Below are each of the Arbiter FAQ messages we have sent to schools. As new messages are sent we will continue to add them to this page. Note that you can search for text on this page (or any page) in your web browser by typing Control-F (Windows) or Command-F (Mac).
Happy New Year to All –
Just wanted to give everyone a quick update regarding Arbiter and the CIAC website. The members of our Arbiter Integration Committee in attendance at the NIAAA National Conference last month had an excellent meeting with Zane Zientek (our account manager), Karen Mogridge (Chief Product Officer), Clark Evans (VP of Business Development) and Michael Denson (Product Manager of team responsible for schedules). We discussed a number of subjects and are well on the way to building a unified road map to address some of the biggest challenges and concerns.
One of the biggest concerns was the differences between how schedules appear in Arbiter and how we are able to sync them to the CIAC site when games have pending changes. I’m happy to say that we have a solution to show pending changes on schedules in a manner very similar to our previous system. That has been implemented now on listview schedules shown on our public site. Both schools and assigners still need to stay on top of accepting/processing pending changes so the process does not get bogged down in any way.
One other note in regards to syncing of schedules, if you have games entered on Arbiter which are not on the CIAC site:
* If the opponent is “TBA Team”, be sure you have a title entered. Games vs. TBA do not sync unless there is a title.
* Try editing the game and saving it without making any changes. This will flag the game as changed and it will be sent to us for syncing. This is often necessary when the game is against an out-of-state or non-CIAC school. If we don’t have the school in our system at the time it is entered it won’t sync, however we will be notified and will add the school. This only needs to happen the first time someone enters a game with the school, our database is growing so many out-of-state schools will sync correctly the first time.
It was also agreed upon by everyone that doing some additional in person training now that people have some familiarity with the system would be valuable to all involved. We will be working on the particulars of accomplishing that and will be back in touch ASAP with that and some additional updates.
Thanks again to all for your efforts with the transition. I think we have moved a long way in the right direction from where we were when we started and I’m confident that progress will continue in 2020.
A reminder to schools as we approach the start of the winter season of the importance of regularly checking the officials icons on your schedules in Arbiter. If you see red icons or no icons on games where you should have officials, look at the details of the game and correct the issue. If you don’t have the correct choice as an option, be sure that your team settings are correct per the document distributed via the Arbiter Integration Committee to the members of their leagues:
https://www.casciac.org/pdfs/ArbiterGameTeamSettings.pdf
As an additional safeguard, when viewing list schedules in the eligibility center you will now see a red officials jersey icon in the note field on games which should have a linked officials group but are set to either “no officials needed” or “ad assigned” in Arbiter. You can click on that icon to go directly to the edit screen for that game in Arbiter and make the necessary corrections (you must already be logged into Arbiter for the link to work, if you get an error log in, then go back and click the link again). Note that if you wish to hide the icons when printing you can do so via a “Change Criteria” option.
Finally, please remember it is important to be sure that when making changes you don’t skip the step of sending notifications. Many of the choices may not be necessary but if your opponent, the assigners and/or the officials on the game aren’t notified then it will cause problems.
In the sport of wrestling, assignors need to know the number of mats being used in each event to assign the proper number of officials. Arbiter currently does not provide a place to enter that information. We are working with Arbiter on implementing a long-term solution where the info will be able to be seen in Arbiter, however for this season, schools will need to enter that information separately via the CIAC site.
This can be done via the same place where scores are entered, on each event there is a pulldown menu allowing indication of the number of mats. You only need to set this for home events where the number is more than one. This information can be entered on the scores interface by either ADs or coaches. If a number greater than one is set, the number of mats will show on schedules (below the name of the opponent).
Also, when entering multi-meets/tournaments for wrestling you should not use the “tournament” option in Arbiter. These events need to be entered as “meets” by the host school. You should include all of the teams that will be participating as opponents, and be sure to enter a title as that is what will show on the CIAC site.
A subcommittee of our ArbiterSports Integration Committee has developed an instructional document which should go along way towards correcting some of the biggest issues we have seen – games going to wrong (or no) officials group, incorrect game lengths getting carried over to assigners groups, and games being synced back to the CIAC site with incorrect genders for the sport.
Each league representative on the committee will be coordinating with their schools on the best way to get this done. The committee strongly feels that getting each school to properly configure its team settings will best be done on a league basis. Some leagues have already completed the task, if you have not heard from your league representative yet regarding this please follow up with them directly.
