Our Base Cover 3 play has not been categorized: notice how there is no “Delete Category” button.

Now that you’ve created your categories, how do you use them?  How do they help your team?  You can use categories for documents, videos or plays, but we’re going to talk about how to use categories to organize your playbook.

Our first play selected, “Base Cover 3″ is not in a category.  When we create a new play, it is not in a category and has to be put into one.  You can also tell that it is not in a category because in the Manage Categories box on the right, there is an “Add Category” button, but no “Delete Category” button.

We’re going to take that play and just above the “Add Category” button, we’re going to select “Defense” and then press the button.

We’ve added Base Cover 3 to the “Defense” category. Notice how the “Delete Category” button is visible now.

Notice that there is now a “Delete Category” button.  This lets us remove something from a category if we want.

Below the Manage Categories box, there is another box: Browse by Categories.  This area is the heart and soul of categories and is very important as you add more and more plays to your online playbook software.

Right now we have ten plays for simplicity, but when you have one hundred plays or more in your playbook, categories are crucial.

We’re going to select “Defense” in the Browse by Categories area, and then press the “Get Plays in Categories” button.

There are all of the plays under “Defense” and only the plays under “Defense.”

Now there are only two plays showing.  These are the plays that are under the category “Defense” and only the plays that are under that category.  This way, if your player is only looking for certain kinds of plays, he can quickly and easily find them.

To go back to the full, list, all we have to do is press the “All Plays” button, and all of the plays will show again.

What we can also do is select multiple categories at once.  This is where the true strength of OnePlaybook’s categories lie.

We’re going to search for both “Offense” and “Run Plays” by selecting both of those categories in the Browse by Categories area.  This will give us only plays that are filed under both categories.

Looking under “Offense” and “Run Plays” gives us one play that’s categorized under both.

Our play Red Right Sweep Right is the only play that shows up because it is the only play filed under both “Offense” and “Run Plays.”

Going back to our football software example.  Say you’re offensive tackle logs into your OnePlaybook account.  He can go to your Plays tab and see all of your plays, but a lot of those don’t matter to him.

What he can do is look for all of your “Offense” plays or “Run Plays.”  Or he can look for “3rd and Long,” “Shotgun,” “Four Wide Receiver,” “Slide Protection” plays.  Now he gets a list of one or more plays that fit those criteria and quickly finds what he is looking for.

Categories are a very powerful feature that any coach can benefit immensely from.

Say, for example, you’re a football coach.  You’ve started using our software for football coaches, but you find that you’ve added a lot of plays to your online playbook.  You don’t want your players to get confused because they’re looking at a ton of plays all in one place.  They may only be looking for one kind of play or their only looking for your offensive playbook or special teams playbook.

A typical football team's categories for OnePlaybook.

Categories is your answer.  When you have a play, there are often a lot of ways to describe it.  Back to the football playbook software example, you can use categories to designate run plays, offensive plays, power plays, any possible options that you might want.  Some coaches might make categories based on position, down-and-distance or field position.  The beauty of categories is that as a coach, you have full control over what they are and what they do.

In this tutorial we’re going to go over how to add and edit categories as well as what you can use them for.  You can add as many categories as you like and name them whatever you would like.  There will be another tutorial about how to categorize your plays in your online playbook.

Adding a new category is very easy.  Press on the Add button on the right, and a new text box will appear where you can type in the name of your category.

Creating a new category for our football team's playbook software.

The new category is added immediately and is ready for you to use to get your team more organized.

Again, categories can be anything you would like.  If you want to use categories for Documents, then you can add a category like “Medical Forms,” “Workout Plans,” or “Schedules.”  They are very flexible and easy-to-use.

If you’ve named a category and realized you mistyped something or that you want to change them name, you can always delete it, but you can edit that category as well.

Quickly and easily change the names of your categories.

Just click on the category on the left, and its information will be shown on the right.  Pressing on the Delete button deletes that category, and the Edit button lets you change the name of the category.  Simply Save, and move on your way to another feature of our online coaching software.

Here we’ll walk through how to make OnePlaybook your own and change the color scheme as well as show some of the color schemes available.

The default color scheme for your coaching software account: Light Blue.

What you’ll notice on the right is the color scheme that every OnePlaybook team starts with.  The color scheme is named “Light Blue” and is the basic color scheme.

You can change your team’s color scheme by navigating to the profile page by clicking on the Profile link at the top right.

