The SNO Report: FLEX improvements to Sports, Staff Profiles and Breaking News

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Our latest update to FLEX includes subtle improvements to staff profiles, bylines, breaking news headlines, sports scores, and the Sports Center add-on.

1. Perhaps the first change you’ll notice is in how the relationship between the Writer’s Name field on stories and your Staff Profiles is more clearly stated.

  • When you start typing a Writer’s Name, you’ll see a dropdown list of names to choose from based on the staff profiles that have already been setup.
  • If you’re typing a new name, you’ll see a message prompting you to go ahead and create a new Staff Profile for that person.

2. The Staff Profile creation stage has also been simplified to eliminate redundancy.

  • The name you type into the title field of each profile (now labeled “Full Name”) is the name you’ll find in the Writer’s Name list on stories and on your public Staff Profile. (In the past, you typed your name twice on this page.)
  • Also, you can create and edit your own “Staff Years,” meaning if you’d rather your staff be sorted by Fall and Spring semesters or anything other than 2018-2019, 2019-2020, and so on, you can. To do this go to Staff Profiles → Staff Years.
  • Selecting your Staff Year when you create a profile now shows up as a box in the right-hand column of the page (similar to Categories).

As for Breaking News headlines, the redundancy is also gone there. The headline you write into the Headline field at the top is the one that shows up on the website. The only extra information to input is the link to the story.

We also made changes to entering sports scores or rosters, standings, and schedules.

  • Now, when you add a new sports score, for example, you only have to input the information that matters. (We’ve eliminated the need to give it some kind of internal title.)
  • You also don’t have to wait on us anymore to add your own set of sports for your scores, schedules, standings and rosters. You can create and edit your own by navigating to Sports Scores → Sports. (For the Sports Center add-on, it’s also “Sports” located under Game Scheduler or Standings tabs.)

If you have any questions or issues, don’t hesitate to let us know.