Feature Friday #10: film review, a mobile layout, 156 fixes

This week (September 25-October 2) we shipped: an immersive film review mode, a new mobile layout, an updated Home, an updated website, in-app notifications, and 156 smaller fixes.

Immersive film review mode

The film page held the player, the timeline, the notes and the box to write one, all at once, so the video got a corner of the screen. A note marked a single moment. To talk about a whole point you typed "0:42 to 0:55" yourself, and anyone reading it had to scrub there to see it.

Now watching film is its own mode. Press Resume and the film fills the window, with the controls above and below the picture instead of on top of it. Notes pop up as cards over the timeline at the moment they're about, so you read the coach's comment while the play is still on screen. Open a card and the film pauses while you read the replies and answer. Press F to go full screen.

Writing a note is faster too. Press C to note the moment on screen, or I where a point starts and O where it ends to note the whole point. Press R to loop it and watch the same cut as many times as you need without touching the timeline. Press H to switch between notes on the video, a list beside it, or none.

The film page is now a summary: the poster, the details, the notes, and a Resume button that picks up where you left off, on any device. Notes posted since you last watched are marked, with a way straight to the first new one, and the film's card in the library shows where you stopped and how many notes are new. So after a film session, everyone can catch up on their own time and see what the team said. Open a film and press Resume to try it.

New mobile layout

On a phone, changing sections meant the menu button in the top-left corner, and menus opened as small cards at the edge of the screen. Long forms sat in a sheet, with the start time hidden behind the buttons. Hard to use with one hand.

A phone now has a tab bar at the bottom: Home, Events, Roster, Plans and More. Menus and pickers rise from the bottom of the screen, and a form with several steps fills the screen with its buttons under your thumb. The month calendar fits the screen, with a dot for each event. The roster and the Access list show more than twice as many people per screen. On an event page, the time, the place and a Directions link come first instead of below the comments.

Opening a team, from sign-in or your home screen, now lands on its schedule. On an iPad, the plan editor's drill panel slides over the plan instead of squeezing it.

Updated Home

Home put invites, billing and getting started in three separate cards at the top, and the schedule switched between a list and a month.

Now Home starts with quick actions like New event, Build a plan and Add people, depending on what you can do on the team. One Action items list gathers the invites, billing and setup steps. Up next shows the next seven days across your teams, with your RSVP in each row, and the month calendar sits full width below. The first stat is your week streak: how many weeks in a row you've been marked present at something. The news card filters by source too.

Updated website

Our home page described Ulti-Mate in words and screen recordings, and the recordings went out of date every time we changed a screen. From the outside, it was hard to tell what using the app was actually like.

The home page is rebuilt around the product itself. At the top, a team's week - the group chat asking if practice is on, the sign-up sheet, the drill PDF, the weather check - comes together into one event card. Scroll down to the features and five demos play as you go: a practice plan building itself, a film session in review mode, a schedule filling up with RSVPs, a season's attendance trends and the forecast for your fields. They're built from the app's own screens, so they stay current as the app changes. A grid below covers the rest, like calendar sync, directions in one tap and adding Ulti-Mate to your home screen.

The same demos now play inside the app. The first time you open Film, Plans or Attendance, the demo plays where an empty box used to be, so you can see what goes there before you add anything. If you're making the case for Ulti-Mate to your team or your club, send them the home page.

In-app notifications

Until this week, the bell in the top bar didn't do anything. If a practice moved, someone replied to your comment or a captain answered your RSVP for you, you found out when you next opened the event, or at the field.

Now the bell tells you. You hear when you're invited to an event, when it changes, is canceled or gets a new time, and when someone mentions you, replies to you or reacts to your comment. A day before RSVPs close, anyone who hasn't answered gets a reminder. A day before the event, everyone going gets one, with the heat level if it's hot. You can answer an RSVP right from the notification, and the badge counts what you haven't read.

Captains, coaches and admins also hear when a player drops out close to the start and when too few people are going. You set what "too few" means in Settings → Notifications, which is in beta - try it and tell us what number works for your team.

Smaller fixes

• Attendance: check-in now opens at a game's arrive-by time, or an hour before any other event. Tapping Here marks someone straight away with an Undo, each arrival shows its time, and each row has a Call button, plus one button to text everyone who isn't there yet. On an event day, Home leads with a Today card and a Take attendance button.
• You can add a phone number to your profile, which is now a page of its own. Only you and your team's admins, coaches, captains and staff see your phone number and email. Before this week, every player on the roster could see everyone's email.
• A canceled event can be brought back with Reinstate event, keeping its RSVPs, comments, plan and photos, and everyone invited is told it's back on. Deleting an event people have already answered now offers to cancel it instead.
• Library stats moved into a dialog: a chart button next to the create button on Activities, Locations and Plans opens them, and Film has its own now (who's watched, the most discussed). Locations also shows every venue on a map.
• Help, in the account menu, lists every page with a button to take its tour.
• Errors: one broken page no longer breaks every page after it, and a bad link says "not found" instead of crashing. Autosave keeps saying a change isn't saved until it is, and a teammate's save no longer wipes what you're typing.
• On the calendar, a weekend tournament shows on every day it covers. On the schedule, an event you haven't answered says when your RSVP is due.
• Speed: the app downloads about a fifth less before your first page shows, because Film, activities and six dialogs now load when you open them.
• Accessibility: a form that can't be sent moves you to the first field that needs fixing, reduced motion fades things instead of sliding them, and typing in Japanese or Chinese no longer submits a field early.
• Dark mode reads cleaner, and status text is easier to read in both themes.
• Plus the rest - 156 fixes in all this week, and the running list is in #changelog in the Discord.

What we're working on next

Reminders by email and text, so the nudge before RSVPs close reaches people who don't open the app every day. Tryouts are still in progress: set up your tryout days, have your staff evaluate players, and pick the team from what they saw. And we're still looking for more teams to try Ulti-Mate - if yours would like to use it and tell us what's rough, we'd love to hear from you.

Tell us what your team needs - the Discord or feedback@ulti-mate.app.

— Victor