Wednesday, 27 June 2012

New League Management System

Today we're pleased to announce that the new League Management System is live and available for all clubs, counties and districts to use. We hope that this will greatly simplify the administration of league events, including dealing with team personnel, master points and pay-to-play charges. Some organisers already have very good systems in place to do this so we're not forcing anybody to switch, but we hope this service will be of some value.

The LMS works within our online members area, so you'll need a user name and password in order to use it. Clubs and counties have this already (if you don't, please check with the treasurer or scorer). What used to be called Districts, i.e. entities which run leagues but which are not affiliated clubs or counties, will need to request a user name and password from the EBU.

Once you're logged in you should now see an additional 'Leagues' tab in your members area. If you don't see it then you may still be looking at the old version of our members area and will need to clear your browser cache.



To create a new league, click the green plus icon and you'll be presented with some options.



Enter the league title, the number of divisions in the league and the promotion/relegation criteria and then click 'Submit'. Wait a few seconds and you should see something like this:



With the league set up, we now have to look at the individual divisions. To manage a division of a league, click on the line you're interested in. In this case, we'll click on Example League Division 1, which gets us here:



There are no teams in the league yet, so click on the green plus icon to add one:



Enter the team name and the captain's EBU number. You can also optionally enter a suffix, for example in a club league you could have Aylesbury A and Aylesbury B - 'A' and 'B' are the suffixes. Let's add some more:



When you're finished adding teams to the division, it's time to create some matches.

Important: make sure you've added all the teams before you create the matches. Once the matches are created you won't be able to add more teams.

Clicking the 'Create League Matches' button asks you if it's a single- or double- round robin i.e. if each team plays each other team once or twice. Submit your preference, wait a few seconds and the matches will be ready.

In an ideal world this is where the league administrator's involvement ends, at least until the end of the season. The team captains that you have designated are now able to log into their own Members Area to update their team information and submit match results. Of course, some captains will be either unable or unwilling to do this so there may be a need for some further intervention. The rest of our instructions are from a team captain's point of view, but the functionality is identical for the league administrator.

When a player logs on to their Members Area they'll see a button on the right-hand side if they're a part of any league:



Clicking this will bring up a table like this:



This shows the team name, the league it's a part of, whether or not you're the captain of the team and finally a shortcut to the league results table. If you're the captain you can click on the line to bring up some information about your team.



Under 'Player Roster' you can see the list of all the players registered for this team. You have been included by default, but if you're of the non-playing variety of captain you can remove yourself by clicking the small cross by your name. Under 'Matches' you can see a list of all the matches for this team for the season.

To add a player to the roster, click the green plus icon.



To amend the details of a match, click the appropriate line in the match list:



Enter as much information as you can and then check the boxes of the players who played for your team. This isn't final - you'll be able to go back and correct any mistakes or add some data which you left out.

Both captains will be able to amend the match data, but the team lineups can only be entered or changed by the captain of that team - after all, they're the ones who should know best who played!

Once a few results are in the table might look like this:



We can now see how this will look in the public results table:



This gets updated as soon as the results are in and will reconfigure itself according to the new ranking. You can see the real version here.

I don't see a feature I need!

There are dozens of different sorts of leagues being run across the country and I'm sure there's something you do which we can't do. If so, please let us know. We should be able to deal with most peculiarities, although some might be more work than others.

What about teams-of-eight leagues?

We don't enforce any limits on the number of players per team and it will work the same way for teams of four/six/eight/twelve/thiry-one! At the end of the season you'll be charged based on the number of people that play in the matches, so it's important that you record this correctly after every match.

What about knockout events?

These are on their way and will be available as another type of event when you use the 'Create New League' function.

There's no way I'll be able to get my captains to use your Members Area!

That's a shame. You could just make them do it, or make them pass the captaincy onto someone who's willing. It's really not very difficult once you've used it once. If they're steadfast in their refusal, though, then don't worry - the league administrator has the same abilities as the team captains. In the teams list page (where you see the 'Create League Matches' button) you can click on the team in question and then you'll be able to amend their players list and match results just as if you were them.

I have a question that's not covered!

Sigh... Drop us a line and we'll see if we can help you!

Your new system is a load of rubbish!

Perhaps it is! Let us know about it, though, and we might be able to do something. We're always keen to get feedback on new features like this.

Thursday, 1 March 2012

National Grading Scheme

The National Grading Scheme (NGS) has just gone live and there have been some significant updates to the members area. Also, there is now a new NGS Rankings page which you can visit to see the highest graded players and partnerships in the country, search for your friends and see some statistics about how the players are distributed amongst the various grades.



Here you can see the top players. The navigation links in the top left take you forward and backwards through the list and the 'Hide Evolving Grades' link will remove the players who haven't yet played 1000 boards (shown with a grey background with an 'E' icon on the right).

Search is simple - just type the surname of the person you're interested in in the box at the top right and hit enter. If you're searching for a common name it can get a bit slow, so you can add a comma after the surname and then the first few letters of the first name to narrow it down further. For example, try "Smith, P".



Members Area

In the members area you'll see three new columns in your sessions list. These are:

Sopp - the strength of your opponents in that session
Par - your percentage score compared with 'par' for that session
Grade - your resulting grade after that session


If you don't see these values for a given session it means it hasn't been processed by the NGS. This could be for a number of reasons, including: it's too recent (so wait a few more days), it's a teams event, it's a Sim Pairs result (only the local club heats are counted) or something went wrong.

As with many of the tables in the members area, you can click on the headings to sort them. So you can easily check just when it was that your grade was at its highest!

On the right you'll see a new button called 'NGS Info', under 'Change Password'. Click this to get up a new page which shows you information about your grade and your partnership history. You'll see all of your partnerships listed, but there will only be grades for the ones where you've played 300 boards or more.

Club Area

Club administrators will now also see some new features. The Members List will include a Grade column, with an icon indicating their Grade Band. Again, you can click on the header to sort it and find out who the best player in your club really is. The sessions list also includes a new column.



Here you can see the new NGS column, which will show the Strength Of Field for that session when it has been processed by the NGS (you can sort on this field too). The egg-timer icon indicates that the session is too recent to be processed. A red cross will indicate that it couldn't be processed for some reason. Hover your mouse over the icon and it will give you a description of why this happened.

Further Information

This was just a quick walk through the new features. For a more in-depth look at how the NGS works, take a look at the Full Guide, which includes comprehensive FAQs. Further queries can be addressed by email to ngsqueries@ebu.co.uk. Please note that we may not respond to your query directly but your email will be read and you'll be included in any bulk responses we send out in future.