Events=>schedule teams, Misc Action red tab are a set of operations on the schedule that you likely will need when developing the schedule. Below is a brief description of each.


Pre-Schedule


After setting up the rooms for Global Finals, the next step is to assign teams to rooms.  For example all the tech-ML teams are assigned to the room that will appraise the middle level of the tech challenge.  After performing this operation, if you look at the schedule for a room, you will see all the teams to be appraised in this room, but none will be assigned specific performance times.


If a challenge-level is split, pre-schedule will split the teams in that challenge-level across the split rooms.


Set Team Constraints


This action collects arrival/departure information, kids on multiple teams, team managers for multiple teams, and other scheduling requests and converts this information into a set of constraints that the automated scheduler needs to take into account.


Auto Scheduler


Once teams have been pre-scheduled and schedule constraints have been generated, this step will run the automated scheduler assigning teams to TC and IC times consistent with this information.  See Don for details.  The algorithm used changes based on the needs for a specific Global Finals.


Verify Schedule


This action checks the schedule to see if any teams are scheduled in a way that is inconsistent with the scheduling constraints.  A list of constraints not met are listed at the bottom of the page.


Clear Schedule


This action unschedules all teams.  The teams still remain pre-scheduled (associated with a room).


Clear Preallocation


Check with Don.


Reset Schedule


This action removes all the teams from rooms.  You are back to the state just after all the rooms were created.


Fix Locations


Teams are identified by a team-number, organization (ie membership name), team name, and location. Sometimes organization, team names, and locations need reviewing to make sure they meet the expectation of any published schedule.  Locations are expect to be a city or town not including province or state (we get this information from the team's affiliate). 


Fix Locations will search teams for locations that don't fit our expectations.  If you click on the Fix Locations button, it will search the location of each team for commas.  The last comma and text following the comma are removed from the location.  For example: Londonderry, NH will be replaced with Londonderry.  The feature will display each change it makes.  If the change is inappropriate, you can set it back using Teams=>edit.  To change Londonderry, NH, USA to Londonderry, this action needs to be run twice.


Teams=>edit supports changing this information fo a specific team.  After selecting the team to edit, the page will show how this team will be presented and allow you to change the organization, team name, and/or location.


Freeze / Thaw


The schedule can be in either of 2 statuses: Frozen or Thawed.  The current status is displayed at the top of the Misc Actions page.  When thawed (the initial status), changes made to the schedule are made without remembering the prior times. When the state is changed to Frozen, we start remembering the original schedule and list the changes in the Errata red tab.


The schedule typically is not frozen until the point we start publishing the final schedule.  The Errata is then published as a set of changes to the original base schedule.  In either state, the Edit Schedule can be used to make changes.


Set Visibility


The dropdown to the right of the Set Visibility button controls what the public sees about the details of the schedule. The states are as follows:

  • unavailable: the schedule is unpublished
  • day-only: the schedule lists only the day a team is doing their TC and IC
  • half-day: the schedule lists the day and am or pm
  • actual-times: the actual times are listed


The idea behind these settings is to hide the schedule initially.  Then teams see the days of competition and can react if there is a problem.  By only specifying the day it is easier to juggle teams on that day to meet the needs of all teams.  Half-day give a bit less flexibility in re-scheduling.  Actual times means you need to negotiate with more than one team if you need to switch times.


Check Constraints


Check Constraints is much like Verify Schedule, but allows you to pick a specific room to verify.


Export Constraints


Export Constraints creates a .CSV file that contains the unscheduled teams and their constraints.