Set up your team and get your roster in

About fifteen minutes, most of it pasting a roster you already have.

1. Sign in

Go to app.playhub-os.com and enter your email. You will be emailed a sign-in code — enter it. There is no password.

2. Create your team

Give it the name families already use: Charlotte SA 2014 Boys Red, or whatever is on the schedule.

You should see your team, with an empty roster and no matches.

3. Get your roster in

Two ways, and the second is almost always faster.

Paste it from a file

If you have your roster anywhere — a spreadsheet, an export from another app — copy the rows and paste them in.

Your columns are worked out for you. Real exports do not agree on names, so First Name, first, Player First Name, Jersey Number, Uniform Number, Shirt # and Squad No. are all understood. Check what it worked out before confirming; you can correct any column.

Names written "Smith, John" in a single column are turned back around. Some platforms export that way and refuse to import it, which is how a squad ends up with Smith, John on every shirt.

You should see a preview of every player with their number, and a chance to fix anything before it is saved.

Add players one at a time

Fine for a handful, or for a late signing. Name, shirt number, position.

4. Check the numbers

Shirt numbers are how the live scoreboard is driven — during a match you tap a number, not a name. Ten seconds spent making them right now saves fumbling on the sideline.

5. Invite the families

Each player can be linked to their parents. A linked parent can follow matches live and see the season's figures for their own child.

Open a player and enter their parents' email addresses. Each invite works only for the address you typed, so a forwarded one cannot link the wrong person.

Once a parent is linked, they can invite their own extended family — a grandparent, an aunt, a co-parent in another household — from their child's profile. Those people can watch and change nothing, and the parent can remove them again at any time.

They should see your team, and their own child, without seeing anything about anybody else's.

6. Bring in your fixtures

If your league or club publishes a calendar, paste its link and your fixtures come in. Matches are told apart from training and other events.

If you do not have one, add matches by hand — opponent, date, time, home or away. Either way you end up with a season you can run.

You should see your fixture list on the team screen.

What you should have

• A roster with correct shirt numbers
• Families linked to their own children
• A fixture list

You are ready for a match. Next: run a match.

Troubleshooting

My paste came in as one column. The file is probably using an unusual separator. Open it in a spreadsheet, copy the cells themselves rather than the raw file, and paste again.

Everybody has the same shirt number, or none. The number column was not identified. Set it by hand on the mapping step and re-paste.

A parent says they cannot see anything. They signed in with a different email than the invite went to, or the invite has already been used. Issue another.

I created the same team twice. Delete the empty one from the team screen.