Linking and syncing Sportlink

With a Sportlink link, matches, results and standings arrive in 4planning automatically. Linking works like this: your club subscribes to Club.Dataservice at Sportlink, you look up your client ID, and you send it to 4planning. That's all we need: we fetch your club code ourselves. See 4planning for football clubs for how this fits into the rest of the setup.

The link works for every federation that uses Sportlink, such as football (KNVB), handball (NHV), korfball (KNKV), volleyball (Nevobo), basketball (NBB), swimming and water polo (KNZB) and baseball and softball (KNBSB).

Step 1: Subscribe to Club.Dataservice at Sportlink

Club.Dataservice is the Sportlink service that allows other systems to fetch your club's data. You order it in Sportlink Club via the Shop shortcut. Sportlink charges for this itself: at the time of writing € 125 one-off plus € 1 per member per year. You pay that to Sportlink, not to 4planning.

Does your club website already show data from Sportlink? Then your club most likely already has Club.Dataservice, and you can go straight to step 2.

Step 2: Look up your client ID

After ordering, your client ID is in Sportlink Club under Vereniging › Beheer › Gebruikersbeheer (Club › Management › User management), on the Clubsite tab. See Where do I find my Sportlink client ID? for the steps.

Step 3: Send your client ID to 4planning

Send the client ID to 4planning, for example via Chats › 4planning Support if you're a system administrator. We switch the link on and fetch your club code from Sportlink ourselves. It's needed to determine whether a match is home or away, but you don't have to look it up.

The link itself is under Settings → Integrations → Sportlink Link. That part is only visible to the 4planning team, not to a (system) administrator of your club. It also holds the switch "Enable automatic synchronisation" (on by default), and two buttons we can use to start a sync right away: Sync teams and Check Sportlink now.

Linking a team to your club

Showing the match schedule to a group — open the group under Groups and choose the right team under "Link to Sportlink Team". Members of that group will then automatically see their matches in the app.

Referees are not assigned via Sportlink: you do that under Manage matches, per match or all at once with the generator. See Scheduling referees as an administrator.

What happens automatically in the background

As long as "Automatic synchronisation" is on, several automatic checks run:

• Matches — fetches the schedule (two weeks ahead), several times a day. Matches that disappear or get cancelled are updated automatically, and an already-assigned referee gets notified of any change in time, location or team.
• Results — updates the result and status of recent and upcoming matches, several times a day.
• Standings — fetches the current league table for each linked team, several times a day.
• Changes to teams and members — regularly flags differences between Sportlink and your member records (new players, departed players, name changes) and queues them for approval. See Approving Sportlink changes.

If Sportlink is temporarily unreachable, the sync simply skips that round and tries again at the next check — you don't need to do anything. There's currently no "last synced on" date visible in the app; the clearest sign the sync is running is that new matches (and, where applicable, pending changes) appear.

Frequently asked questions

• Does Sportlink work for hockey too? Belgian hockey clubs run on Sportlink, so they link up as usual. Dutch KNHB clubs do not go through Sportlink: there you enter the schedule manually, and we are happy to look into a link with your system. See 4planning for hockey clubs.
• I don't see any matches, even though Sportlink is linked. First check that the team is linked to a group (see above). If it is, let us know: we'll check whether automatic synchronisation is on.
• Can I, as a club administrator, set up the Sportlink link (Client ID) myself? No, the 4planning team arranges that for you. You do manage the daily changes inbox yourself afterwards.
• Do you also need our club code? No, just your client ID. We use it to fetch the club code from Sportlink ourselves.
• Wasn't there a "Referee Matrix" to have teams refereed automatically? Not any more. In practice no club ever set it up, and the assigning itself has moved to Manage matches — there the app proposes a schedule that you adjust and confirm.
• I manually changed a member's Sportlink ID — is that safe? Be careful: at the next sync, that member will take on the name and teams of the new ID. The app explicitly asks for confirmation before this.
• Our federation doesn't use Sportlink. Is it still possible? For the Dutch Rugby Federation it is: we fetch that competition directly from the federation. See Competitie van de rugbybond koppelen.