Automate the court calls. Keep control of the exceptions.

Three courts finish while you’re handling one problem.

An umpire asks for a break. A parent is trying to find a missing player. Meanwhile, three courts finish within a few minutes of each other. Each needs its next match, an available umpire and a clear announcement.

The desk already knows the procedure. The interruption is the problem: you are halfway through an assignment when another court becomes free, and someone asks whether the players for Court 2 have been called.

SmashIQ’s Auto mode follows that routine from the Match Control page. You can let it prepare and call eligible work while you deal with the exception—provided that exception is recorded in the controls it reads.

What Auto mode does, in order.

An organiser starts Auto mode from the Match Control header. It takes one action, refreshes the board, and evaluates the next action. The sequence matters because placing a match changes which umpire and court it needs.

The umpire list puts those with no recorded work today first, then available umpires whose last completed assignment ended longest ago. It also shows recorded workload. Auto mode follows this ordering; it does not claim to measure tiredness or independently judge who should officiate a difficult match.

Filling an empty Next up slot can happen before the match’s call window. The announcement waits for its own timing and availability checks. Preparing a card is not an instruction to start play immediately.

Put the interruption on the board.

Suppose umpire Leela is taking a break until 11:20 and player Dev is away until 11:15. In Announcements & availability, mark each unavailable until that time. Auto mode will avoid giving Leela a new assignment or placing Dev’s match up next, and will hold an automatic call for a card involving either of them.

The black dot beside Dev’s name marks the active availability hold. For the other player indicators, see the Match Control status key.

There is an important exception: Dev might already be on Court 2’s Next up card when you record the hold. Auto mode waits on that card. It does not reshuffle an existing assignment behind your back.

The availability panel then shows Needs a decision. For an unavailable player, you can unschedule the match. For an official on a break, you can assign another official. For an unavailable court, you can move the pending match to an offered court with an empty Next up slot, or unschedule it. Choose the fix that matches what is happening at the venue.

The hold stops applying at the recorded return time; you can also mark the person available sooner. If they are still absent, extend it. A guessed return time left unchanged can make work eligible before the person is back.

A get-ready call is a different promise.

A court call is for a match whose court is free. A get-ready call prepares the next players while the current match is still playing. With get-ready calls enabled, you can trigger them after a chosen number of playing minutes or a chosen completed game, whichever condition is reached first.

For example, with ten minutes or one completed game selected, the next players can be told to get ready when either condition is met. Their readiness and availability still matter. A get-ready call does not assign a start time or promise that the current match will finish in five minutes.

Eligible automatic announcements get an amber warning on the board before playback, with a full minute for a newly eligible or changed call. Skip auto on a Next up card suppresses both its automatic court call and its get-ready call. It leaves the match scheduled, so the desk can handle that announcement deliberately.

If you want the placement and umpire assignment without the audio, switch match announcements off. Those first two steps continue. You can also stop Auto mode from the header when you need to work through several exceptions manually.

Choose how early you’re willing to call.

Early-call settings apply once play has begun that day. Before the day’s first match, Auto mode does not bring a court call forward from its planned time. Later, an eligible match may be called within the configured early window, subject to the announcement warning.

This setting needs to fit your event. A generous early window may help at a venue where everyone is nearby; it may be awkward for players relying on published times to arrive. Record known absences, and choose a window the desk can explain to players.

Readiness uses your tournament’s aggressive rest floor as the blocked threshold. Caution and watch warnings can still permit automatic work. The automation does not insist on ideal rest, and it cannot infer an unrecorded injury, absence or officiating concern.

Make the controlling desk clear.

Auto mode runs from one organiser’s visible Match Control page per tournament. Keep that browser tab open; it pauses when hidden. Another organiser can see who is running it and take over or stop it from their device.

A saved availability hold or skipped call is shared tournament state, so a handover does not erase the desk’s recorded exceptions. The page is still part of the workflow: this is not a background service that keeps calling matches after everyone closes Match Control.

Before switching it on, check the current Next up cards, record known breaks and absences, and choose your announcement timing. Then watch how it handles the first few court changes. The useful division of work is clear: SmashIQ follows the recorded routine, and the desk records and resolves the exceptions.

For an example where the desk needs to change the queue first, read Court 3 is empty. Why can’t we call the next match?