Hello! This is our app Brace documentation, where we will describe its features in detail. Our goal is to help users to use Brace the first time: we are aware it couldn’t be simple to understand. In order to be more clear, this documentation was structured as a guideline for navigating throughout the app. In other words, we will start talking about home page first and we will proceed with following pages, like there would be someone next to users that are using app.
If you don’t have a Brace account, once you open the app click on Subscribe. A page will appear by asking you some info (necessary for a new account):
Completed all fields, click on Send all. If all went well, you will receive an email that will confirm your subscription. Sometime it would take some minutes to receive thi email: check also between spams eventually.
Obviously, if you have already used the email address, you will be asked to use a different one.
If you lost your password, you could reset it and have a new one, generated automatically. From Login page, click on Password forgotten a new page will ask you to insert your email address. Then, click on Reset.
You should receive an email with a new password of 8 chars. Use this password for login (you can change it later).
Once you manage to login, the app will save locally in your phone your credentials: this means you will not need to re-insert them anymore. Your account session will be left alive since:
If this happens, you will be forced to insert your credentials again.
Once you login the user menu page will appear. Here you can see:
If you click on Players in user page, you will go to a page with the list of all created players. Now we need to underline this point: the page shows players without mentioning which squads they take part of, because a player can be part of more than one team squad or none. In fact a player can:
The third scenario could be useless for most of users. However, for someone could be interesting to exclude some players from its squad without forcing their deletion. In that case, a player’s data are not deleted and they can be restored when the player is added again to the squad. So, putting out of squad a player is a safe procedure, since it is reversible, and it can help users to clean and make order in crowded squad. For example, let’s think about a squad that, in the middle of the season, reached 50 players: it could be annoying working with such long list of players. But if 20 of them went to another team or they were just excluded, you can consider to clean your squad by putting them out of squad.
If you want to delete a player definitely, you can do it on this page: search the player in the list and click its right icon (with a bin symbol). Player’s data will be removed and they can’t be restored anymore, but team statistics will not be changed. For example, if the deleted player scored a goal for a team this goal will not removed as well, but it will assigned to an “unknown” player. Unfortunately since you can have at most 50 players, you might be forced to proceed with some players removal soon or later.
You may ask now: “but, how can I create a player?”. This operation can be done inside a team squad, so let’s create a team first!
If you click Teams button in user page, you will go to a page with the list of all created teams (Created teams). You can create a new one by clicking on New team below: a form will appear. Every team needs:
Let’s focus on the third info. With “team” we are meaning a squad that played within one season. This means that two seasons of same football team are seen as separate “teams” by the app. With “season” we mean a period of 11 month and it starts from the “start date” that you selected in the form.
Every user can create at most 2 teams, so if you need to create a third one you have to delete one first (click on the right icon above the team item in the list). Be aware that after deleting a team, all of its data are lost for ever and you can’t restore them.
Inside Created Teams page, if you select on of them you will got to its menu page. Here you will find some tools for managing a season:
At the top right of the page, there is a pen icon button that you can click to Edit team page. Here you could change your team name and its logo (but not the season start date: you can’t modify it).
Now you have created a team, you need to add some players first! You can do it in Squad page: click on Add player below. You have two options:
If you select the first option, a page will see a form to insert your player data:
When you create a player these other two info will be set automatically:
You could change all of this info later, anyway.
If you select the second option, you will see the list of created player that don’t take part of the squad. Click on them to pick them (a green icon will be shown) and click on Add selected.
In Squad page you can remove a player from squad: you just have to click on the red icon on the right of the player. We remember you that excluding a player from a squad doesn’t delete them from the app and you can add the player again anytime.
In Squad page, by clicking on a player you will see the Player page. Here all player info will be shown:
You can also filter player’s stats for a specific tournament. Click on All competitions banner and you will see a list of all created tournaments, then select one of them.
Now we have to clarify the difference between these two stats
The first percentage let users to have a more precise and equal for players that could have played some games for an injury or an indisposition.
We have to inform that extra time and injury time will be not taken into account on minutes calculation, with an exception: if a player played only during extra or injury time, the app will consider only 1 minute for this player in the stats. Of course we want to avoid to have a player with a presence and 0’ minutes played in stats calculation!
In Player page you can also edit a player info. If you click the pen icon at top right of the page you will see a form where you can edit all info. Here you can edit also height and weight with some limitations:
Once you have defined your squad, you can proceed by creating one or more tournaments. Now lets explain better what a tournament consists of.
In Brace a tournament is a group of games which have in common:
Therefore tournament let to define once for all some specific rules for a set games, without inserting them every time.
A game that is part of a tournament is named competitive and players and teams statistics are calculated only considering this kind of games. In fact, a game that is not part of any tournaments, which is called friendly, will be ignored on stats calculation. In other words, tournaments are mandatory for data extraction.
After that, tournaments are useful also to clustering data. For example, in Player Page you can read data for a specific tournament only and this helps to do a more accurate analysis.
Now we have to explain how disqualification calculation works. A tournaments can offer the possibility to calculate a player disqualification and show it to user. You have these options available:
If a player is red booked, disqualification is showed by the app (expect for the last option)
Disqualifications are calculated considering only the games of a specific tournament: if a player receives a disqualification for Competition A, the disqualification will be not showed for Competition B.
Disqualifications in Brace are just warnings because they don’t force users to leave a player with a disqualification out during a game. They are just a tool that can help users on choosing the best formation for a game.
From Team menu, click on Tournaments: you will see a page with all created tournaments. Then, click on New Tournament and you will see a form to select new tournament specifics. Once you click on Create, the tournament will be added to the team.
You can create at most 5 tournaments per team.
