The Station Manager assists the tournament director in keeping track of the stations being used at his/her tournament. A station is a designated area for playing one match in an event's bracket; stations can be television sets, chess boards, softball fields, or any other arrangement. When a director elects to use the station management feature of tio (via the options section of the event editor), each match that is set "in progress" will be scheduled at a station at the director's discretion. The director will be able to review the status of all stations in use and will be able to make intelligent scheduling decisions based on the current usage of each station.
Stations must be initalized by clicking the Stations tab at the top of the user interface, which will the following window:
From this window, the director can choose a station type and the number of stations in use; doing so will populate the station list. Clicking on a station in the list will let the director edit that station's name and add identifying information to the station label. This can help keep track of televisions with VCR setups, stations that lie away from the main tournament area, or other notable distinctions:
If station management is enabled (it is by default), the director will be shown a station assignment window whenever he/she marks a match in any bracket "in progress":
This window shows the current status of each station. Stations that are "free" (green icon) do not have a match assigned to them; stations "in use" (yellow icon) only have one match scheduled; any amount of queueing (red icon) is beyond that first scheduled match.
tio automatically recommends a station for you to use, highlighted in blue. The recommended station always has the fewest matches scheduled; when two stations share the smallest queue, then the station whose current match was scheduled further in the past will be chosen.
Double click on a station when you're ready to schedule the match, or press the X in the upper right corner to cancel the operation (the match will not be marked in-progress if you do).
When a match completes and a winner is inputted into tio, that match is removed from the station queue it was scheduled at.
You can view the station a particular match is assigned to by placing your mouse over the match after it has been marked "in progress". The tooltip which appears contains the station the match was assigned to, whether it should be running or is queued, and how long ago it was scheduled:
This tooltip is available on all bracket types.
Return to the Station Manager window to see an overview of your stations' status:
You can see current and future matches at each station by selecting it in the list. Use the "Clear" button to clear the selected station's queue; doing so will not clear the "in progress" status of the affected matches.