When you are creating debate pairings, it is sometimes desirable to prevent certain groups of teams from meeting in the "preset" rounds of the tournament. The groups may be defined many different ways, but one common term for this is "district" protection.
When the software pairs debates for "random" rounds, it considers a list of contraints (or "Pairing Priorities") that you indicate are important for consideration. Common constraints include prior opponents and hitting another team from the same school, etc. The "district" protection allows you to indicate to the software that an additional constraint should be considered that covers a "group" of teams. The first group is called "district" and a second group is called "region".
In some leagues, districts are setup naturally by the governing body. Sometimes the districts might more appropriately be called areas or regions or clubs. The salient point is that there is a combination of several schools that you do not want to meet. You may actually call the combination something other than a "district", but in terms of the software, you will use "district" protection to accomplish your goal.
The first step is to setup in the software the list of "districts" that will be competing in the tournament. This is done via "File" -> "Administration" -> "Manage Districts".
The following dialog will appear.
Type the name of your "district" in the field labeled "Description". The description could be something like "District 14" or "Area 2", or "Region VI", or "Dallas". The description is only used so that you may distinguish between the various "groups". Use a name for each "district" that you will recognize easily.
Click on the button labeled "Add".
The "district" that you have entered will move down from the "Description" field into the box labeled "Districts".
Every school will need to belong to a district. Multiple schools may belong to the same district, but every school must belong to a district. If you have schools that don't technically belong to a district, you will need to make one up. You might call the made up district "Independent" or something similar.
CAUTION: If you make up a district and associate several schools with that same district (e.g. "Independent"), make sure that you realize when you are using district protection, they will not be allowed to meet. Any school from the same "district" will be prevented from meeting. Instead, what you probably want to do is create a separate district for each independent school ("Independent 1", "Independent 2", "Independent 3", etc.).
After you have entered several districts, your list should look similar to the following:
When you have your list of districts complete, press OK. You may come back to the "Manage Disrict" option again if you need to create additional districts.
The next step is to associate each school with the appropriate district.
Open up your "Schools" folder. Right click on the name of a school and select "Properties".
The properites dialog for that school will appear. About mid-way down on the left-hand side of the dialog is a drop down list labeled "Disrict". Select the appropriate "district" for the school you have selected from the drop-down list. The districts which will appear in this list will exactly match those you created from "Manage Districts" above.
Repeat this process of assigning a district to every school. You may review your selections for all of the schools via the folder labeled "District/Region" underneath the "Schools" folder on the navigation tree. This option makes it easy to review that all of your "district" information has been entered correctly and that you have not omitted the district information for any of the participating schools.
Once you have the "districts" established for every school, you are ready to create pairings using this restriction. Right-click on the appropriate debate round and select "Pair". From the "Random" tab, you will be presented with the various constraints to consider when pairing the round.
The options are listed in order as they will be considered. Your most important constraint should be listed first, then your next most important constraint, etc. Depending on your situation, you may want your "districts" to be protected when possible, but there are other things you consider more important. In that case, you would list the other constraints first and place "District Variation" lower in the list. Sometimes district variation is one of the very most important considerations; if so, you would list "District Variation" earlier in the list.
By default, the "District Variation" option will be marked as "Ignore". This means, that unless you make a change to the "District Variation" option, it will not be considered in the pairings.
You will want to change the "weighting" of the "District Variation" constraint to either "Absollute" or "Preferred". You may also want to move that constraint higher or lower in the list.
NOTE: It is not always possible to create pairings with "district" protection. If you select "absolute" for the weighting for "District Variation", this tells the software that every pairing that it creates must have two different districts. Assuming that you have enough districts and enough teams that have not already met, then it will be possible. If you don't have enough districts, then it may not be possible. It may be necessary for one or two of the debates to be within the same district. The "Preferred" weighting instructs the computer to separate districts as much as possible, but to allow "some" districts to still meet. Depending on the size of your field, this may be necessary.
Mathematically, some combinations of schools, districts, and teams cannot produce pairings with district protection as "absolute". It is also possible that even the "preferred" method will fail. "Most" of the debates that are scheduled must be of varying districts in order for the "preferred" method to succeed.