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Import Your League Meet Schedule

Tracy Nelson
  • Updated

If all of your teams are using SwimTopia, you can send us your league’s entire meet schedule and we'll perform a League Meet Schedule Import.  With this import, the meets for each team will automatically appear on each team’s Schedule, and all the meets for all the teams will appear on your league’s Schedule.

>>Note: Before we can conduct a League Meet Schedule Import, you must set up a Shared Meet Template.  For more information ➞ See our Help Center article about Shared Meet Templates. 

Also, please ensure you have set up your current season, including the age-up date for your league, and that all of your teams have updated their seasons to the current season on their sites, with the correct age-up date, as well➞ See Creating & Managing Seasons.

Covered in this Article:

League Meet Schedule File

To perform the League Meet Schedule Import, we’ll need a special file from you with details about each meet, including date, start time, visiting and home teams, and course for each team in the league.

Step 1: Download the League Meet Schedule File

First, download the following league meet schedule file: meet_schedule.csv 

You can open this csv file in a spreadsheet tool such as Microsoft Excel or Google Spreadsheet to make it easier to enter the information.

Step 2: Add Meets to the League Meet Schedule File

In the meet schedule file, you’ll see the following columns:  

league-schedule.png

For each meet, you’ll set up a new row, with the following information in each column:

  • MeetDate: enter the meet date in m/d/yyyy format, e.g., 7/8/2018
  • MeetStart: enter the meet start time in h:mm pm/am format, e.g., 9:00 am
  • HomeTeam: enter the home team’s abbreviation, up to 5 characters maximum, e.g., PELA 
    >>Note: to check the accuracy of your teams' abbreviations, go to Manage League > Settings > Division Assignments. The abbreviation in the spreadsheet must match the abbreviation in our system for each team.
  • VisitingTeam: enter the visiting team’s abbreviation, up to the 5 character maximum, e.g., MOSA
  • SwimCourse: the three letter code for the meet’s course, one of the following—SCY (for Short Course Yards), SCM (for Short Course Meters), or LCM (for Long Course Meters)
  • MeetName: optional; we recommend adding a meet name that makes sense to your teams' parents
    • If left blank, the default meet names will be generated in the format 'YYYY ShortName1 at ShortName2' where:
      • YYYY is the 4-digit year
      • ShortName1 is the short (max 16 char) name of the visiting team (found in Settings > Team Information)
      • ShortName2 is the short (max 16 char) name of the home team
      • In the example above, if MeetName had been left blank, the meet name would be '2020 Megaladons at Mosasaurs'
    • >>Note: if preferred, the league can opt to use abbreviations in meet names instead (where MeetName is left blank), where the meet name format will be 'YYYY ABBR1 at ABBR2. If you'd prefer this format, let us know when you submit your spreadsheet'.
      • YYYY = the four-digit year
      • ABBR1 = the visiting team's abbreviation
      • ABBR2 = the home team's abbreviation
      • In the example above, the meet name would become: '2020 MEGA at MOSA'
      • The league must let us know if that is their preference
    • If there are more than two teams at a meet and MeetName is left blank, all visiting teams will be listed before the home team (the default would be 'YYYY Shortname1 and Shortname2 at Shortname3')
  • Location: optional; if left blank will show the home team’s full name on the league and team Schedule pages
  • MeetTemplateID: enter the numeric ID for the shared meet template this meet will employ (see Meet Template, below) 
  • Team3, Team4: optional additional teams for tri-meets and other meets with more than two teams. Add as many “Team” columns (Team5 and so on) as you need for meets with more than 4 teams, invitationals, championships, and so forth.

Step 3: Send the Completed League Meet Schedule File

Once you have each meet entered on the spreadsheet, send the file to your friendly SwimTopia Customer Happiness team via leagues@swimtopia.com. The Customer Happiness Team will upload the file, populating the league website with all meets, and each teams’ website with the meets their team is participating in. 

When you send your spreadsheet to us, please let us know:

  • Whether we have permission to update your teams' seasons (if out of date) and age-up dates (if not correct)
  • Whether we can make corrections to your teams' preferred pool course (SCM or SCY) if it happens to be set incorrectly under Settings > Team Information (this requires you are very certain of their pool course before you submit the spreadsheet)
  • If you'd prefer that the meets on the league site don't appear on the public-facing calendar (some leagues would prefer that their calendar only list league events, such as board meetings). If you'd like your meets to appear in your calendar, we recommend you switch your calendar display mode to Upcoming/Past. See Calendar Display Mode

 

Meet Template

Each meet should have a meet template. The meet template must be shared at the league level. Different meets can use different templates, but you only need to use a different template if the Events, Entry Rules, Entry Fees, Eligibility, or Seeding & Scoring change.

