Match Schedule & Fixture Schedule changes

This article is targeted at the competition administrators and coordinators. For general competition help click here.

This article covers the following scenarios where you may need to make changes to the currently scheduled day or times. Most importantly this article will help you prevent impacting payments and other aspects with the rescheduled matches.

  • Matches are washed out
  • Sever storms halt or cancel play
  • Lights and other infrastructure fail and prevent play

To work through these scenarios it requires a few different SportsM8 features and the exact steps may change depending on your specific scenario. The following information is provided as best practices but should be adjusted to your specific competition as required. Should you need assistance please reach out to our support team (support@sportsm8.com).

Using Time Slot Status to track wet weather or other changes

This is an optional configuration but can be a best practice in more advanced or longer running competitions.

The Competition Configuration allows you to create a custom status of “Washed Out” or any other name that reflects the reason for the schedule change. The time slot status should be set to lock the time slot but not process payments. Using this approach, ensures that the time slot will not be picked up for payments. Following the below guidance will also recommend setting the time slot to not published, which is a secondary safe guard to ensure exclusion from payment or statistical reporting.

Depending on your weather policies you may or may not need to ensure the matches are not paid.

Scenario: The entire day/night scheduled matches have been postponed/cancelled due to weather conditions

This is one of the more common scenarios that impact outdoor sporting events. For this scenario lets assume you were only hours away from start of play meaning you already scheduled the day, collected availability, imported the draw and appointed match officials/coaches. If you have only completed a few of those steps then this is still the recommended scenario to follow.

  1. Ensure you notify your match officials of the reschedule either through SportsM8 messages/email, or through other channels (e.g. social media, direct email, txt messaging services).
  2. To ensure the appointments do not count towards payments or statistical reporting
    1. Unpublish any time slots for the fixture day using the unpublish all button.
    2. [Optional] Clear all appointments for the day using the button in the Match Schedule Admin tool bar
    3. [Optional] Set each of the time slots to a status that reflects the completed/locked state. I.e. You can create a custom status of “Washed Out” that locks the time slots but also won’t count towards payments. Even if the status counts towards payments with the time slot unpublished it will not be picked up.

Reschedule the day to another day

If the matches are to be rescheduled to another competition day, and this day is not already configured in your competition, you can choose to repurpose the existing day and match schedule for that new date. Follow these steps if that is your intention:

  1. Navigate to Fixture Scheduling > Manage Days
    1. Find the existing day for the original date and edit the configuration
    2. Adjust the date and start times as required
    3. Save the new day configuration
  2. Navigate to the Match Schedule Admin
    1. Select the new scheduled date from the day list
    2. If the time slot times have not changed much, the most straight forward approach is to use the Reschedule button from the Match Schedule Admin tool bar and select the new date. This should match the new date you set on the Competition Day in the previous steps. The intent here is that the time slots are the same date and reporting is not impacted.
      1. If you need to adjust any start times for the time slots, then manually edit the start times of each as required
      2. If too many start times changed on the time slots then you can use the Delete Match Schedule button in the tool bar, and then Regenerate the match schedule from that button in the tool bar.
    3. If the draw has changed for the new date, then import the new draw if ready, or if not then clear the draw so you know you need to import when ready.
    4. You will most likely also want to clear the appointments at this time for the rescheduled date. Use the Clear Appointments button in the Match Schedule Admin tool bar and then save all changes.
  3. Availability will automatically sync to the new date. To increase confidence that you are working with actual availability it is recommended to reset the availability for all members that previously provided availability.
    1. Open the Manage Availability button from the Match Schedule Admin tool bar
    2. Search for availability and enable edit mode
    3. Select all members found with existing availability
    4. Click the Reset availability button in the bottom tool bar
    5. Ensure the process completes successfully
  4. When appropriate, notify your match officials of the rescheduled date and request they provide new availability

Scenario: The day/night scheduled matches have been PARTIALLY completed and remaining matches postponed/cancelled due to weather conditions

Similar to the above scenario, however, you have commence the matches for the scheduled day/night. This could be one or more time slots. When play is halted due to the weather, you should first follow your wet weather policies. If there are time slots still to be played there are two likely pathways you will take.

