Here we go again with this new seasonal delivery, see what's new coming out:

Performances

Was time to make some renewed testing and ground works concerning Wiclax behavior under heavy constraints. Continuous development and integration of new features means also continuous care to provide on these aspects. This time we've focused on mass races configurations, lots of participants and lots of timing locations.

Sparing you complex details about how things are working in the black box, we've eliminated a certain number of bottlenecks and made a better use of parallel task processing. No compromise with Wiclax excellence anyway, with any ranking still computed in real time and ready to be printed/exported/broadcasted. Hoping you'll appreciate the improvements!

Calculated fields

You've already seen them in the custom data section of an event, where you have the ability to enter a calculation formula to feed such a field.

What's new is that we've introduced a few Wiclax specific functions that can be used within formulas:

• TimeToMs(), MsToTime(), AddTimes(), SubTimes(), which can be used to make operations with Wiclax time values.
• WxVar(), which takes as argument any variable identifier as per listed in the custom export format reference that you've maybe already discovered for other purposes. For example among many other possibilities you can obtain the number of finishers in the participant category.

Points calculation

Similarly, we've introduced the ability to edit a custom formula to use for the points calculation. For cases where simple lists of points to award based on place in rankings is not flexible enough.

Bundle reports

Bundle reports are still called Stage summary in Wiclax, cause it's a must have in the context of a cycling stage race. But we aim at giving it a wider purpose like for example when you're requested 2 complementary reports as a single document.

So we continue to refactor a lot of things to bring more flexibility at all levels. Here's a summary of the latest improvements:

• quick selection of reports to embed, each item can be just temporarily disabled
• multiple predefined templates: standard, compact and 2 columns (configurations can be imported/exported and soon to come will be the ability to save a custom list with the event file)
• for each report you can choose a max number of rows, and specify its layout is multi columned
• on the print preview you can click on a sub report and access its own layout options. This includes for example selecting which data fields to print - specifically for this bundle report configuration, choosing a vignette layout, etc...
• at general level you can say the report will start with some cover pages. Combined with the new race communiqués feature, it becomes possible to fill them with some custom graphical content.

Race communiqués

Race communiqués become fully managed with the event: recording of items for each stage, free edition with Word-style formatting and availability for inclusion in a stage summary report. Ideal for cycling races but also to enrich any type of document printed from Wiclax.

Live screens

Continuing with making Live screens design as fun as powerful, 2 great new features:

• some predefined style templates can be applied in one click to result/participant list widgets, sparing you some research on how to tweak CSS style by yourself. Please share your displays if you don't find anything close in this selection, we'll be happy to enrich it.
• access added to the whole list of Google fonts for your screen styling, just pick any from the list.

Prize money

A must have for Criterium like bike races, but not only, a new module delivers this feature.

You can easily setup a new awarding lap during the race, simply entering its prize grid.

For other purposes than prize money, you can also now automatically grant points or time bonuses based on the passing order at a given lap (for races managed as lap races).

Result exchange and/or transfer

Though different scenarios have to be considered and it's not always easy to just have a clear thinking about which operations have to be performed, we've introduced a new dialog aiming at clarifying options when some result data have to be transferred to another participant. Most usual use case is dealing with a bib/chip physical allocation mistake.

Hoping you'll feel more confident with it.

Going along, a new contextual menu Initialize with data from another participant brings the ability to quickly copy registration data under a given bib number. Ideal in case you decide to keep an 'unknown participant' as it comes, with the chip he's wearing, but knowing he was initially registered under a different bib number.

Exporters

We continue to extend possibilities for exports in JSON format - either as local files or as TCP data stream. A data preview now facilitates testing and further processing by external programs.

Arrival graphs

New display mode available to visualize segment times in a stacked view. Makes things easier to spot any eventual anomaly, like a segment obviously too short/long or a missing intermediate time.

Miscellaneous

Result publication: a new publication option allows to activate the display of a 'Provisional ranking' warning banner on the web side.

