Team Shake Help (iPhone / iPad Version)

This page is for the iPhone and iPad, for help with Android based devices, click here.

Introduction

Team Shake provides its users many ways to create teams and groups for many different uses.  This includes creating teams for sporting events, groups for class projects, and picking teams for board games.  Without any configuration, you can start using Team Shake to make your teams.  However, Team Shake also supports many advanced features in order to create teams in the way that is best for you.  This page will go over some of the basics of using Team Shake, and it will also explain some of the more advanced functions of Team Shake and how to use them.  As always we appreciate the comments and feedback of our customers, so if you notice something that should be added or corrected to this guide, please send email to support@rhine-o.com or send us a message via the Contact Us page.  We also can be contacted on Twitter (@rhine_o), Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Rhine.O.LLC/), or Google Plus (https://plus.google.com/+rhineo).

Topics to be covered on this page:

Demonstration Videos

This page contains lots of great information in text form with great pictures.  However, before we get to that, a few great videos are available to help show how Team Shake can be used.

First, the Rhine-O Enterprises produced demonstration video showing some great, easy to use features:

Next, we have two videos created by a happy Team Shake user, Jo Bailey (follow her on twitter @LovePhyEd), created two awesome demo videos.
The first one shows you how to import names into Team Shake with an excel spreadsheet:

The seconds one shows some more advanced features of Team Shake:

Basic Operations

Getting Started with Team Shake

Making teams with Team Shake is simple.  Refer to the image below, and the associated directions for the details on how to pick teams.

1. Press the + button, and a window will popup allowing you to add a user.  Repeat until all the users are added to the list.
2. Move the slider to the left or right to pick the number of teams that you want to create.
3. Now press the “Shake-em Up” button or shake your phone up and down.  To create simple teams, that’s it!  Your team will be created.   Note, that you can disable the shaking function of the Main Screen by disabling the “Initial Shake” option.  If you are just looking for the very basic using of Team Shake, you can move on to the Using Teams section of this help.  If you are interested in learning about more advanced functionality such as saving and loading lists of players, continue reading this section.
4. Press here to pick a random user from the list.  The user will only be chosen from those players who are not absent.
5. You can press the action button on the bottom right of the screen to do additional functions.  These functions are:
   1. “Pick a Random Player” – This will choose one random player and display him on the screen.  This can be used if you don’t want to create any teams, but you just want to pick players randomly.
   2. “Toggle Video Out”  – If you iPhone / iPad is connected to a television or monitor, this will display the output on the screen.
   3. “Mark All Absent” – This will mark all the players on the list absent so that they won’t be chosen for teams.
   4. “Mark All Present” – This will mark all the players on the list present, so everyone will be chosen for a team.
   5. “Sort List by Name” – This will reorder the list alphabetically.  Note, there is a configuration option “Sort by Last Name” which controls whether this sort is done by first or last name.
   6. “Configuration Options” – This will display another screen with a number of configuration options that will allow you to fine to the operation of team shake.  See the General Options section of this document for more details on configuration options.
   7. “Share Team Shake” – This gives you an easy way to share a link to Team Shake with your friends via text message, email, twitter, Facebook or Buzzdoes.
6. Press the “Edit” button to put the list into edit mode, where you can delete users or drag them into a different order.
7. Press the “Manage Lists” button to save / load / modify / exports lists.  The options available are:
   1. “Backup / Export” – This will allow you to email a backup file with all the lists and options in Team Shake.  This file can be opened later from a different device to restore the settings or lists (TODO: need a details section about this)
   2. “Import List” – This will open a new screen, where you can existing list of users that have been typed in somewhere else.  See this section for more details.
   3. “Create New List” – This will create a new blank list.  Be sure to save your existing list first (you will be warned if there are changes that need to be saved)
   4. “Load List” – This will allow you to load any lists that you have saved.  Be sure to save your existing list first.  Note that in the “Load List” screen, you can also delete any existing saved lists by ending “Edit” mode.
   5. “Save As New List” – This will allow you to create a new list out of the existing list you are currently modifying.  Any changes you have made to the list since you last saved will NOT be saved to the old list.  The current changes and all future changes will be saved to this new list.   If you try to specify the name of an existing list Team Shake will give you an error, and it will not overwrite the list.
   6. “Save List Changes” – This will save any changes to your current list so that if you load a new list, your changes will not be lost.  Note, that Team Shake always keeps track of your current changes in a temporary list that is automatically saved.  Therefore, stopping Team Shake, or even rebooting your phone, will not result in any changes being lost.
8. Press the “Help” icon to access our online help (this page you are reading!) at any time.

