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Per-Participant Availability: When Different Teams Play on Different Days

· 6 min read
Score7 Team
Score7 Team

You're running a 12-team weekend league. Most teams are happy with Saturday matches, but Team Atlas only practises on Wednesday evenings — that's the only night the school hall is free for them. Until now, Score7's auto-scheduler treated every participant as available during the same global time slots, so you'd run the scheduler, then manually drag Team Atlas's matches to Wednesdays one by one.

Per-participant availability fixes that.

Where to find it​

Open your tournament's Scheduler page. Right under "Day and time slots", there's a new accordion section. The title depends on your tournament setup:

  • Team Availability — when your tournament uses teams
  • Player Availability — when your tournament uses individual players

Expand the section. You'll see one row per active participant, with a little caption next to each name telling you whether they're using the global schedule or a custom one. The accordion summary tells you at a glance how many participants have a custom schedule — for example, "3 of 16 teams have custom availability".

By default, every participant is set to "Uses global schedule" and the live count reads "All 16 teams use global availability".

Setting a custom schedule for one participant​

  1. Expand the Team Availability (or Player Availability) section.
  2. Click the edit icon next to the participant's row.
  3. A dialog opens with the same day-and-time-slot picker you use for the global schedule. Tick the days that work for them, and add up to three time slots per day.
  4. Hit Save.

That's it. The row caption flips to "Custom schedule", a small calendar icon appears next to it, and the next time you generate the schedule that participant's matches will only land in their available windows.

One important rule: it replaces, it doesn't add​

A participant's custom schedule replaces the global one for them — it does not add to it.

Concretely: if your global schedule allows Thursday and Saturday, and you tick only Saturday 09:00–12:00 for Team A, then Team A will only ever play Saturday mornings. Their Thursday matches, if any, won't get scheduled even though Thursday is open globally.

This is the right default for most leagues — the team is telling you when they can play, not adding a bonus window. But it's worth keeping in mind: if Team A is also fine with Thursdays, you need to tick Thursday in their dialog too.

Going back to the global schedule​

There are two ways to remove a custom schedule and put a participant back on the global one:

  • Click the reset icon next to their row.
  • Open their dialog, untick every day, and hit Save.

Either way, the override is removed and the participant goes back to using whatever you set in the main "Day and time slots" section. There's no confirmation prompt — it's easily reversible (just reopen the dialog and re-tick).

Real scenarios this unlocks​

Mixed-day league​

You're running a 10-team Sunday league. Two of the teams play in a separate Saturday-only competition because their venue is rented out on Sundays. Set Saturday-only availability for those two teams; keep the other eight on the global Sunday schedule. The auto-scheduler avoids double-booking the Saturday teams onto Sunday matches and the league runs without a single manual edit.

Player-by-player tournament​

You're organising a doubles tennis tournament where each player has their own work schedule. Switch the tournament to player mode in the settings, then give each player their own weekly availability. The scheduler matches up players who can both make it to the same time slot — and tells you specifically who's blocking the schedule when one player's availability is too tight.

Last-minute conflict​

A team's pitch suddenly becomes unavailable on Sundays for the rest of the season. Instead of editing every remaining match by hand, just update that team's availability to weekdays-only, and re-run the scheduler with "Override existing dates" on the affected stage. The system rebuilds the rest of their season around the new constraint.

One coach, three teams​

A single coach manages three different school teams, and they can only commit to Wednesdays. Give all three teams a Wednesday-only schedule — even when they're playing each other or facing other teams, every match for those three teams will land on a Wednesday.

Limits and gotchas​

  • 256 participants per tournament can have a custom schedule. If you have more than that and need to override every one, the auto-scheduler probably isn't the right tool — get in touch and we'll talk through what you need.
  • Withdrawn participants don't appear in the section, and any cached override they had is cleaned up automatically.
  • Incompatible schedules return a clear error. If a custom schedule has no overlap with the rest of your constraints (no shared time with opponents, daily caps too tight, no available pitches), the scheduler will return an error explaining what to relax — and it'll name the participant so you know whose schedule to revisit.
  • Custom schedules are per participant. There's no group-level override. If three teams from the same school all need the same Wednesday-only schedule, set it on each of them. (It takes about ten seconds per team — it's not worth a workaround.)
  • The global schedule is still the default. New participants — say, someone who registers late and is added after you've set custom schedules for others — start on the global schedule. Edit theirs separately if needed.

Per-participant availability is part of the premium scheduler. The tournament owner or the current admin needs an active premium subscription to use it.

Ready to set up your league with the schedules each team actually has? Create your tournament and let the scheduler handle the rest.

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