How to add scheduling rules

Scheduling rules tell the generator what it has to respect, or should try to, when it places games: rest between games, a court that isn’t free in the morning, a streamed court every team should play on. They live in the Scheduling rules tab of your event’s settings. Rules apply the next time you generate the schedule: saving a rule moves no game.

Before you start

• You need to manage the event or its schedule.
• If the schedule is locked, the rules are locked too. See how to lock parts of your event.

Steps

The steps add a Court Coverage rule, so that every team plays on the streamed court. Every rule type is added the same way.

1. In your event’s planner, click Settings at the bottom of the sidebar.

   

2. Open the Scheduling rules tab.

   

3. Under Hard Rules, click Add Rule. For a soft preference instead, use Add Preference under Soft Preferences.

   

4. Choose Court Coverage. The new rule opens.

   

5. Under Courts To Cover, pick your streamed court. Games Per Team is the least number of games each team plays there, and Applies To narrows the rule to a division or to teams. The summary at the top of the rule says what it does.

   

6. Click Save All Settings Changes.

   

To describe your rules in plain words instead, see how to generate rules with AI.

Hard rules and soft preferences

The tab has two lists, and each rule type can go in either:

• Hard Rules must be met. When a time slot would break one, the generator leaves that slot for another game, or empty.
• Soft Preferences guide the generator without blocking anything. Each has a weight: drag its slider towards High for the preferences that matter most.

Every rule has a switch to turn it off without deleting it, and a bin to delete it. Click a rule’s title to open or close it.

Blackout

Blocks a court, or all courts, during a time window, on one playing day or on all of them: a gym you only get at noon, or a lunch break for the whole venue. Applies To can narrow it to a division or to teams, for a team that can’t arrive before a certain time. Set both a Start Time and an End Time: a blackout without a time window blocks nothing.

Max Consecutive Games

Limits how many games a team plays back to back. Two games count as back to back when less than 15 minutes separate them.

Minimum Rest Time

Sets the shortest rest, in minutes, between the end of a team’s game and the start of its next one.

Court Restriction

Keeps matches on the courts you allow: all matches, a division (and, when it has several groups, only some of them), or chosen teams. It only says where matches may go. To make sure every team gets a turn on a court, use Court Coverage.

Court Coverage

Gives every team at least the number of games you set on the courts you pick, usually the streamed court.

As a hard rule, those courts are held for teams that haven’t played on them yet, and given up only when the court would otherwise sit empty. This steers the whole schedule: on a day that is already full, giving everyone a turn can leave a few games unscheduled, so check the schedule after you generate. As a soft preference, those courts favour teams that haven’t played on them yet but are never held open for them.

With Order by day on in the blueprint, each day is generated on its own, so the rule counts each day separately: a team’s turn on the court one day doesn’t count for the next.

Custom Condition

Builds your own IF/THEN rule. Base Scope picks the matches it looks at. WHEN narrows them with conditions on the court number, start time, division, home team or away team. THEN says whether those matches Must match or Must not match the conditions you add there.

To start quickly, click ✨ Start with a template: Restrict division to specific courts, Block team from a court, No games before a time or No games after a time.