At this point, you should have learned enough to make basic teams and to save and load lists of players.  Next, we will go over the details of some of the more advanced Team Shake functions for creating balanced teams and applying special rules for groups players.  To do this, first we need to understand how Team Shake picks team.  In Team Shake’s default configuration, it will create truly random teams from the players that you add into your list.  This works really well for many situations, but sometimes you many want additional control over how teams are created.   To do this Team Shake offers a number of options.  First, we will discuss the options that can be set on a per user basis that will impact how teams are chosen.   Next, we will discuss some configuration options that can be used to change the way teams are picked overall.  However, its important to note that the per user options can be used together with the team selection options to offer extremely flexible team sections.

These per user options include subteams, oppose teams, user strengths.  We will refer to the diagram above for a description of these options.

• (Subteam/Oppose team – #1) – The numbers in the green circles identify a users’s subteam.  The number in the red circles identify a user’s oppose team.  Subteam and oppose teams are used to force people to always be on the same team or to never be on the same team.  If two or more players have the subteam number, they will be forced to be on the same team, if that is possible.   Similarly, if two ore more players have the same oppose team number, they will not be allowed to be on the same team.  One possible use of subteams is to assign friends to the same team.  Oppose team can be very useful to separate two students that don’t get along.  Its also important to note that we said these numbers will be used “if possible”.  There are some circumstances in which subteam or oppose team number cannot be honored.  For example, if the team size is only 4 players, but you put 5 people in a subteam, it will not be possible to create a team with all 5 players.  In a similar fashion, if you put 5 players on the same oppose team, but only 4 teams were created, two people from the same oppose team would be forced to be on the same team.  Team Shake will display a warning if it is unable to honor the subteam or oppose team numbers.
• (User Strengths – #2) – The little arrows to the left of a player’s name indicate their strength.  Strength can be assigned on a per user basis as weakest (downward green arrow), weak (downward blue arrow), normal (no arrow), strong (upward black arrow), or strongest (upward red arrow).   The display of these arrows can be turned on or off by toggling the “Show player strength” option.  This option is available because we understand that you may not want players to see what “strength” value you have assigned to them if you are showing them Team Shake.   In order for strengths to be used during team selection, the “Balance Team Strengths” option must be enabled (this is the default).   When you assign strengths to players, this will change the way teams are selected.  Team Shake will still be as random as possible.  However, it will now try to create more balanced teams by distributing the stronger and weaker players more evenly across the teams.   One important thing to note, is that (by default) Team Shake assumes that having additional people on a team is an advantage, and that having less people is a disadvantage.  Therefore, if you have one small team, and only one “strongest” player, he would almost always end up on the small team.  Similarly, “weakest” or “weak” players are more likely to end up on a large team.  When picking teams for some games, this may not be the desired behavior.  For example, if you have a game where there are only 4 players and with a 5 person team, there would alway be one person sitting out and waiting his turn, you could enable the “Balance alternates” option.  This option balances the teams based on the average user strength of the team, rather than the combined strengths of the team.
• (Gender) – This option is not shown explicitly in the above diagram.  However, each user can be assigned a gender.  Players that do not have a gender assigned will be displayed in green text (as in the diagram).   Male players will be displayed in blue text, and female will be displayed in pink text.  Note that the display of the colors can be toggled by setting the “Show gender color” option.  By default in Team Shake, setting a player’s gender will have no impact on Team Selection.  However, there are two configuration options that will change the way gender is using in creating teams.  If the  “Balance Male / Female” option is enabled, Team Shake will attempt to create teams where each team has the same number of male players as every other team (and also the same number of female players as every other team).  For example, if you have 12 boys and 8 girls in a class, and you make 4 teams., each team will have 3 boys and 2 girls.  The other configuration option that can be enabled is “Separate Male / Female”.    This option will create separate teams of males and females.    For example, if you had 15 boys and 10 girls, and you make 5 teams, you will have 3 teams with 5 boys and 2 teams with 5 girls.  Note, that it does not make sense to enable both of these options at the same time.  If you do enable them both, then “Balance Male / Female” will be ignored, and the “Separate Male / Female” team selection method will be used.
• (Advanced Team Selection) – There are some additional configuration options that can be used to change the way that Team Shake picks teams.
  • The “Equal Ability Teams” options allows you to create teams where each team is made up of players with similar strength.  For example, suppose you had 30 players 10 of which were “strong”, 10 of which were “normal”, and 10 of which were “weak”.  If you chose to make 6 teams, you first 2 teams would be made up of just “strong” players, the second 2 teams would be made up of just “normal” players, and the last 2 teams would be made up of  “weak” players.  If the players did not dived evenly into the teams, some teams might have been “strong” and “normal” players, and other teams might have “normal” and “weak” players, but no teams would have both “strong” and “weak” players.   This method of team selection is useful when the players in the team will be playing against themselves rather than another team.
  • There are 3 remaining options that impact the way teams are selection “Larger uneven teams”, “Larger Groups First”, and “Subteam 1 in Team 1”.  These make minor changes to the way teams are picked:
    • Larger uneven team – If enabled in the case of an uneven number of players some teams will have more players than requested.  If disabled, some teams may have less players than requested.  This option has no impact if the players can be divided evenly into the requested team size.
    • Larger Groups First  – If enabled, in the case of uneven teams, the larger teams will be listed first.  If disabled, the smaller teams will be listed first.
    • Subteam 1 in Team 1 – If enabled, all the members of subteam 1 will always appear in team 1
• (Absent / Present #3) – The red “no” circle on the right of each user’s name can be used to toggle a player between “Absent” and “Present”.  Users that are “Absent” will not be placed into any teams.   Both the text of the player’s name and the “no” circle will change color to grey to indicate an “Absent” user.
• (User Details #4) – By pressing on the user’s name or any empty space in the row, a “User Details” screen will be displayed where the user’s name, absent / present state, gender, strength, subteam, and oppose team can be set.
• (Number of Players indicators #5) – These two numbers in the bottom bar on the screen, give you an easy indication of how many players total are in your list (the right number), and how many users are currently present (the left number)
• (Players per Teams / Number of Teams Toggle #6) – Press this button to toggle between choosing the number of players that will be in each team and the number of total teams that will be created.