The document can be accessed directly at https://www.casciac.org/pdfs/ArbiterGameTeamSettings.pdf.
The following is the listing of committee reps by league:
BL: Matt Perachi
CCC: Corey O’Connell
CRAL: John Krot
CTC: Brooke DiFormato
ECC: Chris Landry
FCIAC: Sheila Moffett
NCCC: Tim McCluskey
NVL: Tanya Adorno
SCC: Tim Kohs
SL: Hildie Heck
SWC: Rob Bleggi
Additionally, we have created an “Arbiter FAQs” page on our website which is a compilation of all the FAQ messages which have been sent. We will continue to update the page each time a new message goes out. This way you will have one place where you can look and search for things without having to go through a bunch of emails.
The FAQs page can be accessed at https://www.casciac.org/arbiterfaqs/.
The syncing of tournament brackets directly to Arbiter schedule data has been working great. As compared to what was done under the old system we now have school schedules, assignor schedules and tournament brackets which are all in sync and no need to submit support tickets for changes. We’re looking forward to implementing more improvements such as these as people continue to learn and understand the new process.
This message is being sent to all CIAC member schools and all fall sports assignors.
The following information details how league and CIAC tournament games should be entered into Arbiter for sports where tournaments involve team vs. team games. In the fall season this refers to soccer, field hockey, volleyball and football.
Before listing the details three general statements are important.
1) All league and/or state tournament games should be entered with a game type of “Postseason”. Assignors, while Arbiter may have told you in the past this didn’t matter, it does now that the games are flowing to and from schools schedules via the same system.
2) When schools add games against TBA opponents which may or may not happen cause confusion on assignors schedules. If a school feels the need to list games before a site or matchup is set they can do so, but they should be sure to set the officials section for that game to “No Officials Needed” so it does not show up on the assignors end. Also keep in mind that we already have the dates of each round of each state tournament already showing on schedules in the CIAC site, and our plan is to remove those as the matchups in each round are set.
3) In all cases, just like in the regular season, schools should be looking at the referee jersey icons on their games in Arbiter to determine the status. If there is not a green jersey icon, be sure you know why and deal with the problem ASAP if there is one.
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LEAGUE TOURNAMENTS
In leagues where a single assignor handles the entire tournament, the best process would be for the assignor to put in all the games. When an assignor adds a game involving a school, it’s the same as if a school had added it. There is a contract added that each school needs to accept and the schools can also adjust sites and times as necessary.
If multiple assignors are involved in assigning the tournament, games can be entered either by the schools or the assignors.
Most importantly, if you set up a TBA game as discussed in “2)” above which becomes a real game, in addition to changing the game to the correct opponent, you will need to change the officials section to “An ArbiterOne Assigning Group” so the game does get added to the assignors list.
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CIAC TOURNAMENTS
For the purposes of entering games on schedules CIAC Tournaments need to be divided into two parts, games in which the home school’s assignor provides the officials and games in which the CIAC tournament assignor provides the officials.
On a sport-by-sport basis, the breakdown is as follows:
* Soccer (boys and girls): Home school’s assignor through the quarterfinals, CIAC assignor in semifinals and finals
* Volleyball: Home school’s assignor through the 2nd Round, CIAC assignor in quarterfinals, semifinals and finals
* Field Hockey: CIAC assignor for all games
* Football: CIAC assignor for all games
Games where the home school’s assignor provides the officials can be entered either by the schools or the assignors. Please heed the note in the beginning about adding TBA games before they happen.
Games in which the CIAC assigns will be added by the CIAC assignor. Schools should be sure not to add those games, because if they do they will not go to the correct place for assigning purposes.
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Several schools have requested guidance on the proper way to enter an in-season tournament (i.e. holiday basketball tournament) into ArbiterGame. The following instructions will help you perform this task.
The host school needs to enter the tournament and the games within it for all schools involved.
1) Select “Add New”, then “New Tournament”.
2) Make the start and end dates the first and last days of the tournament, be sure the correct assigning group and level are selected, and enter the other information listed.
3) Add all the teams to the tournament.
4) After you’ve added the teams and saved them, go to the “Games” section under the tournament and add the games. Put the specific teams in the ones which are known, and make the others TBA vs. TBA. You can then edit those games once the matchups are determined (ie put the teams in the championship and consolation games after the first round is played).
