Shareware Overload/ShartewareOverload.cdr/busi/teammate.zip/TEAMMATE.DOC

Text File | 1990-03-11 | 18KB | 420 lines

                     Alex Freiman


                       Presents







                      TEAM-MATE (tm)


               Sports Scheduling Program














          IBM PC, XT, AT, PS2 and compatibles

       (c) Copyright 1990 - Alex Freiman











Published by:


              Alex Freiman
              162 Cedar Drive
              New Britain, PA  18901
              [phone]



                    Introduction


Welcome to TEAM-MATE (tm). TEAM-MATE is an advanced sports
scheduler for any sport that computes Round Robin schedules that include
date, time, place and officials (like umpires for baseball or referees
for football).  It is written using a high speed language that allows
for fast response on the smallest hardware configurations and supports
use of both the keyboard and mouse to control its operation.

Overview

TEAM-MATE is divided into 3 main sections which are shown on the main
menu when the program is first loaded.  These are:  Division Section,
Schedule Section and the Product Information Section.  The TEAM-MATE
scheduling unit is called a division.  We could have used the term
"League" or "Unit" or any number of names for a collection of
competitors.  We chose "Division" because many sports programs (called
Leagues) have several levels of play within their program and scheduling
is done for each level (Division).

The steps necessary to create a schedule are:

           o Enter the list of teams and officials that compete in each
             division.  Use the menu choice Create New Division.
           o Enter specifics about playing sites available such as day
             of week, time, and location of playing site.
           o Review schedule on the screen.  Make any changes
             desired in the scheduling information until you get the
             schedule the way you want it.
           o Print a copy of the schedule for distribution to teams.
             You may also save the schedule to an ASCII disk file
             and make changes with your favorite word processor.

That's really all there is to it.


Program Conventions

TEAM-MATE has been developed using a menu oriented approach which
makes the system easy to learn and use.  This section provides an
overview of keyboard and mouse conventions used in this program.

   o  Simple menus are used to ease selection of the functions
      that you want to perform.  To make a selection from a
      menu, you may use the cursor arrow keys to highlight a
      choice and then press <Enter> to actually make the
      selection.  An alternate method of selection from a
      menu is to enter the first letter of the item in the menu.
      This makes the selection immediately without requiring
      any other key to be pressed.  When a menu choice is
      highlighted, a short explanation is displayed on the
      bottom line of the screen.  This explanation appears in
      the same color as the menu that it explains.

   o  Mouse support allows for making selections on the
      menu and for moving the cursor around on the data
      entry screens.  Use the left button when <Enter> is
      required: use the right button when <Esc> is desired.

   o  The <Esc> key is the universal key for ESCAPE or
      EXIT from any function going on in the system.  Use it
      to backup to the previous menu level or to indicate that
      you are finished making entries on the current screen.

   o  To terminate TEAM-MATE, press the <Esc> key while in
      the main menu and confirm your request to exit by
      entering "y" and <Enter>.

   o  When entering data on the screen, the universal key to
      indicate that you have completed entering data
      successfully for that screen is the <PgDn> key.  This
      helps avoid having to press the RETURN key for each field
      until you get to the end of the screen.


Hardware Requirements

The minimum hardware requirements to run TEAM-MATE are:

           o An IBM PC, XT, AT, or PS/2
             computer or compatible.
           o 384K bytes of memory (RAM).
           o 1 Floppy disk drive.


Optional equipment supported:

           o Mouse

           o A second floppy disk drive - use one drive for
             the program and one for data.

           o Hard Disk Drive - the most convenient storage
             for your programs, division information and
             schedules.

           o a printer if you want to print a copy of your
             schedules.


Support and Problem Reporting

This version of TEAM-MATE has been thoroughly tested, but it is possible
that some combination of features or hardware may not work properly.
Most problems are due to simple user errors or misunderstandings,
ambiguous documentation, or bad diskettes.  If some problem comes up
which behaves like a "bug", first go to appendix B to review common
problems and questions and see if an answer has been provided.  If you
still can't figure out the problem, please let us know and we will try to fix
it (no guarantees but we will try our best).  We need your help to try to
recreate the problem.  Please describe the situation at the time the
problem occurred, for example, what function were you running, what
special environment do you have, what memory resident programs you
have loaded, etc.?  Try to print the screen using the Ctrl-PrtSc key.  Print
a copy of your CONFIG.SYS file and your AUTOEXEC.BAT file.  Make
a copy of your data files on diskette and send this information with your
original diskette back to us.  Please be sure to write your name, address
and phone number on all the materials you send so we can return it to
you.  Send this material to :

                     Alex Freiman
                     162 Cedar Drive
                     New Britain, Pa 18901
                     [phone]

                  Using the Menus


The first time you execute TEAM-MATE, you will see the Main Menu
displayed.  This menu allows you to access the Division Menu, the
Schedule Menu and to display Product Information.  The following
sections detail the functions of each menu and the choices within each
menu.


