Creating and switching groups

A group is a saved roster of players plus the settings that go with it. Your Tuesday night drop-in and your competitive ladder can each be their own group, with separate players, ratings, schedule, and defaults. One account holds as many groups as you want, but you work in one active group at a time.

What's in a group

Nothing is shared between groups. Each one owns its:

• Players: the roster lives in the group; adding someone to one group doesn't add them to another.
• Subgroups: flights, squads, or skill sections within the group.
• Ratings and history: scores and Elo are tracked per group, so a casual group and a serious league never mix standings.
• Schedule and sessions: events and saved mixer sessions belong to the group.
• Settings: rating, game, and policy defaults are configured per group (see below). A group's ladder shape (individual vs team mode, divisions, promotion counts) is chosen when you set the group up as a ladder.

Create a group

1. From the dashboard, open the Groups page.
2. Press Create Group.
3. Enter a name (a description is optional) and save.

The new group becomes your active group right away, and it runs on your account's timezone, which is set automatically from your browser. Event times and rating decay follow it; change a group's timezone in Group Settings → Games → Time Settings. If your profile has no timezone yet, the group starts on New York time and you'll get a warning with a shortcut to change it. Once your profile picks up a timezone, we'll offer to move those New York groups (and their upcoming events, at the same clock times) over to it. For a competitive season, use Create Ladder on the same page; that's covered in What is a ladder league?.

Import several groups at once

If you run a club with a dozen leagues, Import Groups on the Groups page sets them all up from one spreadsheet, each group with its players, subgroups and sub-organizers.

The players file (required)

One row per person, with these columns in any order:

group_name, name, email, role, rating, gender, subgroups, dupr_note, dupr_id, notes, fixed_partner

• group_name: which group this person belongs to. Leave it blank to reuse the group on the row above, so each group's block only needs it once.
• role: leave blank for a player. Use organizer for a sub-organizer who doesn't play, or both for someone who does both.
• subgroups: separate several with a pipe: Main Roster|Spare A|Spare B. Subgroups that don't exist yet are created for you, as ordinary subgroups. The import doesn't make squads: for squad-versus-squad nights, mark those subgroups as squads afterwards.
• rating: the player's starting rating in your group's own scale, where a new player starts at 1500 by default. Seed stronger players a little above that and newer ones a little below (the template uses 1495–1620). Put a DUPR level in dupr_note, not here. A 3.5 among 1500s ranks that player far below everyone else.
• dupr_note: where a DUPR level does go: a short badge shown next to the player's name, like DUPR 3.75 (32 characters). dupr_id links their DUPR profile.
• notes: private notes about the player, for organizers only. Any length; line breaks are kept.
• fixed_partner: the name of the player they always play with, in the same group. One side is enough: put Eve Marsh on Dan's row and both are linked, the same link the roster's partner setting makes, so a mixer launched from the dashboard brings them in already linked. The partner can be later in the file or already on the roster. The import won't guess: if two people name the same partner, neither pair is linked, and it never breaks up a pair you've already set; both show up in the report instead.

A sub-organizer is matched by email, so that column is required for anyone with a role, and they must already have a PickleFriend account. Anyone who doesn't is listed in the report; ask them to sign up, then run the same file again.

The groups file (optional)

One row per group, for settings you'd otherwise click through:

group_name, description, courts, subgroups plus any setting from Group Settings: decay_enabled, default_target_score, league_policy and so on. Yes/no columns take yes or no.

• league_policy can be as long as the Policy box in Group Settings allows; a whole handbook is fine. Line breaks survive: type them inside the cell (Alt+Enter in Excel) and Excel keeps the paragraphs together when it saves the CSV.
• Timezone isn't a column. Imported groups take your account's timezone, like any new group; change a group's in Group Settings.

These apply to groups the import creates. A group that already exists keeps its current settings (an import never rewrites live rating math), and the report tells you so.

Running it

Download both templates from the modal, fill them in, and drop them on the upload area. Preview shows exactly what will happen (how many groups are new, which subgroups get created, who can't be added and why) without changing anything. Only Import makes changes.

