Player Lineup Manager

History

Some variant of plm has been used privately since 2014 to schedule tennis doubles matches for a group of around 30 tennis players. Play for this group occurs weekly on Tuesdays using as many courts as necessary and the schedules are made for three months (one quarter) at a time. More recently, smaller Monday and Friday groups have been added each using at most one court. The process involves these steps.

Obtain from each player a list of the dates that the player can play.
Randomly sort available players for each date into groups of two (singles) or four (doubles) taking account of previous pairings.
From each group, randomly select a 'captain' taking account of previous selections.
Produce a "user friendly" version of the schedule organized both by date and by player.
Send the completed schedule to each player.

The current version of this program automates each of the steps in this process and allows some flexibility in scheduling dates, indicating a willingness to be a possible substitute, specifying the number of players per court (doubles or singles), and so forth. A further change is that all information relevant to a project is now stored in a single, project file in yaml format with players's responses listing the dates that the player can play rather than the dates the player cannot play. A final change is that plm is now publically available both from PyPi, plm-dgraham, and from GitHub, dagraham/plm-dgraham.

Requirements

This program requires python3. To check for this requirement, open a terminal window and execute:

    ~ % which python3

If python3 is installed the response should be something like

    /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/bin/python3

and, otherwise,

    python3 not found

If python3 is not installed, follow the appropriate installation procedure for your platform.

Initial Setup

If python3 is installed, the next step is to setup a home directory for plm to use when it starts. These are the options:

If the current working directory contains a file 'roster.yaml' and a directory 'projects', then it will be used as the home directory.
Otherwise if the environmental variable 'plmHOME' is set and points to a directory, then that directory will be used as the home directory.
Otherwise ~/plm will be used as the home directory and, with your permission, created if it does not already exist.

When plm is started for the first time, a sub-directory called projects and a file called roster.yaml will be created in the home directory if they do not already exist.

Installation

For personal use

The easiest way to install plm for personal use is to use pip. First update the python package manager, pip, using python3

    ~ % python3 -m pip install -U pip

and then install plm itself

    ~ % python3 -m pip install -U plm-dgraham

This will install plm and any needed supporting python modules. This same can also also be used to update plm when a new version becomes available.

For use in an isolated environment {#For-use-in-an-isolated-environment}

Installing plm in an isolated or virtual environment (sandbox) is only slightly more complicated. Begin by using pip to install pipx:

$ python3 -m pip install -U pipx

Now run:

$ pipx ensurepath

to ensure that directories necessary for pipx operation are in your PATH environment variable and finally to install plm itself:

$ pipx install plm-dgraham

To upgrade plm when a new version becomes available, simply replace "install" in this command with "upgrade".

Starting plm

Either way, you can then start plm with

$ plm <path to home>

and you will see something like this

    Player Lineup Manager (0.3.4)
    home directory: ~/plm
    project: The active project has not yet been chosen.
    Use command 'c' to create one or 'p' to select one.

    commands:
        h:  show this help message
        H:  show on-line documentation
        e:  edit 'roster.yaml' using the default text editor
        c:  create/update a project                           (1)
        p:  select the active project from existing projects  (1)
        a:  ask players for their "can play" dates            (2)
        r:  record the "can play" responses                   (3)
        n:  nag players to submit can play responses          (4)
        s:  schedule play using the "can play" responses      (5)
        d:  deliver the schedule to the players               (6)
        v:  view the current settings of a project
        u:  check for an update to a later plm version
        q:  quit

    command:

This begins a loop in which plm waits for you to enter a command at the prompt, processes the command and, unless the command q (quit) is given, waits for your next command.

Note: the commands a, r, s, d and v begin with a request that you select the active project if you have not already done so with either c or p. Tab completion is available and, once a selection is made, this project becomes the active project for any further use of the commands in this group while the command loop continues.

The Player Directory: roster.yaml

This file is the directory for the players in all of your projects. It should be populated with all the relevant players for a project before you create the project itself.

You can open roster.yaml in your favorite editor or use command e:

    command: e

to have plm open the file for you. Each line in the roster file should have the format

    lastname, firstname: [emailaddress,  tag1, tag2, ... ]

For example:

    Doaks, Steve: [stvdoaks321@gmail.com, mon, tue]
    Smith, John: [jsmith123@gmail.com, tue, fri]
    ...

