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Schedule a Tournament by Hand: the Drag-and-Drop Planner Board

· 4 min read
Score7 Team
Score7 Team

Auto-scheduling is the fast way to fill a calendar: set your days, courts, and match length, and Score7 lays out the whole tournament for you. But sometimes you want your hands on it. Maybe the final belongs on center court at 8pm, maybe two clubs asked to play early, or maybe it's a one-day event where you'd rather just place everything yourself. That's what the manual planner board is for.

It sits right next to the auto-scheduler, and the two work on the same schedule — so you can generate a draft in one click and then tidy it up by hand.

Where to find it​

Open the Scheduler page and switch to the Manual tab. Like the rest of the scheduler, it's a premium, admin-only tool — the people running the tournament can arrange it, everyone else just sees the result once matches go out.

The board at a glance​

The Manual tab is a grid:

  • Courts run across the top — one column per court in your saved list.
  • Time runs down the side — using the same available days, start date, and slot length you set on the Auto form. Both tabs read one shared configuration, so they never disagree.
  • An unplanned pool holds every match that doesn't have a court and time yet.
  • A referees strip you can drag from.

You see the whole day in one view, which makes clashes and gaps obvious at a glance.

What you can do​

Everything is a drag:

  • Place a match — drag a card from the unplanned pool onto a court-and-time cell.
  • Move a match — drag a placed card to a different court or time.
  • Swap two matches — drag one card onto another and they trade places.
  • Unschedule — drag a card back to the pool to clear its court and time.
  • Assign a referee — drag a referee from the strip onto a match card.
  • Add a court or referee on the fly — the "+" buttons open a quick dialog, and the new entry joins your saved list right away.

You can even place matches whose players aren't decided yet. A knockout match still waiting on an earlier result shows up as "Winner of Quarterfinal 1" — and you can drop it onto the grid just like any other, so you can lay out the entire day before a single result is in.

Guardrails so you can move fast​

Hand-scheduling should feel safe, not fragile:

  • No accidental double-booking. Drop a match on a court that's already busy at that time and the board refuses the move and tells you the court is occupied. You can't stack two matches on the same court by mistake.
  • Undo. Changed your mind? Step your last actions back.

The time-row spacing is just a viewing grid, too. Pick a coarser or finer granularity to zoom the day in or out — it doesn't change any match's real time or how long the court is reserved for.

Start with Auto, finish by hand​

You don't have to choose between the two tabs. Run the auto-scheduler and Score7 drops you straight onto the Manual board with the generated schedule already laid out — ready to review and tweak before you share it. A change on the board updates the same matches the Auto tab produced. It's one schedule, two ways to shape it.

It stays live during the event​

Leave the board open while you run the day. It refreshes when you come back to the tab and checks for changes about once a minute, so results entered elsewhere — including scores your referees enter from their phones — show up without a manual reload.

Keyboard and screen readers​

The whole board works from the keyboard, no mouse required: pick up a match, move it across courts and times, and drop it. Screen readers announce each step ("Picked up …", "moved to Court 1 at 14:00", "movement cancelled"), so arranging a schedule isn't locked to a pointing device.

When to reach for it​

The auto-scheduler is still the quickest way to build a schedule from scratch, and for most tournaments it's all you need. Reach for the manual board when you want deliberate control: showcase matches at specific times, a small event you'd rather arrange yourself, or last-minute tweaks on the day. Generate, drag, done.