The bottom option allows a coach to select which color scheme they would like to have.  The layout, usability and useage of your web application for coaches will not change, just the colors of items within it.

Change your coaching web application's theme in your profile page.

There are currently eight different color schemes a coach can choose for his team, but if you can request an additional color scheme for your team and we would be happy to add it.

Now we’ll show a few of the different color schemes available for coaches.

A red theme is available for teams.  So, whether your the Cardinals, Red Raiders or other team, you can have a red color scheme for your team.

OnePlaybook's online coaching software's Red theme.

Another popular color scheme is the Blue and Yellow theme.

Again, you can notice that even though the colors change, the layout and functionality of your coaching software stays the same.  This means that even if you change your color scheme often (maybe you want your players to see the color scheme of your next opponent to get them psyched-up), your players will always know exactly what’s going on and how to use your OnePlaybook account.

Your software for coaches can also be colored blue and yellow.

In all, the eight color schemes currently available are Light Blue, Dark Blue, Light Green, Dark Green, Purple, Red, Blue and Yellow, and Purple and Yellow.  Since OnePlaybook builds the software coaches want, you can always request an additional or different color scheme as well.

Your personal profile where you can change your password as well as other information.

At the top right of every page of your online playbook, there is a link named Profile.  It’s right between your name and the Log Out link.

We’re going to press on that link as our first step.  Here is some information about us and our team, like our name, position, email, our team’s name and team’s color scheme.

Probably the most important part is the Change Your Password area and this is the area we’re concerned with.  This is pretty standard and accepted for most web applications to the point of it being assumed there will be a section like this, and in our playbook web application it’s the same.

Fill in your old password, and type your new password twice.

In the first area, we type in our old password.  That’s simple and straightforward.  In the next two sections, we are going to type in our desired new password twice.  We do it twice to make sure that the password is correct and there aren’t any mistakes.

We can then press the Change Password button and instantly our password has been changed.  After that, we can continue using our online playbook as normal.

When we logout after we’re done, the next time we come to OnePlaybook and want to login, we just have to use our new password, and we will be all set.

This is what a team's online playbook's video section looks like, with the videos listed on the left.

When a coach presses on Videos tab to go to the videos section of his online playbook, this is the page he sees.

The videos he has uploaded are shown on the left, with information about the selected video on the right, and the button to bring him to the upload page on the bottom right.

To upload a video, we’re going to press on that Upload button down at the bottom.

OnePlaybook's online playbook uploading area which is where a coach uploads videos as well as documents.

This brings us to the upload page.  When we press on the Browse button, a dialog pop-up appears that allows us to select multiple videos to upload.

The video will then upload.  Make sure that you stay on the same page and don’t navigate away because your video will be lost.  The time the upload takes depends on the video file’s size, which can be determined by the length, quality and type of file.

The beginning of a video uploading to your online playbook account.

The types of files that OnePlaybook supports with its online playbook are avi, asf, flv, m4v, mov, mp4, m4a, 3gp, 3g2, mj2 and wmv.  If you need help clarifying what any of these formats mean, just comment below.

Once the videos are uploaded, they are converted to flv files to ensure that the most possible people will be able to view them as Flash is the most widely supported medium for video.  The process of converting them will take a few minutes, so after you video has been uploaded, it will not be immediately available.

This is our video almost finished uploading, notice the progress bar moving from left to right.

When the video is finished loading, the status will show Finished and then the box with the upload information will dissappear.  This just means that it’s done uploading, not that it has been deleted.

As the video is uploading, or at any time, you can cancel the upload or start to upload another video with no problem.  It will simply add that video to the queue.

Our new video is up and will be available for coaches and players to see.

Now that our video has uploaded, it is available in the Video section of our online playbook for our team to see.

We can press on the play arrow to the left of the name to play the video or press on the name to select it and then press on the video’s name on the right to play it.

OnePlaybook allows a coach to easily integrate video into his or her online playbook whether you draw football plays online or use it for another sport and it is one of the most cutting-edge features of the package.

Here is a normal OnePlaybook's team's roster. Notice on the right hand side, the second gray area reads "Choose a CSV file to upload."

First, a coach just has to log in and go to the Roster page.  You can see here that there is a section towards the bottom right that reads “Choose a CSV file to upload:” with a Browse button.

Well, what is a CSV file?  That’s the abbreviation for Comma-Seperated Values, and can also be called a Comma Delimited File.  Essentially it is a spreadsheet where instead of lines showing the different rows and columns, commas do that instead.