Lap races: the number of laps to perform for a race can now be modified through a shortcut available from the race statistics & control panel.

Note that we're also introducing here a concept of Active race. This will be important for a context where you have several races or heats defined in the file but only one at a time is going to be competed.

Team data import: to ease some scenarios of participant data processing, a new option provides the ability to merge some independent individual data rows into a single registration in Wiclax. I.e. a single bib, where teammate names will be concatenated.

Real bib numbers: new option for automatic calculation of real bib numbers (those finally appearing on printouts and exports), with addition/subtraction applied to the technical bib. Option available from the race bib numbers setting.

Podiums: in some rare occasions you can be asked to calculate some podiums based on a category set (age groups) which is not exactly the one applied to participants in the file. Now possible with this menu selection:

Conditional formatting: From the contextual menu of a column header (main grids) it's now possible to define formatting rules for the cells, Excel style. For example red+bold if value>xxx.

The actual times seems better for sport timing and we all hope that things will keep going this way.

The first six month of 2022 have been a great period for Wiclax improvements and addition of new features. Most of them have been released along the way in the current public version but they have not been publicized so far.

We will now go back to a public version and a beta version for new developments.

Performances improvement

A great job has been done to improve the performance for massive events with many check points, races and competitors. Some bottlenecks have been identified and solved.

This work will continue in the coming month.

Hardware implementation

Feibot active and passive system are now integrated in Wiclax, both with local connection and through our cloud.

Decoders and trackboxes can now send their data directly to our cloud, giving a peaceful and instant way of retrieving remote split points data.

Dag system was already present in Wiclax for long but now the direct connection to the chronobox finds its place back with the historic connection to Dag center. There is no longer need to use the generic acquisition.

Partnership with Betrail 

Betrail team is encoding trail results from France, Belgium, Nederland and Luxembourg. Following a collaborative work between our teams, you can now access information for most of your runners, and display it on your website, like below.

Computed custom data

You've always wanted to calculate your own data in Wiclax, the way you would do in Excel? That's now possible! 

Customized live screen online

Customized live screen allows you to build the perfect screen to display the result of a particular race. We have simplified the way they can be displayed on your website. You can simply push them from the Web publication windows. You can upload many of them and even overwrite the usual live windows.

Reworked saving, backup and FTP transfer

Again, we have done a hard job to improve saving and FTP syncing.
They are no longer dependent.
Syncing well be done in an automatic way every 3 minutes. If you need to update earlier, for the first finishers for example, you can still force the FTP export with the button.

Backup is improved a lot. It keeps easy to make regular backup but the best thing is that you can now reload a backup while the timing is on. You will keep everything running (decoders connection and g-live).

UCI stages race - stage summary improvement

We've worked hard to make the outprint of the stage summary even more practical and customizable.
Among other things it is now possible to break page after a classification.

For UCI stages race, we also have improved the way you can deal with falls in the last kilometers and added a new way to enter the secondary ranking has been introduced.
Many of you might have already seen this throught the dev version.

Interesting developments are on their way to edit communiqué for UCI races. It will be available in the next release.

For more information about this new release, you can also refer to this page on our website : Wiclax - Versions

The Wiclax team.

All about keeping the pace, despite all. So here we continue with an additional release upon our successful v9. Wishing it to add up on the software strong basis - with a number of fixes included - and to continue bringing valuable new features for all of you.

As usual, a list of things to extend the range of race configuration possibilities and to maximize the ergonomics of the solution - not to say the pleasure to use it.

Some new implementation for acquisitions

The BeChronized acquisition is updated to comply with the new system Ceres G3.

Still through the same Online passings acquisition, you can connect to DotVision API and take advantage of their geo-fencing timing capacities. The passings get down to your event file just like any regular acquisition.

Tag Heuer devices equipped with a modem can be set up to synchronize their data with your Génialp cloud service. Backup and import service, but best of all instant forward to your Wiclax event. More to see in your service administration page if you're still to discover it.

