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    Admin help

    Admin help

    This is the help file for the admin functions. It includes the functions for the league system as well as for the main SquashLevels system. Depending on your admin level, you may or may not have access to all these functions but they are listed here all in one place for simplicity - and if you see a function listed that you would like access to, then please let us know. We can potentially bump up your admin level.

    Click on the title below to reveal the help info.

    League admin

    Updating your rules page

    The rules page is just a news article called 'Rules', so go to Admin->Modify news articles and then scroll down to the bottom and look for the article. You can edit it and your rules will be updated. Keep the date blank so that it remains at the bottom.

    Updating your committee page

    The committee page is just a news article called 'Committee', so go to Admin->Modify news articles and then scroll down to the bottom and look for the article. You can edit it and your committee will be updated. Keep the date blank so that it remains at the bottom.

    Adding a new season

    The season is the top level of the league structure. A season has one or more leagues, a league has one or more divisions and a division has a number of teams. A season would be something like 2016 or 2016/2017 for instance. It's just text so it's up to you what you call it.

    • Find the Modify Seasons/Leagues/Divisions page under the Admin pull down.
    • Click on [add new Season].
    • Enter the season name in the field at the top.

    Don't check the Finalised box. That's for the end of the season when you want to lock it down.

    Click on Create and you have your new season. You will be returned to the Modify Seasons/Leagues/Divisions page where you will see your new season listed.

    Note that you can change the order of the season by clicking on the up and down arrows.

    Adding a new league

    You will have one or more leagues in a season. Each league has one or more divisions and a division has a number of teams. A league would be something like Winter or Summer for instance. The league name is combined with the season name so you end up with something like Summer 2016. It's just text so it's up to you what you call it.

    • Find the Modify Seasons/Leagues/Divisions page under the Admin pull down.
    • Click on [add new League] under the appropriate season.
    • Enter the league name in the field at the top.
    • Fill out the rest of the form for the league options. There is help information for each option on the page itself.

    At the bottom of the form is an option to copy a previous league across which is very useful if you want to start with what you had last year for instance. In this case you can create the Summer league for 2016 from the Summer league for 2015. Just select the league you want to copy from and click Create. You will be returned to the Modify Seasons/Leagues/Divisions page where you will see your new league listed in the appropriate season.

    Note that you can change the order of the leagues within the season by clicking on the up and down arrows.

    Adding a new division

    You will have one or more divsions in a league. Each division has a number of teams. A divison would be something like Premier or '1' for instance. It's just text so it's up to you what you call it.

    • Find the Modify Seasons/Leagues/Divisions page under the Admin pull down.
    • Click on [add new Division] under the appropriate league.
    • Enter the divsion name in the field at the top.
    • Don't worry about the Min and Max ranking fields. This is legacy information and will be removed at some point. These have been replaced by the automatic levels calculations.

    Click Create to create the division and you will be returned to the Modify Seasons/Leagues/Divisions page where you will see your new division listed in the appropriate league.

    Note that you can change the order of the divisions within the league by clicking on the up and down arrows.

    Editing a season, league or division

    • Find the Modify Seasons/Leagues/Divisions page under the Admin pull down.
    • Click on the appropriate [edit] link and you will be taken to the same page that you used to add the information in the first place.
    • Click on Save and you will be returned to the Modify Seasons/Leagues/Divisions page.

    Adding a player

    • Find the Add a player page under the Admin pull down.
    • Fill in the player details.
    • Click on Save details.

    Adding a club

    • Find the Modify Clubs/Teams page under the Admin pull down.
    • Click the [add New Club] link and you will be taken to a page to enter the details for the club. These fields are all free-form text so enter whatever you can to give contact information, start times etc.
    • The field at the bottom is for the maximum number of home matches that can be played on the same night and is important for the fixture generator. Setting this to 1 will ensure that only one home team can play at home on the same night.
    • Click on Create and you will be returned to the Modify Clubs/Teams page.

    Adding a team

    • Find the Modify Clubs/Teams page under the Admin pull down.
    • Click [add New Team] for the appropriate club and you will be taken to a page to enter the details for that team. The team name is appended to the club name so, if you want a team to be called Fletchers A and that team is one of the teams of Fletchers club then just enter the 'A' in the team name field.
    • Make sure you enter both email address and phone numbers as one of the automated rules checks that all of these are in place. This information is also made available on the team summary page.
    • Click on Create and you will be returned to the Modify Clubs/Teams page.

    Assigning teams to divisions

    • Find the Modify Seasons/Leagues/Divisions page under the Admin pull down.
    • Click [arrange] for the league that has the division you want to assign the team to. You will be taken to the page for assigning any team to any division in that league.
    • This page allows you to:
      • Add a team to a division. Select the team from the pull-down at the top, click the radio button of the division you want to put the team in and click Add at the bottom.
      • Move a team up or down a division using the [up div] and [down div] links.
      • Remove a team which means they are no longer in that division. You can only do this if there are no results for this league and you will need to re-run the fixture generator afterwards.
      • Withdraw a team which means they are still in that division but no longer playing. Use this if you are half way through the league and a team pulls out. It keeps all the existing fixtures but discounts any points won against that team for the remaining teams. Player history remains on the system but the team is not shown in the division on any of the user pages.