Once SwimTopia loads your League Meet Schedule, it’s imperative you not “unshare” the template(s) used. You CAN make changes to the shared template and those changes will propagate to the meets using the template, as long as that meet is in the future or the changes you make don’t remove events that already have entries. 

MeetTemplateID 

The numeric id for the shared meet template this meet will employ. Each Meet Template has a unique numeric ID which you can find in the url for that particular meet. To access the meet template, go to Manage League > Schedule > Meet Templates and click the link for the shared meet template you want the meet to use.

Look at your browser's url field for something like:

../manage/swim_meet_templates/1066/events

The numeric value between “swim_meet_templates/” and “/events”, in this case “1066” will be the what you want to use for your League Schedule.

MeetTemplateID.png

 

Current Season

Ensure that your Current Season is up-to-date and that the age-up-date is accurate.  It also helps if all of your teams have updated their Current Season as well.

➞ See: Leagues: Transitioning to a New Season

Imported Meets

Teams' Schedules

The Schedule page for each of your teams will list all of the meets in which that team is a competitor (including home and away).

➧ Imported Meet Settings: 

  • The date, time, and course as defined in the import file
  • Meet name as defined in the import file; if not defined, will be listed as (Visiting Team’s Abbreviation) Visiting Team’s Full Name at (Home Team’s Abbreviation) Home Team’s Full Name
  • The location will be the home team’s abbreviation if the location is not set in the import file

League_-_schedule_import_-_team.png

➧ Other Meet Settings:

Your teams will still need to go into each of their meets to add any description information, Meet Participation Settings, and Volunteer Jobs.  

For more information ➞ See:

>>Note: Please notify your teams that their meets have been populated into their Schedules and that they’ll need to review each one to ensure their meets are set up properly.

➧ Linked Meets: 

Each meet will be linked to its competitor via a link to a corresponding meet on the league's schedule (see below).  This link is needed for scoring validation, Meet Maestro operations, and SwimTopia Mobile features.  

>> Note: It is very important that teams do not unlink meets, change the date of any linked meets, or delete any meets that are linked. Doing so will affect scoring, Meet Maestro and the mobile app. 

➧ Duplicate meets: 

If there is a meet already set up on the team's SwimTopia site with the same date as a meet provided in the league import, our system assumes it is the same meet and that the team had set up their meets before the import was conducted.  Once the import occurs, meets with the same date will be replaced by the meet provided by the league, while preserving the name that the team had originally entered for that meet.

League Schedule

The League’s Schedule page will list every meet for every member team as defined in the file.

Each meet’s name will follow the same pattern as on the teams' sites:

  • (Visiting Team’s Abbreviation) Visiting Team’s Full Name at (Home Team’s Abbreviation) Home Team’s Full Name
  • The location will be the home team’s full name if the location is not set in the import file
  • The date, time, and course will be as defined in the import file

League_meet_schedule_-_import.png

 

These meets will appear on the league's public-facing calendar, unless you ask us to hide them when you send the schedule to us.

 

➧ Linked meets:

Each meet on the league's schedule will be linked to the corresponding meet on each team's site.  In the example schedule shown above, the January 1 meet will be listed in three places:  the league's SwimTopia site, the MOSA site, and the MEGA site.  The MOSA and MEGA meets are linked to the meet listed above on the league's schedule.  In that meet on the league site, under Meet Setup > Linking, you can see the meets on both teams' sites that are linked to the league's meet:

mceclip0.png

>> Note: It is very important that teams do not unlink meets, change the date of any linked meets, or delete any meets that are linked.  This link is needed for scoring validation, Meet Maestro operations, and SwimTopia Mobile features. 

Scoring and Standings

Once you’ve set up all of your league’s meets using our League Meet Schedule import, you can begin keeping track of each meet’s scores, and you can track the teams’ win-loss standings.

➞ Read more: Scoring for Leagues

➞ Read more: League Standings Snippet

 

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