New design extensions for G-Live

No new release without bonus gifts to the most visible part of the solution! We've worked this time on these topics, as you've probably noticed already through our Facebook posts:

Athletes pictures

Making some progress on this feature, aiming to enrich your results online with some pictures of participants.

Currently possible in one way, which reuses the fact that the athlete summary is looking for a <bib-number>.jpg file in the event folder. In case the picture found is less than 150px, it's assumed it's something like a user profile picture and is positioned and styled this way:

Of course limited as you won't often have such a set of pictures, named after bib numbers. So we're working on more flexible options like looking up in a centralized folder, having something else than the bib as an identifier, or calling a custom URL that will return an image (from a DB or whatever). More on that soon, waiting for that don't hesitate to share your own use cases.

Custom color palette

Want to present your race results in a more colorful way, or to get them closer to your brand colors? This is now possible! More information about it in this post.

New settings menu

The new menu - intended to remain discrete on the main page - gives a definitely simpler access to those features mainly useful on the local area: switching the dark/light color themes, running the TV mode - auto scrolling or not.

Points on rankings

2 different concepts are getting developed in parallel:

• Some points based events, where point values are the primary ranking criteria and they actually replace time performances. Available from the Points ranking entry of the event creation assistant. So far intended for some collateral use cases when you need to publish such a ranking. Latest changes allow the points entry through the result input form or through data file import.
• A points allocation as a secondary data, when the primary ranking is still based on timing.

This second concept is now coming live, opening some new possibilities to manage sports where points are participating to the rankings.

Some details about the implementation:

• A new Points tab in the event options form allow for specifying which point values are allocated. Based on final ranks, and point series can be specified either globally or based on rank by category/by level group.
• As of now the allocation is applied after a manual action and not automatically (exception made of an allocation on the general ranking).
• A new Points column can be displayed in the result grid. If necessary, some point values can be entered manually in grid cells.
• Different point series can be specified by stage/heat in a stage race, and the general ranking can be set to be calculated on points (i.e. the sum of points for each stage is used to order the ranking).
• A team ranking can be set to be calculated from individual point values (note that the previous point allocation grid that was there is now moved)
• An option of the Championship module allows it to work on point values extracted from the events, instead of being (re)calculated locally.

Passings to ignore on acquisitions

Useful feature when an acquisition is running as an automated file import, or is plugged on a cloud data service: when a passing has to be eliminated for some reason, the risk exists that it keeps coming down again and again if it's still in the original data and in the time period scope.

To avoid that, you can now put an 'ignore' flag on some passings from the history.

New menu is available at the bottom of the result entry form, below the time lists. Click All first to display the whole history and then you can locate some records by filtering a bib number for example.

Miscellaneous

On printout: ability to print only selected rows from the current grid. Simply by launching a print preview after selection is made. A confirmation will be prompted.

Team ranking: for the case of a points based ranking, you can now specify a number of best results to keep.

Emails: new context menu item Send an email for a competitor or a selection of competitors in the grid. Opens the system's default mail client and initializes the message.

Races without ranking: the option to publish an event without ranking (i.e. only performances are displayed for athletes, which are simply sorted by their registration order) is now available at the race level. Allowing to manage such a race among regular ones in the same event file.

Not much to say about this Covid period that you'd not have already heard... So just hoping you took (you're taking) time to read some good books and change your mind.

On our side, here's what we managed to achieve: a new release 9 with some hopefully interesting changes, and a big framework update.

Biggest items in detail:

New event notifications

Following one of our users suggestion, we've implemented a new kind of visual notification/alarm.

It's intended for useful but not vital/blocking race events, thus it's designed in a non intrusive way. Not popping over the main display.

3 cases plugged on the feature for now, more can easily be added so waiting for your ideas:

• a participant flagged as withdrawal crosses the finish line: may trigger a further verification
• a participant with its category data missing crosses the finish line: may be interesting to jump out and ask for his/her birth date
• you've manually flagged some participants for whom you want to be notified when they're seen somewhere. Notification + sound will be played.

