. But I get what your saying that any half decent IT sales person would be able to sell the idea of an overhaul and probably not even mention they could just do the responsive redesign as a workaround
bustercherry wrote: » The new web interface is responsive :rolleyes: This was 20+ year old platform using a technology stack that reflects that. Legacy software and infrastructure gets to the point it's too expensive to maintain (and add new features) over replacing with more modern stacks. You can't just put lipstick on a pig. I also suspect (or at least that would have been the first thing I would have done) the entire backend was moved to a cloud provider over maintaining their own infrastructure too. Which is in the current climate could be a stroke of luck because things that are build 20+ years ago don't tend to scale quickly. You know that statement about a little bit of knowledge...... I think that probably applies here.
woodyg wrote: » Ok to fill in what i suspect BRS have done. As they are a division of GolfNow (NBC Sports Group) they have migrated to using Kubernetes on Google Compute Engine. This would have involved both a complete shift of the infrastructure and code base of the website. GolfNow moved to using Node.js and MongoDB from the old on premise C# and SQL Servers a couple of years ago now so i fully suspect BRS have followed the parent company to this DevOps model. that level of work is a massive undertaking as you are completely redoing the entire companies systems and not just a straight forward website redesign.
Kiith wrote: » Sorry, couldn't resist, even though i understood most of that :P
woodyg wrote: » Ok to fill in what i suspect BRS have done. As they are a division of GolfNow (NBC Sports Group) they have migrated to using Kubernetes on Google Compute Engine. This would have involved both a complete shift of the infrastructure and code base of the website. GolfNow moved to using Node.js and MongoDB from the old on premise C# and SQL Servers a couple of years ago now so i fully suspect BRS have followed the parent company to this DevOps model. that level of work is a massive undertaking as you are completely redoing the entire companies systems and not just a straight forward website redesign. anyways back to golf, i think the website is fine cause it means we are actually back playing golf! i was delighted to play my 1st round saturday since the 6th of march.
PARlance wrote: » It was required but rolling it out during the busiest period for bookings in those 20 years, was a crazy decision. It wouldn't have taken much foresight to see a huge surge once golf opened up again and that this would ease over the following months as people return to work.
prawnsambo wrote: » I'm a bit confused about this. Are we talking about a change from this interface?
bustercherry wrote: » Am I missing something, the new site and app was available before Covid-19? Unless there was some sort of A/B testing going on but our club was using the latest prior to lockdown. I'd say they dodged a bullet by having this out. I wouldn't have liked to try and scale the old BRS to accommodate the current loads on the system.
prawnsambo wrote: » Nobody actually answered this, so I'll explain why I asked and maybe then get a definitive answer. Our club has been on a newer interface of this for over a year. I've seen the above older one on other club websites in the intervening time. So if that's the case, the rollout didn't just start in the last month, but has been tested on a number of sites for a considerable period.
HighLine wrote: » Another (minor) gripe I have with the desktop version, they no longer have different colours for different formats of play. So for my club, next Monday for is divided up into different hours of competitions and causal golf but all the one colour. A simple colour differentiation worked well on the old version and is also present on the current app.