Random Player

Before we go on to talk about how you use the teams that you can create, we wanted to show just a little detail about the Random Player button.

Using Teams

Now that you have successfully picked some teams, here are some details on how you can use those teams.

1. The names of all the members of a team appear in a colored bubble.   By default the names are sorted alphabetically by last name.  However, the sorting behavior can be changed by the “Sort by Last Name”, “Sort Generated Teams”, or “Never Sort Single Team” options.  The team names and the colors of the bubbles can be customized by setting the Team Color and Team Names Options.
2. Press here to generate a new random set of Teams.  You can also shake your phone to re-generate new teams.   Note, that you can disable the shaking function on the Teams Screen by disabling the “Follow-up Shake” option.  Disabling this can be useful if you accidentally shake your phone too much and lose the teams you generated.
3. Press the Action Button to share your Teams in the following ways:
   1. Share Teams as Text – This will allow you to share a text version of the teams via Text Message, Mail, Twitter, and Facebook
   2. Share Teams as Image – This will allow you to share a image of the teams via Text Message, Mail, Twitter, and Facebook.  You can also save teh image to your photos.  The image will look the same as the image on the screen.
   3. Share Teams as CSV / Excel – This will allow you to share you teams as a CSV or Excel file.  These are common spreadsheet formats that can be used to import the teams as a spreadsheet.
   4. Print Teams – This can be used to print the teams via a printer that supports that Apple AirPrint technology.
4. Press here to return to the Main Screen and create a different set of teams.

