Details Tab
Depending on how complete and wide spread your league is, you may spend a little or quite a lot of your time on these screens. There are two concepts on this screen, a playing location and a fieldlocation. Some Playing Locations have multiple fieldslocations some have only one. Regardless, you will have to enter fieldslocations into the fieldlocation grid if you want to schedule games on them. That said, you can organize playing locations and fieldslocations any way you like. For example, you could enter information like it was intended. Add each separate playing location and for each, add the fieldslocations into the fieldlocation grid. This is minimal work if you are managing a single playing location with several fieldslocations. If you are managing a traveling league with playing locations in multiple cities, you might decide to add one location like ‘Toronto FieldLocations’ and add all of the fieldslocations played in the city into the grid. You have the option to display the diamond’s name with the playing location or without. You have a lot of choice how you wish to set things up. Try a few different scenarios until you find the one just right for you.
When entering fieldslocations, there is one key piece of information used for scheduling. If a fieldlocation is to be used by one and only one home team, then enter that home team in the grid. Only that team can have home games scheduled at that fieldlocation. For most house leagues, this is too restrictive for the fieldlocation. You can also add on the Teams Screen a preferred home playing location or fieldlocation. This has the same effect as specifying that the team must play its home games within one playing location or on one fieldlocation, but multiple teams can play at the same playing location or fieldlocation.
Printing
Playing Locations and FieldLocations have different reports as seen in the printing options section on the Details Tab.
All Location Contacts and Directions: No parameters, this just prints a listing of all Playing Locations and all fields on the Details Tab.
FieldLocation Availability: Accepts a date range as well as an optional schedule type. This report prints a listing of all Calendar Schedule Slots that do not have games fully scheduled on them. The report is run for each fieldlocation belonging to the Playing Location displayed. If the last option is selected, it will print for all fieldslocations across all Playing Locations. This report can be printed in a monthly calendar format. By checking the ‘Print in Calendar Format’ box, the report will be printed in a monthly calendar view. If instead of printing this report, you wish to export them to a CSV file format, then simply click the "Export Slots" button instead of the Print button.
Calendar Schedule Slots Tab
The Calendar Schedule Slots tab must be used for each fieldlocation that games are to be scheduled. This tab displays a calendar of all available time slots and can be configured to display currently scheduled or completed games. It worth taking some time to describe how these calendar slots are used before giving the details on how to add them. This is the most complex concept in the software, but one that will reduce the amount of work setting up time slots. Please refer to the details to using the systems calendaring function.
Calendar Slot Linking
Depending how you set up fieldslocations, you may take advantage of some of the software’s short cut features. When adding a scheduling slot for one fieldlocation, you can alternatively add the same scheduling slot to all of the fieldslocations of the same playing location in effect linking the calendar of all fieldslocations. .
When you link a calendar slot to all fieldslocations, it in effect creates a record for each existing fieldlocation. If a new fieldlocation is added, it will not be linked. A calendar slot that is linked will have a linked symbol on it and all linked entries. Any updates to one will replicate the same update to all. The only exception is during a delete. When you delete a non-recurring calendar slot, only the slot for the fieldlocation displayed is deleted. This allows you to add a linked calendar slot and remove one or more fieldslocations from the linkage that the calendar slot does not apply to. If the linked calendar slot is recurring and you select to delete all entries, again only the entries of the single fieldlocation displayed is deleted. All other delete options will delete calendar slots from all linked records.
Schedule Types
Once you have saved a new calendar entry or displayed an existing one, the Schedule Type boxes will appear. Schedule Types are a focal point of scheduling and details are provided under the general Calendaring Function. It is important to realized, that when a new schedule type is added or an existing one removed, it is updated automatically across all occurrences of the calendar entry including all linked entries. You CAN NOT change schedule types and have the change be reflected on any subset of all entries. To do that, you must FIRST update the single or range of entries you wish to change by modifying the dates and simply clicking SAVE. Then select the option to update only the one entry or all future entries. After the save is complete, then change the Schedule Types and this will be reflected only on the date or date range of the calendar entry displayed.
Please see our full section on the use of the Scheduling Preferences function.
This tab has a grid that servers two purposes. It cross references all fieldslocations with one another so that you can enter the distance (miles, kilometers, blocks, etc...make no difference as long as all distances are in measured in the same unit) between any two. This information can optionally be used when scheduling games if teams are travelling from one fieldlocation to another. Tournaments typically use that type of travel. The other feature is the travel time required. Since some schedule require teams to play a number of games in one day, if a team is scheduled to play games 10 minutes appear and the fieldslocations it is playing those games on are a half hour appear, the team will not be able to make it to the second game on time. If you wish to enforce travel times when scheduling, input the travel time (in minutes) and then select this option when creating your schedules.
You can input the travel distances and time either between playing locations or fieldslocations. It is recommended that you enter one or the other and not both as the individual fieldslocations values will override the playing location values.