Note that tournaments do not sync to the CIAC website, but the games under them do just like any non-tournament game. That means the championship and consolation games won’t sync until the teams in them are actually set.
The workaround to show those games on the CIAC schedule is for a school to add an additional game outside of the tournament, make the opponent Team TBA and set the title to what you want to show on the CIAC schedule. Be sure to set that game to “No Officials Needed” so it doesn’t go to the assignor. Then when the matchups are set for the real second games you can delete the placeholder game.
GAME SCORE ENTRY
Game scores are not entered in Arbiter. We will be adding links under the options for each sport in the eligibility center to enter scores. The link will take you to the existing coaches score entry tool. When it requests a coaches access code, you can enter your eligibility center password and that will work regardless of the sport. You should still be giving access codes to your coaches, do not share your password with them. The mobile site and coaches score entry pages are also still available options and are unchanged from the past.
POSTPONEMENTS, SUSPENDED GAMES AND CANCELATIONS
The following explains how cancellations, postponements and suspended games should be handled in Arbiter.
A postponement is a game not being played at the originally scheduled date and time but will be played at some point in the future. If a game is postponed, change the status in Arbiter to “Postponed”. The game will still show on your schedule with an indication it is postponed. When you have agreed on the new date and time, change those in Arbiter and change the status of the game back from “Postponed” to “Normal”.
A suspended game is one which starts but does not finish and will be completed later. If a game is suspended, change the status in Arbiter to “Suspended”. The game will still show on your schedule with an indication it is postponed. When you have agreed on the completion date and time, change those in Arbiter and change the status of the game back from “Suspended” to “Normal”.
A canceled game is one which is never going to be completed. If you have a game which is not going to be finished and will not have a final result, then change the status in Arbiter to “Canceled”. This should only be done when you are 100% sure the game will never be completed. If there is a possibility it will and the decision has not been finalized yet, you should use the “Postponed” or “Suspended” status. If the decision is later made to cancel you can change the status to “Canceled” at that time.
** IMPORTANT NOTES: **
1) At this point no school or assigner should be deleting games from schedules for fall sports. Deleting cause games to show up with TBA opponents, and causes confusion for schools and assigners. Using the status options available is the correct way to handle this at this point in the process.
2) If a game is postponed or suspended, DO NOT add a new game for the completion. The information and status of the existing game should be changed. I can not over emphasize how important this is for score entry and other processes to work correctly.
3) While Arbiter offers a status which says “Rainout”, that should not be used. Chose the appropriate option from “Postponed”, “Suspended” or “Canceled” instead.
Thank you for reading and following the instructions above.
1. HOW DOES THE CIAC SYNC DATA WITH ARBITER? MY DATA IS RIGHT ON ARBITER BUT WRONG ON THE CIAC SITE, WHY?
When viewing your schedule in ArbiterGame or ArbiterLive, you are seeing “pending information” included. Pending info is when someone puts in a change which requires the contract to be re-accepted by their opponent(s), and in some cases, their assigners. You can tell if there is a change pending on a game by clicking on the contract icon, which will either be red if there is a change you need to accept or yellow if there is a change your opponent needs to accept.
If the contract icon for the game is green and the info on the CIAC site is still different, that most likely means that the assigner has not accepted the change yet. The information passed to us for syncing currently only includes final info, meaning it updates only after changes have been accepted by all parties. We are aware that this is not a perfect situation and we have taken the following steps towards improving it:
– We are communicating with assigners to let them know the importance of staying on top of approving changes.
– We are working with Arbiter on being able to access the pending information for syncing.
– We are working with Arbiter on being able to create a report showing pending changes involving your school and who has or has not accepted them. As soon as we have access to that data we will be adding this report to the eligibility center, in a similar location to where the games with pending changes showed in the old scheduling system.
Also keep in mind that the schedules in ArbiterLive do show pending info. You need to decide what works best for you, but if you point people to those schedules they currently may see more accurate data than we are able to provide. You can find the URL for your school’s ArbiterLive page by going to Settings -> ArbiterLive when you are signed into ArbiterGame.
2. SOME OF MY GAMES AREN’T SHOWING IN ARBITERLIVE.
In order for a game to show in ArbiterLive, it needs to be “published”. Publishing is a team-by-team option, so you can have a game published and showing on your schedule even if your opponent does not. By default, games are automatically published when created.