Loading and Deleting Previously Saved Lists

Earlier in this page, we discussed the “Manage Lists” button, and how you could use that to save and load teams.  Specifically, we mentioned the “Load List” option, and how that could be used to not just load saved lists, but also to edit and delete the old saved lists.  We will go into more details on how that works here. First, let’s look a screenshot of the page:

1. Simply press the name of any list to load the list and return to the Main Screen.  Note that this list will replace your current list, so any changes that have not been saved will be lost.  Team Shake displays a warning message before the “Load List” screen is opened if you have any unsaved changes.
2. Pressing, the edit button will change the look of the screen (see picture to the right) and enter into “edit” mode.
3. Press the “cancel” button in either normal or edit mode to return to the Main Screen.  The “cancel” is located in the upper right hand corner.
4. In edit mode, you can delete a list by pressing the red circle with a line through it that appears next to each list.  After pressing the circle, a red delete button will appear to the right of the list name.  You must press this button to confirm you want to delete the list.
5. In edit mode, you can also change the order of the list by dragging them up or down using the bars on the right side of each list name.

One thing that should be pointed out is that it is NOT possible to change the name of a list with the current version of Team Shake (2.3.0).   Instead you have to save the list with a new name, and then delete the old list.  When this feature is added to Team Shake, you will be able to change the name of the list from this screen.

Advanced Team Selection Scenarios

This section goes over how to setup some of the more common team selection scenarios for which people use Team Shake and how to setup these scenarios.  Most of these scenarios have been mentioned throughout this guide, but they have been placed here in one place to make them easy to find, and the details are stated more explicitly.
Below, we have a table the summarizes the Configuration Options that are used in the various team selection scenarios.  The cells in red are the ones that must be changed from the default for each scenarios.  Note that in general it is possible to mix together multiple scenarios, but the are some cases in which options are not compatible.  In some cases mixing the scenarios would not make sense (e.g., “Creating teams with an even number of males and females” and “Creating female only and male only teams”).   Also, there are some limited cases, where Team Shake does not support the combination (e.g., “Creating teams with an even number of males and females” and “Creating groups with equality ability”).

Team Selection Configuration Options Overview

	Balance Team Strengths	Balance Male / Female	Separate Male / Female	Balance alternates	Equal Ability Teams
Teams Balanced by Player Strength	On (default)	Off  (default)	Off  (default)	Off  (default)	Off  (default)
Keeping Players on the same team and Separating players between teams	On or Off	On or Off	On or Off	On or Off	On or Off
Creating teams with an even number of males and females	Off	On	Off  (default)	On or Off	Off  (default)
Creating female only and male only teams	On or Off	Off  (default)	On	On or Off	On or Off
Creating groups with equality ability	Off	Off (default)	On or Off	Off (default)	On
Creating balanced teams with alternates	On (default)	Off  (default)	Off  (default)	On	Off  (default)

In the above chart, Red indicates a required options that is different from the default.  Blue indicates an option that can be set either on or off to adjust the scenario.  Black represent the default value of an option.

Teams Balanced by Player Strength (“Fair Teams”)

In order to create teams that are balanced rather than just random, you man make sure that you have the configuration options set appropriately (“Balanced Team Strengths” enabled and all other team selection options disabled, see the above table for details).  In the default configuration of Team Shake, the Configuration Options will be set correctly for this scenario.  So you only need to adjust the configuration options if you have previously changed them.  Once the configuration options are set correctly, it is only necessary to set each user’s strength.  Details on setting user strength can be found in the Getting Started with Team Shake section of this guide.  The table above shows that all other team selection options must be disabled in this scenario.  In reality, you can adjust most of the other options, but then you will no longer have truly “fair teams”.   3 of the other scenarios in the section can be used in conjunction with the “Balanced Team Strength” options to create balanced teams but with some additional restrictions on the balancing.

