Whether your league gathers together in person for a fun draft day event or everyone connects remotely for your league draft, here are some helpful tips for the Commissioner to ensure things go smoothly.
- Commissioners running the event in person can utilize just one computer if desired and make picks for any owner using the Commish Draft button.
- A great way to familiarize yourself with the live draft experience is to try out a mock draft on our site. (Team > Draft > Try out a mock draft)
- It’s a good idea to check the draft board at least a couple of hours before the draft to make sure it looks as expected in terms of draft order, number of picks/rounds, etc. If issues are spotted, the typical culprits are the number of keepers set (each keeper represents a draft pick, so for each player set as a keeper that is one less draft pick) or the Configure Draft settings (make sure the “Retain all players…” option is not selected unless you are avoiding dropping non-keepers).
- Another setting to check pre-draft are the position maximum settings via League > Settings > Edit Roster Requirements. Make sure you bump up the max number for each position if you are allowing owners to roster additional players.
- In the live draft room, an important feature Commissioners should familiarize themselves with is the Play/Pause button in the top center of the live draft room; it can be used at any point to pause the draft for any length of time. (Hit Play to restart the timer for the next pick. The Pause can stay on for as long as needed — minutes, hours, days even.)
- Right next to that Play/Pause button is a back button which can be used to undo picks and move backwards in the draft if needed. (Mistakes happen!)
- If you are going to use Commish Draft for a pick for someone who is not connected to the draft, we’d recommend being ready to hit the Pause button there’s ample time to search for and select their pick. Anyone who is not connected to the draft room will only get 10 seconds on the clock before the auto-draft feature chooses for them. (But don’t worry, if the pick is missed for some reason, the Commish can use the back button mentioned above to undo the pick.)
- If any owners are connecting from afar, let them know that they need to connect to the live draft room somewhere with a good wifi connection so that they don’t risk disconnection during the draft and missing their pick.
- Tablets, laptops or desktops are recommended devices for live drafting as they have the screen real estate to show the full draft room and all of its features. While owners can draft from the mobile phones, their view will be limited in comparison to larger devices.
- We don’t offer live drafting via our new app yet, so owners that are drafting via phone will need to access the draft by going to fleaflicker.com via their mobile web browser.
- You can have your draft board up in a separate window if you want to switch to it at any point to show folks in the room. Each position has an assigned color, so it helps easily highlight your league’s drafting trends.
- If something goes really wrong, like an owner didn’t set their keepers and that needs to get fixed before the draft can happen, we offer a “Stop & Cancel Draft” option in the League Settings. You can use that to stop the current draft, then edit the rosters, set keepers, tweak roster requirements, etc., and then schedule a new live draft. (Note that it won’t retain any previously drafted players; it will start back with Pick 1.1.)
- If you come out of draft mode at any point unintentionally (you will know if you no longer see the draft settings in League Settings), you can correct this by going to League > Settings > Edit Rosters and choosing “These are complete rosters but still draft this season” in the bottom Keeper Options section and clicking Save.
- There is a My Queue feature in the middle of the screen — this is best utilized if an owner needs to step away from their computer during the draft. They can put their top players they are interested in (in priority order) in this section and then click “Away” at the top to inform the system to choose from that list if any of those players are still available.
- By default, the auto-draft feature will choose the best available starter based on roster needs if an owner is absent. Alternatively, owners can pre-rank their players via Draft > Draft Rankings and set the option on the right to “Best available player regardless of roster needs (follows your rankings blindly)” and then click Save at the very bottom of the page (below the player listing on the left).
- If a Commissioner just wants the system to make all of the picks (an “auto-draft” draft), he/she would just schedule the live draft but tell owners not to join, open the live draft room at the chosen time and just keep it open in a separate tab and let it do its thing. The tab can be closed when the draft is complete.
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