How to Set Your Blocks in Arbiter 2018 – ArbiterOne
How to set your blocks in Arbiter is essential to any basketball official’s professionalism and accountability. A key part of our responsibility as basketball officials is ensuring that our availability is fully up-to-date. Assignors need to be confident that they can assign games to officials without unneeded turnbacks. Today we will run through how to do a solid preseason setting of blocks in ArbiterOne, the leading assignment software in use today. There are four steps to our approach:
- Set blocks for normal working/school hours.
- Layer on any known dates when not available.
- Take back any dates where there is additional availability.
- Refine the blocks by setting a mileage maximum, blocking specific partners, specific teams (coaches), blocking certain zip codes, etc. then finally doing a report to ensure accuracy of our blocks.
The basketball season is just around the corner you can make this the best year of your officiating career by being prepared an on point a great indicator of our professionalism commitment is having our availability accurate and up to date most of us use arbiter so today we cover setting our availability for an entire season stick around hey everybody its Greg Austin with a better official calm or we craft video to help basketball officials get better and to take control of their officiating careers if you haven’t already done so take a moment hit below subscribe and notify so that you don’t miss anything when we produce new content which during the season is two times a week we continue today with another preseason video this one will discuss something that is completely under our control and that is keeping our signing software up to date here in the San Francisco Bay Area I think we use exclusively arbiter many officials rely on arbiter this video will cover arbiter all the all the essentials though can be applied to other assigning software we’re going to get down into three parts our video today the first part we’re going to talk about laying out for the entire season an overlay of our basic availability on a weekly basis so if you work or go to school you have a fundamental schedule that you can apply at the beginning of this season this applies to most people that covers you know Monday through Friday over the course of a season after we do that one layer across the entire season of our availability then we’re going to go back and start adding calendar items that we have we’re going out of town for a two week period I have an event planned I’m not available that night I have commitments every other Tuesday for Cub Scouts or what have you right so we start overlaying block dates on top of that and then finally we’re going to go back through and say okay I’ve given a basic overlay but there are some dates that I want back I want those available to me such as like Martin Luther King normally that would be blocked because I’m not available on Monday but during that holiday there are showcase games throughout the day I want to make myself available let’s say for a 10 or 12 o’clock game so I’m gonna release that date after those overlays of dates then we’ll cover some things that are available via some assign errs including mileage blocks I’ll only travel so far zip code blocks I will not work in that zip code etc etc and so we’ll cover some additional blocks that we could put on it’s our responsibility to keep everything up to date so that when assign errs assign us a game we can accept it as of course doesn’t mean that things don’t crap up life happens emergencies issues health issues I’m sick etc then the signers understand all that we’re gonna go to schedule but we’re gonna do is block dates I’m logged in to an account that only has playoff assignments at the end of the season so I have a blank slate here in terms of my schedule so the basics right obviously I can block a day by clicking block all day and then selecting that date on the calendar it turns red and down below there is now an entry that says this is block now I could say during the basketball season which here in the San Francisco Bay Area is going to run from September 29th I’m not available on any Monday during the season ok going to be blocking all day during this date range on Mondays I will apply that now if we look at the schedule for October it applies that block throughout that date range okay let’s go back now let’s say I want to undo that I’m going to clear all the blocks on Mondays during that day range and those disappear so now we have a clean slate for the season I work I’m not available between 8 a.m. and 4:15 I work Monday through Friday so during this period I’m gonna go Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday now if I apply this block it’ll block part of the day 8 a.m. to 4:15 Monday through Friday during this date range which I’ve set up as being the season let’s apply that each weekday I’ve created a block for when I’m working I’ve done that this is a basic setting that is gonna prevent my assignor from assigning me games when I’m working or until I’m off work now I can layer other blocks on top of this scenario my son’s birthday party is going to be on October 17th I can simply go block all day October 17 what we have on this is two two blocks one on top of the other but one obviously overrides the other from the 17th to the 28th I will be out of town I can go block all day I could set up the date range here and apply it to every day but for just a limited amount of days 14 days let’s say I’m just going to click click click etc on week ends I had don’t have a work schedule but I may have other schedules that are important first of all I could block all day during the season on Sundays maybe you’re a signer also assigns other games that are on Sundays three Sunday during this date range this is my season date range I’m going to block Sundays I will apply that so all Sundays during the season are now blocked just showing a way that we can do that let’s say I’m not available on Saturdays after 5:00 p.m. I want to block part of the day I’m going to set up the date the time range so I’m not available from 5 p.m. until midnight this is on Saturdays during the regular season so I’m blocking part of the day here’s a time range here’s a date range and within that date range only on Saturdays do I want to apply that block The Saturdays fill in if we view a set we want to view our schedule on a Saturday it shows now blocked from 5:00 to midnight that’s cinch there’s a couple of weekend’s where it doesn’t apply during January that Saturday obligation I have is not there I can just simply go to the dates and say okay I’m going to clear that block right I could have you know changed the date range here if it was more extensive just on Saturdays clear blocks these all these tools can be used together early October there’s going to be a weekend birthday party Oh to October I’m going to block all day on the 20th there’s a birthday party and again we’ve got blocks on top of blocks and that’s okay I don’t have to clear the previous block to say hey I’m now blocked out I’m blocked all day on the 27th I’m not available as well there’s a meeting scheduled I have in November on the 20 on the 19th I have a meeting I’m gonna block in December on a Monday I have a meeting on the 3rd etc let’s review we’ve gone in we’ve set up basic blocks of our work schedule on top of that we’ve layered some our weekend schedule let’s say our non-work availability we’ve blocked off dates that we know we’re not available we’ve just layered those on top and now we have a pretty robust basic block schedule showcase games are done around Martin Luther King’s birthday the holiday Monday January 21st okay we’ll go back and we’ll say on Monday January 21st those games occur from maybe 10:00 in the morning right so I know I’m not working that day I want to clear my blocks on the 21st so I can get that high-profile game without restriction okay that’s it for calendar blocks next we’ll be covering just how some assign errs allow you to block on many different levels including sites don’t want to do or I cannot do games at my daughter’s high school it’s a conflict of interest there I want to block that venue I want to block a particular team I have an issue with the coat an ethical issue about I went to school there or I just do not want to do games for that asked partners I can do a partner block there’s a guy I don’t get along with and you know that guy yeah we all know that guy and then there’s travel limits okay this is an important one I’m going to have travel limit during the week it will be based on my place of employment if I have one that’s fixed I can use this strategically only want to do games within a certain radius of that location here in the Bay Area I’ve chosen Alameda as a central location and I could do games within 31 miles of that and what that’s going to do is exclude some locations that traffic will just not allow me to get to without a great deal of stress and risk so I’ve blocked that can make that block really tight if you want or really big on the weekends I do it from my residence the distance is large includes the entire coverage area for this assignor I could set it at 250 and it wouldn’t matter as games are only assigned within this distance on top of that you can also block postal codes there’s a part of the Bay Area that’s super tough for me to get to and I’m just going to block it you’re a signer may allow you one they may allow you to they may allow you five they may allow you an unlimited number this is something that is set by the assignor and if you want to have an overall look at your blocks can view it I’ve blocked this team I don’t have any site blocks I’ve blocked a postal code I’ve blocked a partner I have travel limits during the day I have basic block between 12:00 a.m. and 6:15 p.m. all season long I have some all day blocks included some Mondays and Wednesdays during the regular season I’ve blocked for this assignor alright thanks for watching the video much appreciated videos over here you can check out as well and keep learning how to be a better official something we’re all striving to do and let’s do it together here at a beneficial calm
