Three Main Features

I want Rec Team Captain to be narrowly focused and do what it does well. I'm not trying to recreate Google Calendar or replace Facebook. In that vein, I'm focusing on three main features: notify players about upcoming games, track who is playing and who is not playing, and notify reserves if necessary.

Notify Players

Rec Team Captain wouldn't be useful at all if it didn't notify players about upcoming games. The first go round I'm sticking to email to keep it simple. If in the future other forms of notification become important, then I'll implement those, but emailing players seems to be the simplest and most popular way to notify players.

For this feature to work, all the captain has to do is enter the schedule and players' email addresses and the system will take care of notification.

Track Who Is Playing

Second on the list is keeping track of who is and is not playing. Again, the simplest path has been taken by providing links in the notification emails the players can click on. Depending on which link the player clicks, that player is registered as playing or not playing in the game the notification email is for.

Once the player clicks the link, he or she is taken to a page on which he or she can change her status just in case he or she accidentally clicked the wrong link.

Reserve Players

The last feature is contacting reserves. When the captain enters players' information, she can indicate if the player is a reserver or not. Reserves are not sent game notification emails unless a regular player indicates he or she is not playing. Once a player chooses not playing, a reserve is sent a notification email, and the reserve player can indicate playing or not playing. This will continue until the roster is out of reserves.

The only difference between a reserve and regular player is that a regular player is send game notification emails, and a reserve is not unless a regular player responds as not playing

Summary

There you have it. Three simple features that help team captains manage players and games. Feel free to post your ideas for future features in the comments.