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Old 10-20-2014, 01:14 PM   #5
aston217
College Prospect
 
Join Date: Sep 2010
From the commissioner perspective, you need to:

-Give them FTP information
-Give them Team password
-Remember to to tick the 'User Control' box in the Team Control Panel
-Give them proper setup instructions.

Here's the current Setup Guide at the OSFL, recently revised after we hit some snags. Despite the streamlined FTP experience AFTER you are setup, there's still a step where the new user has to download some files into C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\Solecismic Software\Front Office Football Seven\LEAGUEID\. I hate this, by the way, but c'est la vie.

Here's the contents of the "OSFL Setup".zip file we have all new users download:

-FCC, FCY, FNI (color schemes, city names, team nicknames)
-BMPs for our logo set
-All End of Season files (LEAGUEID.2016, .2017, etc. I have to update the .zip at the turn of every season, when the previous year's EOS file is generated).
-FPX and FRC (this may or may not need to be updated at the end of a season as well. I'm not sure what they even are)

The FCC, FCY, FNI files, as well as the logo set, are cosmetic, but important especially in fictional leagues with alternate team names. They're not necessarily to be a full user of the game.

The EOS files, if any of them are missing, the user will get popup error messages when clicking on a player. However, he can get these files at any time, no big deal. It won't cause setup problems if he doesn't have them. But users definitely will need ALL of them. In fact, if they skip importing the game during the turn-of-season stage, they'll miss that year's EOS file. So when you run that stage, post the season's EOS file as a download as well. This is going to be a common occurrence, one or more users coming around a few weeks into the offseason and asking why they're getting "Missing .... file" messages all of a sudden.

Missing the FPX and FRC files WILL cause setup problems. During the season this isn't a big deal, because they are included in the game files downloaded every stage. During the offseason, however, they aren't, and setup WILL break unless the user places them in that LEAGUEID folder before attempting to import files.

Lastly, no prior weekly files are necessary. These are the LEAGUEID##.2016, LEAGUEID##.2017 files, etc, where ## = week number. The stats are wrapped up in the EOS files for the year. Without the weekly files, all the user won't have are box scores and logs from previous years, but that is not a big deal.

I've shared my issues with this process with Jim/customer support before, but it bears repeating that this could all be automated so much more. The in-game "Import Initial Files" function could be pointed to a folder that has all of the necessary as well as cosmetic files, and the game could automatically keep this updated at season turn. It could also check for missing EOS files on every import and pull them from the server (or at least, keep the most recent EOS file published with every export).
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Last edited by aston217 : 10-20-2014 at 01:20 PM.
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