Creating and Modifying Draws

[bs_notification type="info" dismissible="false"]Important: If you are using SportyHQ to accept online registrations for your tournament, then you should refer to our guide to Setting up Online Registration.[/bs_notification]

Your draws are the various divisions that participants will compete in. They are often separated by ability, age, gender or a combination of these factors. They might also be separated by event type where you are playing different variations of a sport (e.g. singles and doubles) and your event.

Creating Draws

To get started, go to the Manage Draws link in the Administrator bar on your tournament's main page.

From there, click on Create Draw.

[bs_notification type="info"]Tip: If you're still in the early stages of planning for your tournament and aren't entirely sure which draws you will end up using, that's no problem. You should add them all for now, and then you can merge or delete them later on.[/bs_notification]

The Create Draw page will vary depending on the sport being played, and whether or not your event is sanctioned by a federation using some of our more advanced ranking features.

Complete the form as follows:

• Name (required)
  This is your draw's name. E.g. Mens Open, Womens Open, Mixed A, Mens 50+, etc.
• Sport (this will only appear if your tournament is running multiple sports)
  Select the sport from this dropdown. If you don't see the sport you'd like to include here, then you can add it by going to your Tournament Settings page. Watch the video below where we show you the process.
  
• Scoring System
  This will give you a list of all of the currently supporting scoring systems for your selected sport. If you don't see the scoring system you would like to use, then please contact us with the details of the scoring system and we do our best to accommodate you.
• Minimum Age Limit
  If your draw has a minimum age limit, then you can enter it in here. Otherwise, leave this set as No for an open age level event.
• Maximum Age Limit
  If your draw has a maximum age limit, then you can enter it in here. The age you set here will look at the player's date of birth and accept them as long as they are not over this age. As an example, if you are creating an Under 19 event, where people must be under 19 years of age (not including 19 years of age), then you would 18 in to this field.
  
• Age Cutoff
  This field lets you set the date on which people's age is based. As an example, if you had to be 18 years or younger on the date registrations for the event will close and the registration deadline is February 1st, 2016, then you would select February 1st, 2016. When someone signs up to the event, it will look at how old they will be on that date, rather than the current date.
• Create Additional Draws
  This feature is useful mostly where you are not specifying age groups. If some additional draws you intend to add match all of the parameters (except for name) of the draw you are currently creating, you can enter their names in the text field provided. Enter one per line.
• Enable Handicap
  This feature will allow you to assign an advantage through scoring compensation to equalize the chances of winning. In principle, a more experienced player is disadvantaged in order to make it possible for a less experienced player to participate in the game or sport whilst maintaining fairness.

When you are ready, press Submit.

When you have finished adding your draws, you'll see them listed on the Manage Draws page.

Editing a Draw

If you want to modify the properties of an existing draw, go to the Manage Draws page from your tournament administrator bar.

You'll see a list of your existing draws. Click on the name of the draw you want to edit. That will bring up a screen where you can modify all of the draw's parameters.

Once you have made your updates, press Submit and your draw will update instantly.

Splitting Draws

Occasionally you'll find yourself with a draw that has more players that you'd like and you will want to break it out in to two or more draws. SportyHQ makes this task very simple.

The draw that you want to split must be unlocked. To begin, go to the Player Management page from your tournament administrator bar on the tournament's main page.

Then next to the draw that you want to split, press the Split Draws... button.

You can now start configuring how you want your draws to be split. You can split the draw in to as many draws as you would like, with varying number of players per draw. We've left it flexible so that you can make it work for your needs. Using the configuration option, enter in the number of draws you want to split in to, then fill in the name and number of players for each draw. The sizes of each draw must add up to the the number of players in the original (un-split) draw.

After you press continue, you'll see a preview of what the split draws will look like.

If you want to move anybody around, all you need to do is drag 'n drop the row by clicking (and holding) the orange box with the up/down icon. After you drop the row to its new position, the row counters will update so that you can see how many people you now have in that draw.

If you want to change the draw names, scroll back to the top and update the name there. You can press continue if you'd like to see the draw names update in the preview, but that is up to you. The draw names you enter will save regardless of if you complete this step.

When you are ready, press the Split Draws button and the process will complete.

Merging Draws Together

A very common practice is merging two draws together. This typically happens when one draw hasn't got enough participants and so you want to move all of the players from that draw in to another. SportyHQ makes this process quick and easy.

To merge two draws together, go to the Manage Draws page from your tournament administrator bar on the tournament's main page.