Keeping Players on the same team and Separating players between teams (“Buddies” and “Enemies”)

One  advanced  scenario that Team  Shake supports is the ability to force certain players to be on the same team, and to force other players to be on different teams.  This is very useful for certain situations.   For example, this has been used by customers to  create golf foursomes where a member has brought a friend, and they want to play together.  Also this has also been used in PE (gym class) when some students don’t get along, so that the students won’t be placed on the same team.  To force players to be on the same team, you set the players to have the same subteam number.  To force  players to be on different teams, you set the players to have the same oppose team number.  Details on setting subteam and oppose team numbers can be found in the Getting Started with Team Shake section of this guide.  Each player can have a one subteam number and one oppose team number, so its possible to force a player to always be with another player, and at the same time also force that player to be on a separate team from another player.  However, watch out when setting many subteam and oppose team numbers that you don’t create an impossible situation that can’t be met.  If not all the subteam and oppose team numbers cannot be met, Team Shake will display a warning and attempt to meet as many as possible.

Creating teams with an even number of males and females (“Fair boy / girl teams”)

To create teams with an even number of males and females, you need to enable the “Balance Male / Female” option.  All other team selection options should be disabled (see the table at the beginning of this section for the detailed options).  Team Shake does not support creating teams of balanced strength at the same time as creating teams with an even number of males and females.  Once the configuration options has been set, you need to set the gender of each team.  See the Getting Started with Team Shake section of this guide for details on setting a player’s gender.

Creating female only and male only teams

To create female only and male only teams, you need to enable the “Separate Male / Female” options.  This can not be used with the “Balance Male / Female” option, but it can be used with any other team selection option.  Once the configuration options has been set, you need to set the gender of each team.  See the Getting Started with Team Shake section for details on setting a player’s gender.  When using the “Separate Male / Female” option, the males and females are separated first, so all options will be applied separately to males and females.  For example, if 2 males and 2 females have a subteam number of 1, the 2 males will be on the same team, and the 2 females will be together on a separate team.  However, the 4 players will not all be on the same team.  In the same way, if you use the “Balance Teams” options in conjunction with “Separate Male / Female”, the male teams will all be created with equal strength and the female teams will be created with equal strength, but there is no guarantee that the female will have the some strength as the male teams.

Creating groups with equality ability (When the group members play amongst themselves)

To create groups of equal ability, you need to enable the “Equal Ability Teams” option (see the table at the beginning of this section for the detailed options).  All other team selections options should be disabled except for the “Separate Male / Female” option which can be used with “Equal Ability Teams” if desired (see Creating female only and male only teams).  Note that we said we are creating “groups” not “teams” in this case.  We used this terminology to point out that in this case, Team Shake is creating groups that would compete with itself rather than against other groups (or it could be groups that are cooperating with itself).  One possible example usage is to make basketball teams for gym class where the best players play against each other, the normal players player play against each other, and the weak players against each other.  Another possible usage is for reading groups in school where you want to group the strongest readers together, normal together, etc.  Once the configuration options are set correctly, it is only necessary to set each user’s strength.  Details on setting user strength can be found in the Getting Started with Team Shake section of this guide.

Creating balanced teams with alternates

One variation of the normal balanced teams scenario is the case where you have an uneven number of players on a team and all players to not play at the same time, but rather the “extra” player substitutes in the throughout the game.  In this case, have an extra player is not really an advantage, so the teams are balanced based on the average player strength instead of the total player strength.  The “Balance Alternates” and “Balance Team Strengths” options should be enable in this scenario (see the table at the beginning of this section for the detailed options).  Once the configuration options are set correctly, it is only necessary to set each user’s strength.  Details on setting user strength can be found in the Getting Started with Team Shake section of this guide.

Loading and Exports Lists / Backups

Loading Lists from CSV or Text Files (e.g., Excel)

It’s very easy to use Team Shake to add single players one at a time and to set the player’s strength, gender, etc.  However, sometimes you already have an existing lists, or you just find it easier to type up a full list on your computer, etc.  In that case, we offer support to import lists of names in a variety of ways.  You will need to take your typed up list of players and put it in the correct format, but first let’s just discuss how to get to the “Import List Screen”.  There are several ways to do that:

1. You can simply open the “Import List” screen by pressing the “Manage Lists” button on the Main Screen, and then press “Import List”.
2. Email yourself a “txt” or “csv” file in the correct format.  Then “Press and Hold” on the email attachment, and press “Open in Team Shake”
3. Put a “text” or “csv” file on you Dropbox or Google Drive account, and then choose “Open in Team Shake”.