Delayed matches and the start times need to be adjusted

In this situation you have matches that are still to be played and the decision is to simply pause play and recommence when safe. In this scenario you may only have to adjust the start times, either keeping the same interval or adjusting for a new interval. If there are also draw changes that needs to be adjusted after first changing the time slot. The most critical part of this process is preserving the existing time slots and appointments.

  1. Ensure you notify your match officials of the decision that has been made either through SportsM8 messages/email, or through other channels (e.g. social media, direct email, txt messaging services). Throughout the delay keep your match officials informed.
  2. For any completed matches follow your finalization steps (e.g. setting the time slot status to “Complete”)
  3. For each of the remaining time slots, click the Edit Time Slot button, then on the edit screen click the Edit button next to the scheduled time.
    1. Using the edit time modal, adjust the start time to the required new time
    2. Repeat this for each remaining time slot as needed. Pay attention to which is the next time slot you need to adjust as when adjusting the times they can start to overlap
  4. Once all the start times are adjusted. If you do not need to change any appointments or draw then no further action is required and continue with your coordination as usual.
  5. If you need to adjust the draw for the remaining time slots, then follow the following steps. Alternatively if there are only a few changes you can use the Move Match tool in the MAtch Schedule Admin tool bar.
    1. If you are using one of our 3rd party integrations to retrieve the draw, then ensure this has been updated by the competition organizers, and follow your usual process to retrieve the draw. Alternatively you will need to obtain/create the CSV draw using your standard process.
    2. Before importing we recommend manually limiting the CSV data to just the time slots you need to process (note integration CSV times are in UTC).
    3. Review the changes and save the time slots with the new draw.
  6. If you have adjusted the draw then it is likely you need to adjust the appointments as well. For this you may want to clear the existing appointments or simply manually make the changes depending on how many draw changes there were.
  7. [Optional] Availability will automatically adjust to the new time slot times, however, you may no longer have confidence in the collected availability. The recommended approach is to simply ask all match officials to check and update their availability (you may need to unlock the availability if your configuration locks it). If you prefer to clear and ask people to resubmit their availability follow these steps:
    1. Open the Manage Availability from the Match Schedule Admin tool bar
    2. Search for availability, and enable Edit Mode
    3. Manually select / deselect each of the adjusted time slots for the members as required. Unfortunately right now there is no bulk select for this operation and the Sync/Reset options affect all time slots.
    4. Save all changes
  8. Once ready continue with your usual coordination processes.

These moments can be stressful, please contact our support team if you require assistance or clarification.

Remaining matches are cancelled and may/may not be rescheduled for another day

In this situation you have matches that were still to be played but the decision has been made to cancel those games for the current day. They may be or may not be going to be rescheduled for another day.

  1. Ensure you notify your match officials of the decision that has been made either through SportsM8 messages/email, or through other channels (e.g. social media, direct email, txt messaging services).
  2. If your intent is to pay referees and count the cancelled matches towards any statistical reporting then follow your usual nightly completion steps. Skip the following steps if that is your intent.
  3. To ensure the cancelled matches and their appointments do not count towards payments or statistical reporting follow these steps.
    1. Unpublish any remaining cancelled/postponed time slots for the fixture day using the unpublish button for the specific time slot.
    2. [Optional] Clear the appointments for the cancelled time slots (now unpublished) using the clear appointments button in the Match Schedule Admin tool bar
    3. [Optional] Set the time slot to a status that reflects the completed/locked state. I.e. You can create a custom status of “Washed Out” that locks the time slots but also won’t count towards payments. Even if the status counts towards payments with the time slot unpublished it will not be picked up.

Next steps

Situations where the match schedule is impacted due to rescheduling/cancelling can be stressful and overwhelming. We have created this guide to minimise this but should you required further assistance please do not hesitate to reach out to our support team.