Unlimited, flexible custom barns to organize your horses

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Gwayne's World
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Re: Unlimited, flexible custom barns to organize your horses

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SMART BARNS FOR DUMMIES!

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Carolyn Eaton
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Re: Unlimited, flexible custom barns to organize your horses

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The smart barn I had trouble with was steeplechasers - it would only bring in the 2 and 3yos so I went back to make it a manual barn.
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Ali Hedgestone
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Re: Unlimited, flexible custom barns to organize your horses

Post by Ali Hedgestone »

I have a question about how horses move at the year turnover. If I have a bunch of horses in a training barn named something like "Equipment Done", where do they go when the year rolls over and they move to racing barns? Will I have to resort a bunch of horses into racing barns?
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Mr. Lord Rich
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Re: Unlimited, flexible custom barns to organize your horses

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unless you have smart barns for your 2yo horses, you will have to move them into some form of racing barn manually.
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The Admin
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Re: Unlimited, flexible custom barns to organize your horses

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Ali Hedgestone wrote:I have a question about how horses move at the year turnover. If I have a bunch of horses in a training barn named something like "Equipment Done", where do they go when the year rolls over and they move to racing barns? Will I have to resort a bunch of horses into racing barns?
As Pete mentioned, SmartBarns will always show horses based on the criteria you set. But Managed (Manual) Barns will automatically remove horses that no longer qualify. So when a horse no longer qualifies for the "Training Barn", then it can't be in any Managed Barns that are based on the Training Barn Type.

Do you have a suggestion about how this could be handled better? We can't change the criteria for what qualifies for "Training", but what could/should we do when a horse no longer qualifies for the Managed barn that it is in?
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Madelene Gilbert
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Re: Unlimited, flexible custom barns to organize your horses

Post by Madelene Gilbert »

Admin wrote:
Ali Hedgestone wrote:I have a question about how horses move at the year turnover. If I have a bunch of horses in a training barn named something like "Equipment Done", where do they go when the year rolls over and they move to racing barns? Will I have to resort a bunch of horses into racing barns?
As Pete mentioned, SmartBarns will always show horses based on the criteria you set. But Managed (Manual) Barns will automatically remove horses that no longer qualify. So when a horse no longer qualifies for the "Training Barn", then it can't be in any Managed Barns that are based on the Training Barn Type.

Do you have a suggestion about how this could be handled better? We can't change the criteria for what qualifies for "Training", but what could/should we do when a horse no longer qualifies for the Managed barn that it is in?
I don't know how to answer that question, but the first thing that comes to mind that might easiest would be to allow a horse to be set to any Managed Barn, rather than limited to just those Managed Barns within the primary SmartBarns (Racing, Training, etc.). If the horse is set to a Managed Barn outside of the primary SmartBarn, then they would appear in the primary SmartBarn as if they were unassigned.

That would mean Managed Barns would still have to be manually assigned, but it would mean that you could assign horses in the Training Barn to a Managed Barn in your Racing Barn before the year switched over, and keep your organization in tact.

You could also assign horses in your Racing Barn to Managed Barns in your Breeding Barn which would sort them immediately upon retirement.

Another option might be to offer custom barn assignments on the horses' page for each separate barn. For instance:
Training Barn horses would have a custom barn drop down menu for Training Barn, Racing Barn and Breeding Barn (3 menus)
Racing Barn horses would have a custom barn drop down menu for Racing Barn and Breeding Barn (2 menus)
Breeding Barn horses would have a custom barn drop down menu for Breeding Barn (1 menu)

Essentially you could manage the custom barns for each stage of the horse's life as it moves through the primary SmartBarns. Downside is it clutters up the page and might be confusing in design.

/random Friday morning thoughts
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The Admin
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Re: Unlimited, flexible custom barns to organize your horses

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Each barn-type has certain mass-operations that are appropriate. For example, the Racing barns let you nominate, but the Training barn does not. When you choose "All Horses", you are offered a much shorter list of actions that apply to all horses. That is why we have all Managed barns based on a specific barn type so that we can offer the appropriate actions. We thought it would be confusing to offer options that couldn't apply to any of the listed horses.

I had an idea that is similar to your idea but at the Barn level rather than the horse level.

Each Managed barn could have a way to specify which other Managed barn to move horses to when they "graduate". So a Managed Training barn could say "move horses to 'my special racing barn' when they are old enough". Does that make sense? I haven't figured out how to present this clearly to users. I guess Training barns would need to have a "next racing barn" and "next breeding barn" setting. A racing barn would need "next breeding barn".

Just thoughts.
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Nena Olson
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Re: Unlimited, flexible custom barns to organize your horses

Post by Nena Olson »

How were the previous barns coded? When you had alternate barn yearlings go to alternate barn racing? That is the ideal scenario, imo.
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The Admin
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Re: Unlimited, flexible custom barns to organize your horses

Post by The Admin »

Nena Olson wrote:How were the previous barns coded? When you had alternate barn yearlings go to alternate barn racing? That is the ideal scenario, imo.
That was easy and ideal for then because you only had one alternate barn for each type. If you enabled the Alt Racing and Alt Training, then a horse in Alt Training would move to Alt Racing. Now you can have unlimited barns so it is not clear where a horse should move... if anywhere. You may have 10 Training barns and 8 racing barns.

