Welcome to the New Scheduler for Spordle PLAY.
This update marks a significant development in our platform, aimed at enhancing your experience and efficiency. With the introduction of this new Scheduler, we're excited to unveil improvements that will streamline your scheduling processes, making them more intuitive and effective. Whether you're a seasoned user or just getting started, this guide will provide valuable insights into the features and functionalities of our latest update.
Launched initially for the 2023 Spordle PLAY introduced a scheduler closely resembling the PTS. Following a thorough assessment at the end of the season, we identified several crucial enhancements that were needed. Consequently, we are proud to unveil the new and improved PLAY Scheduler. While the approach may diverge somewhat from your past experiences, rest assured it offers significantly enhanced effectiveness. Collaboration between leagues and clubs has been streamlined, making coordination smoother and more efficient than ever before.
What You Need Before You Start Creating your Schedule
Understanding what you need to have set up, what information you need to have available to you, and what roles & permissions you need before diving in to create your schedule will help you complete your schedule and manage the associated information effectively.
Checklist:
Spordle PLAY accounts: : It's crucial to confirm that you have created your login account. If you have a login account for Spordle ID, you will need a separate account for Spordle PLAY at this time. In the near future, you will be able to use the same login for both platforms. If you need to create a PLAY account, please consult the user guide for Accounts, Roles, Profiles Notifications.
Roles & permissions: Ensure that you have the correct role for what you need to do within the schedule management for Spordle PLAY. For a list and description of roles and permissions, please consult the user guide for Accounts, Roles, Profiles Notifications.
Playing surfaces: Confirm that all the locations and their availability, which you will be using to create your schedule, have been added to Spordle PLAY. This will reduce the number of updates required for your schedule and help avoid conflicts.
Teams: Teams created in Spordle ID will be automatically synced to Spordle PLAY. Confirming that all your teams are available to be scheduled will help reduce the number of updates required. If you are not using Spordle ID to create your teams, please consult the user guide for creating teams in PLAY.
Assigning rules: In this step, you determine and apply the requirements of officials needed for a division and category. Note: this can be done afterwards, but having it set up before you create your schedule will set the official requirements up at the same time.
Leagues: If your organization requires a local league that has not yet been set up in Spordle PLAY, simply submit a support request to Spordle. We'll assist you in getting your league set up promptly.
Spordle Page: Your Spordle Page serves as your public website for displaying stats, standings, and schedules. We recommend incorporating all your leagues onto a single page to provide members with a centralized access point for scheduling information across the organization. However, if you prefer individual pages for different leagues, we're happy to accommodate your preferences. For instance, if you're organizing a 2024 Non-Competitive League, a Minor Local League, and a Senior Local League, we'll create a unified league called the ABC Organization League.
Practices: Practices do not need to go through the timetable creation process. They can be created directly within your organization and scheduled on your fields. For detailed instructions on creating practices, please refer to the documentation on Adding and Modifying Practices.
Understanding Terminology and Sections in Schedule Creation
Leagues, Tournaments, Cups
These are organizational entities to which schedules belong, encompassing various categories of play within an organization. These entities persist across seasons and are responsible for managing settings and permissions.
Office Members
Typically, associations belong to a single office, such as a region. However, we need a mechanism to indicate that associations also participate in a league, enabled by office members. This functionality extends the office hierarchy automatically, facilitating permission inheritance as well.
Currently, office members are static throughout seasons but will eventually roll over each season and limit included categories.
Schedules
Schedules correspond to specific categories within a league, tournament, or cup. Each schedule has its own individual stats and standings, which can further be divided by groups. Schedules must be created each season. When creating a schedule, you'll provide a name, category, and date range. Teams must be added to the schedule before creating games.
Groups
Groups, also known by various terms like division, divide a schedule into sub-schedules with segmented standings. Groups must be created each season and can be applicable to all categories or specific ones. Groups can also be used to restrict permissions, such as creating a league manager for a single group within a large league.
Games
Games belong to a schedule and are organized within a league, tournament, or cup office. Once created, games are publicly accessible on the website, and notifications are sent for any changes. Games have home and away teams, but both are optional in certain scenarios. Date, time, and surface are required, and if applicable, a group can be specified. Each game has a scoresheet producing stats.
Practices
Practices belong to any office and can involve zero or many teams. Date, time, and surface are required. If a game overlaps with a practice, the practice is automatically conflicted. Practices have no additional functionality currently but may later include a practice sheet for tracking lineup attendance.
Activities
Activities are basic events that teams can create, including Training, Meeting, Meal, and Accommodation. They do not affect scheduling conflicts and have a free-form text input for location, eliminating the need for location management in Play..
How To User Guide for Creating your Schedule
Please click the links below to access our How-To user guide for various tasks within the Scheduling Management section of Spordle PLAY.