Reviewing and approving fixture change notifications

When a fixture changes — the league moves a kickoff, a ground swaps, a match is postponed — Clubhouse updates the fixture straight away but holds the notification for a human to review before it reaches families. This safety net stops a venue typo turning into a hundred families showing up at the wrong ground. Clubhouse never auto-sends a fixture change notification.

Any user-facing change to a fixture within 21 days of kick-off, whatever its origin: a Dribl sync from the league, an admin's own Match Settings edit, an abandonment, or accepting a Dribl update over local changes. Changes further out than 21 days, and things families don't need to hear about (like score corrections), update silently with no approval needed.

Severity is decided by the change itself:

• Critical — cancellations, postponements and forfeits. On approval these go out as a notification and an SMS.
• Important — date, time and venue changes. These go out as a notification, with SMS as the fallback for recipients who can't receive one.

Recipients are the squad's parents and staff (coaches and team managers).

1. Admin dashboard banner — for example "3 fixture changes awaiting your review", with "Parents won't be notified until you approve." A change that includes a cancellation or postponement says so. Escalated items carry an Escalated tag.
2. Straight to the review — the banner rows open each review; View all opens the Fixture approvals list.

When there's nothing waiting, the list says "All caught up" — auto-detected fixture changes appear here for approval before they go out to parents, players and coaches.

Each entry opens Review fixture change, which shows:

• Status — Pending approval or Escalated, with its expiry, and the Critical / Important severity.
• What changed — each field's old and new value.
• Notification preview — "This is what parents and players will see when you approve", with an editable Title and Message. For critical changes, the SMS text is derived from the same content when you send.

Then one of two decisions:

• Approve & send — opens a final check before anything goes: the squad's families and its coaches and team managers, each counted, and the message exactly as it will read. The button names the total, such as Approve and notify 42 people, and Keep reviewing takes you back. If the match has moved outside the 21-day window, the check says nobody will be notified and the button reads Approve. Once sent, the confirmation tells you how many it reached.
• Skip notification — a confirm explains the consequence: "The change is already live in the app and calendar. Parents and players won't get a push or SMS." Use this when the change is trivial, already communicated, or was reverted by the league.

Either way, the fixture data itself is already updated everywhere — the calendar, the family app, the coach portal. The queue only controls whether anyone is told about it.

The programme's technical director gets the review request first — a notification titled Review fixture change that names the squad, the opponent and what changed, and ends "Tap to review before it goes to parents." A programme with no technical director assigned sends it straight to the squad's head and assistant coaches.

If it sits unactioned for 2 hours, the review is marked Escalated and the squad's head and assistant coaches are asked as well. Any of them can approve or skip it, as can any club admin. Escalation is a louder nudge, never an auto-send: a person still has to approve. A review nobody acts on expires unsent at kick-off.

Will the family see the change in the app even if I skip the notification? Yes. The fixture data updates regardless. The approval only controls the notification and SMS.

Can I batch-approve? No — each review is individual, because the message might need editing and the decision to notify is the whole point of the queue.

What if I approve and then realise the message was wrong? The notification has already gone out — there's no recall. Send a correction through your normal communication channel.