Exporting Schedule from Sports Connect, Importing into a GameChanger Organization

With the release of the Bulk Schedule importer for Organizations it is now possible to export a schedule from many league management solutions and import that schedule into GameChanger from the GC Staff Portal. Below we will go through the steps to export a schedule from SportsConnect and import it into your GameChanger Organization that you created from the GC App.

Export Schedule to CSV in SportsConnect

 First things first, access the schedule that was created in SportsConnect. There is a dropdown in the SportsConnect web application that will allow you to export that schedule to a CSV. This will be used as a starting point for importing into GameChanger using the Bulk Schedule importer.

Once the CSV is exported, you may open the CSV in Microsoft Excel or Apple Numbers, but for the purposes of this article we have imported a sample CSV into Google Sheets as that application is free to use for all GameChanger organization admins.

1. Select the CSV from your computer after exporting it from SportsConnect and then import it into Google Sheets:
   
   
2. These are the columns will will be most concerned with when importing this data into GameChanger:

Change the Data to match the GameChanger CSV format

Now that you have the CSV imported into Google Sheets, there is a little more work to get it ready for the Organization Bulk Schedule Importer - but Google Sheets has everything we need to get it done!

1. Combine the Location / Field columns into one combined "location" column
2. Compute "duration" in minutes from the Start Time and End Time 
3. Convert the Start Time to be in format HH:MM PM
4. Remove columns that are no longer needed (rename and reorder the rest)

Combine the Location / Field columns into one combined "location" column

To combine Location and Field into one merged column (so you don't lose the Field number/letter) create a new column, label it "Merged Location", and use a simple formula in Google Sheets to join the Location and Field columns into a new combined text value:

• = cell1 & " - " & cell2   (example shown below)
  
  
  
  
• Apply the formula to the rest of the cells in the new column by dragging the "blue square" in the lower right corner down to the rest of the rows in the column:
  
  

Compute "duration" in minutes from the Start Time and End Time 

To compute Duration instead of Start Time and End Time exported from SportsConnect is a little more complicated but the instructions below should get you through it:

• Enter the formula as = (cell1 - cell2)*60*24
  (see values for cell1 and cell2 in above screenshot, match to your particular CSV)
  
  
• With the entire column selected go to the menu and select Format > Number > Custom Number Format (at the bottom) and choose the integer value ("0") and hit the Apply button:

 

• Apply the formula to the rest of the cells in the new Duration column by dragging the "blue square" in the lower right corner down to the rest of the rows in the column.
• If you did everything right, it should subtract the Start Time from the End Time and convert it to minutes with no decimal point (i.e. 90 minutes instead of 90.00 minutes).

Convert the Start Time to be in format HH:MM PM

Start Time is the only field that will be needed along with Duration but the expected format will be in AM/PM rather than in military time - that's simple enough to change in Google Sheets. Let's also remove seconds from that data since the importer will not need that level of specificity.

• Select the Start Time column
• Select Format > Number > Custom Date & Time in Google Sheets
• Scroll down and select 1:25 PM as the example time format

Remove columns that are no longer needed (rename and reorder the rest)

You can now remove the columns selected below in blue as they will no longer be needed:

Lastly simply reorder the columns to the following sequence and change the labels to be all lowercase:

• date / time / home / away / location / duration

^^^ This is the final format needed and is ready to be imported! ^^^

READY TO IMPORT!

Now you have all of the data you will need formatted properly to import your Sports Connect schedule into a GameChanger Organization.

TBD opponents are not yet supported

Lastly, if you do not have an opponent for a particular game and want to have a placeholder, you can do a few things:

1. Simply create a team in the organization called "TBD" and schedule against it.
   When the head-to-head matchup is created it will schedule the game against that team, but you can always edit the opponent later with the finalize opponent when you are ready
   
   
2. Remove the TBD games from the CSV and add those games one-by-one later when both opponents are determined.

Save your new .CSV

Last step is to save off all of the work you just did as a new CSV.  Select File > Download > CSV to save your new edited SportsConnect CSV to a new file:

This will be used as your starting point for the GameChanger CSV.

Create your Organization and then Invite or Create Teams

As described in the article Creating an Organization and Inviting Teams it is fairly straightforward to create a new Organization and Add Teams from within the GameChanger app(s).

IMPORTANT:  The teams will ALL have to be joined to the organization in order for you to schedule head-to-head matchups against those teams.

You have two options as the Organization Administrator to get teams into the Organization:

1. Create NEW teams yourself, add them to the Organization instantly, invite the Coaches to take control of those teams you created.
2. Find the EXISTING teams in Team Search, invite those Teams/Coaches, ensure the Coaches accept your invite.

Once the Teams have all accepted their invites and joined into the Organization, it will look something like this (using our same AnyTown Little League as an example):

Import CSV into Organization Bulk Schedule Importer

Now that your Organization exists and has teams joined to it, go to http://web.gc.com to access your Organization and the Bulk Schedule importer.

For example, from the "AnyTown Little League 12U" organization above, I would access the Bulk Schedule Importer from the "Add Games" dropdown menu:

Click the Import Teams' Schedule from Spreadsheet item above and then follow the instructions in this Bulk Schedule Importer blog post to get those hard-earned head-to-head events scheduled for all teams in your Organization.

Good luck with your season!