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Advanced Scheduling Process

  • Updated

Advanced Scheduling's Auto Assign builds a division's schedule and puts each home game at a field that belongs to the home team's club, league or town, on a day and time that field is open. Set up your associated organizations, locations and teams once, then turn on Auto Assign for each division and click Create.

Applies to: Admins and schedulers · Sites with the Advanced Scheduling module (Multi-Org Scheduling on older sites) · Standard league divisions

Where: Administration > Associated Organizations; Schedules > Locations > Manage Locations; Schedules > Leagues & Divisions > (division) > 3 Time Slots

How Auto Assign picks a field

When you click Create, TeamSideline pairs the teams and balances each team's home and away games. For each home game it then looks for an open time at a location that:

  • lists the home team's organization under its Associated Organizations,
  • lists the division's Age Group under its Age Groups,
  • has a Game Spacing equal to or greater than the division's Game Spacing, and
  • is available on one of the division's game days, inside its Start Window.

A game with no such time gets TBD instead of a time slot. A location's Show Publicly setting doesn't matter to Auto Assign.

Step 1: Add your associated organizations

  1. Go to Administration > Associated Organizations.
  2. Click Add Organization, enter the Organization Name and a Short Name, and click Add.
  3. Repeat for every club, league, town or other group that owns fields or teams.

What you'll see: "Associated Organization Added."

Step 2: Set up each location

  1. Go to Schedules > Locations > Manage Locations. To add a field, click Add Location, enter its details, choose its Organization and click Add.
  2. Click the location's Edit icon (pencil).
  3. Choose the Game Spacing ("Used for advanced scheduling only.") and click Save. It must be equal to or greater than the Game Spacing on 1 Configuration > Scheduling of every division that plays there: a division with 60-minute games never uses a location set to 50 minutes. A new location starts at 0, which Auto Assign never uses.
  4. Under Associated Organizations, click Add Associated Organization, choose an organization whose teams play home games here and click Add. Repeat for each organization.
  5. Under Age Groups, click Add Age Group, choose an age group that plays here and click Add. Repeat for each age group.
  6. Drag the rows of both lists into order. A team's home games go first to the locations that list its organization and age group nearest the top.
  7. Click the location's Availability tab, then Set Availability. Choose the Date(s) and Time the field is open, add an optional Note and click Add. Use Block Times for closures.

Auto Assign uses only the times you set with Set Availability: a location with no availability on a date is closed that day for Auto Assign, even though other scheduling treats it as open all day. Games already at the location (other divisions' games, practices and facility reservations) block those times too, so divisions that share fields can be scheduled one after another.

To change many locations at once, click Update Multiple Locations on Manage Locations (Elite and Enterprise plans) and choose an Update Type, such as Set Availability, Age Groups or Location Details (which includes Game Spacing). Administration > Import Data also has a Location Availability Import (Elite and Enterprise plans). For a long list of new locations, TeamSideline Support can load them from a spreadsheet.

Step 3: Add the teams and their organizations

Add your leagues and divisions on Schedules > Leagues & Divisions first; on the Enhanced plan and up, Copy Season copies last season's. Then add the teams in one of these ways:

  • Import them. On Administration > Import Data, use the Team Import. Its Associated Org Name column sets each team's organization. Fill in League Name and Division Name to load the teams straight into those divisions, or leave them blank and assign the teams on Schedules > Team Assignments > Pre-Season: add filters (Step 1), select the teams (Step 2), select the division (Step 3) and click Assign.
  • Add them by hand. On the division's 2 Teams page, click Add Team, enter the Team Name, choose its Organization and click Add.

A team without an organization has no home field, so its home games come out TBD unless it has a preferred location (see Good to know).

