It is mostly a brute force visual scan and I can miss an entry. I have several folders of bookmarks.
- Basic Set folder contains the, the organizations that publish premiums (CPE, NADAC, TDAA) and the AKC trial secretaries in Florida with web sites. I am also scanning for new events in the calendar of the organizations (CPE, NADAC, TDAA). CPE and TDAA have a date of last update so I can skip the page if the date is not recent.
- EVENT folders - This group is the easiest to scan. These are bookmarks to event listings where the premium appears. This has evolved into multiple folders. Now that AKC will publish premiums on the event page (clubs have to use the online event management to upload it), I now have folders for AKC, UKI and USDAA. For UKI & AKC, I can just stare at a single spot on the screen to see if a premium is available and for USDAA, the screen "lights up like a Christmas tree" when the premium is published.
- ACTIVE folder which has the clubs that publish links to their premiums and have trials coming up.
- INACTIVE folder which has clubs that may have a trial once a year that get promoted to the active folder a few months before their trial and moved back after the premium is published. This folder also contains clubs that I usually have better luck finding the premium elsewhere.
Next comes the scan
- I open a private window in my browser (pretty much assures I will not get a cached copy of the pages and no cookies).
- I have a second monitor now and on the second screen, I load my Florida Premium Dates page which highlights the clubs that are getting close to (or past) their premium due date. This gives me some clubs to watch out for. The posted premium date field is color coded so I can tell which are coming up soon or are past due. The same spreadsheet also calculates the Agility Trial Stats.
- Then I have my browser open all of the pages in the first folder as individual tabs.
- Then I just position my cursor on the “X” to close the tab and start clicking. Some pages require some extra effort. The TDAA and CPE calendars have a easily visible last update date and if it is not the current or previous date (or the date I last checked) I will skip the page. I wish CPE would go the route of USDAA and UKI because the monolithic nature of the page makes it a real pain to process if the date changes (just adding a link to the premium in the event “details" would accomplish this).
- The trial event folders are then opened in a set of tabs. Since this folder is organized by date, the farther down the tabs the faster I can click and not accidentally miss one. Once I process a premium for one of these trials, the bookmark is deleted.
- The active folder is opened in a set of tabs and scanned.
- I generally do a premium scan early in the morning and maybe one in the late afternoon or early evening. The scans do not take long and require only a couple minutes if there are no premiums to process. I generally do not do scans on weekends when we are away at a trial. The software that I use to update the website is on my desktop at home. I can operate it remotely via my iPad but it is more difficult and requires a good data connection.