    Generating fixtures for a league

    The process of generating fixtures is one of adding unplayed matches between the teams in each division so that every team plays every other team in that division both home and away. The generator does it's best to use the same team order for both home and away matches so you play each opposing team twice, each time in the same order. The generator will take the available courts into account (set in the club details page) and not allow more than the requested number of home games to be played at the same club on the same night.

    Note that this court availability check works between leagues so if you generate the fixtures for one league and then do the same for another league running at the same time then you will still only generate fixtures that can be accommodated but the clubs. The same applies if you have two or more teams in the division from the same club.

    It is possible to hard code rules into the fixture generator such as 'this club can only have home games on a Wednesday'. This allows for club nights or even BUCS matches when generating fixtures. Please contact the system provider for this as it has to be hard coded. It's not that hard and can save a lot of manual rearranging each time.

    • Find the Fixture generator page under the Admin pull down.
    • Select the league that you want to generate fixtures for. Only leagues that have not started can be selected to prevent accidental re-fixturing which would cause match dates to be rearranged and confuse everyone!
    • If you only want to generate the fixtures for one division then select that division in the field below the league.
    • Choose the day of week preference. For instance if you'd rather play on a Wednesday but can also play on a Tuesday then select 'Weds', 'Tues' and 'Tues' again. Repeating a preference only counts once. I.e. set all three to 'Weds' if you only want to arrange matches for a Wednesday. This flexibility is important if you are short of courts. Some counties are really struggling with that.
    • Choose the start date and the end date. Any unambiguous format will work fine. '15 June' is fine.
    • Enter any extra dates that are available and any that aren't. Allowing for half term is a reason you might you these.
    • Click on 'Show Dates' at the bottom to see all the dates that the fixture generator is going to use. This button doesn't generate any fixtures.
    • Click on 'Generate Fixtures' at the bottom to actually generate the fixture. Note that it will remove any existing fixtures for each division first and then generate new ones. If the generation was successful you will be shown the list of divisions in the league which you can select to see what the fixture matrix looks like. If you selected the league to be visible in the left hand menu (as part of the league configuration) then it will now be visible.
    • If it wasn't possible to generate the fixtures (if you didn't have enough dates or courts) then you will see a summary of the fixture generation progress and you will be asked to provide more dates. You would normally do this by extending the league or by adding other days of the week.
    • You can only do any of this if the league has not started and no results have been entered yet.

    Modifying fixtures

    Once you've generated the fixtures you may still want to modify them. You can change the date or just hide the fixture (which you may want to do if you don't want to play all of them).

    • You should be able to see the divisions listed on the left hand navigation pane. If not, edit the league so that it is visible.
    • Click on the division you want to change. This will show all the fixtures for that division as a matrix with all the dates as links. The link takes you to results entry which isn't what we want to do here.
    • Click on the edit button at the top left of the matrix. This gives you the fixture matrix in a form that can be edited. You should be able to see the home and away fixtures; the home team on the left column and the away team on the top row.
    • From here you can change the date of the fixture or just hide it by clicking the exclude check-box. Note that the fixture is only hidden so it can be unhidden by unchecking the box. Once hidden, it will not appear in any of the other pages.
    • When you have made the changes you want, click on the save button (which replaced the edit button).

    Withdrawing a team mid league

    If a team pulls out halfway through then you need to withdraw them. This can be done directly from the division matrix page.

    • From the left hand navigation pane, click on the division that the team is in. This will show the division matrix page.
    • Click on the [withdraw] link under the team's name in the left most column. This will withraw the team.

    Withdrawing a team just means that their fixtures are hidden along with any results which now don't count. That includes any points gained by the teams that have already played them. They no longer appear in the tables.

    Player histories are unaffected. If playes have results from playing against a player in the withdrawn team they will still be shown and contribute to their level and ranking.

    As withdrawing a team is just represented within the system as a flag, it is easily reversed from the same page. The results will then be visible and will count.

    Making someone an admin

    • Find the Manage site admins page under the Admin pull down.
    • Find the name/email of the person.
    • Click on their name and this will take you to their account details/preferences page.
    • Near the bottom of the page are the Access check boxes. For a club admin, select the 'Club Administrator Rights' checkbox. It's also worth checking their Rule checks for your club checkbox so they're kept informed of any rule breaches.
    • Click on Save.

    Checking player membership numbers for the club

    If you want to see which players have been playing in which league and whether or not they have a valid ES membership number then use the Admin pull down and select Show ES membership.

    This will show all the player appearances for the last few leagues along with their ES membership number and whether that's valid. This is a handy page to check for keeping your ES player membership lists up to date.

    Club admins will see all the players in their club (by team), full admins will see all clubs. As ES data is potentially sensitive (though it's just a number), only admins can view this page.