So, let’s fire up Excel (or your favorite spreadsheet application).

I’ve created a simple spreadsheet with two entries as an example.  The colums are for first name, last name, position, email and password, just like when a coach wants to enter a single player’s or coaches’ information.

Two entries in an Excel spreadsheet with a coaches' and a player's information listed.

Notice in my spreadsheet that even though those are clearly what each column is for, I do not have labels at the top for those columns.  Otherwise, I would end up with a player called “First Name Last Name” play at “Position” and have an email of “Email.”

Now, I am going to select “File” then “Save As…”

Depending on the program you are using, it may appear slightly differently, but you are looking for a drop-down that will be labeled something like “Format.”

There may be a lot of options listed, you want to select CSV or Comma Delimited.

Pressing on that will give you a lot of options and you want to select CSV or Comma Delimited.

After saving, you may be asked a few questions depending on your software.  All you have to do is hit Ok or Yes to get through those.

We’ll go back to our team’s OnePlaybook Roster page now.  We are going to hit Browse and find where we saved our CSV file.  Just select it and press Open and we’ll come back to the Roster page.

The last step is to hit the Upload button below.  After a few seconds, our file will upload and our team will be added.

All of the new coaches and players will be added and sent a notification email.

Our new player and coach have been added successfully.

Our player and coach have been added quickly and easily so they can immediately start using our online playbook software.  One thing to notice is that every player or coach is initially added as a player, so you will need to quickly edit coaches and give them coach priveleges on the Roster page.

The last thing to realize is that there are a lot of different spreadsheet programs available, so saving a CSV file might be slightly different based on your application and version.  If you have problems, please contact us or use the comments section below and I’d be happy to work things through with you.

Using OnePlaybook web statistics, a coach can see who is using his online playbook and keep his players accountable.

How do you make sure that everyone is keeping up to date on your playbook?  It’s simple with OnePlaybook’s web statistics.  It’s a page only a coach can see and means he or she can keep track of who is logging in how often, and how may videos, documents and plays they are looking at.  While you can never be sure that a player is looking at a handout, you can always be sure that they are looking at your online playbook.

To check your team’s web statistics, just go to the second to last tab on the right named Statistics.  There you will see a list of all of your players and coaches as well how much they use your playbook software.  By pressing on Logins, Plays, Documents or Videos, you can also sort by who is using your playbook the most and the least.  The first click organizes by who has the most of that item, and the second click organizes by who has the least.  Now your players are really accountable!

These are individual plays drawn for a team's online playbook.

When a coach or a player clicks on the Plays tab, they are brought to a page that lists all of their plays drawn in their online playbook.

On the left is the name of each play, and when you click on a name, you select a play and information about that play, like who drew it and when, displays at the top right.

In addition, there are sections below for browsing based on categories, as well as placing plays in categories.

At the bottom right, there are four buttons, Offensive Plays, Defensive Plays, Offensive Snips and Defensive Snips.  Snips save a coach time creating his playbook be reusing key parts of the play.

A listing of offensive plays that coaches have created for their team.

When we press on the Offensive Plays button, we go to a page where we have fewer plays listed because they are only the plays in the offensive playbook.  This allows offensive coaches and defensive coaches the ability to easily find their information.

When we press on the Add Play button at the bottom right, we come to the editor page.

A blank play using a section of a football field to draw on.

We come to a blank editor page where we have a lot of tools a coach can work with on his or her playbook.  We’ll talk about each tool we use as we use it, and we’ll cover other tools at another time.

First, we’re going to name the play at the top left.  We’re going to make this one pretty generic, Tutorial Play for our playbook software tutorials.  Since we’re creating a football play for a football playbook, we’re going to use a part of a football field to draw on.  All of the techniques here would work for a football playbook, or a basketball playbook, or any other sport’s playbook.

We’re going to add a player first by pressing on the third button, the oval and then pressing on our football field.

Now that that player is there, we’re going to want a smaller oval than that.

We've added one player to our football play.

Notice how there is a new oval and box on the right below the gray area?  That’s for our new player, and we can change his shape by pressing on the picture of his shape.

We can click on the football player's symbol on the right to change it.

After clicking on the symbol, a new group of symbols appear and we can press on one of those and our player’s shape changes.  This way a coach has a variety of symbols and shapes to use in his playbook.

