The Advanced Scheduler is the most complex fixture scheduler Full-Time provides. It allows for venue sharing between divisions, and allows for individual timeslots to be set up for divisions, teams and venues. It allows a league to run more than one schedule (e.g. a youth league may want separate schedules for Saturday AM, Saturday PM and Sunday AM) and allows a league to specify that certain fixtures can or cannot be played on certain date(s)
When you first start using the Advanced Scheduler, we recommend you provide limited data to FullTime. The Advanced Scheduler remembers the calendars and restrictions you set, so you can re-run it and build on these as you become more familiar with it.
Advanced scheduler sections:
- Preparing your scheduler
- Create a new schedule group
- Setup a new schedule
- Settings tab
- Timeslots
- Ground availability (availability tab)
- Fixture Constraints
- Review & Submit
- Review a schedule outcome
Preparing your scheduler
Venues - Make sure your venues are correctly setup and assigned to teams. This will allow the scheduler to mirror fixtures for teams ground sharing if needed Creating and Editing Venues
Timeslots - Timeslots state at which time a fixture can take place and additionally when divisions/teams/venues are available. Timeslots can be added during the season also, therefore do not include contingency time slots (ie. midweek catchup games) at the start of the season but add them in as they are required. The fewer redundant timeslots = the more efficiently a schedule will run.
Primary & Secondary Timeslots - Each timeslot must be allocated as a 'Primary' or 'Secondary' Timeslot. The scheduler will try and assign fixtures to Primary timeslots ahead of secondary. Usually, leagues will set weekend timeslots as primary and midweek games as secondary (ie. You want teams to be playing at the weekend as much as possible and minimise the amount they play midweek.)
Timeslot variation - You can also give variation to a specific timeslot. For example a league may have 3pm Saturday as their recomended kick off time but allow any time between 11am and 4pm for kick off or allow teams to play on a Saturday or Sunday. The timeslot variation allows you to make these variations within one specific timeslot
Schedule Group - You can set up seperate schedules for seperate groups. For example a youth league may be running some age groups on a Saturday morning and some on Saturday afternoon which they want seperate schedule groups for. You will want to minimise your number of schedule groups as the scheduler will only take into account venue sharing when the teams are in the same schedule group.
Tips: 1. Do not add unnecessary extra of season dates when creating your initial fixtures, these can be created at a later stage 2. Try to put in as shorter gaps between fixtures as possible (typically 48 hours) 3. Remember a schedule group doesn't immediately create these fixtures, you will get the opportunity to "Accept" or "Modify" a schedule before it adds to your "fixture list" and is published to Full-Time public site 4. Remember you can keep one schedule whilst producing a second one to try and refine it 5. Try to schedule as many divisions at the same time as possible, this will give the best results in regards to venue sharing across these divisions.
Create a new schedule group
Step one: Click Fixtures > Scheduling/Re-scheduling > Advanced Scheduler
Step two: You will automatically be in the "Default" schedule group, if you click "Maintain Groups" you can add new groups as required.
Step three: From "Maintain Schedule Groups" you can create new groups as well as assign these groups to their relevant division
Setup a new schedule
Click Fixtures > Scheduling/Re-scheduling > Advanced Scheduler > Advanced Scheduler
Settings tab
Within the settings tab specify the number of times the teams are set to meet during the season and also give the minimum number of hours that should occur between consecutive fixtures (we recommend 48). Please also input the number of days that the same teams cannot play (ie. If Team A plays Team B on 1st Jan and you input '21' the next time they can play would be 21st Jan).
Tip: Don't leave longer than is necessary as the minimum hours between consecutive fixtures simply select the minimum time, remember the scheduler will still try to accommodate the teams timeslots anyways.
Timeslots
The timeslots page will show any existing timeslots you have created and you will have to clear options
Repeating timeslots - for example, every Saturday at 3pm
Single timeslots - for example a special date where fixtures will be played like Boxing day
You will need to define whether each timeslot is a "Primary" or "Secondary" timeslot, the scheduler will assign fixtures to primary first then secondary. An example is a league who primarily wants games to be played on a Saturday (primary timeslot) but uses weekdays to fill any remaining fixtures (secondary timeslot).
For each timeslot you can allocate "conflict hrs before/after" this is leeway allowed for varying the kick off times.
Example 1: The timeslot is 3pm Saturday, and the league doesn’t allow clubs any leeway on varying the kickoff. The league would set Conflict Hrs Before = 0, Conflict Hrs After = 0.
Example 2: The timeslot is 11am Sunday, but the league will allow clubs to play any time from 10am Saturday morning (25 hours earlier) to 3pm Sunday afternoon (4 hours later). The league would set Conflict Hrs Before = 25, Conflict Hrs After = 3.
Tip: Do not add unnecessary extra of season dates when creating your initial fixtures, these can be created at a later stage and will slow the scheduler down.
If you click "Show historical timeslots" at the bottom of the page, you can see the timeslots you have created. It might be here that you delete "County Cup" weekends or similar
Ground availability (availability tab)
Please try to complete your timeslots prior to completing ground availability. Once these have been completed, you can setup when specific grounds/teams are/aren't available.
You can filter the availability table by "team" or by "venue"
To specify a particular team/venue isn't available on a certain date, simply check the box and click 'update'.
Note that during the season, as fixtures are added the background boxes will change to either green (showing that the team/venue has a fixture arranged for that date) or red (showing that the team/venue has a conflict for that date – two fixtures, or a fixture when the team/venue isn’t supposed to be available).
Fixture Constraints
The scheduler allows you to setup fixture constraints for example if a certain fixture must be played on a specified date. This may be that you want to create a local derby for a boxing day fixture or similar.
The constraints give you two options, either:
Must Play - two teams must play on a specified date, ie. a local derby on 26th December
Cannot Play - two teams cannot play on a specified date ie. significant travelling midweek
Review & Submit
Within the review tab you will firstly need to select the divisions you wish to schedule then you will need to pick your preferred "scheduling options" and "smoothing options". The more options you choose the longer the schedule will take to process.
Tip: When you first produce a schedule, do not request too many options as it will run slowly. Produce a "rough schedule" first and then review. You can then re-run it with more smoothing options enabled to produce a "final schedule"
Once you've selected your options click "Review". If there are any obvious problems Full-Time will highlight them to you. You can then correct these before producing the schedule.
Providing there are no obvious errors the system will produce a message like the below, please input your email you wish a confirmation to be sent to, then click "schedule".
Review a schedule outcome
Upon completion of the schedule you will be notified via. email. You can also navigate to schedule outcomes by clicking Fixtures > Scheduler/Rescheduler > Advanced Scheduler > Schedule Outcomes
Please note: the schedule outcome button will only be available once you have fully submitted a schedule to be produced