Once you have done one of the above, an “Import List” screen like in the following diagram will appear.   Let’s describe how this screen works in detail.

1. List Name – Here you populate the name of list that you will be creating.  Note, that this list will NOT be loaded immediately, and this will not impact the list you are currently editing.  Instead, this new list will be added to the list of saved lists.
2. List of Players – Here the names (one per line) should be entered.  This can be manually typed, copied and pasted from any other app, or loaded from a file (via email, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.)
3. Save Button – Press here to save the list to your saved lists.  You will be returned to the Main Screen where you can continue to use the list you are currently editing, or you could load the list that was just imported.
4. Cancel Button – Press here to cancel importing the list.  Anything that has been typed or loaded will be lost, and you will have to start over with the import later.

Now, let’s get into some more detail on the format of lists of users.  There is really one format that is used for importing lists, but for the purpose of this explanation, we will treat it as 2 separate formats.  Let’s call these the “simple” format and the “complex” format.
The simple format consists of a text file with a single user’s name on each line.  The names must NOT have a comma in them.  If you use a comma in a name, only the part of the name before the comma will be added.  You can create such a file using an application like Microsoft Word, Notepad, Wordpad, Libreoffice / Openoffice Writer, or any number of programs .   However, you when you save the file you must save the file as “Plain Text”.   Here is an example of creating such a file in Microsoft Word and saving it as “Plain Text”.   Note, you should accept the default “File Conversion” options chosen by Word after you press save.  Click here to download the example text file.

The complex format consists of a comma separated list of 6 parameters for each player, one list per line.  The parameters are:

1. Name,
2. Strength (-2 to 2)
3. Subteam (0-64)
4. Oppose team (0-64)
5. Absent (0 – Present or 1 – Absent)
6. Gender (0 – not specified / 1 – Male / 2 – Female).

It is possible to create such a file in a program like Microsoft Word by just separating the parameters with commas.  However, it is much easier to use a program like Microsoft Excel or LibreOffice / OpenOffice Calc to create a spreadsheet with this information, and then save the spreadsheet as “CSV (MS-DOS)” in Excel or “Text CSV” in Calc.  Now, when you save as a CSV file you are saving your data as a plain text file with commas.  So if you have done an fancy colors, etc. with the SpreadSheet then you may want to save the file twice, once in Excel format and once as CSV.  When you try to save as CSV, make sure you use “CSV (MS-DOS)” in Excel or “Text CSV (.csv)” in Calc.  You may be warned that some formatting will be lost and that only the current sheet will be saved.  You must answer that you want to save as CSV anyway.  Also, if asked what “Field Delimiter” to use use, make sure you use a comma (,).  If asked for a text delimiter, choose double quotes (“).
When creating a SpreadSheet to use for importing, it is important that the first row in the Spread Sheet starts with the word “Name” in the first column, and that you have exactly 6 columns for each user.  This can easily be done by hand.  However, we have created an example Excel file that you can use as an example and template.  Click here to download the template / example file.  We have also have example CSV file that was created by saving this example Excel file as CSV file.  Click here for the the example CSV file.

As mentioned earlier, once you have created a TXT or CSV file in the correct format, you can use the “Open in Team Shake” option to import the teams into Team Shake from the Email app, DropBox or Google Drive.  Its also possible to simple copy and paste the contents of the file into the Team Shake “Import List” screen.

Exporting / Backing up Team Shake Lists and Configuration Options

Team Shake can backup your Teams and Options so that you can easily restore Team Shake later, or so that you can transfer your Teams to another device.   To backup your current Team Shake settings and lists, press “Manage Lists” on the Team Shake Main Screen, and then choose “Backup / Export”.  This will open an email window with the backup attached.  Email this to yourself for safe keeping or to use to transfer to another device.  Note, that Rhine-o Enterprises LLC will sometimes request a backup of Team Shake to help with support questions.  This backup contains all of your lists with their associated names.  If you feel comfortable sharing this information, a backup can be very helpful in identify problems as it allows us to see exactly what you have setup and reproduce the problem you are having exactly as you are having it.