Both templates open straight into Excel with the columns already separated, wherever you are in the world. Save from Excel as CSV (File → Save As → CSV) and upload that. Tab-delimited text works too, and so does the semicolon-separated CSV that Excel writes on a European computer. Afterwards the report appears on screen and lands in your inbox.

Re-running the same files is safe. Groups, subgroups and players are matched by name, so anything already imported is skipped rather than duplicated, so you can fix a few rows and re-upload the whole file.

Switch the active group

The group switcher sits in the site header, available on the dashboard and the Mixer. Pick a group there and every page switches to that group's roster, schedule and sessions.

Your choice sticks: the active group is remembered when you sign back in, so you land where you left off.

Where group settings live

Group-level defaults (ratings, game settings, and policy) are configured in the dashboard's Group Settings (open it from the sidebar). They're stored on the group itself, so changing a setting in one group never touches another.

Scope	Examples	Where it's set
Per group	Roster, rating defaults, game defaults, policy, schedule	Group Settings
Per account	Your profile, email preferences	Account settings

Pick the right active group first, and adding players, mixing, and recording scores all land where they should.

How many groups can you have

A free account holds 1 group (up to 19 players); Lite raises that to 5 groups and 100 players; Pro and Club have no limit on groups or players. If you're near your plan's group limit, check whether any old or test groups can be archived or deleted. A group's players and game history are gone once it's deleted, so export anything you need first.

Saving tonight's roster into the group

Saving players is free up to that limit, and saved players are there to import next week. In the Mixer, a player's three-dot menu (⋮) has 👥 Save all (N) to "your group" to push tonight's names into the group, and the clipboard icon's Import from your group pulls them back next time. A free account launches up to 19 at once; while your free score-entry period is running, launches stay fully open.

If tonight's roster is bigger than the limit, you still mix with everyone; on a free account you add the players past 19 by hand. Paste a list, or launch from your saved group, and the first names fill the roster while the rest appear in an add-them-manually list with a Copy button each; type them in and they play exactly like the rest. Lite adds them all at once and saves up to 100 of them.

What's in Group Settings

Each group has a Group Settings modal in the dashboard sidebar with four tabs (five for ladder groups).

Ratings: the rating system (Elo or cumulative points), calculation parameters (default rating, scale, K-factor, placement games per player and pool-wide, highest-player responsibility %, and the rating method: point margin or win/loss), Team Rating Mode (individual weighted average vs team entity), public ratings page visibility, and rating decay (on/off, rate, exponential growth).

Games: Launcher Settings (see below), the Live Mixer self-service switch, the group's default courts, the scoring rules that pre-populate score entry (rally scoring, win-by-two, target score), and Time Settings: the group timezone and typical game duration.

Policy: a free-text field for your league code of conduct, payment terms, cancellation rules, or any text you want players to see. When filled in, a "Policy" tab appears on the public ratings page and a "League Policy" button appears on each event page. Leave it blank to hide both. For ladders, the policy is shared across every division; saving it from any division updates the same value.

Ladder: visible only for ladder leagues. Covers promotion/relegation counts, min-games eligibility, auto-invite scope, spare-up promotion mode, and spare-down protection. See Running a cycle for what those settings do.

Sub-Organizers: invite another PickleFriend account by email to help manage this group. Sub-organizers can manage players, run mixers, enter scores, and manage events. Only the group owner can add or remove sub-organizers. See Collaborators for full detail.

Launcher Settings

At the top of the Games tab, Launcher Settings set the mix settings the mixer starts with when you launch it from this group's dashboard or an event page. Once launched, they become the group's saved settings. Leave them off and the mixer starts with whatever settings this group used last, on any device.

Pick the Starting settings in one tap from any built-in preset or one of your own, and use Fine-tune if you want to adjust them. An optional Game plan switches to different settings at later games, for example rating-balanced courts from game 4. If another organizer sent you a preset code, use Have a preset code? Paste it.

For every Group Settings field, see Group Settings reference.

What's next

• Players: add, edit, and bulk-import the roster for your active group.
• Group Settings reference: every Ratings, Games, and Policy field explained.
• Collaborators: invite a sub-organizer to help run a group from their own account.
• Accounts and your data: what a free account adds and how your data is handled.