As you swing into Spring, your busy season is ramping up and your patrons are back enjoying your parks and recreation facilities. We are here to provide the tools, tips, and tricks to make the experience feel like a home run every time! You will learn about new product releases, available education and training times, services and support updates, and the Employee Spotlight featuring John Gretkowski.
Quick Links:
- Bringing the Fun at Elk Grove Park District
- ePACT Spotlight on Adaptive Recreation
- Upcoming Education and Training Available
- Employee Spotlight
- Vermont Systems Symposium
- All Current Product Releases
- News and Updates From Services and Support
- Is Cloud Hosting Right for You?
CUSTOMER SPOTLIGHT
Bringing the Fun at Elk Grove Park District
Parks and Rec departments face a number of challenges. People look to parks for fun without breaking the budget. For that reason, parks have to be both responsive to the public and conscious of their budget. It can be a fine line. Elk Grove Park District in Illinois found that Vermont Systems enabled them to do both. With a population of 38,000 people, 42 parks, and various centers, including a water park, there was a lot of activity to keep track of.
ePACT Spotlight on Adaptive Recreation
Last month ePACT interviewed clients who have put a strong focus on inclusivity and community through adaptive recreation. We spoke to the city of Seattle to learn more about their use of Mobi - Mats, 50-foot lengths of synthetic ground surfacings, originally designed for the U.S. Marine Corps for vehicular beach landing operations, now being used to allow people using mobility devices to easily enjoy local beach fire pits or wheel right into the water during beach outings. Lakewood, Colorado, shared a story about the youngest football star on their Special Olympics Flag Football team scoring his first touchdown. Check out the blog to learn more about how adaptive recreation allows everyone to play!
Read More About Inclusivity within Parks and Recreation
Upcoming Education and Training Available
The Vermont Systems Education team offers the most efficient way to become proficient and productive with the software as well as the fastest way to onboard new employees, with options to fit any time and budget. If one of your goals is productivity - learning from and with others is a proven path.
- Every other Thursday at 2:00pm Eastern, RecChat offers conversations about new features, hot topics, and upcoming events that are included in your plan with Vermont Systems. Sign up for the latest and to view archived sessions. Sign up here.
- The RecTrac Lab: Our free online series of micro-learning courses covers topics for everyone from new to advanced users. Contact us to find the right RecTrac Lab courses for you.
Employee Spotlight- John Gretkowski
Job Title: Principal Implementation Consultant
Resident of: Milton, VT
Time at Vermont Systems: 21 years
Family: Partner Diana and a Springer Spaniel named Blue.
Hobbies: Umpiring High School and Legion Baseball, Golf, Playing Cards (Cribbage)
What I am Currently Binge-watching: Just watched the 1st Season of 1923 with Harrison Ford and Helen Mirron.
Most Recent Accomplishment: I had two birdies last week after not swinging a golf club in two years. 😊
Why I Enjoy Working at Vermont Systems: Our staff and especially the customers I have become acquainted with!
Favorite Quote/Words to Live By: Heard one from the late great LA Dodger broadcaster Vin Scully about the humility to prepare and the confidence to pull it off… so true in our business!
Vermont Systems Symposium
Start planning for 2023 by adding the Vermont Systems Symposium to your budget. We would love to see you there! Save the date November 7-9, 2023 and check out this page for more details.
2023 Vermont Systems Symposium
All Current Product Releases
RecTrac 3.1.10.19.00 is ready for download: We're happy to announce that RecTrac Version 3.1.10.19.00 has been released! There are many important updates in this release. We urge all departments to update as soon as possible.
The WebTrac Virtual Waiting Room
This a reminder for our hosted customers that we are still using the Virtual Waiting room for large online registrations. Please contact support several weeks prior to your scheduled event, and we will have the system setup and ready for you and your patrons if the event exceeds 900 plus households at the start of the registration for an Activity event and more than 300 for other events (campsites, tickets, reservations).
The virtual waiting room allows Vermont Systems to meter traffic destined for your WebTrac site at the onset of registration launches. This allows us to pull all patrons into a randomly assigned queue just prior to the start of the registration and then release them to your WebTrac site in a manner that promotes a positive and predictable customer experience. We have successfully deployed the virtual waiting room for many recent high-volume registrations and are now positioned to use this as a tool if we determine the demand may exceed the ability of your WebTrac site to sustain a positive user experience.
For events that are known to Vermont Systems, we can monitor traffic leading up to the event and determine if the virtual waiting room will be needed to support the demand. Please continue to inform our Support or Hosted Services teams of high-volume upcoming registrations.
News and Updates From Services and Support
It has been rewarding to see that our customers are responding positively to our support process and staff. We reached an all-time high of 97.5% positive feedback rating on all support cases in 2022! This beat the previous high of 94.8% in 2021. We have a wonderful team of professionals supporting our products, and it is a pleasure working with our customers every day. We continue to look for ways to improve our support services and welcome any feedback.
Online Live Chat continues to be the best and most popular method for customers to get a quick answers on software items. We have added more live chat representatives to the schedule to help with those higher volume times we see each weekday. You can access chat in the Support Portal online: Home · Customer Self-Service (vermontsystems.com). We look forward to working with you!
Implementation Team: Do you have new staff members that have never been trained on RecTrac 3.1? Are you new to your organization and ever wondered, “Why was the setup in RecTrac done a certain way, and could it be improved?” Would you like to streamline the online services and ensure your patrons are getting a good experience online with WebTrac using their mobile devices? If you said yes to any of these questions, we are here to help! Please check out the new “Elevate” option for training bundles: [email protected] or email Brian Hatch (Implementation Manager) [email protected] with specific training questions or to set up discovery calls.
Education Team: The Education team (EDU) led by Zach Malloch has moved all of our Field level help and Topic Documents to the new Vermont Systems Next Gen Knowledge Base. This change from having content within our RecTrac database and now points to this new platform with the 3.1.10.18.00 release. Our Support Portal Knowledge Base and videos have also moved to this location. It’s pretty exciting and has taken more than a year to complete. We encourage you to check out hundreds of new articles, videos, and other self-help resources. Here is the direct link to access for our customers: Vermont Systems Next Gen Knowledge Base (helpjuice.com) Don’t forget to check out the bi-weekly free RecChats with Zach and the team on software and industry topics. Look for the invite via the VS Connect email.
Reminders: We encourage all customers and IT departments to keep the RecTrac version up to date to ensure you have all the latest updates and features. On-premises customers should plan to update 5 times per year. Fully hosted customers are all set and get each update loaded automatically.
Support Portal and Knowledge Base: Access the support portal to chat with an expert, view the system education documents, and find FAQs. Be on the lookout for the new knowledge platform mentioned above, and look forward to an improved experience in the knowledge base.
Visit the Support Portal
VS Assist: Our team of RecTrac experts can ensure that you hit the ground running with a database and solution that’s move-in ready. Whatever your needs, VS Assist will help you reduce training requirements, accelerate your implementation timeline, and enable you to start better serving your patrons and community faster.
See all the ways that Vermont Systems can assist you.
Is Cloud Hosting Right for You?
It’s hard not to miss the trend: the vast majority of organizations are moving to cloud-hosted solutions. The reasons are clear, Cloud Hosting simply delivers far more advantages and allows your team to focus on serving your community. But is it right for you?
Take a look around your organization and see how you would answer the questions.