Applicable to: Association Administrators
Application(s): Admin Portal > Competition Management
This article will cover the following:
- Understanding Advanced Fixturing in PlayHQ
- What you'll need before starting
- Creating fixtures with Advanced Fixturing
- Managing and troubleshooting your fixtures
Understanding Advanced Fixturing in PlayHQ
Advanced Fixturing transforms how association administrators manage fixture creation across multiple grades and divisions within their Home and Away competitions.
This powerful automation tool eliminates the hours typically spent manually scheduling matches by intelligently handling club and team fixture requests, venue capacity constraints, the balance of home and away allocations, and other competition requirements within a single streamlined process.
Advanced Fixturing allows you to create comprehensive fixture schedules for multiple grades simultaneously while automatically considering venue availability, team preferences, travel limitations, and competition format requirements to ensure optimal scheduling outcomes for all participants.
How it works
Advanced Fixturing uses a sophisticated three-layer processing system that considers various administrator inputs to create balanced Home and Away fixtures.
The engine processes your inputs in layers, starting with the fixture pattern from the Home and Away fixture template as the foundation. It then applies your fixture requests and constraints, evaluating multiple combinations to find the best possible fixture outcome without breaking the underlying template structure.
Not all requests may be met due to competing constraints, but you'll receive a comprehensive Result Report for each advanced fixturing request showing which rules passed and which didn't. This transparency allows you to understand exactly how the system handled your requirements and make informed decisions about the generated schedule.
Administrators can then accept and upload the fixture as-is, or manually adjust this within the Fixture Upload file, giving you the flexibility to approve scenarios like a team playing three consecutive away games due to venue availability, if it helps fulfil broader club needs while maintaining competition integrity.
What you'll need before starting
Required information
Before you begin creating fixtures with Advanced Fixturing, ensure you have:
- Created your grades and allocated participating teams
- Documented your bye rounds or exception periods when games should not be scheduled
- Considered any travel groups required if your competition includes geographic constraints
- Documented club preferences for home and away requirements
- Competition format details including number of rounds required per grade and when each grade's fixture should start
Creating fixtures with Advanced Fixturing
⚠️ Important: Ensure all competition parameters including team allocations to grades, home venue selection per team and game slot settings are accurate before creating fixtures. Changes to these elements after fixture generation may require processing your advanced fixture steps again.
Follow these steps to create fixtures using Advanced Fixturing for your competition:
Access Advanced Fixturing
Navigate to the Fixture Tools section from your competition season within the Admin Portal. Locate and click the Create Advanced Fixture button to begin the automated fixture creation process.
Select Grades and Divisions
Choose which grades you want to include in this fixture creation process. Advanced Fixturing accommodates multiple grades simultaneously, allowing you to schedule across various age groups and competition levels in one operation.
Create Club and Team Requests
Add each club and team request for the tool to consider while automatically scheduling each selected grade. This may include all club teams playing at home in a specific round (across all grades), or two teams scheduled to play each other in a specific round, or a team required to play away in a round, as examples.
Apply Team Travel Constraints
Nominate groups of teams to play at the same venue on the same day, across your selected grades.
Confirm Club Capacity
Limit how many games a club can host at their home venue(s) on any date. This step is optional, but could be considered for example if a club has two venues and due to facility access or limitations, may only host up to 5 games across their venues on a given date.
Add Exception Dates
Set any bye rounds for specific grades, or exception dates that prevent any games from being scheduled across all or selected grades. Any exception periods created in your season/grade settings will automatically flow into this screen, and can be edited as required.
Select Game Times
Set game times per grade, or define shared game slots. For example, if there are 6 teams in a grade then there are 3 time slots per round. You could select that each game slot is scheduled to play at 9am, 11am and 1pm, with teams rotating through these defined time slots each round.
Review and Finalise
Review your advanced fixture selections on the summary screen, before clicking Submit to pass this information through the tool. Your advanced fixturing pack may take up to an hour to generate, for significantly large requests. Small requests may complete in minutes. Once complete, the file status will show Generated and a Download button will appear. Review the request report to understand how the tool has applied your requests. This allows you to verify the schedule meets your competition requirements and make any necessary adjustments before uploading the advanced fixture and sharing this with participating clubs.
Frequently asked questions
Here are answers to common questions associations have about Advanced Fixturing:
- What is included in my Advanced Fixture pack after the tool generates this? The downloaded folder includes a Fixture Upload file, used to create your fixtures in PlayHQ. This also has Results Reports to review which requests passed or failed when creating your advanced fixture. Included are Fixture Integrity Reports, to show how well the fixtures matched the Home and Away fixture template and the requests and constraints inputted. Note - Fixture integrity reports are also available for generated fixtures in PlayHQ via the Report Builder.
- Can I use Advanced Fixturing if teams are still registering or if team numbers might change? Advanced Fixturing works best when team registrations are finalised, as changes to participating teams after fixture generation may require recreating the entire schedule. If you're expecting late registrations, consider waiting until your registration period closes or be prepared to regenerate fixtures if significant team changes occur.
- How does Advanced Fixturing handle bye rounds when I have an odd number of teams in a grade? The system automatically calculates and distributes bye rounds evenly across teams when grades have odd numbers. Byes are scheduled to ensure fair distribution throughout the season.
- What happens if Advanced Fixturing can't create a schedule that meets all my constraints? If the system cannot generate a viable schedule due to conflicting constraints (such as limited venue availability or restrictive travel requirements), it will notify you of the specific conflicts in your advanced fixture pack. You can then adjust parameters like venue availability windows, travel group settings, or season length to create a workable solution.
- Can I protect certain time slots for specific grades or premier competitions? Yes, you can configure time slot preferences through the advanced fixturing tool. This ensure games across grades are scheduled at appropriate times.
- How far in advance should I create fixtures, and can I schedule future seasons? Advanced Fixturing can create schedules well in advance, which helps with venue booking and club planning. Many associations create fixtures 2-3 months before a season commences, though the key here is that teams must be allocated to a grade in order to generate a fixture, so a competition structure should be confirmed before starting.
- If I need to make changes after publishing fixtures, will it affect the entire schedule? Individual game modifications (time changes, venue swaps, team changes) can be made as usual. However, major structural changes like adding teams or changing the number of rounds may require regenerating fixtures, either through the Regrading tool, a manually created Fixture Upload file, or through Advanced Fixturing, which would impact the entire schedule for affected grades.