This document outlines the tools and terminology used to schedule games with inLeague.
The Game Scheduler employs the following terms:
The Game Scheduler is accessible to users with Game Scheduler privileges, and (optionally) Division Director privileges, if the 'Division Directors can access Game Scheduler' option is enabled in the Control Panel.
The Game Scheduler is listed Games menu, and also in the quick links navigation bar on the home page.
The first step to game scheduling is to allocate field space on the dates and times games will take place.
The default view is:
All of these options are set from the navigation pane at the top right of the Game Scheduler.
When you first open the Game Scheduler, the create slots task tab is open by default:
This pane can be used to schedule a single game, several games on one day, or several games per day for several weeks in a row. You may specify the following options:
Click once on the 'handle' of an individual game (the topmost portion that shows the division and the team assignments, e.g. B6: TBD v. TBD or B6A v. B6B) to open the quick edit pane for that game.
All of a game's properties may be edited from the quick edit pane. Division Directors with access to the game schedule may be restricted to changing only the match-ups, or they may be permitted to change the field, date, or time. If a match-up has been assigned, the coaches for each team may be viewed by clicking on 'coaches,' and any assigned referees will also be displayed in the quick edit pane.
A game's date, time, and location may be changed by clicking and holding the mouse button down on the 'handle' of the game and dragging it to a new time (up or down in the game's current column), a new field (right or left to a different field displayed in the scheduler pane) or a different date (right or left across the thick black line when a weekend or multi-week view is selected.
Note that you can only drag-and-drop a game to a field or a date that is currently displayed on the scheduler. If you are moving several games to a field that currently does not have any games scheduled on it, you will have to use the quick-edit pane to move the first game, which will then cause the new field to appear as a column in the scheduling pane, after which the remaining games can be dragged over to it.
Each game has a small white box with an 'X' in the top right-hand corner of the individual game display. Clicking on the X will change the white X to a red X. Clicking on the Delete Selected button in the top navigation pane will delete all slots marked with a red X.
If you need to quickly delete several games on the schedule, select the Bulk Delete tab and click Select Games. You can then quickly select as many games as you would like to delete, and they will appear highlighted on the scheduler. Click Delete Games and they will be deleted.
You may clear all team match-ups within a specified date range by clicking on the Clear Assignments tab. You may then specify a date range and a competition, and all games in the currently selected competition and divisions will be set to TBD v. TBD.
For most leagues, the concept of a round of games is very simple: every team plays once per week or weekend for some number of weeks, so a round of games occurs once every seven days from the start of the season. The matchmaker uses the concept of rounds to determine how often teams should be scheduled to play. If you schedule your match-ups maually (without the matchmaker), then you may skip this section; round designation is not used outside of the matchmaker.
If your schedule is consistent every week, then the only thing you need to know about rounds is that they will be automatically generated for you if and when you utilize The Matchmaker (below).
On occasion, you will want to specify rounds prior to running the matchmaker -- for instance, if your third weekend is cut short and you need the last two games to be added to the fourth weekend, then it is no longer true that "every team plays once per week" - four teams will not play in week 3 and will play twice in week 4. When this happens, you should manually specify all the rounds for the season in the Game Scheduler by selecting the Create Rounds tab.
Begin by selecting the competition, division, and pool for the rounds you wish to specify. A division that contains pools may have rounds specified for each pool, or for the entire division. On the calendar tool, select the date range for the round or rounds you want to create, and then click Create New Round. Click on each game that you want to assign to the round and the game number will be added to the Rounds window. Finally, click Save Round and the games you selected will automatically be assigned to that round when you run the matchmaker.
Immediately after you create any slots, an 'undo' link will appear at the top of the scheduler. It will delete any slots that you just created, but it the link will disappear if any other action is taken in the scheduler.
The Matchmaker is accessible from the Generate Match-ups link on the top of the game scheduler, or from the Matchmaker link in the Administrators inLeague menu tab.
The Matchmaker is an optional tool designed to automate the 'first pass' of assigning teams to slots. It looks at empty slots in a date range that you specify and attempts to schedule each team once each 'round' until every team has played every other team one time. The matchmaker may be run any number of times (even on the same date range), and will keep trying to make every team play every other team in that range so long as there are empty slots available.
The Matchmaker works as follows:
Q: I don't want each team to play at a different time each week! Is there an option to turn that part off?
No, but team match-ups can always be edited after the matchmaker has run. The fastest way to achieve this would be to use the game swapper function in the quick edit pane.
Q: Our teams each play once every Saturdays. Isn't our round length one day?
Even though all of your games occur on one day, the round length should be the complete time frame in which every team plays once - that is, each team will play one time and they will not play again until the end of the round. The only time the round length should be lowered from the default is if your teams play more than once per week.
The Publish Game function may be accessed from the 'Publish Games' link at the top of the games scheduler or the 'Publish Games' item that appears when you mouse-over 'game scheduler' in the Administrators inLeague menu tab.
Games will not appear on the public game schedule or the referee self-scheduler until they have been published.
It is easier to think of divisions or even whole competitions as being published rather than individual games. The idea is that every competition (and, optionally, every division within a competition) has a date through which all games are published. All you do is indicate that you want all games within a competition to be published up through (for example) the end of December, or else only games in BU10 and BU12, and all other divisions through the end of November.
The schedule will always check first for a publication date in the game's division. If it doesn't find one, it will look for a competition-wide publication date. If it doesn't find that, no games will be published.