Boy do we have good news...

Each week I'll run down a few development notes so you can get a feel for where we're going. This week, I'm pleased we've got two of our most-requested features in, but first, a heads up!

As you may or may not be aware, the reason Pickwatch has changed is that in late July, we received our first external investment to improve the site for the long term. Our aim in that short space of time (around 5.5 weeks between that point and the start of the College season...) was to replicate as much of nflpickwatch from 2017 as possible, while rebuilding the underlying core to be able to handle cool new features that simply weren't possible otherwise.

Every time a website updates, there are criticisms. We totally expect it and that feedback is what makes this site better. If you can tell us about issues, we can fix 'em! More importantly, we do listen and we always let you know that we're working on things.

So although we've got 95% of the site replicated, don't worry, we're moving as quickly as we can to make that 100% over the next few days!

That said, 100% is for losers - we want MORE than 100%, because the aim is that by the end of the season, we've done so much that you'll be extremely glad we moved to our new platform. Here are two cool new features we added this week:

Search

Oh man, did we need this in! Of course, to find yourself (not in an existential way) you need a search bar. Well, we've added and upgraded the search function to help you guys out.

First, you can of course search for your username in the user picks table for both S/U and ATS, but try it on our expert tables for the best stuff.

You can now enter multiple search queries. If you watched Pickwatch Live this week, John Halpin showed how you can get multiple experts into one table - you can go one step further too, here's a custom table with the Pickwatch fan consensus alongside all of the ESPN experts! All you do is type your search and press enter, then type another query, and another...

This works for every week, but more importantly, it also works in conjunction with...

Excel Downloads

Probably the most-requested feature for the last 3 years has been excel. We know thousands of people copy our data manually, and that process now just got easier!

Each week, you can download our data for that week into it's own file. Even better, combine it with the search bar (above) and you can filter by network or users! John Halpin demonstrated the functionality on this week's Pickwatch Live, but below is a screenshot showing the position of the button and what the data outputs as. It's clean, simple and you won't have to spend time tidying up the data!

What's more, as you can read below, we're introducing a whole range of new filters that should make it easier to see what you want on Pickwatch, and that will work in conjunction with Excel downloads too!

We're offering excel as a stopgap. Our aim is that all of the things you do in excel, you should ideally be able to do on Pickwatch without leaving us each week. We also have a duty of care to protect our data to some degree from misuse (we know there are people out there who try...), so while we'll look at opening up relevant data in excel as the season goes on, it's not something that we'll let people harvest wholesale at this stage.

Here's a screenshot of the button in the top left of the table:

In the pipeline

We have some cool new features coming this week that we again think you'll like. This is just the start...

• Forum - This is a key feature for us. We want to bring all of the pick'em community together, and more importantly, we can engage with you as a team on there. Support queries can be answered, and you can see our answers!
• Filters - as discussed, filter experts out who you don't want to see, such as those below 50%, or those who haven't made picks yet this week. You can also download those custom filters into excel to save time, but we'll be expanding that function to make exporting needless
• Audio Podcasts - We love watching John, Josh and Ryan on Pickwatch Live, and we know many of you do too, but we also want you guys to be able to listen to it in other ways. We'll be offering audio downloads, and an embedded player for this
• Improved UI/Layout - Yeah, we have improved, but that doesn't mean we're happy. We want a bit more responsiveness, a bit more feedback for you when you interact (animations etc) and improvements around the site so you can find our best content, quicker.

So next week, we will likely have all of these things in, but rest assured, we have bigger plans in the pipeline. Once the forum is up and running, I'll go into more detail...

For now, happy picking, and hit us up with any requests for new features in the comments and around the site