Division Menu

The division menu allow access to all the functions necessary to create
and maintain as many divisions as you need to manage your sports
program.  Division information consists of the list of team names within
the division and the names of officials (umpires, referees, etc.) to be
scheduled.  This information is then saved to disk for use later in case
you wish to modify your schedules or generate new schedules.  The
division maintenance choices are described below.

Create New Division

Choose this item to enter the names of teams for a new division that you
haven't previously created.  Also, enter the names of the officials to be
scheduled within this division.  Some organizations use the concept of
"crews" for scheduling a number of officials for each game.  For example,
if you wanted to schedule 3 umpires for each game in a baseball program,
you could assign 3 man crews and name the crew by the home plate
umpires name.  You would enter e.g. Al Clark as the crew chief and the
umpires who are assigned to Al's crew would know that they must attend
all games with Al's name on them.

After creating these lists of team names and officials, you should save the
division list to disk in case you want to experiment with the division later
or a late entry is received and a new team must be added to the division.

Get existing Division

This menu choice is used to select a division for scheduling.  You can
select any division created previously and saved to disk.  When you
choose to get a division, a pop-up window appears on the screen with a
list of all divisions available in the current directory.  In the simplest case,
all you have to do is locate the name of the division that you want, use
the arrow keys, PgDn, PgUp, Home, or End keys to highlight the division
name and press <Enter>.  The division names are in alphabetical order
and if there are too many to fit in the window, they will scroll up and
down using the positioning keys described above.  The division teams and
official names are now selected.

When using the mouse to select a division, you must place the diamond
shaped cursor on the division name to be selected.  Press the left button
to highlight the division.  When the desired division is highlighted, press
the left button again to select the division.  If there are too many names
to fit in the window, use the mouse to highlight the up or down arrow on
the right margin of the pop-up window.  The window will scroll one line
at a time.  For larger movement, click on the box in the right margin and
drag it up or down to move faster to the area of the directory you wish
to view.  When the entry you wish is highlighted, place the cursor on the
highlighted entry and press the left button.

If you are not trying to change to a different sub-directory, ignore the
lines that say "<dir>" in the second field of the pop-up window.  These
are described below and are only used if you use directory structures on
your disk.  If you don't know how to use directories, you probably don't
need to concern yourself with this information.  Directories are used
primarily by hard disk users and some additional information about
navigation through them is described below.  For more information on
directories, see your DOS reference manual.

Note that at the top of this pop-up window you can see the search name
used to tell DOS what files to list in the pop-up.  It contains the name of
the drive and subdirectory that you are pointing to followed by "*.DIV".
This identifies the directory to use and asks for the list of files that end
with "DIV" only.  Two types of entries are shown in the window: a
directory type entry and a "DIV" type entry.  The directory entry is
identified by the second field on the line which says "<dir>" and the
division type entry shows the size of the file used to store the division
information.  If you select a directory type of entry, TEAM-MATE will
change the current directory to the newly selected directory and
automatically show the list of divisions (and sub-directories) available in
that directory.  If you are not using the root directory, you will notice that
the first entry in the pop-up window contains a <dir> entry with a name
of "."(period).  This is the DOS terminology for the parent directory.
Using these capabilities, you will be able to select any directory on the
default disk drive.

After moving through the directories and locating the division name you
want to schedule, highlight the division name that is shown on the screen
and press enter to select that division.  To use the mouse, see the
directions above for mouse control.  The team names and officials names
will be loaded into the computer.
Edit Division

Use this menu entry to make changes to your list of teams or officials for
a particular division.  You can use the arrow keys to position to the field
you want to correct and then type in any changes you wish.  The mouse
will also allow you to position to any field to make corrections or
additions.  Be sure to press the <Enter> after typing in each field.  If you
press <Esc> before pressing the <Enter> on a field, your last entry may
be ignored.

When you are done making corrections, press <Esc> to return to the
division menu.  Don't forget to save these changes back to disk after you
are satisfied that they are correct.  To be safe, this should be done as
soon as you complete your editing of the division information, even before
creating any schedules.


