Coaching tutorials — “everything you were afraid to ask”

Every club has the same problem with new bowlers. Somebody shows them how to hold a bowl on their first evening, they nod, and then three weeks later they still do not like to ask what a toucher is, why everyone shouts “yours” at the skip, or which way the thing is supposed to curve. They are not going to buy a rule book, and nobody wants to be the person who keeps asking.

Members → Coaching Tutorials is a library of short reads that answers those questions, and it appears in the members’ app under Learn to bowl. A member reads them in their own time, in any order, on their phone. They tick each one off as they go, and nobody else sees how far they have got — no coach report, no list of who has not finished. That privacy is what makes people willing to start at the very beginning.

📚 What comes as standard

Pavilion ships a full set covering six areas: first steps, delivering a bowl, how the game works, on the green, bowls and kit, and playing better. They run from “what the game actually is” through grip, stance and the delivery, into ends, scoring, formats and what each player in a team does, and on to etiquette, the language, reading a green, choosing your first set and basic tactics. The rules content follows the Laws of the Sport of Bowls, Crystal Mark Fourth Edition, and says plainly where the Laws are the final word.

✏️ They are yours to change

From the moment they are installed, every tutorial belongs to your club. Reword any of them, switch one off, delete one, drag them into a different order, or write your own — how to find the club, which green is used in wet weather, who to ask about coaching, what actually happens at the Tuesday roll-up. Tutorials your club writes are marked Your club and are never touched by anything Pavilion does.

The Standard tutorials button puts back anything missing — one you deleted, or one added in a Pavilion update. It leaves your wording alone unless you deliberately tick the box that says otherwise.

🎥 Adding a video

Any tutorial can carry a video link, and a Watch this one button appears at the top of it in the app. A phone video of one of your own coaches demonstrating the delivery on your own green is worth more than any polished one from elsewhere, because it looks like the place they are actually going to play.

🌐 On your public website

Put [pvl_tutorials] on a page and the whole library appears there too, readable by anybody — no account needed. It is a genuinely good recruiting page: somebody wondering whether to try bowls can read what the game involves before they ever ring the club. Add category="first-steps" to show just one section.

Common questions

Can members see how far other people have got?

No, and there is no report for the club either. A tick is a member’s own note to self. The only figure the admin screen shows is a total count of ticks across the whole club, which tells you the library is being used without telling you who is using it.

If I edit a tutorial, will a Pavilion update overwrite it?

No. Anything your club has changed is left exactly as it is. The only way Pavilion’s wording comes back is if you press “Standard tutorials” and deliberately tick the box that replaces edited ones.

What happens to somebody's ticks if I hide a tutorial?

Nothing — hiding takes it out of the app but keeps the record. Turn it back on and the ticks are still there. Deleting a tutorial removes its ticks with it, because there is nothing left to have read.

Can I write a tutorial in a proper editor?

The box takes plain HTML — paragraphs, headings and lists — and everything else is stripped when it is saved. That is deliberate: these are read on a phone, and the shipped ones are the model. Write in Word if you prefer, then paste the text in and add the paragraph tags.

Should I put our club's own rules in here?

Anything about how to play, yes — that is exactly what the “Your club” tutorials are for. Formal documents like the constitution or a safeguarding policy belong in the Document Library instead, where they are versioned and can be sent out.

Do I have to use the standard set at all?

No. Delete the lot and write your own if your coaches would rather. The library is a starting point, not a fixture.