Understand the interface and core concepts

Use the dashboard and sidebar to move between reusable app records and the data for one tournament. This chapter explains the navigation, counters, core competition objects, and status labels without going into the procedures covered later in the guide.

Open and close a tournament

The Tournaments dashboard is the first screen outside a tournament. It shows one card for each tournament, including its name, dates, and current status.

Open Tournaments in the main sidebar.
Select a tournament card.

The tournament opens on Overview. Its name and status appear above the page, and the sidebar changes to tournament-specific navigation.

To leave the tournament, select Close tournament above the tournament navigation. This returns to Tournaments and restores the global sidebar. Closing a tournament only changes the current view. It does not change the tournament status, delete data, or stop work that has already been saved.

Use New Tournament when you are ready to create another tournament. Tournament creation and configuration are covered in a later chapter.

The global sidebar is available when no tournament is open:

Tournaments opens the dashboard.
Players manages the reusable player registry.
Doubles manages reusable doubles pairs.
Venues manages reusable venues.
Help opens this guide.
Settings manages app-wide defaults.

Use Collapse sidebar to show only the navigation icons. Select Expand sidebar to restore the labels.

Opening a tournament replaces the global navigation with sections for that tournament. The sections follow the usual flow from setup to results.

Overview is a standalone page. It shows the tournament details and status, event categories, publication controls, and the Setup Checklist.

The other pages are arranged in four labelled groups:

Participants contains Players and Entries. Use these pages for tournament registrations and event entries.
Plan contains Format, Draft, Draws, and Planner. Use these pages to design the competition structure, create matches, and assign actual matches to times and courts.
Schedule contains Match day, Match results, Standings, and Activity. Use these pages while running the tournament and reviewing current play.
Outcome contains Results and Reports. Use these pages for final places and printable summaries.

The Schedule label is a navigation group, not a separate page in the sidebar. Planner is where generated matches are assigned to the working schedule. Match day is where that schedule is operated.

A number beside a section is a current workload or record count. It is not a warning and does not necessarily mean that the section is complete.

Players counts all player registrations in the tournament, regardless of registration status.
Entries counts all entries across the tournament’s events.
Draft counts virtual matches in the primary format plan that have not been placed in a draft slot.
Draws counts all draws across the tournament’s events.
Planner counts generated matches that do not have a scheduled time.
Match day counts generated matches that do not have a final result. Matches marked finished, walkover, or retired are not included.

In a collapsed sidebar, the same numbers appear as small badges on the icons. Counts are refreshed when you move between tournament pages and after supported changes on those pages.

Separate global records from tournament data

Global records can be reused. Tournament data belongs to one tournament and describes how those records participate there.

A player in global Players is not automatically registered in a tournament. A pair in global Doubles is not automatically an entry. A venue can be selected by more than one tournament, while courts, events, registrations, entries, draws, matches, and results belong to a specific tournament.

Use global Players, Doubles, and Venues to prepare reusable records. After opening a tournament, use Players and Entries to decide who participates in that tournament and in each event. See Set up app defaults and directories for the global setup procedures.

Understand tournament and participant concepts

A tournament is the complete competition. It contains dates, a venue, courts, events, registrations, plans, draws, matches, and outcomes.
An event is one competition category inside a tournament, such as MS, WS, MD, WD, or XD. An event has its own entries and competition structure.
A player is one person in the global player registry. The same player record can be used in more than one tournament.
A registration connects a player to one tournament and records whether that player is pending, accepted, or rejected.
A pair is two players who compete together in doubles. A pair is reusable and does not by itself place the players in an event.
An entry is the participant in one tournament event: one player for singles or one pair for doubles.

Registration and entry are different levels of participation. Accepting a player’s registration confirms the player for the tournament. Adding an entry places an accepted singles player or doubles pair in a specific event.

Understand plans, draws, and matches

A format plan is a saved scenario for the structure and capacity of the tournament. It describes possible phases and estimates how many matches and court-time slots they require.
A phase is an ordered stage of one event. Each phase uses one kind of competition structure and contains one or more draws.
A draw is one group or one knockout bracket inside a phase. Draws hold entries and are used to generate actual matches.
A match is one contest in a draw. It can be assigned a time and court, started, and given a result.
A side is one participant in a particular match: a singles player or a doubles pair.
A court is a playable court configured inside one tournament. Courts are used by the draft grid, the actual planner, and match-day operations.

Use side only in the context of a match. Use entry when referring to participation in an event or draw, and pair when referring to the two players competing together in doubles.

Distinguish the planning screens

The planning pages represent different levels of commitment:

Format compares saved format plans. Use it to model phases, draw sizes, match totals, and available court time before actual draws and matches exist.
Draft places virtual matches from one format plan into provisional court and time slots. Virtual matches describe expected workload without fixed entries as sides. Draft assignments stay with that format plan.
Draws creates the actual groups and knockout brackets for each event. Entries are assigned here, and actual matches are generated from the draw.
Planner works with those generated matches. Use it to assign or remove their actual court and time slots.
Match day is the operational view. It evaluates the queue, shows free and occupied courts, starts matches, and records results.

Changing a draft does not schedule actual matches. Creating actual draws from a format plan does not add entries or generate matches by itself. These later actions are covered in their dedicated chapters.

Compare round robin and knockout

In a round robin phase, each entry in a group plays every other entry in that group. Results contribute to group standings, which rank the entries after their matches.

In a knockout or playoff phase, entries occupy positions in a bracket. A decided match advances its winning side, while the other side leaves that path through the bracket. Later matches can remain unresolved until earlier winners or linked qualifiers are known.

One event can contain more than one phase. A common structure is a round robin phase followed by a knockout phase, but the format plan and actual draws determine the structure used for each event.

Read tournament statuses

The status beside the tournament name is selected manually. In the current app it is an informational label: changing it does not open or close registration screens, publish data, or enforce a fixed sequence.

Published is the default label for a new tournament. It is separate from the publication controls on Overview and Match day.
Registration Open indicates that registrations are being collected.
Registration Closed indicates that registration collection has ended.
In Progress indicates that tournament play is under way.
Finished indicates that the tournament is complete.

Select the status beside the tournament name to update the label. Choose the value that communicates the tournament’s current stage to other operators and in published tournament data.

Read registration statuses

Each player registration has one of these statuses:

Pending means the registration has been added but has not been accepted or rejected.
Accepted means the player is confirmed for the tournament. Only accepted players are offered for new event entries.
Rejected means the player remains in the tournament registration list but is not eligible for a new entry.

These statuses belong to the registration, not to the global player record. The same player can have a different registration status in another tournament.

Read match statuses

Match status describes whether the match is waiting, on court, or decided. Court and time assignment is shown separately and should not be inferred from the status name alone.

Scheduled means the match exists but is waiting to become ready, commonly because one or both sides depend on earlier playoff results.
Ready means both sides are known and the match has not started. Match day can still show it as blocked, resting, or waiting because of live-player conflicts, rest time, availability, or timing.
Live means the match has started on a court.
Finished means normal play ended with a recorded result.
Walkover means the match was decided without normal play, including an automatic advance through an empty bracket position.
Retired means play ended early and a winning side was recorded.

The Match day counter treats Finished, Walkover, and Retired as completed outcomes.

Before you continue

Check that you are working in the intended tournament before changing tournament-specific data.
Check the tournament status as an informational label; do not use it as confirmation that registration or publication actions have occurred.
Check whether a sidebar counter represents total records, unscheduled work, or unplayed matches before using it as a progress measure.