League Management Software

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Prompted by this proposal (in an ECF re-election address by Home Director Alex Holowczak) "to tender out for League Management Software (LMS), of which several already exist in different areas of England":

http://www.englishchess.org.uk/Forum/vi ... ?f=4&t=377

Does anyone have a listing of the different 'League Management Software' in use around the country?

I'll list a few to start things off:

1) Score Checker (Malcolm Peacock)

http://sc.popmalc.org.uk/

2) LeagueManage (JEU Consultancy Services - John Upham)

http://www.hillingdonchess.org.uk/main.php
http://www.manchesterchess.org.uk/main.php
http://www.chilternleague.org.uk/main.php
http://www.borderleague.org.uk/main.php
http://www.berkshirechess.org.uk/main.php
http://www.citychess.org.uk/main.php
http://www.londonchess.com/
http://www.thamesvalleychess.org.uk/

3) The software used by the SCCA (Surrey County Chess Association), not sure of the name of people involved there.

http://www.scca.co.uk/comps/comps_index.html

4) The ChessNuts software used by the Yorkshire Chess League and others

http://yorkshirechess.org/yorkshire-chess-league/
http://www.chessnuts.org.uk/ny5/

5) The software used by the Bristol Chess League

http://www.chessit.co.uk/

6) Oxford Fusion

http://www.oxfordfusion.com/oca/index.cfm

7) E2E4 results and grading service

http://www.e2-e4.co.uk/chess-results/results.htm

Any more?

[MartinCarpenter]

The Yorkshire league is really chessnuts - http://www.chessnuts.org.uk/ny5/ - which actually covers everything that gets Yorkshire graded so quite a few leagues/congresses all told.

That is fully integrated into the Yorkshire grading system of course, so there's a lot of things like league grading lists on the site, which won't be as natural for many of these other things to do.

[Andrew Zigmond]

The Oxford Fusion site is the one the ECF use for the County Championships and I believe it also hosts several leagues in and around Warwickshire.

http://www.oxfordfusion.com/oca/index.cfm

It's worth noting that the site doesn't run a grading script. It merely generates the files to be sent to the grader and often these require a bit of tweaking to prevent errors entering the database.

[Roger de Coverly]

Any more?

Herts & Bucks use the same system.

http://www.e2-e4.co.uk/chess-results/results.htm

It was devised by the Herts grader, so I think the file formats are very similar to those used currently by ECF graders.

Most counties and leagues have something, even if it's just material pasted from a master spreadsheet.

Bedford for example
http://www.adrianelwin.co.uk/Bedfordshi ... sion1.html

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Thanks Roger (and others). For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not referring to "material pasted from a master spreadsheet". More the stuff that clearly has a proper database sitting behind it.

[Roger de Coverly]

For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not referring to "material pasted from a master spreadsheet". More the stuff that clearly has a proper database sitting behind it.

Using a spreadsheet is a valid way of running a small league and could cope with monthly exports to ECF grading if the file format required by the ECF didn't differ greatly from how you would lay out a match card.

[Carl Hibbard]

For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not referring to "material pasted from a master spreadsheet". More the stuff that clearly has a proper database sitting behind it.

Using a spreadsheet is a valid way of running a small league and could cope with monthly exports to ECF grading if the file format required by the ECF didn't differ greatly from how you would lay out a match card.

Please NO.

[MartinCarpenter]

Could be using sheets of paper

A thought has occurred to me about this - I really don't think you'd need every competition to do monthly reporting to start doing this. Just a healthy proportion.

Just keep the 6 monthly/yearly list(s) for all the formal board order/section rules - a rather good idea anyway to be honest - and publish the monthly updates including as much data as you can get each time.

[Nick Grey]

Best league management software is Mitoo - as in football Mitoo.
Works fantastic but relies on various inputs from the club secretary & managers.
Great apps for contacting opponents, refs, league, & players.
On top of FAs new discipline system.

Any system will need more timely inputs from all & not just the league secretary.

[Dragoljub Sudar]

As a team captain, and a former league secretary who manually compiled the fixtures 9 times for the Nottinghamshire league (which by the way does not have any divisional grading limits and has no restrictions on board order apart from eligibility rules (apart from one occasion, you must play on the lowest two boards of 5 to remain eligible for lower teams)), I would quite like to see Nottinghamshire adopt some system.

I'm impressed by the work done to create the above systems, but do any of them provide the facility to see all of a division's results in detail 'in stream' on the same page as the Notts website currently does (http://www.nottschess.org/2014_15/d1.html)?
I find it very irritating to have to click on each match result to see the match details.

[Mick Norris]

I'm impressed by the work done to create the above systems, but do any of them provide the facility to see all of a division's results in detail 'in stream' on the same page as the Notts website currently does (http://www.nottschess.org/2014_15/d1.html)?
I find it very irritating to have to click on each match result to see the match details.

Yes, the MCF system allows you to see all results, and you can then sort these e.g. to see just C division you just click on a "C" - you can also see just the results of 1 team or of 1 club

[Mike Gunn]

Yes, the Surrey system does this.

[Angus French]

The Croydon League system also has this.

[Roger de Coverly]

The Croydon League system also has this.

This strikes me as an example of what I meant by a spreadsheet based system.

The question to be asked of all such systems is as to how the transmission of grading data via the local grader to the ECF works and what would streamline it, where it to be done monthly. I know that one problem can be the absence of grading codes for new players. You have to insist on the presence of grading codes to avoid ambiguous data, but as they can take a while to be issued, you can end up with your own home made temporary code, which later has to be updated.

Note for team captains

To complete the form using the automated features, set the Division value first by selecting the input cell adjacent to the 'Division' text and then choosing a value from the drop-down list which appears. The team lists will then populate and you can set Home Team and Away Team values from their drop-down lists. Once a Home Team value has been selected, the Home team player lists will populate and so on. If a player's name is not in the appropriate drop-down list, please input their details manually and provide an estimated grade if necessary.

Defaulted boards: For a named-player default, identify the player and then set their score to �0 (def)� � note: these games will NOT be graded. For an unnamed player default, select �(default)� from the dropdown list � the score will automatically be set to 0.

The form should print on a single page and you can print a partly-completed form to take to a match.

Please save completed result forms in .xls Excel format and email to Angus French at the addresses given at the bottom of the form.

[Angus French]

The Croydon League system also has this.

This strikes me as an example of what I meant by a spreadsheet based system.

The question to be asked of all such systems is as to how the transmission of grading data via the local grader to the ECF works and what would streamline it, where it to be done monthly. I know that one problem can be the absence of grading codes for new players. You have to insist on the presence of grading codes to avoid ambiguous data, but as they can take a while to be issued, you can end up with your own home made temporary code, which later has to be updated.

Yes, the Croydon League uses Excel for recording match results. An app extracts the data from results forms, validates it and stores it in a database. Players without an ECF Grading Ref are assigned a temporary reference (this is for internal use and can later be replaced with an official reference)... In the grading submission files (the ones sent to the ECF), temporary grading references are omitted - the ECF's own software will allocate a new reference after checking for matches on Name, Sex, DOB etc... Having to submit results each month wouldn't be a problem technically, just slightly tiresome extra work.