I assume that people like the flexibility of unlimited and would rather have that flexibility than go back to a single Alt barn per type.
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Danny Derby
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Re: Unlimited, flexible custom barns to organize your horses

Post by Danny Derby »

Admin wrote:
Nena Olson wrote:How were the previous barns coded? When you had alternate barn yearlings go to alternate barn racing? That is the ideal scenario, imo.
That was easy and ideal for then because you only had one alternate barn for each type. If you enabled the Alt Racing and Alt Training, then a horse in Alt Training would move to Alt Racing. Now you can have unlimited barns so it is not clear where a horse should move... if anywhere. You may have 10 Training barns and 8 racing barns.

I assume that people like the flexibility of unlimited and would rather have that flexibility than go back to a single Alt barn per type.
I can only speak for myself, but I preferred the single Alt barn per type.
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Mr. Lord Rich
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Re: Unlimited, flexible custom barns to organize your horses

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Admin wrote:Each barn-type has certain mass-operations that are appropriate. For example, the Racing barns let you nominate, but the Training barn does not. When you choose "All Horses", you are offered a much shorter list of actions that apply to all horses. That is why we have all Managed barns based on a specific barn type so that we can offer the appropriate actions. We thought it would be confusing to offer options that couldn't apply to any of the listed horses.

I had an idea that is similar to your idea but at the Barn level rather than the horse level.

Each Managed barn could have a way to specify which other Managed barn to move horses to when they "graduate". So a Managed Training barn could say "move horses to 'my special racing barn' when they are old enough". Does that make sense? I haven't figured out how to present this clearly to users. I guess Training barns would need to have a "next racing barn" and "next breeding barn" setting. A racing barn would need "next breeding barn".

Just thoughts.
I think this would be an excellent idea.
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Regina Moore
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Re: Unlimited, flexible custom barns to organize your horses

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I like Admin's idea, too.
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Madelene Gilbert
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Re: Unlimited, flexible custom barns to organize your horses

Post by Madelene Gilbert »

Admin wrote:Each barn-type has certain mass-operations that are appropriate. For example, the Racing barns let you nominate, but the Training barn does not. When you choose "All Horses", you are offered a much shorter list of actions that apply to all horses. That is why we have all Managed barns based on a specific barn type so that we can offer the appropriate actions. We thought it would be confusing to offer options that couldn't apply to any of the listed horses.

I had an idea that is similar to your idea but at the Barn level rather than the horse level.

Each Managed barn could have a way to specify which other Managed barn to move horses to when they "graduate". So a Managed Training barn could say "move horses to 'my special racing barn' when they are old enough". Does that make sense? I haven't figured out how to present this clearly to users. I guess Training barns would need to have a "next racing barn" and "next breeding barn" setting. A racing barn would need "next breeding barn".

Just thoughts.
This idea would work nicely! I wasn't sure how the backend was organized, so I just threw out some ideas. It sounds like barn-level transfer options would be easier to maintain on the user end as well, rather than at the horse level. I pull my hair out going through 100 horses, so I can't imagine how those with 1000 horses do it.
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Nena Olson
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Re: Unlimited, flexible custom barns to organize your horses

Post by Nena Olson »

Madelene Gilbert wrote:
Admin wrote:Each barn-type has certain mass-operations that are appropriate. For example, the Racing barns let you nominate, but the Training barn does not. When you choose "All Horses", you are offered a much shorter list of actions that apply to all horses. That is why we have all Managed barns based on a specific barn type so that we can offer the appropriate actions. We thought it would be confusing to offer options that couldn't apply to any of the listed horses.

I had an idea that is similar to your idea but at the Barn level rather than the horse level.

Each Managed barn could have a way to specify which other Managed barn to move horses to when they "graduate". So a Managed Training barn could say "move horses to 'my special racing barn' when they are old enough". Does that make sense? I haven't figured out how to present this clearly to users. I guess Training barns would need to have a "next racing barn" and "next breeding barn" setting. A racing barn would need "next breeding barn".

Just thoughts.
This idea would work nicely! I wasn't sure how the backend was organized, so I just threw out some ideas. It sounds like barn-level transfer options would be easier to maintain on the user end as well, rather than at the horse level. I pull my hair out going through 100 horses, so I can't imagine how those with 1000 horses do it.
Only speaking from my experience but I don't haha. That is why most of my allowance gallopers havent started since W2 lol. I had to stop my ultra defined barns and go back to one barn for my allowance+ and one barn for my productive and lower because I couldn't do the multi barns. It was too difficult to keep them all entered. I went back to the Alt barn and main barn like it was before and am a lot happier.
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Mr. Lord Rich
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Re: Unlimited, flexible custom barns to organize your horses

Post by Mr. Lord Rich »

That is the beauty of it, you can still have a main barn and an alt barn and others can have 100 barns if they choose. We have the flexibility to play the way we choose :)
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