Availability Calendar Guide
This guide only applies to the USAEL Open. The USAEL Open does not give each game a fixed match day. Instead, teams say when they can play each week, and league admins pair them and set a match time from the hours both teams have open. If your school competes only in a state league with fixed match times, you do not need anything in this guide. This guide explains where availability lives, who sets it, and how to make joining the weekly queue quick.
Related guides: Match Week Guide and Team Creation Guide. Not in the USAEL Open yet? The Multi-League Linking Guide shows how to register your existing school and teams for it.
1. How Scheduling from Availability Works
Each week, when you join the queue, you paint the times your entry can play during the play week that follows. The queue opens Thursday and closes Monday at 12:00 PM ET. Matches are played Monday to Friday between 3:00 and 9:00 PM ET.
When the queue closes, the platform proposes pairings from rating and shared free time, and league admins review and confirm them. Two entries must share at least 60 minutes to be paired.
Each match starts at the earliest time both entries share, unless an admin moves it within that overlap. You get an inbox notification, and both entries see the time on the match page.
Teams can still move a match by agreement. Section 4 explains how.
The more hours you offer, the more opponents you can be paired with and the more likely you get a time that suits you. A team that offers a single hour will be paired only with teams free during that hour, or not at all.
2. Optional Availability Setup
You paint your availability every time you join the queue. To save time, set a standing Availability Preference for your school, each team and each player. The queue grid pulls in your team's preference with one click, a team's preference can pull in the school's, and players' preferences feed the member heat map.
2.1 Set Your School's Preference
Open your school's page and select Settings, then Availability Preference. Only coaches and school admins see it.
The grid shows a week, Monday to Sunday, with hours down the side. Click or drag to select the hours your esports program normally runs.
Select Save.
2.2 Set Each Team's Preference
Open a team page (from your school's Teams tab or from Teams in the left navigation) and select the calendar icon (Availability Preference) in the header.
The grid shows a week, Monday to Sunday, with hours down the side. Click or drag to select the hours your team can play. If your school has a preference, select the + Include button that names your school to add its hours.
Select Save.
To see when your players are usually free, turn on Overlay member heat map on the team or school grid. It shades each hour by how many members have saved that time in their own preference. Counts only appear once enough members have saved theirs, so no single student's schedule can be read from it.
2.3 Ask Players to Set Their Own Preferences
Your students open Settings, select Schedule, and paint their usual weekly hours under Availability Preference. You never see one student's own times. You see them only as the member heat map on the team, school and entry grids.
3. Weekly Queue with Availability
3.1 Join the Queue
Open the competition and select the Bracket tab. The band at the top shows a countdown to when the queue closes.
If you have several entries in this competition, pick one from the picker next to the queue button.
Select the queue button at the top of the Bracket tab. A window titled Set Your Availability opens with the line "Paint the times you can play during this window. Saving joins the queue."
Select the + Include button that names your team to add its usual hours, or + Fill all match times to offer every hour the league plays. Then adjust for this week: remove hours lost to a field trip or a state league match, and add any extra time you can offer. Each block must be at least 60 minutes long.
Select Save and join. The band should now read In Queue For.
Repeat for each of your entries.
You cannot join the queue without submitting availability.
When you add hours your team's preference does not have yet, a box that starts Also add these times to appears, ticked by default. Leave it on and your team's preference grows each week, so next week's + Include button brings these hours back. Untick it for a one-off week that should not change the standing preference.
3.2 Change It Before the Queue Closes
Open your entry from the competition's Entries tab and scroll to its Availability section. Change this week's times as often as you like until the queue closes, then select Save. You do not need to leave and rejoin the queue.
3.3 After the Queue Closes
When the queue closes, that week's play days lock while league admins pair the queue. Once matches are made, the hours your match uses show as Reserved by a match and cannot be removed. Your match page shows the assigned start time. A starter who already has another match at the chosen time is swapped for a free substitute automatically when the pairing is made, in your entry's sub order.
4. After You Are Matched
The assigned time falls inside both entries' availability, so it should already work for you. If something changes:
Agree on a new time with the other team in Match Chat. Then select Flag Admin (the hand icon) on the match page, choose General Support, and write the new time in the details. A league admin moves the match. Play it by the end of the day on Sunday of that week.
If the other team does not agree, the assigned time stands.
If the other team does not show up, post in Match Chat at the start time. After 15 minutes with no reply, use Flag Admin and choose Opponent Unresponsive. Only a league admin records a forfeit.
5. Tips for Coaches
Offer as much availability as possible. Two or three afternoons of two hours each pairs far better than one exact hour.
Leave out your state league matches. If your school plays in both a state league and the USAEL Open, remove your fixed state-league match times from the Open's grid and the two schedules never collide.
Join the queue early. You can still change your times until the queue closes Monday at 12:00 PM ET, so there is no reason to wait.
One coach, several teams. Each team has its own preference, and each entry joins the queue on its own. The picker next to the queue button switches between your entries.
Who can do this. A coach or the team captain can submit an entry's availability and join the queue. Any player can set their own preference. Only the team's coach or captain can save the team's preference, and only a coach or school admin can save the school's.
6. Common Questions
We were paired with a team we have no overlap with. This should not happen, because pairing looks for at least 60 minutes both entries share. If it does, agree on a time in Match Chat, then use Flag Admin on the match page with General Support, and a league admin will move the match.
What time zone does the availability calendar use? The queue grid and your entry's Availability section show times in your device's time zone. An availability preference shows a Time zone chip with the zone it was saved in. If that differs from your device's zone, select the Use button that names your zone to move the preference to it. Teams in other zones see the same hours converted to theirs.
We got a bye. Nobody with enough shared time was left in the queue when it closed. A bye shows as a completed match marked Bye, and most leagues count it as a win. A team with a bye generally does not get a second match that week. Offering more hours next week helps.
Can a player join the queue? Only a coach or the team captain can. Players contribute by keeping their own Availability Preference up to date so the heat map is accurate.