Step 4: Turn on Auto Assign and create the schedule

  1. Go to Schedules > Leagues & Divisions and click the division's Edit Division icon (pencil).
  2. On 1 Configuration > Scheduling, set Games per Week/Team to 1 or 2, then Games Played/Team, the Day of First Game and the Game Spacing, and click Save and Next Step.
  3. On 2 Teams, check that every team shows its organization in front of its name (edit any team that doesn't), then click Next Step.
  4. On 3 Time Slots, click Enable Auto Assign. From now on the division's 3 Time Slots tab opens the Auto Assign page.
  5. Under Game Day(s), choose the 1st choice day and, if you want, more days in order of preference. With 2 games per week, choose days for Game 1 and Game 2.
  6. Choose the Assign Type: Earliest fills the earliest open times first, Latest the latest, and Random mixes them.
  7. Optional: set a Start Window (from and through) to limit start times, check Enforce Preferred ("If Team preferred location and/or time is not available, TBD assigned."), or choose a Template.
  8. Click Save and Next Step.
  9. On 4 Create Schedule, click Create.
  10. Review the schedule, fix any TBD games (see below) and click Calc & Save.

What you'll see: "Auto Assign enabled." after step 4 and "Auto Assign configuration saved." after step 8. After Create, each game shows its location and time, or TBD. The distribution tables below the schedule show how games spread across weeks, teams, opponents, times, days and locations.

If it doesn't work

  • Every game is TBD. Part of the setup doesn't match. As the Auto Assign page says, "The Auto Assign scheduler requires location availability to be configured." Check that each location has availability on the game days, that its Game Spacing is at least the division's, that the division's Age Group is on its Age Groups list, and that every team has an organization that a location lists. Then delete the schedule and click Create again.
  • Some games are TBD. There weren't enough open times that week. Click the game's Swap Game icon, choose a Date and Location, pick an Available time (or another division's game to trade places with) and click Swap. Or add availability, delete the schedule and click Create again.
  • The age groups look the same but don't match. Auto Assign matches the exact age group, so 12U and U12 are different. Use the same one for the division and its locations.
  • Games start later than the Start Window. Start times step from the start of the location's availability by the location's Game Spacing, and the Start Window only removes times. With availability from 3:00 PM and 60-minute spacing, a window that starts at 3:45 PM gives a first game at 4:00 PM. To start at 3:45 PM, start the location's availability at 3:45 PM too.
  • There's no Enable Auto Assign button. It shows only with Advanced Scheduling, on the Regular schedule's 3 Time Slots page, when Games per Week/Team is 1 or 2 (not Custom), and only before the division has any time slots. If the division already has time slots, click Delete All first.
  • There's no Create button. Check the Day of First Game and that 2 Teams has at least 2 teams. If both are fine, the division is probably still in Manual Entry Mode from 3 Time Slots: on 1 Configuration > Scheduling, change Games per Week/Team, click Save, change it back and click Save again. That change can clear the division's blocked weeks, its 2 Game Configuration and its Odd Team Division Configuration, so check them afterward on 1 Configuration and the Auto Assign page.
  • "No game day selected." (or "No game day selected for Game 1." or "No game day selected for Game 2.") Choose at least one day for each game.
  • "Start time range is incomplete." or "Start time range is invalid." Fill in both Start Window times, with the from time before the through time.

Good to know

  • On a team's edit page (2 Teams, pencil), Preferred Location and Preferred Time are "Auto-Assign only." To list more in order of preference, use the link under Preferred Time: it opens the team's preferred locations page ("Use this page to edit Team Preferred Locations.") and shows once the team has been added. A preferred location doesn't have to belong to the team's organization. Without Auto Assign these settings do nothing: change a game's location on 4 Create Schedule instead (Toggle View).
  • Click a game's lock icon on 4 Create Schedule ("Unlocked, click to Lock") to keep it where it is: a locked game can't be edited, moved or swapped until you unlock it.
  • If Multi-Team Coach is on (Schedules > Configurations > General), Auto Assign avoids putting a coach's teams at the same time and locks those games.
  • The Template list shows your site's saved schedule templates; pick one made for the same number of teams. With 1 game per week and no template chosen, Auto Assign uses a matching scheduling template when one exists. For a schedule you build often, TeamSideline Support can make a template for you.
  • Deleting an Auto Assign schedule also deletes the division's time slots; Create builds them again. The division's 2nd Half schedule uses the same Auto Assign settings.
  • Disable Auto Assign, on the Auto Assign page, turns it off for the division, and 3 Time Slots shows the time slot list again.
  • If you don't see Enable Auto Assign or the Organization fields, your site doesn't have Advanced Scheduling, or your admin role doesn't include it. Contact TeamSideline Support to ask about adding it. If games still come out TBD after these checks, send Support the league and division names.

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