Do you schedule your refs through the IMleagues Ref option?

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Just wondering. We are thinking about doing some type of online-scheduling and wondered if anyone actually uses the option available on IMleagues. Would love to hear from you.

Jared and Brett and Texas Tech

@McCauley I've tried it in the past, but it doesn't quite work like I want it to. I've asked for a couple of years now about it, but it needs to be updated before I would use it. I've spoken to the guys and they've said it's in the plans, but other things have taken precedence, which is fine cause the upgrades to everything else has been good. It's probably time though for that aspect to be updated.

We use it as our primary scheduling tool. It has some bumps, but overall has worked well. We opted for Refs to input their Unavailability and assume they are otherwise available. After we run a season's schedule, they have 24 hours in input all their unavailability before we make assignments. The drop down menus for assigning make it quite easy...we just keep record of how many games each ref has. Once a schedule is published, it pushes their work schedule to their IMLeagues calendar. Downside: When you reschedule a game they are assigned to, it takes the refs with it and does not consider their availability or if they are reffing/playing in other games at that time.

@Allison Thanks for the heads up. Good info.

This is a really good topic. We've been planning on overhauling our refs area! I feel like there are a few things that would be pretty easy to do that could really make a huge difference in its usability. Those who are familiar with this section we'd love the feedback.

Additionally how many people use ref specific software and if you do which program do you ue and do you like it? We've been considering integrating with ref software as well and it would be great to get that feedback.

Thanks!
Doug

Doug- I used to imleagues.com and then I changed to excel (using the imleagues availability calendar) and now I use the Arbiter. Arbitersports.com does have a fee to it, but it is easy to use and with officials on staff being certified and local assignors use that software it prevents me from scheduling students who have high school games and also prevents them from being assigned high school games if they are already assigned to work an IM contest. Feel free to contact me with questions.

We use a Google Doc form for our refs to sign up and let us know their contact info and availability. We use that information to schedule them on IMLeagues, And we just have a log for each ref so that on the nights they ref, they sign in with our Supervisors and are marked down for each game. The system as worked well so far.