Manual: Features-Conflicts

Conflicts

SelfAssign represents a mechanism that permits a Referee to indicate an interest in and directly obtain an Assignment without involving another individual (e.g. Assignor) in the process. It (SelfAssign) is designed to eliminate the slow and cumbersome "collect availability; make assignments; Confirm or Accept assignment" cycle of traditional paper-and-pencil sorts of assigning.

This is accomplished through the implementation of a series of SelfAssign Rules that the Chapter selects that are intended to enforce Chapter policies about Assignments. Basically, any time a human Assignor would clearly permit an Assignment to the requesting Referee, SelfAssign should permit that Referee to assign himself/herself to the Assignment without an Assignor's intervention.

However, there are many situations where Assignors do have to be involved in making Assignments, for all sorts of predictable and unpredictable reasons. Whenever this happens, it becomes very possible (and often times, quite likely) that the Assignor making a "manual Assignment" could, inadvertently, assign a Referee to an Assignment that is in violation of one or more SelfAssign Rules for the Assignment. The Assignor does have mechanisms (Assignor: Assignment-SelfAssign) to mitigate this, but...the fact remains that the Assignment schedule is, periodically, simply in conflict. And, of course, when there are a large number of Referees, Matches, and corresponding Assignments it is quite a difficult task for a human Assignor to double check all aspects of each Assignment for each Referee.

Feature=Conflicts is designed to double check Assignments on Matches during key points of processing by re-verifying that the applicable SelfAssign Rules are valid for any Referees assigned to the Match. Typically, when an Assignor looks at the Match (Assignor: Assignment), when a Referee looks at the Match (Referee: Inquiry), or when an Administrator looks at a Match (Administrator: Manage-Matches). Feature=Conflicts quite literally re-runs the SelfAssign Rules (as specified in Setting=Rules.Conflicts) for the Assignment for each Referee assigned to the match and displays any Rule failures that might be present.

The basic concept is that if we can forewarn the User (Referee, Assignor, Administrator, ...), then we can head off an Assignment problem BEFORE the Match date arrives. Think of Feature=Conflicts as an early warning system for one or more Assignments that have potential to be a problem and MAY need looking into.

The Feature is customized via Setting (Rules.Conflicts) and can be installed in the Chapter site in full or partial implementation (depending upon the Chapter's Policies and Webmaster instructions).