Beach Volleyball Information System (BVIS) is the software used at FIVB beach events to create schedules and record results.  BVIS should not be confused with VIS as there is no ability to record statistics in BVIS, it is simply tournament management software.  My experience of using BVIS comes from the Swatch FIVB Junior World Championships 2008 held in Brighton, England where I used it under the instruction of the FIVB supervisor.

BVIS needs to have tournament data imported into the system in order to function correctly.  It also needs player data to be imported.  This data is normally supplied by the FIVB at the start of the tournament.  BVIS allows certain information on the tournament to be stored so that this is used throughout all reports that are printed using BVIS. 

BVIS splits each beach tournament into qualification and main draw events.  Before each event a technical meeting will be held at which time the seedings for each event are worked out.  These seedings must be entered into BVIS and used to generate the matches.  Before generating matches a tournament format is imported that describes the tournament structure.  The format files are text files with a specific format, and so it appears that often there are issues with the format and changes will need to be made to this file.  Once the format is imported the matches can be generated and a number of reports printed.

When using BVIS it is necessary to print out many reports from the software and use these to make up Daily Bulletins (printed at the end of each day).  You will get used to the print screen as you will see this quite often when using the software.

After matches have taken place it is necessary to input the data into the results of the match.  Set scores, timings and referees must be entered, after which the data is uploaded to the FIVB website using login details provided by the FIVB.  The upload data is built into BVIS and works well.  It appears that occasionally there will be issues with the upload which must be fixed by the IT department at the FIVB.

Once the qualifying tournament has taken place the software is used to move teams over to the main draw and then the whole process is carried out again. 

It's important to get the distinction between VIS and BVIS as most people will not be aware of this.  Using BVIS is very much an admin job where a little technology experience is useful, but is much less technical than using VIS.  Overally BVIS was a fairly good system.  It still suffers from occasional crashes, without reason or warning, and occasionally the formats must be manipulated to work correctly.  One big enhancement needed is to give the ability to print off scoresheets using the software, as this is a very time consuming job without.

Ben Brown