Save Division to disk

This menu choice asks for the name of the division that you want to save.
Two small files are created to record information about each division:
<div>.DIV and <div>.OFF.  You may use up to 8 characters to name
your division and TEAM-MATE will automatically append the suffix to the
file names.

TEAM-MATE only saves the names of teams and officials for each division
on disk because you will normally want to change the information about
dates, times and fields each time you create a new schedule for each
division.

Delete Division from disk

When scheduling is completed or when divisions are deleted from your
program, you may wish to remove these files from your disk.  Use this
choice to delete the division files to preserve the disk space for
information that will be needed later.  Highlight the name of the division
that you wish to delete. (See Get Existing Division information about how
to locate a division).  When you select the division, a confirmation
message will appear asking if you really want to delete the division.
Answer "Y" and return to have the division deleted.



Schedule Menu

The schedule menu provides the necessary functions to identify field
locations, times, starting dates, number of games to play and exception
dates for building schedules.  It also provides the choices to display
schedules on the screen, print hard copies of the schedule or save the
output schedule to a disk file.  When writing to a disk file, you may use
your favorite word processor to fine tune the schedule with your
particular special requirements.  The following sections provide detailed
information about each of these functions.

Create Schedule

This item asks you for all the information needed to run a schedule
calculation.  The first screen that appears allows you to select the starting
date, the number of games to be scheduled for each team and any
specific dates that you don't want games scheduled on.

First select your starting date, the day you want to play the first game for
the division.  Next, you have to tell TEAM-MATE how many games you
want each team to play.  If you want each team to play an even number
of games against every other team (a complete round robin) in the
division, you must enter a number one less than the number of teams in
the division (or a multiple of this number).  This number is calculated for
you and shown on the screen.  For example, for a division of 8 teams to
play each other an even number of times, you will have to enter 7, 14, 21,
etc. to get an even number of matches between each team.  TEAM-MATE
will automatically schedule a minimum of one complete round robin.

The last area of this screen requests a list of exception dates.  These are
dates that you don't want any games scheduled for the division even
though these dates occur on the day of the week that the division
normally plays.  For example, holidays (like Memorial Day or Mother's
Day) or key league activities day (field maintenance, tournament play,
etc.) may demand that no games be scheduled on those days.  Enter the
list of days to skip.

When you are finished entering data on the first screen, press <Esc> to
complete this section and go on to entering the days of the week that you
will play, the name of the field and the time of each game on that field.

The next screen shows a list of the days of the week.  Highlight the days
that this division is to play, one at a time, and press enter.  Another
screen will appear allowing you to enter the field name and game time
allocated each week for the day selected.  Note that you can only
schedule one game per day per team.  No team will be scheduled to play
two games in one day.  This means that there is a limit to the number of
fields that can be used on a particular day.  This limit is 1/2 the number
of teams in the division.  Therefore, the maximum number of games
allowed is displayed for you to fill in.  Naturally, you don't have to enter
a field location for every allowable slot if fields are not available.

After the last field is entered, press <Esc> to indicate that you are
finished.  Be careful to press <Enter> on the last field of data you want
to enter before you press the <Esc> key to insure the data gets accepted
correctly.  Notice that when you return to the list of the days of the week,
those days that you scheduled games for will be marked with an "*" on
the left.

TEAM-MATE will schedule matches so no team is scheduled to play twice
in one day.

The schedule may now be reviewed on the screen, written to disk as a
pure ASCII file for use in your word processor, or printed on your printer.
See below for more detail.

Display Schedule on Screen

This allows you to proof read your schedule without wasting paper or disk
space.  Schedule records are displayed one screen at a time.  When the
screen pauses, press any key to continue the display.  If there are errors in
the schedule, you can select Create Schedule again and make changes in
the available dates, list of teams, etc. until the schedule is correct.  You
then can exercise any of the options described below: write schedule to
disk, or print schedule.

Write Schedule to Disk

This creates an ASCII file on disk for you to view or modify with your
own word processor if you have special changes to make.  After changes
have been successfully completed, you may then print the schedule with
your word processor.

Print Schedule to Printer

This menu choice is helpful in evaluating long schedules and in marking
any changes that you find.  You can then change the input to the program
and have it generate another trial schedule until you get the final schedule
that you wish to use.


Product Information

This menu choice is here for your convenience.  It contains information
on how to order TEAM-MATE either by mail or by phone.