The idea behind the feature is that you don't have to stick to the screen in fear of missing something. Instead these notifications will remain available for later browsing. A quick search field will help if necessary.

Split points on the map

The GPS location picker for split points was no longer usable because of changes on the Google Maps policy.

On this release a new component is introduced in replacement, so hopefully the feature is working again and with a smooth interface. Furthermore, you can quickly load here some GPX tracks to help with the process, typically ensuring that the split points will correctly stick to the race track for a more serious rendering.

Next on the road map, we'll likely extend this track selection so that tracks association to races and stages can be done in Wiclax, then opening the way to an automatic upload of the files in the event folder (for those of you using the G-Live Map option).

Some UI enhancements

The lookup field is now located on top of the main window, and it gives a better access and visibility to the other useful command lookup feature. Remember the Control+P shortcut allows a very convenient way to execute something after typing a few letters.

The column selection menu for the grids is now accessed from a more obvious button on their top right corner. Still you can drop it down by a single click on the grid upper panel (shorter mouse travelling). The display for the menu itself is also modernized.

Shortcuts for races: the access for setting the start time of a race or its terminated status are no longer in a drop down menu but more smoothly integrated in the information panel.

New grid filters

New UX for Championships

The Championships module comes with a brand new interface, or a big re-lifting as you wish.

Enhancements on Live Screens design

Always looking for making the screen design as easy as possible, most noticeable improvements in this release:

• column sizes can be adjusted with the mouse on the screen preview (result list widget)
• the color picking control now allows to specify a transparency level (alpha channel)

Easier certificate designs handling

A nice enhancement for those of you dealing with race certificates online. Templates designed with the new version will now directly embed their images.

So you'll no longer have to care about the original image files, as they won't have anymore to be uploaded alongside the template file.

Additional improvements for the certificates: new variables can be selected to get the event name and dates, and all variables can now be inserted in the text of a standard label item.

Filter for podiums

Sometimes an event requires all official podiums to be based on a selection of athletes only. Like the race is opened to unaffiliated people, but they can't pretend to prizes.

Hence there's a new level of filtering directly bound to the podiums, where you can set any kind of filter condition. This makes everything easier, as you no longer have to juggle with a bunch of additional rankings to declare.

PDF reports online

When launching the publication of PDF reports online - i.e. generation and upload through FTP, a selection dialog is now presented.

This allows a better control of which reports you actually want to be published for the event.

With a great bonus feature: a print preview shortcut is available while hovering any of the reports of the list. Means you can quickly check if their layout is as you expect it, with the right template, ...

Team details

Enhancement for the Teams grid view: passing the mouse over the teammates number cells displays a list of participant names. Themselves giving fast access to their data summary or their entry/results management forms.

Split point as a counter

A split point on the track can now be set as a simple "counter", meaning that instead of registering a single passing of each participant it will instead increment a number of passings. When the race itself is not managed as a lap race.

This can be used for example in the context of a penalty loop, where you need to monitor how many loops have been made by an athlete.

As a result, the grid column for the split will display the number of passings. And the result entry form gives access to the passing detail, allowing to make a manual correction if necessary.

New Starts management module

Big change if you've been sometimes using the Starts module! Quick remind for those who don't know it: its purpose is to provide a start line management screen, for time trial races. Basically showing who's next to start - teams or individuals - and raise a countdown when every actual start time is due.

What's new then: the old module made as an executable is replaced by a brand new web accessible App. Not only more interesting for design/UX aspects, but mainly because it can be launched on any connected device, like a tablet or a smart TV.

Used on the local network, it doesn't need a Wiclax instance to run on the device. Clock synchronization will happen automatically, based on the master PC system time.

Looking forward your feedback on that. Next on the road map could be the ability to report some changes in the start session (typically somebody non-starter), and eventually a cloud based architecture so that it would work without a local network installation.