You can always delete a tournament: you have to click on Tournaments on user menu page and click on the trash icon on the right of the tournament.
Pay attention: if you delete a tournament all its games and statistics will be removed as well. This operation is permanent and you will not able to restore your data
Now you should have a team with a squad and list of tournaments, so we can proceed on scheduling events on calendar. For every team is possible to schedules events in a time frame of 11 months from season start day.
There four types of events that can be scheduled:
In the calendar is possible also to see all squad players birthday
The creation form can be changed by selecting the type of event that you want to create: click on the upper bottom to select the typology. For every event you must select the time (by default is midnight). You can also write the name of the event, which coincides with opposing team for games. After that, games have also these other fields:
Once you add an event in the calendar you may notice that the event is represented with an icon. For games the icon showed is not immediate, so let’s explain them. First, icons color is an info itself:
Then, the symbol of icon is another info:
You can delete an event from calendar anytime you want: you just have to select the corresponding day on the calendar and click on trash icon on the right of the event.
We have to warn you that deleting a competitive game or a training session will removed their data from stats calculation. Then, you will not be able to restore this data.
Once you have created a squad, you can save three standard formations that you can use before playing a game.
Click on Formations button on team menu. You will see a football field with some players. You haven’t saved formations before, the app will put on the field some players randomly, but you can change that of course. Firsty, with upper buttons you can choose:
After selecting the formation, you can swap players in the field. Click on of them and you will see the icon changed: click on another player to swap them.
You can also substitute a player with another one out of the field. Click on the player an click on the See bench button below: you we will see the list of players on bench. Select on player on the list to complete the substitution.
Once you have done, click on Save formations: all three formations will be saved.
Note: you can save a formation if you have a least 5 players in squad.
Now the main part arrived: playing and saving games. This can be done if you have first:
On team menu, click on Games to be played button: you will see the list of games that has to be played. Here you will not find games already played or scheduled in a future day. For example if today is December 15th 2023 and you saved three games in calendar:
you could play the first two games, not the last one: you will have to wait December 20th. Neither games that were already played can be seen on the list: you need to delete them if you want to correct their data.
Once you select a game, the app will guide you to a page with a football field: here you will have the possibility to select the starting formation. If you saved the standard formations before, you can choose one of them and change them.
Some players can be seen with a yellow or a red card: this can happen if you are playing a competitive game. A yellow card means that if a player receive another yellow card disqualification will be triggered for the next game. A red card, instead, represents a disqualification for the game that you are playing. Anyway, you must consider that these symbols are only alerts: you could insert a player with a disqualification in the starting formation without problems
Once you have selected the starting formation, if you don’t have any selected players you can click on Select formation on the bottom of the page to proceed. After that, you will be asked to choose the list of summoned players on bench. By default all players that are not part of starting formation are summoned and left on bench, but now you can decide to not summon someone if you want (such as injured players).
Once you have completed also the bench selection, you can start the game by clicking on Start game on the bottom of the page.
Game page is a dashboard that you can to manage the game. Firstly, you can select game time using the console under the score:
After using the time console, you can record a game event at the selected minute. You have these options:
You can also add a yellow/red card to a player on the bench. Click on Other options and See bench from the popup list. After that, click on the player to be booked and select the color of the card.
Every game event is saved in game history that you can see by clicking in Other options and the History from the popup list. Here you can also delete the last added game event.
Once you add a game event in a specific minute, you can’t go back to a previous minute from the timer but you must delete the event first. This mechanism was designed like that to avoid potential no-sense scenarios, like a goal scored by a player that was on the bench.
Once you have recorded all game events, you can proceed by saving all data. There are three ways available:
If you saved a game temporarily, you can restore its recording by going on team menu and clicking on Games to be played. In that case you will see only the game saved locally: you can’t choose the other ones. Once you select the game, you have also the possibility to delete it, if you want: click on Other options and select Delete ongoing game from the popup list.
You can always see a saved game history: you have to go to Calendar and selecting the game (you should see also the final score). A page will be showed with the list of game events: as we mentioned before, you cannot change them.
If the game is competitive, you can also assign a grade to the players that were summoned. Clicking on Options and selecting Grades, you will see the list of players that don’t have a a grade (NG) by default. If you click on one of them, you will see the grade increasing from 1 to 10. You can also select the MVP of the game by clicking on Options and then MVP. By default, no player is chosen as MVP: click on the cell to select one from the summoned players. After you modifications, you can save all by clicking on Save grades and MVP on the bottom of the page: differently from game events, grades and MVP can be changed anytime.
Users can decide to keep track of players presences at training session during the session, in order to evaluate their squad behaviour. This can be done by creating training sessions on Calendar and using them. When you click on a training session you will see all players of the squad. By default, all of them have their presence set as Not applicable, which means their presences will be not counted on stats. By clicking on a player you can change the status with these other options:
You can save the data by clicking Save presences on the bottom of the page. You can change the presences anytime you want.
Now we can describe the heart of Brace: stats analysis. But first we need to make a comment. At the moment, data analysis will be limited by app screen size: we are planning to develop a web interface to have a more features that would be difficult to display on a phone (such as graphs).
Part of statistics can be seen in Player page, but now we will focus on teams statistics.
To see the season stats, you have to go to team menu and click Stats: you will se a page with different sections for every topic. You can filter data calculation by using the two buttons at the top of the page:
Page sections are:
From this page you can also see games in chronological order by clicking on Games on the bottom of the page.
Users would like also to make a comparison between their players and they do that by clicking on Rankings on team menu. This page sorts players respect to a parameter that can be selected from the button on the bottom of the page. A popup list will appear with this parameters:
All rankings are calculated considering all tournaments together. At the moment you can’t filter only a specific tournament