Page 27 - ABF Newsletter April 2025

MYABF UPDATE with Julian Foster
Current work: Technical updates
Although there may not appear to have been much going on with myABF in the last couple of months there has been work going on behind the scenes. We are doing some updates to some of the tech- nology components with which myABF is built. These also have versions which need to be kept up to date – sort of analogous to updating your phone operat- ing system or Windows on your computer.
That’s expected to take a couple of months but one of the expected benefits is it should speed up the system. At peak times while several clubs are pro- cessing session payments and/or uploading results there have been occasions where it’s been running quite slowly so this will start to address that (more work is planned as well).
We are of course also continuing to look at bugs and enhancement requests (and are doing an exercise to consolidate and better categorise and then prioritise these).
The myABF “App”
Many players will be aware there is a myABF App – available for both Apple and Android. It’s perhaps worth clarifying a few things around the App since I’ve experienced some confusion via the Help Desk recently.
myABF is just a platform that is accessed via the in- ternet. Therefore:
1. You don’t need the App to sign up for myABF. Nor do you use it to do so – you just go via the internet. Here’s a direct guide to what you do do:
https://www.abf.com.au/wp-content/up- loads/2021/04/MY-ABF-HOW-TO-SIGN-UP- DETAIL.pdf
2. You don’t need to use the App to access myABF at all. Yes, you can reach it via a button in the App, but all that does is take you to myABF on the in- ternet.
3. The myABF App on a phone is only used for notification of tournament results and next round draws. And that’s only if the particular tournament chooses to make use of it, which not all tournaments do.
4. If you do want to use the App. once you have it on your phone (see below for finding them) you log in with your myABF username (most easily your ABF number) and password. That’s all you need to do – if a tournament you are playing in makes use of it, the notifications should start to come through.
Finding the Apps
APPLE:
This is available by searching the Apple App store in the normal way.
ANDROID:
This had to be rebuilt some months ago. The old App still works but won’t be updated in future so users of that may at some point need the new one. Before the new one was made publicly available in the Google Play Store, Google required a period of testing with a number of players. That was complet- ed shortly after the Gold Coast Congress (thanks to the 50 players who signed up to assist with that).
Finding the new Android App: Although it’s now publicly available again it’s not currently trivial to find because it is new and has had very few “hits” or downloads. Simply keying in myABF to search does not yet bring it up.
You can find it either by using this link directly:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/ details?id=au.com.abf.myabf&pcam- paignid=web_share
Or by filtering the search in the Playstore on your phone and selecting “New”:
Australian Bridge Federation Ltd. Newsletter: April 2025
Page: 27