Introduction

The Scheduling Module is where all of the items related to a team's official schedule are maintained.  Only those who have been setup as the Scheduler by the organization Administrator will have access to the Scheduling Module.  The website separates the process of scheduling from that of score reporting; in most scenarios there will be a centralized scheduler for the organization and each individual team will record their own scores.  Score reporting, however, cannot be done until the schedule has been setup.

What can be Scheduled?

The website allows for tryouts, practices, games, tournaments, and playoff rounds to be scheduled for each of the teams that have been created for your site.  All of these items are stored in the website's database, in various tables created to specifically handle that type of data.  For example, there is a Games table in the database that stores all of the games for all of the teams.  The website dynamically retreives this information using various filters to show only the games relevant to a given page.

Where Does it Appear?

There are a number of pages on the website which retrieve scheduling information for the visitor.  The banner area normally has a scores ticker which shows results from all teams on the organization's pages, and just those from a given team on that team's pages.  The organization home page will list the current organization record, the next six upcoming games from all of the teams based on the current date and time, and will also show the next five days worth of activity across the entire organization.  The team home page shows the same information, but only for that team.  There are also pages for the organization calendar, the organization schedule & results, the organization detailed records, the team calendar, the team schedule & results, the team detailed records, and the game details page.  All of this information is based on the schedule.

What else can be Scheduled?

If your organization is in a situation where it is very important that you have 100% utilization of your facility rentals, or it is equally important that all home games & practices have a valid time slot at your facilities, the Scheduling Module will also allow you to enter all of your rental times for the sake of comparison against the rest of the schedule.  For example, if your organization rents a facility from 5pm - 10pm every Monday, this can be entered as an "availability" in the website.  The Scheduling Module will show this availability for that venue when doing the scheduling, and will also detect whether there are any parts (longer than 15 minutes) of that availability that aren't being used.  It will also detect and warn if a game or practice has been scheduled on a Monday at that venue either earlier or later than the availability.

Why use the Website for Scheduling?

The single biggest reason for using the website for displaying your organization's scheduling information is that it allows all the parents, players, family, and fans of the organization to have instant access to the most updated schedule whenever they want.  Focusing on maintaining a dynamic, on-demand, electronic copy of your schedule also helps to eliminate situations where an out-dated version of a printed schedule contains an error that goes unnoticed until too late.

But there are numerous advantages for the scheduler as well.  Using the website to store the scheduling information means that when a practice changes, only the details for that single practice need to be updated and the change is automatically reflected everywhere on the website.  In addition, the site is capable of automatically sending email notifications to the entire team that is affected by any of the changes made to their team's schedule.  The schedule will also be instantly available to the Scheduler from anywhere in the world that has a computer and an internet connection.

Lastly, using the website for scheduling allows for the separation of the schedule from the score reporting.  By allowing teams to record scores the massive workload of recording scores for thousands of games gets re-allocated to the people who are more intimately involved with the team which means that score reporting will happen sooner and more often.

Scheduling Pre-Requisites

There are a few things that will need to be setup before scheduling can begin.  Firstly, all scheduling items are assigned to a specific team so all the teams for the given season will need to be entered by the organization Webmaster.  Second, all tryouts, practices, and games are assigned to a specific venue so the list of venues will need to be created.  Please refer to the knowledge base article on setting up venues for instructions.  Lastly, all games are also assigned against a specific opponent so the list of opponents will need to be created.  Refer to the knowledge base article on setting up opponents for instructions.

Important Notes Regarding Setup of Venues

There are three key things to remember about the way the website uses venues.  First, the website treats an individual field of play, or ice pad, or soccer pitch as a venue.  So, if a hockey facility has multiple ice pads it will need to have a venue setup for each of the ice pads.  The easiest way to do this is to make the venue name as follows:  Name of the Facility (Ice Pad).  Second, the website essentially treats all venues the same, except that some venues can be defined as "home venues".  Games can be scheduled at any venue, home or away, but tryouts, practice, and availabilities can only be scheduled at home venues.  This means that if a venue is ever used for a practice it will need to be declared a home venue (this can be easily changed at any time).  Third, a very useful feature of the website is its ability to automatically link a venue to an electronic map using Google Maps.  In order for this feature to work correctly, it is necessary that the physical address of the venue is entered into the website.  This also means that multi-venue facilities will need to have the same address entered for each venue that has been setup.  It is not necessary, however, for the address to be present in order to schedule anything at that venue.

Important Notes Regarding Setup of Opponents

Each time that a team plays another team from outside of your organization, that team will need to be setup as an opponent.  However, some organizations may have multiple teams that represent the same age category.  When this happens, there will need to be multiple oppenents setup for that organization.  For example. Goderich Minor Hockey typically will have at least a rep team, an "AE" team, and a Girls team at each age category.  For organizations who compete against Goderich, this means Goderich will have no less than three opponents created.  Whenever possible, try to create opponents that are not specific to a single team.