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Setting Up Seasons and Competitions

This article is a guide for associations on how to set up their Seasons and Competitions so they are ready for Fixture Creation

This article is written for associations that have already completed the base setup and are now ready to begin nominations for an upcoming season. If you're still in the process of completing the initial setup, see Setting Up Your Compete Environment

Creating and Managing Seasons

Creating a Season

Follow these steps to create a new Season:

  1. Navigate to the Seasons tab

  2. Click 'Create a Season'

  3. Give your season a Name, e.g. 'Term 1 2026'

  4. Click 'Save'

Managing Seasons

From the Seasons tab, you can also perform several actions on your Seasons, including editing, duplicating and archiving your Seasons

  1. Click the 3-dots for the corresponding Season

    1. 'Edit' will take you to the edit section for that season

    2. 'Duplicate' will duplicate that Season and everything in it (except Fixtures, Unavailability and Marquee Game Preferences), useful for re-creating a similar Season format

    3. 'Archive' will archive that Season and make it accessible only if you unarchive it from the 'Archived Seasons' menu (useful when the Season is complete and no longer relevant)

Preparing Competitions

Before proceeding further into Team Nominations or Fixture Generation, there are a few things you’ll need to prepare for your upcoming Season.

Adding a New Competition

To create a Competition:

  1. Navigate to the Seasons tab

  2. Select the relevant Season

  3. Click 'Competitions' tab

  4. Click 'Add to This Season'

  5. Fill in competition Information:

    1. Name (e.g. Basketball)

    2. Activity - select from the dropdown list

    3. Ladder - select from the dropdown list

    4. Options to Hide Ladders or Hide Scores from your public Compete webpage

    5. Choose to use Pools or not (Please read Managing Pools in Clipboard Compete before turning Pools on)

    6. Select the Grades that will participate in this competition

  6. Click Save

Important: If you turn on Pools, you cannot turn them off yourself. It also means you cannot use the Fixture Generator to create fixtures automatically

Critical: The School's Activity Type in Clipboard must match the Association's Activity here, as this will be what links the Teams to the right Activity during Team Nomination

Archiving Competitions

To archive a Competition, click the red icon next to it on the Competitions tab

Video: How to Set Up and Manage Seasons and Competitions

Opening and Closing Team Nominations

To begin scheduling Fixtures, open your Season's Team Nominations. Opening nominations allows each school present in the association to nominate Teams for their chosen Competitions and Grades.

To open or close Team Nominations:

  1. Navigate to Seasons

  2. Select the relevant Season

  3. Head to the 'Teams' tab

  4. Toggle ON or OFF to open or close Team Nominations

Once this is done, upon their next refresh of the 'Competitions' tab on their Fixtures page, Schools will be able to nominate Teams immediately. Upon your next refresh, you will be able to see those Teams filtering in.

Open Nominations:

Closed Nominations:

Managing Teams

Once schools have nominated their Teams, the association can then manage these Teams in Clipboard Compete

Organising Teams within Grades

Depending on how your association runs, you may want to move or regrade Teams before creating Fixtures. This can be done from the same Teams tab.

Follow these steps to move or regrade Teams:

  1. Open the 'Teams' tab for the relevant Season

  2. Decide whether to drag teams between Grades or do it manually:

    1. To quickly move a team, click and hold the team, then drag it to the target grade

    2. To move/remove a team manually:

      1. Click the three dots next to the team and select 'Remove nomination'

      2. Add it to another Grade by clicking 'Add Teams' (located below the last team in the grade list)

  3. Repeat for any other teams you need to move or regrade.

Important: This process does not update existing fixtures. If fixtures already exist, you will need to update them manually after moving or regrading teams

Video: How to Manage Teams in Seasons

Setting Up for the Fixture Generator

As an association, there are a few ways to create Fixtures in Compete. If you want to use the Fixture Generator, you can complete the following steps that are relevant to you.

Assigning Seeds

Seeds are rankings assigned to Teams before a competition to determine how Fixtures are assigned. In Clipboard Compete, seeds are among the factors the Fixture Generator aims to respect when deciding how to create fixtures.

Follow these steps to assign and use seeds so the Fixture Generator respects team rankings:

  1. Open your relevant Season

  2. Go to the 'Teams' tab

  3. Locate the team order list - you will see numbers on the left-hand side representing seed positions

  4. Drag each team into the correct order to reflect ability - seed 1 should be the top team, seed 2 the next, and so on

  5. If there is a bye, the Fixture Generator treats it as “seed -1” (i.e. the effective lowest seed)

  6. Your work will autosave

The Fixture generator will:

  • Aim to match the lowest seed with the highest seed in the first round

  • Work inward from the extremes of the seed list in subsequent rounds

  • Treat any bye as the lowest seed for assignment purposes

  • Not automatically update existing fixtures if seeding is changed mid-season

Video: Seeds explained for Fixture Generation

Adding Unavailabilities

Unavailabilities are periods where any combination of the following parties cannot have fixtures auto-generated:

  • Schools

  • Activities

  • Grades

  • Teams

For example:

  • A School may have a School Assembly

  • Teams from a particular school may not be available due to a Trip or Camp

To add unavailabilities:

  1. In Seasons, select the relevant Season

  2. Head to the 'Basics' tab

  3. Click 'Add Unavailability'

  4. Fill in the details matching the Unavailability and click 'Save'

This will ensure any Fixtures generated from then on don’t cross over those Unavailabilities

Adding Marquee Games

Marquee Games are another granular control you can utilise with the fixture generator. On any date where a Round is scheduled to occur, you have the ability to force the generator to schedule two Schools Home and Away against each other, across one or more Activities and/or Grades

This usually happens when Schools play an annual fixture against each other, which is known and planned in advance.

Follow these steps to add a marquee game to a Season:

  1. Open Seasons and select the relevant Season

  2. Ensure you are on the Basics tab (showing the basic season information)

  3. Scroll down to the Marquee Game Preferences section

  4. Click 'Add Marquee Preferences'

  5. Enter the marquee game details:

    1. Home and Away schools

    2. Date of the marquee game

    3. Affected Activities and Grades

  6. Click 'Save' in the top-right corner

Once saved, those Marquee Preferences will be applied to the Fixture Generator and used when generating fixtures for the specified Activities, Grades and schools.

Video: How to Add School Unavailabilities and Marquee Games

Once these actions are completed, associations are ready to create their Fixtures.

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