Schedule
Flyball Manager generates tournament schedules using official NAFA racing schedules for round-robin tournaments. Our algorithms ensure teams are allotted the most distance between races. The schedule uses data entered from team entries and divisions to quickly generate the most efficient schedule for your tournament.
Creating a Schedule
Initial setup
Prior to creating a schedule, a tournament must be created with team entries and divisions. Please see the tournament section to learn how to get started with a tournament. Once teams and divisions are created, review the tournament Seed Chart to verify teams and divisions are set up as intended.
Start order
The first step in generating a schedule is determining the start order for divisions. This is the order that the first race for divisions follow. The division at the top of the list will be scheduled for the first race. Each division after will follow in the schedule in the order listed.
Reversing Lanes
Round-robin tournaments the default lane selection follows the lanes published in the NAFA schedules. When hosting 2 single day tournaments it is desirable to swap the lanes for Day 2.
Select the checkbox "Reverse Round Robin Lanes" to set the lanes to the reverse as published in the NAFA schedules. This allows teams to have a flow across the 2 days more in line with a multi-day tournament.
Tournament Schedule Screen
The schedule shows the details of all races happening for the tournament. This screen allows you to see the details of each race including left and right lane competitors, division, breakout, format and time both club and team have for breaks prior and coming up.
Schedule Row
Each row contains information about individual races. Let's break down each section of a single row of the race schedule.
The arrows allow the race to be moved to the previous race or next race.
To the right of the arrows is the race number and an estimated time for the race. The time estimate is based on the start time entered on the settings screen.
Next are details for the teams in the left and right lanes.
Top number details the classification and division of the team. Bottom number is the breakout for the division.
1/8
The first number is the number of races the team has raced. Second number is the total number of races in the round-robin schedule for the team.
PM
Team Club abbreviation.
Special Teams
Team name
4/4
Race Format
The numbers in the schedule detail the left and right lane, previous and next race minutes for the club or team, top row is previous, bottom is next, left column is the left team, right column for right team. Here's an example.
The 68 above represents the left lane team races next in 68 minutes.
The 40 above represents the right lane club races next in 40 minutes.
The 90+ indicates the right team races next in over 90 minutes.
The -- indicates the left team has not raced prior to this race.
The settings screen offers an option to change the number of minutes for both clubs and teams indicating a conflict. Races that meet these criteria are hilighted in red. Reasonable defaults are provided for these settings.
Breaks
Breaks can be added to the schedule. Breaks can be anything inserted into the race schedule whens the NAFA racing will be paused. This can be things like mat time, single dog racing, blocks of time to allow resting of dogs and lunch.
To add a break, click "Add break..." on the schedule screen. On the screen that displays, enter the race after number where the break will occur, give the break a label such as ***MAT TIME*** or ***LUNCH BREAK***.
Comments can be used to give specific information for what will be happing during the break. As an example, for mat time you may have divided a 12 minute break into 2 sections where 2 different green dogs will have 6 minutes each. For the comment you can add A-Tayo B-McCree where A is the first 6 minutes and B is the 2nd 6 minutes of the break.
Comments do not need to be entered when the break is created. It is easy to update the break comment later on either the Schedule screen or the Scoring screen.
Give the break a duration in minutes. If a duration is not assigned the standard estimated race time will be used for the break duration (see below). Entering in the duration for the break assists when looking at the rest time for clubs and teams. This duration is also shown online at ondeckmanger.com for each break.
Breaks can be easily moved to different spots in the schedule using the up and down arrows on the schedule screen. Clicking the up arrow moves the break 1 race forward in the schedule. The down arrow moves the break to 1 race later in the schedule.
For 2 day tournaments add a break labeled ***END OF DAY 1 RACING***. Assign the duration to a large value to assist in rest planning.
Flyball Manager currently assigns a race number to each break. There is no way to remove the race number for breaks at this time.
Schedule Optimization
The Scheduling engine optimizes the generated schedule. Flyball Manager spaces teams out as much as possible, some effort is made to spread clubs out. After optimization, it is still possible for races to result in inadequate time off for clubs and/or teams. These races are considered to be in "conflict".
Teams are required by rule to have a minimum rest time. The numbers on each schedule row indicate how many minutes a club/team has had for rest between races.
While Flyball Manager does the best it can, conflicts will still exist in the schedule. Manual intervention will be required to adjust the schedule. Remember that our scheduling engine has made many iterations to arrive at what is believed to be a well optimized schedule.
Changing the start order of divisions will result in a different schedule. Many times it is better to vary the start order before making manual adjustments to a generated schedule.
Race Details
Double-clicking a race in the schedule opens a window to update some details for the race.
Format allows the format for this race to be changed. It is important to understand that this feature IS NOT REFLECTED IN THE SEED CHART GENERATED AUTOMATICALLY by Flyball Manager. Changing the value from the pre-computed value may effect the number of heats run for teams. The exported seed chart will need to be modified manually to correctly indicate the number of heats after the modification.
Duration sets the expected duration for a race. Flyball Manager uses 8 minutes for the race time by default. This can be changed for races that are used for mat time, single dog racing or breaks. Enter the number of minutes this race is expected to take if it is different than 8 minutes. This is used when estimating club and team rest times between races and is also displayed online.
Comments allow for up to 100 characters of text to be displayed on the race. The intended use here is to display online details of the race if needed. Examples would be listing the dogs that will be in mat time or single dog races.
Limitations
The scheduler supports round-robin tournaments only.
Importing a schedule is not allowed with Flyball Manager.