[bs_notification type="info" dismissible="false"]Important: Both of the draws you want to combine must be unlocked. For more information on locking and unlocking your draws, please follow this link.[/bs_notification]

Next to the draw that you want to ultimately remove, choose Merge Into....

A popup dialog will appear asking you to choose which draw you would like to merge the selected draw in to. Remember, for it to show in the dropdown, it must be unlocked. If you don't see it in the dropdown, that's the most likely reason why it isn't showing. The sport type must also match exactly (e.g. you can't merge a doubles event in to a single event, or a tennis event in to a squash event).

After you've selected the draw you're merging it in to, press Confirm. The screen will refresh and the process will be complete. You'll see that all of the players from your original draw have now been moved to the merged draw.

Deleting a Draw

[bs_notification type="danger" dismissible="false"]Important: Be very careful when deleting draws. If the draw you delete has players in it, they will get removed from your event. We only recommend you delete draws if they don't have any players. Otherwise, you should consider using the Merge functionality mentioned above.[/bs_notification]

To delete a draw, go to the Manage Draws link under the Administrator bar.

Then, next to the draw you wish to delete, click on the red trash can icon. You'll get a confirmation dialog asking you to confirm that you want to delete the draw. This operation can't be undone, so please proceed cautiously.

Changing the Display Order of Draws

You can easily change the display order of draws from the Manage Draws page. Simply drag 'n drop them in the order that you would like them to appear. The video below shows this process.

[video width="1194" height="561" mp4="http://docs.sportyhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/2015-12-30_11-25-48.mp4"][/video]

Manually Adding Players to a Draw

If your tournament does not use the SportyHQ payment gateway, you can still run the tournament by adding players manually to the draw under the Manage Draws page.



Select the Players for the draw you want to add players to.

Type the players name in the search box and select the player you want to add.  SportyHQ has a useful feature which searches synonyms, for instance, if you type in Bob, the search will pull through similar names such as Robert.

If you go to add a player into the draw and the player does not appear in the system, either ask the player to create their own account, or click the Create a Player button that will appear, and create the player.  

 Seeding a Draw

To seed the players in your draw, select the Manage Draws page.  Click the Players button for the draw you would like to seed. Under the seed column, select the drop-down menu and select the seed you wish to apply to the player.  You can also set a qualifier from this drop-down menu. If you have complete your set-up, click Generate Draw.

On the next page, your draw will display.  Note that SportyHQ tries to keep players from the same region or club separated in the draw as such non-seeded player positions will be randomly generated. To re-generate the random assignments, click the highlighted section below after

 Grouping in Draws

From this page you can also group players, this can be handy when you have in-town players and out-of -town players or when you are using a multiple box draw.  This feature would allow you to put the players into groups 

For in-town and out-of-town players, this feature would allow you to put the players into groups to separate the players in the first round. For instance, all the in-town players may play on a Wednesday and Thursday night of a tournament running through to the Sunday, while the out-of-town player who are travelling will only start on the Friday.

Setting Player Positions in Box Draw

After you have selected your draw format, you may want to change the player positions.  To do this, select the draw you wish to edit from your tournament's home page. 

Click on Set Player Positions.  In the format selected below, there are two boxes, as such the next page will allow you to edit positions for players in both boxes.

On the next page, select the player you would like to use in each position from the drop-down menu and click Save.

Display Options

You may want your draw to display various bits of information that the default does not show, such as a player's nationality.  To do this,  select the draw you wish to edit from your tournament's home page and click on Display Options. SportyHQ has a number of options which you can show on your draw including Row number, Profile Photo, Club Abbreviation, State/Province, Player Nationality (Flag), Player Nationality (Abbreviation), Membership ID, Show Court on Draw and where you would like the score to sit.  Each Display setting also has it's own print setting.  Selecting the print button will ensure that the display option is visible on the printed draw.

Renaming Brackets in your Draw

SportyHQ draw brackets default to Bracket 1, Bracket 2 and so on.  You may want to rename the brackets in your draw. Renaming brackets can only be done once the draw has been locked, therefore the draw should be final, with no more changes to be made. To do this, select the draw you would like to edit from your tournament's home page.  

Click the Lock Draw button and select Rename Brackets. In the pop-up window, type in the new titles for the brackets and Click Save.

Important: Once you are happy with your draw, you can lock it so that players won't change positions. While you'll still be able to unlock your draw after you lock it, you'll probably want to hold off locking it until you're confident all of the players have been finalized for the draw.