This screen is available from the Schedules screen or the Outlook Side Bar. The screens accessed from the two different areas are separate and use different navigation to display tournaments. All other functionality is identical. Please refer to the Scheduling screen to learn how to set up a tournament prior to its management described here.
This screen provides optimal capabilities to manage your tournament. Below is a sample of the Winners draw of a double elimination tournament.
It shows the game match ups and optionally the location, date and time of the next game to be played. If the series is completed, it will show the final score and no location, date and time as there are no more games to be played.
To view different draws, simply click the link to the draw at the top of the screen and the bracket on screen will be replaced with the selected draw. To update a series, double click the series in the bracket grid and a data entry pop-up screen will appear as shown below.
There are three functions on this screen. If the series is a first round series, you can change the teams. If you did not know all tournament teams when the draw was created, the word TBD or Seed will be listed. These are placeholders until the actual team is put into the schedule. To fill in the team name, the teams must first be added to the Schedule through the Schedules Details tab. In the pulldown list for team, only the two teams that are participating in the series, TBD and all unassigned teams are shown. The only way to move a team from one series to another is to change the team name to TBD in the series that the team currently resides, then select that team in the series the team is being moved to. Once team names are changed, click ‘Save’ to commit the change and update any downstream effects the change might have.
Next you can change the series name. We default standard names, but they can be changed. ‘Series A’ can be changed to something like ‘Semi Finals’ or the final series can be called ‘Championship Series’. Change the series name and click save and all displays and printout will use the new name.
The final function this screen serves is the updating of game results. Enter in a score for Team 1 and Team 2 and click save. Until both teams have been confirmed in the draw (no TBD’s or Bye’s) the grid will either not appear or will be locked or the Save button will be disabled. Once saved, the game will be updated and marked as complete and the series status will be updated. The software will also determine if the series is completed and if it is, then the winners and losers will be moved to their next draw. If the winner cannot be determined and the maximum number of games have been played, use the checkboxes to indicate the winner. This strategy is also how the software handles the end of double elimination tournaments (and other formats) where the team coming from the losers draw needs to win twice. By default, the software sets those series up as 2 games series requiring 2 wins to win the series. If the team from the losers bracket wins both, they are the winner, if the team from the Winners draw wins either game, it is the winner, but the series will not automatically reflect that unless the checkbox is used. Below is a sample of the bracket after updating Series A1 & A2.
Once you have updated the series, you can double click another series and its data will appear. You do not need to close the series pop-up screen to select another series.
Once the winner of the tournament can be determined, it will be indicated on all pages of the draw.
This function is very basic. Select either portrait or landscape printing and click the print button. The currently displayed draw will print. If the draw is too big to fit on a page (either width or length wise) then it will be printed on multiple pages than can be fit together. You can go to the Preference screen (File|Preferences) and Suppress the printing of page headers and footers. This allows the pages to be fit together without miscellaneous header information.
The bracket printout is a little crude. Our apologies in advance. We will continue to improve all our software’s functionality with each release.
Most leagues end the season with play-offs to determine the league champion. It is nice to have those games appear on your regular season schedule so that teams know when they play a play-off game if they qualify (most league we have seen have nearly all teams make the play-offs!). To set up the games ahead of time and have them appear on the proper schedules requires that the following be performed and done in the correct order.
If you have separate divisions, each playing a play-off series against only teams in their own division, you will need to set up a separate play-off schedule for each. Set up a schedule as a tournament/play-off format, select the tournament format, dates, other data and enter the number of seeds and number of teams based on how many teams are into division or league qualify for the play-offs. Now click save. When you set up a tournament, you would select your teams…DO NOT do that now. Select no teams. Enter all other scheduling parameters and then generate the draw. Update all draw parameters for each round if necessary. Now generated slots and games on the Generate tab. No teams or games will be listed in the team grid, but under the ‘Assign to Slots’ tab you will see them. Match to slots and then commit the schedule when all games are assigned to the proper slots. Next, go back to the Details tab and NOW select all possible teams that could play in the play-off series being generated. You may have 10 teams in the league, with only 4 making the play-offs, but you should select all 10. Now when you print a team schedule, those play-off games will all be listed. It is recommended that you go to the tournament bracket and update the tournament series name. This name will appear on the team or division schedules.
