League Filter (official request)

[70clcl]

I have asked about this in the "League Usage" thread, but I wanted to make an official request for the functionality since it is not currently supported.

I would like the ability to toggle the default league selection mechanism to include OR or AND logic.
Filter type 1: (current functionality)
filter games/etc where <leagueName1> OR <leagueName2>.
Filter type 2:
Filter games/etc where <leagueName1> AND <leagueName2>.

This new filter type would enable users to more effectively leverage the league feature by providing the ability to have fewer, more granular leagues that can be combined into more meaningful and complex leagues not yet identified.

Instead of having the following leagues
2010 Evening bracket play <tournament name> spring
2010 evening pool play <tournament name> spring
2010 Evening bracket play <tournament name> summer
2010 evening pool play <tournament name> summer
2011 Evening bracket play <tournament name> spring
2011 evening pool play <tournament name> spring

I can have the following leagues and combine them as appropriate
2010
2011
Evening/morning/afternoon
Bracket
Pool
<tournament
spring/summer/winter

As you can see this method would lend itself nicely to compiling stats for previously undetermined situations. If I want to see general stats for how a team did during bracket games in 2011 all I would do is enable "2011" and "bracket". Likewise, if I wanted to see stats for how a team did during bracket games in spring 2011 in the morning, I would simply enable "2011", "bracket", "spring", "morning".

If I were to select all of these leagues in today's version of iScore I would get stats for every game under all of those leagues since only OR logic is used. If AND logic were enabled I would expect to get a filtered list of only the games that exist in all of the leagues selected.

I realize that this would be a more advanced feature, but I believe it would enhance iScore tremendously (especially the team website when selecting games, stats, etc.). The default should probably OR logic so new users can start out slowly until they get a handle for league usage. However, today's newbies are tomorrow's super users, right?

[FTMSupport]

We still have this on our list from the first time you requested it, but it is still not a high priority. We try and prioritize the things that are going to benefit the most people and get the most requests. Unfortunately leagues are already too complicated for many users to understand and fully utilize, and adding more complexity which would lead to more support issues is not going to be high on our list. We will keep it on our list and if more people start asking for this type of functionality, the priority could change. Thank you.

[70clcl]

That's unfortunate.
I suppose I'll start cluttering my league selection and reassigning all of my games from the past couple of years.

Thanks for the quick response, consideration, and great product!!

[randyehall]

I second this request. I have gotten a request from the manager to provide stats for just regular season play (leave out tournament play). Our team plays in machine pitch tournaments, and those tend to really skew the batting averages.

I'd like to have the ability to put the tournament play in a separate league then be able to toggle the league in/out of recalculated team stats. Right now the only option I think I have is to delete the tournament data.

If there's another way to do this, I'm all ears, but I see this as a very useful feature.

Thanks!

[FTMSupport]

@randyehall - your use case works fine with how leagues work now. Just assign the tournament play to a league called "Tournament Play", and turn off all other tournaments, and the report will be just for the tournament games.

What 70clcl is asking for is an advanced way of using leagues that can be great for advanced users, but unfortunately would confused most users.

Here is a link to a URL for using leagues in their intended way (which should be just fine for what you are trying to do):

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1531" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[bmclaurin]

I would love to see this feature become a reality. Perhaps as a compromise, you could make the AND/OR functionality available only on the team website, which might help to reduce support questions.

[danmcc]

Bmclaurin, although fundamentally I agree with your request, I agree more with FTM on this one. Iscore has casual, intermediate and very advanced users. The volume of league related support requests is disproportionate to all other requests. To make the leagues more advanced would just compound the issue. For a $10 app, iScore offers a great deal for all user types.
A solution perhaps is to have different levels of iScore offered I.e. Iscore basic for $10 and iScore advanced for $10+x. But even that creates issues for those who don't download the correct version. As it is now there is at least one post a week for mistaken download of iPad vs itouch version. JMO

[annettedb]

I too would like an easier way to manage leagues. For me it would be so much easier is if I brought up a team on team manager, or a player in player manager, that when I did the cumulative stats, I could via check box, include or exclude certain games. Maybe it would not need to be done on the software, but instead on the my.iscorecentral website.

[FTMSupport]

This request is exactly the opposite of the original request in this thread, and is why adding any advanced functionality to Leagues would only make it harder to support.

@annettedb - you can do this now. Usually you would define leagues that have some kind of meaning ("Regular Season", "Memorial Day Tournament", etc), then assign the games to those leagues. But if you want more of an ad hoc approach, you can create a league like "My Report League", an assign just the games you want to report on to that league. Then turn off all the other leagues an view cumulative stats. Only the games assigned to that league will be reported on. Be sure to turn the "All" league back on in League Manager when you are done reporting.

[webshowpro]

Here's a thought on the Leagues and League management... I too find it confusing and cumbersome - it got me thinking how the process could be made easier. My idea would be to use the "Gmail" Label metaphor, which is like traditional "folders" expect that in Gmail a message can have more than one label (i.e. be in more than one folder). So the interface becomes more file manager like.

In iScore, each game would be treated like an email/file and each league would be a label/folder - Treating them as such would make it easy to use established patterns to display the information. For example the "Game Manager" screen could be implemented using a iOS split view control (like the mail app). Games could be assigned to leagues as easily as dragging and dropping them into the appropriate labels on the left.

Stats for a team in a league, could be generated by simply finding the team / game in a particular label and generating the stats from there. However, I see the real benifit as more easily and intuitively managing which games and teams belong to which leagues. Since most people are familiar with the "file manager" approach, this layout and design would make more sense to more people.