When creating a new project, you will be prompted for the tag of the players to be included so that, in the above example, the tag mon would include only Steve, but the tag tue would include both Steve and John.

It is worth devoting some thought to the tag scheme you will use before you start adding players. My schedules involve groups that play on a particular week day so I tend to use tags for the week day that the group plays, e.g., mon for the group that plays on Monday. Note that tags are case sensitive so mon, Mon and MON are all different tags.

A New Project From Start to Finish

1. Create the project file

Start plm, if necessary, and use the create project command:

    command: c

Then follow the on-line prompts to enter the project information. This information will be stored in a new file in the projects directory, <project_name>.yaml, where <project_name> is the name you provide for the project. A short name that sorts well and is suggestive is recommended, e.g., 2022-4Q-TU.

The value of CAN in the project settings affects both the request for player dates and the interpretation of the dates:

When CAN == y (the default) the request is for a list of dates on which the player CAN play.
When CAN == n the request is for a list of dates on which the player CANNOT play.

2. Request player dates

With the project file created, the next step is to request the "CAN" or "CANNOT" play dates from the players (depending upon the setting for CAN). To do this start plm, if necessary, and use the ask command:

    command: a

You will be advised to open your favorite email application and create a new, empty email. You will then be prompted to select the relevant project. Tab completion is available to choose the project you created in the previous step. When you have selected the project, you will then be advised that the relevant email addresses have been copied to the system clipboard. Paste these into the "To" section of your new email and then press return in plm to continue. You will next be advised that the relevant subject has been copied to the system clipboard. Paste this into the "Subject" section of your email and again press return in plm to continue. You will finally be advised that the body of the request email has been copied to the system clipboard for you to paste into your email. When you are satisfied with the result, you can send the completed email.

3. Enter player responses

As you receive responses, you can start plm, if necessary, and use the record command:

    command: r

Again you will be prompted to choose the relevant project with tab completion available. This begins a loop in which you can choose a player using tab completion and then enter the player's response to the dates request. The response for a player can be 'all', 'none', 'nr' (no response) or a comma separated list of dates using the month/day format. Asterisks can be appended to dates in which the player wants to be listed as a sub, e.g., '10/4, 10/18*, 10/25' for can or cannot play on 10/4 or 10/25 (depending upon CAN) and might be able to subsitute on 10/18. This process continues until you enter a 'q' to end the loop and, if changes have been made, indicate whether or not you would like to save them. This entry process can be repeated as often as you like until you are satisfied that all responses have been correctly entered.

Hint: you can have plm running in a terminal window near your email program with the r command activated so that when you get a reply from say, Joe Smith, you can just enter "j" at the prompt to choose "Joe Smith" using auto completion and then enter his reply. This is handy because the replies will, at best, arrive sporadically.

4. Process responses to create the schedule

Start plm, if necessary, and use the schedule command when you are satisfied that all player responses have been received and recorded.

    command: s

Again, you will be prompted to choose the relevant project using tab completion. The schedule will be processed and added to the project file without further input.

5. Deliver the completed schedule to the players

This step involves the deliver command.

    command: d

As with the process for requesting "can play" dates, this prompts for the relevant project and then successively copies 1) the email addresses, 2) the subject and 3) the schedule itself to the system clipboard so that each can be pasted in turn into an email to be sent to the relevant players.

Modifying an existing project

You might want to add a player to a project you've already created, update the email address of an existing player or make some other change to an existing project. To do this, first make any needed changes to roster.yaml using

    command: e

When adding new players or modifying the email addresses of existing players, the changes will be incorporated into an existing project in the next step. Also, any responses that have been recorded for existing players will be preserved in the next step. However, changing the name of an existing player will effectively delete the original player and then add the new player. Any "can play" response you might have recorded in the project under the original name of the player would be lost in the process.

When you've finished updating roster.yaml, the next step is to use the project command

    command: p

You will again be prompted for the same information you entered when you first created the project, but this time your previous responses will be the defaults. With each prompt, you can simply press enter to accept your original entry or make any changes you like and then press enter to update the entry. When you have finished with each of the prompts, you will be asked for a final confirmation before modifying the original project file. As noted above, any "can play" responses that had previously been recorded in the project will be preserved for players whose names have not been changed.