You may only want a placeholder for the playoff games or dates. Only playoff series with games assigned will appear on schedules. Once you are ready to run playoff games, change the TBD teams with the names of the team based on their finish in the league. This must be done manually by double clicking each series in the Tournament Bracket.
This section provides some help tips on how to successfully run a tournament within the framework of our software. This section assumes that you have read the scheduling and tournament management features and are familiar with the functional use of those screens. This section explain how to effective use those features.
Setting up a League? When first establishing a tournament you first need to decide where it fits into your regular leagues and schedules. There are two choices. If you are creating league playoffs, then you would not want to create a new league, but create a new schedule within the current league. However, if you have teams from several leagues or just wish to have the tournament separate from your regular leagues, then a new League can be set up just for the tournament. The software allows teams to participate in more than one league, so you can create a new league for the tournament and include any team from any league. Remember that league standings only include games created within that league, so if you wish to have tournament games included in the standings, it must be created under the existing league. For a tournament, division setup is not a factor. The software creates tournament brackets based on seeding and has nothing to do with divisions.
Choosing a format. When creating a schedule in the schedules screen, you have the choice of 6 tournament formats. That section describes the details of each. One format you will not see is round robin. If you have a tournament that splits teams up into divisions, plays some sort of round robin format, then places teams into an elimination draw, then that will have to be setup in two stages. Before beginning I would create a separate league for this type of tournament. The first is to create a schedule with a format of ‘Regular/Round Robin’. Teams need to be placed into the right divisions and scheduled using our normal scheduling process. Check the ‘Include in Standings’ button. Following the completion of the round robin, a second schedule will need to be created with a ‘Play-Off/Tournament’ format. You will have to creating the seedings yourself based on the outcome of the Round Robin. The software does not currently move teams from a Round Robin draw into a Tournament draw. Once all the teams are seeded in the Tournament then it is managed like all other elimination tournaments.
Scheduling Games. Scheduling tournament games is tricky. You only know the team matchups for the first round of games, and all subsequent matchups or games are determined by results in previous rounds. This can impose some restrictions on how you run the tournament. For example, if you have to enforce home preferences, you cannot schedule games in advance…you do not know who will play in certain games and hence may not have enough information to select the appropriate location for games. The following are scenarios that require special management
Enforcing Team Scheduling Restrictions. The only games that are scheduled are those in which both teams are known. Therefore, on the Scheduling Generate tab, when you click the Generate Games button, only games where both teams are known are scheduled. Once you start entering results for completed games, downstream series will begin to have matchups confirmed. As those series get teams assigned, you will have to go through the scheduling process again to assign the games in those new series to applicable fieldslocations.
Enforcing Home Preferences. Has the exact same restrictions as Enforcing Team Scheduling Restrictions.
Series with Variable number of Games. If you have series scheduled that may require less than the maximum number of games (like best 3 of 5 or 4 of 7) these series will only be scheduled with both teams have finished their previous series. Those previous series may have impact the start date of a series (i.e. a best 4 of 7 series ends in 4 straight games) or the unused fieldlocation times might be reused. To allow for maximum use of game slots and expedite any series, all variable game series in which the maximum number of games might not be played, are not scheduled until both teams in that series are confirmed. As those series get teams assigned, you will have to go through the scheduling process again to assign the games in those new series to applicable fieldslocations. Note that this would apply to any series where the maximum number of games is greater than 2 and the winner is determined by wins or schedule points (points for wins/losses). If the winning team is determined by total points scored, they always use the maximum number of games and are not included in this restriction.
Deleting Games. This is a little tricky. If a variable game series finishes early, you simply go to the Games screen, display the games that will not be played and delete them. If however, you are deleting games that you plan on rescheduling, this requires caution. The best scenario to reschedule a game is to simply change the date, time and/or location of the game as opposed to deleting and recreating it. In a variable game series you cannot delete a single game and recreate it. For all series, you must delete every game of the series and use the Scheduling screen to recreate those games. Now there are some other effects to be aware of when deleting games that have been completed. First, don’t do it. If the game has taken place, there is no need to delete it. But if a game was completed by accident and should have been deleted, there is no restriction to prevent this action. The software will do its best to undone downstream series impacts when games are deleted, but these are limited to the very next tournament round. Depending on the size of the tournament and how much work has gone into setting it up, if there is a major flaw and games have to be deleted and possibly recreated, it is better to recreate the entire draw again as opposed to trying to patch a hole back together. The patch can work…but may not!