USAPA Ladder Administration Documentation

There are 5 pages that are used to control the administration of the ladders.

Add Another Name -- Search -- Standings -- Email -- Configuration

Add Another Name.  This is the starting page that is accessible from http://usapa.org/ladder/admin It requires a log in with the ladder name and password. There is a demo ladder that you can play with. The ladder name and password are both 'demo'. You must have your browser configured to accept cookies. If you have cookies turned of in your browser, you can configure it to accept cookies for usapa.org.

This is the page from which you can add a new player.  It has links to the standings page for each of the five ladders.  The Test ladder can be used for practice and to test the functionality of the program without changing the data in the real ladders.

After players have been added to a ladder, they should be linked to the USAPA member database. Click on the link labeled “Link name, phone# and email to USAPA member database”.  That will take you to a page where you can search for the name in the roster.  Enter all or part of the last name.  You will receive zero or more responses.  Select the appropriate response and the name, phone number and email address will automatically be filled in for you.  You should check that information against the information that the player gave to you when signing up for the ladder.    If the roster information is outdated, it should be corrected. 

After a player is linked to the roster, any changes in the roster information will automatically be reflected in the ladder listing.  If a player has submitted the application for membership, but it has not been processed, you can manually enter the information.  But, you should remember to link to the roster at a later date.  If a player is not linked, there will be a reminder in green text in the comment column of the standings page.  If a player’s membership is more than 30 days past due, there will be an alert in red text in the comment column.  There may be rare occasions when you do not want to have a player’s ladder record linked to the roster.  He may want to use a different email address or phone number for the ladder.  In that case, leave it unlinked and make a note in the comment to “Do Not Link”. 

To inactivate a player, put a slash (/) anywhere in the box labeled 'inactive date'.  It could be part of a date if you want to indicate when the player was inactivated, as in 9/16/06.  When a player has been inactivated, that player will appear in a separate list below the active list on the standings page.

The weekly scores read from left to right with Wk 1 being the oldest score and Wk 10 being the most recent week.  You would not normally enter the scores here unless you were correcting scores that had been entered on the standings page.

The rank and size are kept for 5 weeks.  Rank is the player's ranking for the most recent week.  Size is the size of the ladder.  For example, if a player is 36th out of a total of 37 players, the rank is 36 and the size is 37.  This will show up on the standings page as 36/37.  R2/S2 is for the previous week, etc.  Players that do not have any scores on the standings page will not be included when size is calculated.  That way, you can keep track of whether a player is at or near the top or bottom of the ladder for up to 5 weeks very easily. You may want to use this information to decide when to move a player to a ladder that is a different skill level.

When adding a new player, you would not normally enter anything in the rank unless you wanted to place that player above the bottom because of a known skill level.  If nothing is entered, it defaults to 99 which simply puts the player at the bottom of the ladder.  To place a player at the top of a ladder, enter a rank of 1.

The Standings page has a link to an edit window for each of the players.  When one of those links is clicked, it brings up this page in edit mode instead of add mode.  Any of the fields can be edited as needed except for the name, phone number and email of linked players.  If the player is linked, those three fields need to be edited in the member database.  To move a player to another ladder, simply click the button for the new ladder.  You will probably also want to clear out all scores and rank and size information.  If the player is moving down a level, for example from B to C, put “1” in the rank field.

All fields can be entered in lower case.  The program is smart enough to convert to upper case where appropriate.

Search Page. The Add Name page has a "Search" link that you can use to find a player if you are not sure which ladder he is in.   You can enter a partial name.

Standings. The standings page is where all of the action occurs.  This shows the players’ scores for the past ten weeks and the rankings for the past 5 weeks.  The display would be too wide if all of the information were shown at once, so you can choose to show the scores or the rankings or the compact view which shows neither.

To record the scores for the week, simply enter the scores in the text box for each player.  Only the total score for all three games is entered. For example, if a player had scores of 15, 7, and 12, you would enter the total of 34. A player can have a maximum of 45 points because the games must be won by one point. Optionally the ladder manager could choose a win by 2 format, but the scores would then count as 15 and 14 for the winner and loser respectively.

Enter “b” for any player that had a bye.  The bye column will be incremented by one for that player.  If a player did not play that week, leave the box blank.  Do not click the button until all scores have been entered into the rows. Do not press the ENTER key when entering scores into the boxes. The ENTER key will NOT cause any scores to be entered.

The maximum movement of a player in the rankings, up or down, from week to week is limited by the program to a maximum of 1/4 of the size of the ladder.   That is to prevent the yo-yo effect of bouncing from the bottom of the ladder to the top or vice versa because of a single exceptional score. If you see that a player has the same rank as another player and the percentages are out of order, it means that one of the players has had the ranking limited by the maximum allowed.  It is okay for 2 players to have the same rank. That player will have have an 'R' in the rank column of the administration page and an 'R' next to the percentage on the public standings page. The 'R' stands for 'R'estricted movement.

The standings are published to the public web page automatically when the scores are recorded.  The standings page of the website is accessible from the link in the menu table at the top of the page or from the league page of the web site.

To publish the schedule, simply put the court assignments into the boxes and press the “Publish Schedule” button.  Optionally, the court numbers can be left blank. Place an “x” into the box for any player that is not playing that week, or “b” for players with byes.   Byes should be assigned to enough players to make the total number of players a multiple of four. Byes and x’s are not saved at this time because that could change before the games are actually played. Bye players can be subs for any players that are unable to show up at the last moment.  Byes are saved in the bye column when the scores are recorded.  That helps the ladder manager keep track of the byes that have been assigned for previous weeks. Court assignments may be any combination of letters or digits up to six characters.  It is not necessary to fill every row.  If nothing is entered in a row, the court assignment will remain the same as the assigned row above it.  You probably will want to enter assignments in every 4^th row skipping over x’s and b’s, or just leave the assignments blank. 

When the Publish Schedule button is clicked, the bottom of the page will show you what has been put on the schedule page of the website.  Don’t confuse this display with the actual web page that can be seen by the players.  That page is accessible from the link in the menu table at the top of the page or from the league page of the web site.

Email Page.  There is a link on the main page of the ladder administration labeled "Email With Your Program..."  This link will take you to a page of 4 links that can be used to send email to ladder players.  When clicked, the links should bring up your default email program on your computer.  More than likely, you default program is Outlook or Outlook Express.  But, it should work with any of the popular email programs.  This will allow you to send email from your personal email account .

It is recommended that you fill in the “To:” box with your own email address so that you will receive a copy of exactly what is seen by the other recipients.  The BCC (blind carbon copy) box will be filled in with the list of email addresses for active players or inactive players as indicated.

The subject and body of the message will also be filled in as appropriate.  You can add any other text to the message as you prefer.

Configure.  This page is used to enter a number of variables that are specific to your ladder. Each of the variables are defined on the configure page. Take care with filling out this information because most of the items are displayed on the public pages for your ladder. That includes the title for the ladder, contact information, the labels for up to 4 individual ladders and playing day and time.

Bill Booth 9/14/06