By Bill Stark

The Double Masters release has come and gone, and with it more improvements for Wizards EventLink!

Match Results Auto-Update

Match results now automatically update in EventLink!

I’ve talked about concurrency before, or messages being automatically updated across all users in EventLink and the Magic Companion app. We’ve already built this functionality in the calendar and player registration, and I’m very excited to announce concurrent messages for match results, too!

Whether you have multiple staff updating results or players submitting them themselves using the Companion, EventLink will automatically update to show the latest results reported by all users. This will make scorekeeping much easier and removes the need to regularly refresh your browser window to see the latest results.

Late Registration During Sealed Deckbuilding

In our last release, we rolled out the highly anticipated late registration feature for Constructed and Sealed deck events. In our latest build, we’ve further expanded this functionality. Now you can register players for your Sealed events during deckbuilding in addition to after pairings.

Registering players during this window no longer requires you to “rollback” your event to registration. You can simply click the Registration tab, add the player using their Wizards Account or as a guest, and move forward with your event. Because no rounds have transpired, the player won’t be entered with any losses and can play in your tournament regularly.

We’re still working towards building a solution to allow players late entrance into booster draft events, but we anticipate it will be some time before this feature is complete.

Improving Companion Player Name Displays

Previously, the information that automatically displayed for players was their Display Name---their Wizards Account user name. However, that isn’t very useful for in-person play experiences. Now EventLink will display your player’s information in this order:

• We display their first and last name as the highest priority so you can easily see who is joining your event


• If a player’s first and last name isn’t available, we’ll use their email address to help you identify who they are


• In the impossible scenario where a user joining your event doesn’t have any of this information, we’ll fall back to using their display name

No more guessing who “IronclawOrcs1985” is when registering your Companion players into your events! Now you’ll see the far more useful “John Smith” display instead.

Thanks to all the retailers who took the time to provide this feedback, helping make EventLink the best tool it can be. Remember: you can always provide feedback directly through EventLink using the “Submit Feedback” option.

Bugs

We tackle lots of bugs in every sprint’s worth of work. Here are some of the most impactful ones that we cleaned up over the past two weeks:

• A calendar display issue that prevented users from clicking on events or dates not in the current month’s view has been fixed. For example, while viewing “August” events, a user couldn’t interact with events from the last week of July or the first week of September. This functionality has now been added!


• After releasing the “view past events” feature, an issue caused some users to only see “player redacted” for data from their past events. That issue has been corrected. You’ll be able to see player information, results, and standings from events up to 30 days after they occur for players who entered your event using Companion or their Wizards Accounts. 


• A pairings issue that caused some events to transition to “random” pairings unexpectedly has been fixed. While transitioning to random pairings under rare circumstances is intended functionality of EventLink, the bug caused this to happen more frequently than would be expected.


• Some events which were selected to not appear in the Store & Event Locator were displaying there anyway. They will no longer do so.

What We’re Looking at Next

We’re always working on improving EventLink! Some things you can look forward to coming to EventLink soon:

• A timer refactor to improve how the timer displays and its customizability


• In-pod pairings for draft


• EventLink Mirror, a feature set that allows you to better display portions of EventLink on monitors in your store


• Automatically reporting your Arena at-home events’ match results

Thanks for continuing to help make EventLink the best it can be, and keep that feedback coming!