You can use the advanced filters in Arbiter to find all your games which are not published, and then publish all of those in one step by checking the checkbox on all the found games and choosing “publish” from the “action” menu at the top of the schedule.
3. I HAVEN’T CHECKED ALL MY OFFICIALS ASSIGNMENTS, SHOULD I?
YES!!!
Be sure that all of your games are linked to the correct officials assigner. If they aren’t, the assigner won’t know to assign officials for the game. If you are viewing your schedule for a sport which requires officials, then be sure you have an icon in the officials column. If you have icons and they are not green click on them to be sure the associated assigner is the correct one. If you have the game set to no officials needed or AD assigned, edit the game and correct that.
4. I AM TRYING TO ADD A GAME AGAINST A SCHOOL BUT IT ISN’T IN THE PULLDOWN.
The schools which show in the pulldown are the ones which you have on your opponents list. To add an opponent, click on the Opponents tab, then the green button which says add opponent. If you can’t find the school you are looking for, the best way is to Google the school and find its zip code, then search for schools within 10 miles of that zip. If you still can’t find it, then contact me and I will help you. Note that all Connecticut schools are in the system, as are most other schools across the entire country. DO NOT contact Arbiter support and ask them to add a school, it will just create a duplicate which will not accomplish what you need.
5. SHOULD I BE ENTERING MY ELIGIBILITY LISTS INTO THE STUDENTS SECTION IN ARBITER?
No. Eligibility lists and all other forms with the exception of schedules are still entered into the CIAC site directly via the eligibility center.
6. THERE ARE SOME THINGS I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE CHANGED ABOUT THE WAY ARBITER WORKS, AND/OR HOW IT INTERFACES WITH THE CIAC? IS THERE A WAY TO DO THAT?
We are working on a way to provide unified input from the schools and assigners in Connecticut to Arbiter. We are in the process of formulating a committee which will include ADs, assigners and league representatives, so that we can look at what needs to and can be done to make this system work best for everyone using it. We will be reaching out to league commissioners later this week asking for a representative from each league to serve on that committee. If you are interested, contact your league’s commissioner and let them know. We are planning on having the first meeting of the committee prior to the end of September.
Please note the following current and upcoming changes regarding data syncing with ArbiterGame:
1) As of yesterday, we have added the following information along with the time and early dismissal time in the bus time field:
– Return time when the trip type is Drop Off and Return.
– Travel Notes. These are still being synced to the Bus Company field as well to allow for searching and filtering, however including them in the bus time field makes them publicly-viewable as well.
– Number of buses, cars, etc. when designated.
Hopefully the inclusion of these items will assist you in sharing this info with others. This was a very highly requested item.
2) We are working with Arbiter on getting their Game Note field to be made available in the data we use for syncing. As soon as that happens we will begin syncing that to our Public Note field. We do not have an exact date yet, but I expect it will be relatively quickly. The Game Note field is accessible via a text link on the Edit Game screen.
3) We are also working on converting the CIAC Tournament dates from just showing on your schedules in our site to actual games in Arbiter. This will allow you to enter your transportation info for these events. We expect this to be completed by the end of next week.
Lastly, we are close to launching the interface for entering game scores from the eligibility center. The coaches/scorekeepers pages for entering scores and the mobile app will work as is. The eligibility center interface will be very similar to the current coaches entry page.
Dan Scavone and I spent the last two days meeting with Arbiter’s staff at their offices in Utah. We are continuing to work through some of the challenges inherent to moving to a different system.
Much progress has been made by schools, assigners and Arbiter staff, and that will continue to be the case. Thanks again to everyone for doing their part to help make this transition, which was a necessary move for a number of reasons, work.
Following are a few updates from our meetings on questions we have received frequently from schools.
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CHANGE NOTIFICATIONS
We have received several questions regarding notifications when changes are made in Arbiter, specifically when and how they are sent. We have worked with Arbiter to see if there was any reason notifications wouldn’t be working the way they are supposed to and have not been able to find one. Below is a summary of how they work, and a couple things you can do to help be sure the proper notifications are sent.