Now, let’s do that with eleven more football players and draw a full football formation.  Once they have been added, if they are not in the right place, we can use the Select button above the field all the way on the left.  It has an arrow pointing up and to the left, like a cursor.

Once we press on it, we can press on players and drag them to where we want them in our play.

We've now draw our eleven football players and have started naming them.

Once we draw that full formation and all of our players are in the right place, we now have almost everything we need to finish a basic play for our football playbook.

However, we also want to differentiate those players beyond having them be the same simple ovals.  To do that, we can write one or two letters in the boxes at the right, and it will add those letters to the appropriate player on the field.

We’ll do that to a few players and then get to the final part of the play, the lines!

Lines can show whatever a coach wants them to show, in this case, it's where the players should move.

There are solid lines, dashed lines, lines with arrows at the end and lines with flat pieces at the end, usually for blocks or picks, but again, a coach has full control over what anything means.

When you draw a line, you press in one place and drag to another.  Once a line has been drawn, you can select it with the Select button, just like a player, and drag it, or drag the ends to re-size it.  In addition, you can select it and then press on what kind of line you want it to be.  So, if you drew a regular solid line, but wanted to change it to an arrow, you can select it and then press on the arrow line button at the top.

Finally, to make it even easier for players to understand our plays and our playbook, we’re going to add some text at the bottom.

In this case, it’s some very simple text, but coaches can write whatever they want to make their online playbook simpler and easier to use.

We can add text to our football play, likes rules or scouting information.

There are many more options, as you can see in the images, but we want a simple football play, nothing more.  In later sports software tutorials, we’ll be doing things with video, images and text on the field, but those are things for later.

Of course though, we want to save our play!  There is a disk button at the top to save the play.  In addition, there is a disk with a plus if you’re editing a play and you don’t want to overwrite the old play.

We’ll go with the save button now and then head back to the plays page.  From there, we’ll press on the plays name in the list on the left.  It’s now been immediately added to all of the old plays in our playbook.

We can then see information on the right like when the play was created and by who.  We’re going to press on the button with the plays name so that we can see our football play just like our football players see it.

And there it is, a newly created football play has been added to our online football playbook, quickly and easily.

Our football play in our playbook from a player's perspective.

Again, all of these techniques work for any sport, but in this example, we were a football coach creating a football play.

You can use the form below to ask any questions you may have.

In addition, everything is editable and nothing is permanent.  A coach can play around with the tools and change the play, and always delete it later.

Finally, there are more tutorials to come about our play editor and the tools available for a coach.

The first page a player or coach sees after logging into the sports software.

When a coach or player first logs into OnePlaybook, they are immediately brought to the team’s Announcements tab.  Here coaches can add, edit or delete announcements, allowing him to put important information all in one place.  Whether it’s a team schedule, practice updates, thoughts on the last game or a small pep talk, a coach has a central place for that information.  The posts are shown with the most recent at the top so players know immediately when something has changed.

For a coach to add a new announcement, he just presses on the Add button in the gray area.  That gray area will then be replaced with a section for a coach to type in a title for the announcement as well as the announcement itself.

After pressing on the Add button, a coach can type in his announcement to his team.

In addition, a coach can send that announcement as an email as well as posting it on his or her OnePlaybook account.  All the coach has to do is check the checkbox below the areas with the typed announcement.  This just gives another way for coaches to make sure that their players are always up to date.

The page is immediately updated with the new announcement.

The coach can now press the Save button and the announcement will be posted.  The announcement is posted right away, so if a player is logged into the team’s personal OnePlaybook site, when he or she goes to the Announcement tab, he or she will instantly see that new announcement.

Announcements make it easy for coaches to use their sports software to quickly get in touch with their players.

OnePlaybook has an innovative system for drawing new plays called snips.  Normally when a coach wants to diagram a play for his players, he has to draw the whole thing or he can cut and paste parts of it from one diagram to the next.

With OnePlaybook‘s online play editor, a coach can use snips to do this for them.  What is a snip?  It is a part of a play that a coach is going to use over and over again.  For football, that might be a defensive alignment.  For baseball, it might be normal field positions.  For men’s lacrosse, it might be a 3-2-1 formation.  Whatever the sport, there are parts of a diagram that are going to be constantly used.  Those parts can be drawn as snips.

When a coach is then drawing a play, he can load those snips he had drawn before, making it easier to draw many alignments and looks against different defenses and situations far faster than if he was going to draw each one seperately, allowing him to work twice as fast (or more!).