New Web publication assistant

Big step forward to make Web result publishing more comfortable than ever: a newly designed assistant groups everything related to it in a single screen. Gives you an instant picture of what will appear under G-Live for the event, and moreover it will make using an external FTP client useless for most of the usual operations.

Note: it fully replaces the Web publication tab from the event options form.

Some cool features highlighted:

• shortcut to the FTP settings and definition of the remote folder
• status shown for the main file (.clax), if present online and if up-to-date
• easy upload of GPX track files (when your license includes the Map option for G-Live): you no longer have to know about file naming rules as this will happen automatically, and the files get compressed on the fly - removing unnecessary data like timestamps.
• same thing for certificate templates, whether you have a single one for the event or a race by race scheme. Direct edition from the screen, and upload back after a modification.
• quick preview for the race videos, which are now entered as a platform + ID combination. Compliant with Youtube and Vimeo so far.
• GPX tracks can be enriched with any additional points of interest - a food station, a summit, ... that will show up on the G-Live maps.

Alge Timy 3 integration

Always extending the range of external stopwatches you can connect to Wiclax as an acquisition, this time we've added support for the Timy 3 devices plugged in USB mode.

Miscellaneous

• Average calculation option: a new option to specify explicitly whether the average speed has to be calculated from the chip time or the gun time.
• Printout templates in the cloud: that was already possible for G-Live custom screens, now you can also save some printout templates on your user account online. Making them backed up there and easily accessible from any of your workstations.
• Start line acquisition option: new option for use with an external stopwatch acquisition, which is sending bib-less passing information. In a time trial race mode, for instance a ski competition, it will allow the start time received to be automatically assigned to the next competitor on the start list.
• Network participant entry: the page can now let a user reallocate bib numbers for existing participants. Secured by an option - not enabled by default. The form also includes the real bib number data field, when used for the event.
• Network participant entry: new option on the page to deactivate automatic uppercasing of the last name.
• Athlete photos online: released in our previous delivery, this feature receives some useful enhancements. Responsiveness is now optimized by indexing of big photo folders, and you can customize on the event options the time delay values used to locate the photos on a split point (i.e. how many seconds before and after the line crossing time).
• Grids state: the state of main grids - i.e. column grouping and sorting - is now saved with the event file. And hence is restored when the file is reopened.
• Race videos: now possible to bind a video for the start line, useful in the case of a time trial race.

Athlete pictures on the Web

The athlete summary form on G-Live was already able to show some participant pictures, if it can find files named with their bib number. To go further and make it more convenient, it's now delivered with a server-side solution to find pictures based on the passing times of the athlete.

An option Photos of athletes available online has to be activated on the event, in Options/Web publication. Then the documentation details how photo files are expected to be organized on the web side (basically to reflect the different timing locations - start, finish, intermediates - or the stages in the case of a stage race).

Note: in its current form this feature will require PHP to be implemented on your web server.

New filters for passing acquisitions

The ultimate way to control your chip reads in some complex scenarios is now in place. Some new levels of filtering have been introduced.

The first one is the level of a single acquisition, impacting all its possible destinations. The second one is the level of a particular destination of an acquisition.

In both cases, the filter can be specified in different manners:

• listing chip id ranges, bib number ranges, or simply races
• specifying them in inclusion or exclusion mode (only some readings allowed vs only some readings discarded)

When a reading discard occurs, a log entry will be registered below the acquisition, reminding which filter rule was involved.

These filters will be useful for scenarios where for example a start or finish line must be isolated from unconcerned races, and when this discarding cannot be achieved more simply by entering exclusive race start times.

Lap races

A new option is introduced for lap races, in order to get the main individual ranking based on the best lap.

G-Live

To discover in this latest delivery, some cool new features to improve the overall ergonomics and your productivity:

Search and Athletes summary

Want to get some quick info about a participant and its results? You know you can press Ctrl+f and type either a bib number or part of the participant name, then browse the matches.

