How to schedule courts, times and work teams

It is all on the Settings tab, under Courts and times.

• Courts or fields, one per line. Call them whatever the venue calls them. These are the names that end up printed on each game.
• Minutes a match takes, and the gap before the next one on the same court. They are separate because the gap is the thing you shorten when the day is running late.
• First match of the day and day ends by. Anything that does not fit rolls over to the next day, starting from the tournament's own start date.

Then go to the Schedule tab and press Generate the schedule.

These are in the order they matter, and the first is the only one that applies to a bracket game whose teams are still unknown.

• Nothing is played before the games that decide who is in it. A semifinal cannot be at nine with its quarterfinals at eleven. A bracket slot fed by a pool waits for every match in that pool, not just the last one.
• No team is on two courts at once.
• No team plays three matches without a break. Two in a row happens when the courts are tight. Three is two and a half hours on court, so it will leave a time slot empty rather than do that, and it tells you when it has.

Pool matches are always scheduled before the brackets, because the brackets cannot be played until the pools have decided who is in them.

Courts across, times down. It is the sheet to print and tape to a wall, and it answers "what is on court two now" in a way a list of games never does. It appears on the Schedule tab and on the public page, so parents see the same sheet you do.

Under the grid the per-game form is still there. Change the time or the court on one game and the grid redraws around it. A game you move to somewhere that is not in your court list gets its own column rather than disappearing.

Club volleyball runs on this: the teams line judge, keep the scoresheet and track the libero for each other. Tick Teams work each other's matches in Settings and generating the schedule also says who works each one.

It is off unless you turn it on, because most sports do not do it. A baseball tournament has umpires.

How it decides

• A team works a match only when it is not playing in that time slot, and never two at once.
• Where there is a choice it goes to a team already at that court: for a pool match another team in the same pool, for a bracket match whoever played there in the slot before.
• Beyond that it goes to whoever has worked least, so the duty is spread rather than landing on the same team all weekend.

Your tournament may do it differently, and every assignment can be changed by hand afterwards on the Schedule tab.

On the grid the working team is one line under the score. On a team's own page it is a panel of its own, so a family can see both halves of their weekend: the matches they play and the matches they work.

Clear every time and court on the Schedule tab empties all three fields on every game, and the work assignments with them. Who is free to work a match only means something while there are times, so they go together.

• One match length for the whole tournament. If your bracket matches run longer than your pool matches, set the longer one and use the gap to absorb the difference.
• No court preferences. You cannot say that the Gold final should be on Court 1. Generate, then move that one game by hand.
• One team works a match. If you split the duties between two teams, the second is still a job for a separate sheet.

See running pool play for the pools themselves, and sharing your bracket for what parents see.