Importing Team Shake Backups

With a previous Team Shake backup (identified by the file extension tsxml), you can completely restore all of your Team Shake lists and configuration, or just choose some of this to restore.  Above, we show the steps to restore a Team Shake backup:

1. Go to an email with the desired Team Shake backup.  Press and hold on the attachment until the “Open in” window comes up.   (Note that you can also load the file from Dropbox, Google drive, etc.  you just need to get to the “Open in” option on these apps).
2. Look for the “Open in Team Shake” option and press on this.
3. Team Shake will open and pop up a window with the following options:
   1. Full Restore – Press here to do a full restore of all your configuration options and lists.  This will overwrite all of your current settings and lists.  This is perfect, if you are trying to copy one iPhone to another.   Note that this is exactly identical to running both “Restore Lists Only” and “Restory Configuration Only”.
   2. Restore Lists Only – Press here to delete all of your current lists and replace them with the ones from this backup without touching your configuration options.
   3. Add to Current Lists – Press here to add the lists from this backup to you set of lists.   Note that if a list in the backup has the same name as one of your current lists, you will end up with two lists with the same name.  You can manually correct this by saving one of the lists with a new name and deleting the old one.
   4. Restore Configuration Only – Press here to restore your configuration options without making any changes to your lists.
   5. Cancel – Press here to go to Team Shake without restoring anything.

Configuration Options

Up to this point in the documentation, we have explained most of the ways that Team Shake can be used for creating teams and the different ways this can be customized.  Throughout the documentation we have referred to different configuration options.   This section contains a complete list of all the configuration options, and how they impact the operation of the Team Shake.

General Options

• Initial Shake
  • Enables or disables creating teams by “shaking” your device on the main screen (may not be supported on all devices)
• Follow-up Shake
  • Enables or disables creating teams by “shaking” your device on the teams screen (may not be supported on all devices)
• Reset to Defaults
  • Press to reset all of the configuration options to their defaults.  This will only impact the configuration options.  It will NOT delete or change any saved lists.  Note this function is not yet implemented on Android.

Teams Selection Options

• Larger uneven teams
  • If enabled in the case of an uneven number of players some teams will have more players than requested.  If disabled, some teams may have less players than requested.  This option has no impact if the players can be divided evenly into the requested team size.
• Larger Groups First
  • If enabled, in the case of uneven teams, the larger teams will be listed first.  If disabled, the smaller teams will be listed first.
• Subteam 1 in Team 1
  • If enabled, all the members of subteam 1 will always appear in team 1
• Balance Team Strengths
  • Creates teams with balanced strength based on the strength settings set per user.  Note, that this cannot be used with the “Equal Ability Teams” option since these two options create teams in different ways.
• Balance Male / Female
  • Creates teams such that each team has the same number of men and women as the other teams (as nearly as possible).
  • This option does NOT work with the “Equal Ability Teams” option.  If both options are enabled, Team Shake will NOT produce balanced Male and Female teams.
  • If both “Balance Male / Female” and “Separate Male / Female” configuration options are enabled, the “Separate Male / Female” selection method will be used.
• Separate Male / Female
  • Creates teams that just contain men and just contain women
  • If both “Balance Male / Female” and “Separate Male / Female” configuration options are enabled, the “Separate Male / Female” selection method will be used.
• Balance alternates
  • This option should be used when extra players on a team will be treated as “alternates” and not all players will play at once.
• Equal Ability Teams
  • This option creates teams that consists of equal strength players.  “Balance Team Strengths” must be disabled for this option to work.  This is useful when team members compete against each other rather than other teams.
  • This option does NOT work with the “Balance Male / Female” option.  If both options are enabled, Team Shake will NOT produce balanced Male and Female teams.
• Single Uneven Sized Team
  • If this option is enabled, when players cannot be evenly divided across teams the last team will have all of the missing / extra users instead of trying to evenly distribute the missing / extra users. Note that if the ‘Larger Uneven Teams’ option is enabled, the last team will be larger then the other teams. Otherwise, the last team will be smaller. This option is only used if the size of the team is specified. It is NOT used when specifying the number of groups.
• Two Female Minimum
  • If enabled, all teams will always contain at least 2 females or none at all.
• Two Male Minimum
  • If enabled, all teams will always contain at least 2 males or none at all.
• Random User Does Not Repeat
  • If enabled, the random player function on the main screen will pick each user once before repeating names. If disabled, the player will be completely random and may repeat

