This is true for our association, too.  The Team Block feature seems to only block the actual time of a player's home game.  It does not allow for travel time before or after the game, nor does it seem to block practices or tournaments.  I'm not sure it even blocks the away games (I haven't got that figured out yet!).  This creates situation where, even if the official has set a team block, he will show up as available for a game when he is not.  Eg.  the program would block his 8:00 game, but would show him as available for 7:00, even though he clearly wouldn't be.  Louie's suggestion would help to solve this problem.

 

Another way to solve it would be to have officials enter when they ARE available instead of when they aren't.  Then they would not have to worry about blocking all their games, etc. or their personal commitments.  They would just let us know when they were available.  If they didn't bother to do so, they just would never show up on the availability list and therefore would not get any games--good incentive to go in and tell when you are available.  Currently, there is no incentive to set blocks, unless the association imposes penalties for denying or cancelling games.

 

As mentioned in other threads, switching from an always available to an always unavailable model is a complete re-write of the code and there's yet to be consensus on that preference.

 

As far as tying a player's schedule to their block-outs, the reason we can't do this is because the amount of time for preparation / travel / etc is very personal.  For example, some officials may not want to do a game if they have one of their own games anywhere on the same date, whereas others would have no problem officiating right after playing.  It's even worse for away games since the site has no idea how far away the game is and/or what travel arrangements each player would need to make.  Even for home games, if players aren't from the same town it's impossible for the site to know how much time to block out before and after their game.

 

Since it's impossible to automate those time blocks based on a schedule, and because it really doesn't take THAT long for an official to maintain them, it is the best we can do for now.