Leagues - the finer details for organisers

MMM automatically enters players into the next month's leagues when it is 'opened' for signups. Therefore, for a whole month, players who MMM did not auto enter have an opportunity to enter themselves and players who were auto entered have an opportunity to take themselves out.

The automatic entry ONLY happens if 'automatically enter me each time' is set to on (auto enter). This setting is itself maintained relatively seamlessly though it can be manually set by a player in 'My interests' and by the organiser when managing the joiners.

If a player enters into the leagues themselves the auto enter is then set to on. If a player leaves the leagues they are prompted as to whether this is temporary or permanent - their response sets auto enter accordingly.

When you, as organiser, add or remove a player from the league joiners list, auto enter is not affected. The organiser can only change the auto enter by clicking on the double arrow button against their name in the 'Event joiners and draw creation' tab.

This last point is important and MMM highlights the potential issues for the organiser. As an example, let's have a look at league 1 below:

Both Dave and Mike have a red double arrow button indicator - this is warning you that they are in this month's leagues but do not have auto enter on. You can set it on for them by clicking the button and confirming the subsequent prompt. Essentially the red button is telling you that they are in this month's leagues but will not be auto entered subsequently. This might reflect the genuine wish of the player, but generally it's advisable to check with these people.
 
Important note: If you add a player into the joiners list you may well want to set their auto enter on as well. Not only that, you may want to set them into next month's leagues (in 'open' stage) as well, because that league has already executed the auto enter process. So possibly 3 actions to take to ensure an added player is 'fully' added! Organiser's additions may be quite a manual procedure unlike when the player does it themselves (in the above example, both Dave and Mike are not joined in the March leagues).

Conversely, you may have players in the non joiners list who do have their auto enter on. This is quite possible if a player has indicated they want to miss this month but wish to continue thereafter. But all the same, it is worth checking such situations too. For example, if you click the 'show all eligible non joiners to this event' option above the non joiners list you'll see all members not in the leagues. Those who have their auto enter set despite this are shown with a green double arrow button indicator. In the example below, we can see 4 such examples (clicking the double arrow button in the header filters for just those people):

So as organiser, it's always advisable to double check absences are intended for being just for the month in question.

It can tricky to have a smooth experience with players coming in and out of the leagues, and it's a very difficult thing systematically to avoid unwelcome surprises when the process is built around on line self service. But our experience is that it does settle down and players/organisers find the groove.

One of the main issues is organisers understanding that when they enter people manually there may be additional work to do (as per important note above). When following the advice as described above, the experience should smooth out significantly. If not, the issues are likely to carry over from one month to the next (e.g. Dave & Mike may be disappointed to find they are not in March's leagues and maybe Phil, Tom, Callum & Samuel don't expect to be in March).