lobo76 (the ideas man) suggested creating a sticky with all the details on the spreadsheet
What Is The Spreadsheet?
The AFF Status Run spreadsheet lists great fares found by members within the AFF community.
This lets us refer to fares by "fare codes" (e.g. "A57", "B39", etc), and communicate about them without alerting airline representatives who may remove them.
How Do I Get Access?
Eligibility:
At this stage, the only people being refused access are airline employees.
Additional eligibility criteria has been discussed, and may be added later.
Requesting Access:
lobo76 is the creator, and guardian of the spreadsheet.
If you want access:
- Send lobo76 a Private Message with your email address. Gmail is best or you may need to link your non gmail email to a Google account, Hotmail addresses are apparently not supported. Note: Send one private message to him and then wait. PM boxes only have very limited space, and fill up quickly - meaning others can't send PMs. Expect it to take 48 hours.
- Once access has been granted you will receive a notification email from Google Drive including a link to the spreadsheet. lobo76 will also endeavor to send you a PM indicating the access has been granted.
- Make sure you have space in your own PM inbox to receive a reply from lobo76 notifying you that you have access (or letting you know of any problems).
- Please don't use read receipts.
- Please don't request access to the document via Google Drive. lobo76 ignores these emails as they cannot be linked back to a forum ID.
- If you meet lobo76 in person, buy the man a drink. He deserves it for all his hard work here!
Usage Protocol:
Adding New Fares:
- Aim to be a contributor, and give - not just take. Look for new fares and add them - particularly if you know of QF/partner/YUPP status runs (these are big areas of improvement for the spreadsheet).
- After adding a new fare, please sort the sheet by the Status Credit Yield. (You can do this by clicking the arrow over "Points/SC" or "$/SC", then click "Sort A-Z") This will ensure your fare appears in the right place.
- Don't add fares that do not yet exist.
Fare (Points or Cash Cost) Changes:
- If you spot a fare change, make the update into the spreadsheet. (Leave a note in the notes column saying what the fare used to be.)
- If you do change a fare, make sure the Status Credit Yield column is up to date and calculated correctly. The Status Credit Yield is either the points or cash cost, divided by the Status Credits earned. So if a fare costs $100 and earns 15 Status Credits, then the Status Credit Yield is $100 / 15 = $6.67. If the same fare costs 6900 points, 6900 / 15 = 460.
Fares That Are No Longer Available:
- If a fare is no longer available, Markis10 suggests you use Strikethrough temporarily so that others who are looking for the fare (and might not understand where to find it) can still see it easily. It's wise to check months ahead. Several people have reported fares were no longer available when they were, but on obscure dates. If you're unsure, leave a note in the "Notes" column and someone can check.
- After the fare is well and truly dead (has been struck-through for days? weeks? no longer being talked about?) move it to the Archive sheet.
Change Management:
- If you need to roll back bad changes, please make sure you're not undoing any "good" changes too.
- If you're making significant changes to the spreadsheet (i.e. anything other than simply adding or editing fares), please leave a note in the Changelog sheet.
- There are a LOT of columns that use calculated fields and conditional formatting. Be careful when importing/pasting data, or rolling back, that you don't kill these. Every time you muck up the spreadsheet, God delays a flight.
Sorting:
- If you're sorting or filtering columns to find fares from your city, or under a certain number of points, etc - please make sure you re-order it by Status Credit Yield when you're done. (Again, you can do this by clicking the arrow over "Points/SC" or "$/SC", then click "Sort A-Z")
Tips: Staying up-to-date with changes...
- We had a suggestion earlier this week that we add a "Date Added" column, to make it easier to work out which fares are new. There's an easy way to do this already. Look at the "AFF Number" column (column A) for the highest numbered fare (e.g. "A58"). If you've seen this one before, then nothing new has been added.
- If you want alerts about who is changing what, and when - you can receive notifications by clicking "Tools" > "Notification Rules". Then select the changes you want to be notified about. [Warning: You will get 100's of emails about this. Every minuscule change will result in a notification.] I'll see if I can come up with a better solution to be notified when fares are added or improved...
Have I missed anything here?
Mods: Feel free to edit as needed if I miss anything.
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