1) Any time a school makes a change to a date, time or site of a game, after saving the game they will be presented with a “Send Game Change Notification” screen. The screen will include an optional field to enter a reason fr the change, as well as checkboxes to determine who will get notified. By default all the boxes will be checked, and the options will include ArbiterLive followers (anyone following any of the teams involved in the game), the assigner responsible for the game (if there is one), any staff set up in Arbiter for your opponent (i.e. AD, secretzry, etc.) and any game workers attached to the game. While the general public (followers) may or may not need to be notified depending on what the change is, you should always notify the assigner, oppossing school staff and game workers any time you are making a change.
2) There are two buttons on the change notification window, when which is blue and says “Send Notification” and one which is white and says “Don’t Send”. Be sure you click the one which says “Send Notification”. If you just hit return and/or click the “Don’t Send” button then no notifications will be sent, even if you have people checked off to send to.
3) The notifications come from the email address “messaging
arbitersports
com”. If you have a safe sender or whitelist then you should add either the domain “arbitersports.com” (preferred) or that specific address to your list and/or to your contacts, to help be sure the messages make it to your inbox and don’t get filtered to spam or trash.
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MISCELLANEOUS EVENTS
The ability to sync miscellaneous events has been added to Arbiter’s system. It will take us a little bit of time to implement, but I expect you will see the events on your schedules by early next week.
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TRANSPORTATION INFORMATION
A number of schools have brought up concerns with the differences in the way bus info is entered in Arbiter vs. how it was done in the CIAC system. We spent a good deal of time discussing options, and while no final resolution has been reached, we can let you know the following:
1) The “comments” field in the transportation section of the Arbiter edit game screen is going to be made available to us for syncing purposes, most likely within the next 30 days. Once that is done we will sync info entered there into the “bus company” field on CIAC schedules.
2) In the meantime until that is done, I would suggest you take a look at the transportation report available in Arbiter (Reports -> Schedule -> Transportation). You can filter to get the games you want, then generate eith a PDF or Excel report. All transportation fields, including comments, show on that report.
In follow up to last week’s updated, the following changes are now in place:
* Events entered in Arbiter are syncing to Miscellaneous Events in CIAC.
* The “Notes” field in the Arbiter transportation section is being synced to the “Bus Company” field in CIAC. We have also suggested the addition of some other specific transportation related fields. You can see our suggestion and add your endorsement and/or a comment here – https://feedback.arbitersports.com/ideas/AS-I-92 .
* An option has been added to the “Change Criteria” links on CIAC schedules viewed from the Eligibility Center to limit the games shown to those having a dismissal time entered in Arbiter. This will allow those who used to use the public note field to create a list of early dismissals for teachers to accomplish that without the use of a public note field.
We are still working with Arbiter on having a general note field on a per team/per game basis which we can access for syncing purposes. If you think that would help you, go here and vote for it and/or leave a comment why – https://feedback.arbitersports.com/ideas/AS-I-91 .
* The parents meeting sheet available for download from the Eligibility Center has been updated to reflect the need for people interested in regular season schedule change notifications to sign up to follow their team on ArbiterLive. That sheet can be retrieved directly from https://www.casciac.org/pdfs/ciacsportsflyer.pdf .
Following are a few important updates regarding ArbiterGame and the entry of schedules:
1) The deadline for entry of fall schedules has been set as Friday, June 14th. As of that date, schedules will be publicly posted and assigners may begin assigning games. The date is more than two weeks after the normal deadline, due to this being the first time entry will be done via ArbiterGame.
2) As promised, a new tool to assist with the importing of games from league master schedules is now available on the schedules tab of the Eligibility Center. You can get to it directly by going to https://www.casciac.org/elig/generate_arbiter_import_data.cgi. This tool will greatly reduce the amount of time it will take you to enter your games.
3) If you have edited either the “Legal Name” or “Short Name” fields under the main ArbiterGame settings for your school, please change them back to the name used for your school on CIAC schedules. If those fields do not match our names, then your data will not be synched back to the CIAC site correctly.
4) Almost every school was represented at the training sessions we had last week. If you were not able to attend, we did film one of the sessions, which you can watch at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMDZfcQ4I6g. The PowerPoint used in the presentation is available on the downloads tab of the eligibility center.
The basic ArbiterGame on-boarding video available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqX7ydrqzjA&t=281s. If you watch that one you can disregard the sections talking about entry of athletes and rosters because at the present time we are only using ArbiterGame for schedules (other info will still be entered through the eligibility center directly).