Display Options

• Team color in email
  • If this option is enabled, email text will contain the color assigned to the generated teams
• Team color on screen
  • If this option is enabled, the generated teams will show the name of the color in addition to set the background color for each team.
• Show player strength
  • If this option is enabled, small arrows are display to the left of the players’ names to indicate their strength level
• Hide Background Image
  • If this option is enabled, the Team Shake Hat is NOT shown in the background of the main screen.
• Show gender color
  • If this option is enabled, male players’ names are shown in blue, and female players names are show in pink.  The colors are only shown on the main screen.
• Show gender color
  • If this option is enabled, male players’ names are shown in blue, and female players names are show in pink.  The colors are only shown on the main screen.
• Show Gender Color in Teams
  • If this option is enabled, male players\’ names are shown in blue, and female players names are show in pink.  The colors are only shown on the final team screens.
• Show Subteam Bubble
  • If this option is enabled, the green subteam bubble will be displayed on the Main Screen next to each user who is on a subteam.
• Show Oppose Team Bubble
  • If this option is enabled, the red oppose team bubble will be displayed on the Main Screen next to each user who is on a subteam
• Sort by Last Name
  • If this option is enabled, lists and teams will be sorted by Last name (if one is specified).  If this option is disabled, lists and teams will be sorted by first name.
• Sort Generated Teams
  • If this option is enabled, generated teams will automatically be sorted by name.  If disabled, the names will be displayed in random order.
• Sort Generated Teams by Strength
  • If this option is enabled and ‘Sort Generated Teams’ is also enabled, generated teams will automatically be first by strength and then by name. If disabled, the names will be sorted by name (or not at all).
• Male/Female Sorting
  • This option determines how male and female players are sorted once teams are created.
• Never Sort Single Team
  • If this option is enabled, Team Shake will NOT sort the generated teams if there is only a single team generated.  This is useful when creating a list with the order for players to participate instead of creating teams.
• Use Rows for CSV/Excel
  • When this is enabled, teams that are exported to CSV or Excel will have one list on team per row.  If this is disabled, there will be one team per column instead.
• Team Size Preview
  • If this option is enabled, text will be displayed on the screen for 5 seconds showing the composition of the teams that will be created.
• Use Student View
  • If this option is enabled, the player strength, subteam bubbles and oppose team bubbles will not be displayed regardless of the ‘Show Player Strength’, ‘Show Subteam Bubble’, and ‘Show Oppose Team Bubble’ options. This option can also be turned on and off from the main screen.
• User Font Size
  • Sets the font size (in points) to be used in the initial screen, and the team list screen.
• Random User Font Size
  • Sets font size (in points) to be used in the Random Player popup that appears when you press the random button on the main screen.
• Number of Columns
  • This determines the number of columns used to display the generated teams. More columns will fit more users on a single screen, but it will only look nice with smaller player names or smaller font sizes. The ‘User Font Size’ option may need to be adjusted if this value is changed.

Team Colors and Team Names Options

• Team Colors
  • The default colors of team 1 to 16, in order, are Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, Pink, Purple, Grey, Orange, Magenta,Turquoise, Mint, White Beige, Lavender, Black, and Brown.  You can change the color of team 1 through 16 to be any of these colors.  When you do this, you should make sure that you have no duplicate colors, because Team Shake will not automatically do that for you (you could have multiple teams of the same color if you wanted to).   For teams greater than 16, the colors will picked based on the colors of team 1 through 16.  Team 17 will be the color of Team 1.  Team 18 will be the color of Team 2, etc.  By default, when sharing the teams in text form (email, text message, Facebook, etc) each team will be identified in the form “Team 1 (Red Team)” for teams 1 to 16, and “Team 17 (Read Team 2)” for teams 17 to 64.  If you do not want to display the color in the name, you can do this by disabling the configuration option “Team color in email”. 
• Team Names
  • The name of each team can be modified by these options.