What is a Rating System?
Some organizations require that only officials of a certain skill level be assigned to games or positions of a certain age group. For instance, a soccer team in an Under 16 age group may require a higher-skilled official than a team in an Under 8 age group.
Our platform offers an easy solution for this through our Rating System feature.
How does a Rating System work?
The Rating System allows assignors to:
Rate officials based on their skill level (via their Ratings).
Configure rating requirements for games (through Age Groups).
And only assign officials to games in which they are qualified to work (by way of Conflict Codes).
If you’d like to implement this kind of rating system on your site, keep reading…
Here’s an example.
Let’s say we have a soccer league with officials that are all rated a number, 1 through 10, 10 being the highest.
Officials rated 1 through 6 can work games in the Under 8 Age Group.*
Officials rated 5 through 10 can work games in the Under 16 Age Group.*
Regardless of what position the official is working (e.g. Referee or Assistant Referee).
To use a specific example, let’s say…
Ted Lasso is rated a 3.
He would be permitted to work games in the Under 8 Age Group, because 3 falls within 1-6.
But he would not be permitted to work games in the Under 16 Age Group, because 3 falls outside 5-10.
If his assignor tried to assign him to an Under 16 Age Group game, they would see an R next to his name in the assigning dropdown (i.e. Ratings Conflict).
💡 This example walked through illustrated an organization with one rating scale across all positions. Note that the platform also supports position-specific ratings, and multiple ratings per person, if that’s something your organization needs.
In other words, if an organization had an Under 8 age group and an Under 16 age group, each with their own rating scale and rating requirements, they could easily set those up as separate rating types from within their site.
How do I set up my Rating System?
1. Unlock the Rating System feature on your site.
The Rating System feature is available for any customers on our League, Elite, and Enterprise plans.
If you’re on one of these plans and want to use the Rating System, reach out to us at [email protected], and we’ll be happy to enable it for you!
2. Create your Rating Type(s).
This is where you get to create and name your rating scale.
To create a Rating Type, follow these steps:
Select Maintenance → Rating Types in your menu.
Select + Add New Rating Type.
Under Name, type the name of your Rating Type. You can name it something as simple as Rating. Note: if you are creating multiple, position-specific ratings, we recommend naming each Rating Type after the position it will apply to (e.g. Assistant Referee Rating).
Under Applies to All Positions — Select All. Note: if you are creating multiple, position-specific ratings, select the specific position you’d like your Rating Type to apply to.
Select Save.
4. Configure your Age Groups with their Corresponding Rating Requirements.
As we’ve mentioned, Rating Types are designed to coincide with Age Groups in the system.
To configure your Age Groups with their corresponding rating requirements, follow these steps:
Select Maintenance → Ages & Fees in your menu.
Select + Add New Age Group to add a new age group, or select Edit next to an existing Age Group that you wish to add a rating requirement to.
Under Ratings, in the Low and High columns, enter your acceptable rating ranges for each of your Rating Types.
Select Save.
Repeat steps 1-4 above, for each of your Age Groups.
5. Add your Officials’ Ratings.
To add your Officials’ ratings to their profiles one-at-a-time, follow these steps:
Select People.
Select the profile of the person you wish to add a rating(s) to.
Select Edit.
Under Ratings, enter their rating for each Rating Type.
Select Save.
To update your Officials’ ratings in bulk, complete a batch update by following the steps in this article. You’ll want to use an export of your Officials Only spreadsheet, which you can download from the bottom of the People page. From there, you can update it to include a column(s) of your Officials rating(s), and re-import it into the system.
💡 If you haven’t yet added your officials to the platform, you can learn how to here. Note that you can simply add a Rating column(s) to your spreadsheet in order to add your officials and their ratings in one go.
6. Avoid assigning officials to games they don’t meet the rating requirements for, by using the Ratings Conflict Code.
You’ll be able to see if an official does not meet a game’s (and its age group’s) rating requirements from the main assigning page, using conflict codes, which you can learn all about here.
To summarize, you can follow these steps to see if an official has a Ratings conflict or not.
Select Games.
Select Assign next to whichever game you’d like to assign officials to.
Select the assigning dropdown for the position you’d like to assign an official to.
Look at any conflict codes next to an official’s name. If you see an R next to someone’s name, this means there’s a Ratings conflict. In other words, the official does not meet this game’s rating requirements, and should not be assigned to this game.
Select the name(s) of the people you’d like to assign to this game.
Select Save.
Again, you can learn about the full assigning process here. 👍 Let us know if you have any questions as you set up your Ratings system!