http://iscoresports.com/

Partners generally require an account-holder to create at least two sets of players, and at least two teams, before a game can be created and then discovered.

In the case where I have been using iScore without partners, and as a result already have on my device several dozen players, and several teams, and many completed games, can this FAQ do a walk-through of a few issues when discovering from a Partner, and if later changing to a new Partner?

Let us say that in the Partner's external system, I create my current team, and I input my current players, but do not care to recreate every player and every team that we have ever faced. Rather, I create additional teams only when I need to, as my current team becomes scheduled to play them. At that point, in the Partner system, I schedule my very first game, which I am now about to "discover" ...

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Scenario 1: Both my own team's players, as well as the players of the team that we will be facing, already exist on my device. I discover a game, and I expect this will results in the creation of 26 new players and 2 new teams on my device, even though players and teams with similar (and maybe identical) names already exist. This would all make sense. I thus expect that via iScore > Player Manager, I will see these "new" players sorted among my already-existing players, with either identical or very similar names.

In the case of identical names, I am guessing that iScore will sort and list the previously-existing player and team first.

Q1: Despite that "Every partner does things a bit different depending on their system" (posting 40633), are these two versions of the player fully compatible and interchangeable, so that it does not matter which one I choose to merge into the other? --> Or is it important to keep the earlier-existing iScore player on the left, and to "merge into them" (from the right) the newer-created player?

Q2: For Teams, it is the same as for Q1?

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Scenario 2: We face a new team, whose 13 players I input into the partner system, and notice that 10 are familiar, from last year. I schedule the game and discover Game 2.

Q3: After the discovery, I merge the 10 who are familiar with the version of "them" who already existed in my iScore but I do not merge the other 3 players nor the team, since these are all new.

I score both games, export to iScore servers, and the game results are synced.

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Now I decide Partner 1's service offerings no longer meet my needs, and I want to try out Partner 2. So I go through the time and effort of re-creating players, and teams, and scheduling games, in Partner 2's system.

Each time I "discover" from Partner 2, I ought to follow the same steps as above, merging Partner 2 players with any already-existing players and Partner 2 teams into any already-existing teams.

Q4: Am I potentially hooped, in having ever before used some other Partner (Partner 1)? My concern is whether my iScore data set, once it is uploaded to the iScore servers, will be unable to be parsed by Partner 2 because the data set contains

- players created on my iScore device
- players possibly-imported from another iScore device
- players discovered from Partner 1
- some merged
- some unmerged
- same issue for teams

such that I must first, before I begin to use Partner 2, delete all my players and all my teams (basically delete and re-install my app)?

*** or *** does iScore maintain uniformity and consistency in how
- players are stored
- player mappings to a partner are stored
- teams are stored
- team mappings to a partner are stored

and therefore it ought to be solvable for Partner 1 to locate (via query / join that includes the mapping table) those players and teams and games discovered from Partner 1? And it should be likewise separately solvable for Partner 2 to locate those players and teams and games discovered from Partner 2?

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In the event of problems with either Partner's implementation ...

Q5: Suppose Partner 1 did not properly implement the iScore API, and had trouble to store or reference whatever mapping keys had been exchanged, is the worst case scenario one where the players and teams which had been discovered from Partner 1, and which had been merged, and which thereafter become invisible to the user in iScore, become "lost" and that until the problem would be fixed by Partner 1, every discovery risks to create a new set of players and teams which must again be merged, and adding to bloat inside iScore?

Q6: But any problem with Partner 1 would be isolated ("contained"), and will not prevent those players and teams and games which had been or will be discovered from Partner 2 to be properly-handled by Partner 2?

Thanks, iScore!

All of these questions can basically be answered in one summed up response.

If you are posting data back to one of our partner sites that process stats data for use on their own site (Sport Ngin, ScoreMonster, Tourney Machine, etc), then they need the data to have their IDs when the data is going back to them in order to recognize it. The simplest way to achieve this is use Discover to pull in the Game (in which case the teams are automatically pulled in), then score the game, then export. Everything will work smooth.

If you have the players / teams already on your device either because you have created them manually, or Discovered from a different partner, and you want to see cumulative data for those players between the games you have already scored and new games you will be scoring, you will have to Merge those teams and players.

Here is the important thing... you will want to merge the data "into" the teams/players that were Discovered from the partner you ultimately want the data going to. This means making sure you choose the Partner you want to use in the "left list" on the merge screens when doing the merge. If you get it wrong, that is fine... do the Discover again, and then do the merge again. You can rename players to help you identify which is which (add an "x" to the end of a last name for example).

You will not be able to keep cumulative stats for players combining the data for two separate partners as one or the other will not be able to recognize the IDs. You can keep two sets of data on your device during the season - one for Partner A and one for Partner B if you actually do post data to two partner sites. Then when the seasons are over, you can merge the data and do reporting within iScore for the combined data if you would like.

The above was really clear, and very helpful. I bet others will agree… perhaps even Partners!