Your first week
on ARM.

How ARM is put together

Three words do most of the work, and they nest.

• Club. Riverside RFC. One club, one ARM account, one player pool.
• Squad. A group inside the club: Men's, Women's, Colts, Junior. Squads are what your plan is counted in.
• Team. What actually takes the field on Saturday: 1st XV, 2nd XV. A squad can field several.

Everything else hangs off those. Players belong to the club, not to a team, so the same person can be in the 1st XV one week and the 2nd XV the next without being entered twice.

The left-hand menu is the whole app: Roster, Depth Chart, Weeks, Availability, Attendance, Sessions, Drills, Glossary, Playbook, Decks, Results, Player Notes and Club Settings. You will live in four of them.

Set up your club

Open Club Settings first. It takes ten minutes and saves you an hour later.

• Club name and logo. These appear on the player's screen, so players know the link is really from you.
• Club slug. The short name in your player link. Pick it once and leave it. Changing it later breaks every link you have already sent out.
• Teams. Add the teams you actually field. These pre-fill every time you create a new week, so getting them right now means never typing them again.
• Player types. Performance, Open and Women's out of the box. Rename or replace them to match how your club really splits.
• Default squad size. Starters plus bench, usually 22. This sets the shape of the selection board for new weeks.
• What you ask players for. You can require contact details and birthday, and turn weight tracking on or off. Only turn on what your club will actually use.

Get your players in

You have three ways, and most clubs use two of them.

• Send us the list. Email your spreadsheet to hello@armtech.app and we will load it for you, usually the same day. This is the fastest route and the one we recommend for the first season.
• Add them yourself. Roster, then Add. Name is the only thing that is truly required, but a phone number is what makes the availability link work properly, so put one in wherever you have one.
• Let them add themselves. When a player opens your club link and their details do not match anyone on the roster, ARM asks them to confirm, then creates their record from what they enter. Useful for the trialist who turns up on a Tuesday.

A few fields are worth getting right at the start:

• Primary position. Drives the depth chart and the position hints on the selection board. Note that prop is split into Loose Head and Tight Head.
• Secondary positions. Add them. This is what surfaces the second five who can cover full back when you are short.
• Player type. The split you set up in Club Settings.
• Status. Active, Injured, Unavailable, Retired or Archived. Injured and Unavailable still appear; Retired and Archived are hidden unless you switch them on in the filter.

If the same player ends up in twice, open one of the records and use Merge rather than deleting. Merging keeps the history attached.

Create your first week

A week in ARM is one round of rugby: the fixtures, the teams playing and the availability round attached to them.

Go to Weeks, then Create New Week. Set the date, and your teams from Club Settings will already be sitting there. Add the opponent for each, and use the notes field for the things that would otherwise go in three separate texts: kickoff time, ground, bus, which jersey.

Whatever you put in the notes is what the player reads on their phone before they answer, so it is worth thirty seconds.

Send the availability link

Each week has its own link. From Weeks, copy the link or the pre-written share message and paste it into the team chat, or send it to individuals.

The player taps it and lands on their own hub. No app, no password. They confirm who they are with their name or phone number, see the fixture and the note you wrote, and answer with one tap.

Send it once. You do not need to send it again to chase, and you should not create a second week to do so.

Read the grid

Open Availability. Every player is a row and their answer is the cell.

There are three answers: Available, TBC and Unavailable. Anyone who has not opened the link yet sits in No Response, which is the number you actually care about on a Thursday.

Use the tabs at the top to jump straight to the group you want, filter by position when you are chasing a specific hole in the pack, and switch between By Week and By Player depending on whether you are thinking about Saturday or about a person.

Pick the side

When the answers are in, go to the selection board for that team. Available players sit in the pool; drag them into slots. Slot order is the shirt number, and everything under the starters line is the bench. It saves as you go.

Week two onwards

The setup is done. From here the weekly rhythm is short.

• Create the week, or copy last week's shape.
• Paste the link into the chat once.
• Glance at the grid on Thursday and chase the No Response list.
• Pick on Thursday night.

Everything else in the app is optional and can wait until you want it.

Who does what

• Head coach. Reads the grid, picks the side, writes the notes nobody else sees.
• Team manager. Creates the weeks, sends the link, chases the non-responders. In most clubs this is the person who saves the most time.
• Club admin. Owns Club Settings and the roster.
• RDO. Sees every squad in the club on one screen. That is its own article.