What's new now: the athlete summary is directly integrated into the search panel. Faster and more comfortable, you can watch at many summaries in the same row. Moreover, hitting the Return key now opens the result entry form for the participant, which will be the most likely thing you need at this stage.

Search for commands

Though the ribbon organization for feature access is great, you still need a couple of clicks to open something, plus a small mind effort to remember in which area it stands.

Working with keyboard is maybe kind of a geek thing, but all of you might benefit from this new ability: type Ctrl+Shift+P, and then a few letters for what you're looking for. For instance, 'po' to find out the Podiums pane and open it.

You'll see it's as fast as easy, and it remembers what were your latest selections to make it even more comfortable. Means it can be a convenient way to repeat an operation. Betting you can't do without it anymore after you're accustomed...

Figures for split points

More accessible than grouped together with the whole event progress numbers, you can now have a quick overview of the ongoing stats for a split point, keeping the mouse over its page header.

And here's the list of other improvements:

Split points

When working on the result grid, you can now drag time cell values from a split point to another one. This is valid for the finish line as well, and it can work for a selection of rows in a single operation.

When the grid filter 'Inconsistent split times' is on, cells for the anomalies are displayed in red (time value is lower than the previous one).

Network registrations

Non-starter status of participants can be edited from the remote participant entry page.

Start check flag

Some of you often use a split point - unpublished - dedicated to know which participants where seen before start. The information is useful, but somehow doesn't deserve to be a timestamp value, to appear on the result grid, nor to mix up with other split locations. Also, it shouldn't be concerned by safety checks on the race start time or the race terminated status.

Thus we've introduced a new Start check data, which is a simple yes/no value you can see/filter in the participants grid. And the acquisitions settings propose a new target to feed this data from a file import or a direct connection to an RFID device.

Team rankings

Some specific calculation criteria can now be assigned to any custom classification, as it was already possible at the level of a race.

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A new computation option now allows to set a filtering condition for participants, which will be processed upstream for the ranking calculation.

For example this solves easily the case when your team ranking must be made upon some qualified competitors only. Those are usually flagged by a registration data.

Before that, you could still define a classification with the filter and ask the team ranking to be calculated for this classification. But it was a bit more juggling - specially if you had to replicate it for many races - and it made the export of the right ranking not so immediate.

Additional note: when participants are filtered upstream, it means they aren't taken into consideration when calculating the individual rank of individuals. So 3rd means the 3rd of the filtered selection. You get something different if you use the option Other conditions on competitors, for example to tell you want max. 1 foreigner in a team. In this case some competitors will be excluded from teams but they will still count for the individual ranks calculation.

Screen configurations for G-Live

A new variable can be embedded into screen widgets, in order to get a running counter of the time gap with the race leader. This counter will extinguish itself after a few minutes, and will start again when another race leader crosses the finish line - for a new race or a new lap.

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You can now save your configurations on your Genialp online user profile. Means they can be easily shared through the company, and easily downloaded on a newly installed PC.

 

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While there, the menu Import some samples will bring you a new screen template added to the delivery. Ready to use, or available for your inspiration.

Named Responsive lap race - sized for a convenient TV screen, nice fonts, adapting widget sizes and positions to fit the space, remaining laps counter changing as checkered flag when down to 0 + gap with leader + best lap.

Waiting for more ideas!

 

Event videos on G-Live

Remember you can declare an online video of your finish line (youtube or other) so that it's shown on the athlete summary on G-Live, starting at the time he/she actually crossed the line.

To follow this idea, you can now declare as many videos as you have. Associating them with the right split point, race, or even stage. All the relevant ones for a competitor will show up on his summary.

Lap races

Useful for some motorsport races, a new option allows a race termination setting as a duration + 1 or more laps. To comply with this kind of rules: when the race leader crosses the line a first time after the race duration is over, every rider is due to complete one (or n) additional lap.