Create a tournament Part 2: Set up the round robin schedule (app guide)

This article is the second part of a three-part tutorial on getting started with OpenSports tournaments. It is assumed that you have already completed Part I meaning you have already created a tournament and set up registration options.

In the article, we’ll walk you step-by-step on how to set up a schedule of round robin matches.

Let’s begin!

0. Before we start

Please confirm you have access to all of the following. If not, please revisit Part I of the tutorial.

A) Existing upcoming tournament

B) Teams registered

• The tournament should have most, if not all, teams registered before you set up the round robin schedule.

1. Navigating Leagues/Tournaments in the app

To start, we thought it’d be helpful to walk through where the Tournaments functionality was added to the OpenSports app.

A) Tournament admin views

• To access the main Tournaments section in the app, tap on the “Trophy” icon in the main navigation bar (bottom of screen, 2nd from left).
• The Tournaments section for admins is organized by each tournament. If you are running multiple tournaments, you can switch between them by tapping on the name of the current tournament (top of the page). A popup will appear on which you will see a list of all the leagues and tournaments you are an admin for under “Admin”.
• In addition, notifications are also grouped by league/tournament. If there are any unread notifications associated with any league/tournament, you will see a red dot.

2. Creating a round robin

In this section, we’ll walk through how to set up a round robin for your tournament

A) Assign teams to pools

This step is only required if you have pools/divisions in your tournament. If so, we must first assign teams to pools.

• Navigate to the tournament admin page and select the “Tournament” submenu.
• Tap on “Manage Pools”. You will see a list of all teams that have registered to-date. From here, you can either tap on “Add All Teams to Pools” (the system will automatically assign all teams across both pools randomly), or manually assign teams to pools, by tapping on the ellipsis (…) to the right of each team name. Don’t worry if you make a mistake, you can always move teams between pools by tapping on the ellipsis (…).
• Once all your teams are assigned to pools, you are ready to create your round robin schedule!

B) Background and terminology

• The concept of a “schedule” is one of the core building blocks behind OpenSports’ tournaments feature. In short, a schedule is simply a series of matches between teams, each with their own locations and times.
• A schedule can be in one of two states — unpublished or published. A tournament admin will typically set up an unpublished schedule (which is only visible to tournament admins), make any match-specific adjustments, review the overall list of matches, and publish it when ready.
• When a schedule is published, a notification will be sent to all teams/players and match-specific notifications (e.g. reminders) will be begin to be sent out as well. While a published schedule can be unpublished, this is rarely necessary as the admin will still be able to edit individual matches after a schedule is published.
• Currently, OpenSports only allows for 1 round robin schedule and 1 elimination schedule for every tournament.

C) Get started

• To initiate the creation of a round robin schedule, from your Tournament Dashboard, under Round Robin Schedule, tap on “Setup”.
• In the Match Info page, specify the duration for each match, any breaks between matches, and the number of rounds played by each team.
• The number of rounds refers to how many times throughout the tournament the matchups will rotate. For example, in an 8 team tournament, having 7 rounds means that each team will get to play each other once, since each team has to rotate 7 times to play the other 7 teams. Likewise, 14 rounds would lead to each team playing every other team twice. The number of rounds doesn’t always equal the number of matches a team will play, since tournaments with an uneven number of teams will have teams take turns having byes instead of matches in one or more of the rounds.
• By default, each team will play each other team once.

D) Add available time slots

Based on the number of teams, number of rounds per team, and match durations, the OpenSports system automatically calculates the total number of matches for the round robin. In this step, you need to specify enough available time slots for all these matches so the OpenSports system can automatically assign each match to an available time.

There are two options: specifying available time slots manually or setting up a recurring schedule. For this tutorial, we’ll add a manual series of time slots.

• Tap the “Add” button and select “Manual”
• Optional — specify a pool if there is a preference for matches for a given pool to be played in a specific location.
• Specify Facility and Resource(s) — you may need to create a new facility with resources if required. Facilities are created and shared for your entire group.
• Specify the available time slots for that location and it’s “bookable resources”
• Tap on “Create Availabilities for [X] Matches”.
• Repeat steps 1–5 as necessary until you have created enough available time slots for all your matches.

E) Create schedule

• Once you’ve created enough availabilities for all the matches in the league, tap on “Create” and you’ll be asked to confirm you want to create the round robin schedule.
• Tap “Yes”. The schedule will be created in the “unpublished” state.
• You will be brought back to the Dashboard view where you can see the upcoming scheduled matches.

F) Review and edit matches

One key benefit of the “unpublished” state is admins can review the whole match schedule and make edits. Once the schedule is published, the admin can still make edits to specific matches, but notifications will be automatically sent to players (e.g. if match times are changed).

• To view the whole list of matches, simply tap on “View All” besides Upcoming Matches in the tournament admin page.
• On the Match List page, you’ll see the list of all matches sorted by date. Tap on any given match to view more details.

OpenSports makes it easy to edit a match:

• To cancel the match, tap on the ellipsis (…) on the top right corner
• To replace, switch, or modify teams, tap on the “Pencil” icon to the right of “Teams”
• To edit match details (location, times, etc.), tap on the “Pencil” icon to the right of “Details”

G) Publish schedule

• When you’re happy with your schedule of matches, navigate back to the tournament admin page, and tap “Publish” under Round Robin Schedule.
• Once the schedule is published, all registered players will receive a notification to check out their new match schedule!

🍾 Congrats! You have created your round robin match schedule on OpenSports!!

To recap, in Part II of the tutorial, you’ve managed to create and publish a schedule of round robin matches.

When you’re ready, move on to Part III, where we’ll continue by creating and publishing tournament’s elimination bracket.

Woohoo! Any questions about setting up a tournament… send them our way to contact@opensports.net :)