Predict the European Championship with Pigment

When football and tooling come together

With the 2024 European Championship coming up, I wanted to use the tool to organize a score prediction competition within my team. While the countries battle it out on the field, we compete in predicting the outcomes of the matches. Thus, at the end of the tournament, we have our own champion. Although the primary purpose of this model was to facilitate competition, I also wanted to test Pigment's flexibility. How quickly could I set up this model? Could Pigment provide everything I needed for a successful implementation? I was positively surprised that Pigment exceeded my expectations and am happy to share how.

A warm welcome

Within Pigment, you can set up homepages based on the roles within your model. When a participant opens the model, this is the first board they see. When setting up a board, you can easily format tables that you have set up for other purposes to display data in a way that better fits the board. This saves a lot of time during construction. In addition, I was able to take advantage of useful features in Pigment to set up a homepage such as:

• Dynamic text: so that each participant receives a personalized welcome,
• Navigation widgets: to navigate between boards.

User access

The main function of the model is that participants can enter score predictions (with appropriate restrictions). Each day at 12:00 noon, the opportunity for everyone to submit predictions for the games being played that day closes. In addition, I wanted participants to be able to see others' entries, but not edit them. It was therefore necessary that the access handling within Pigment could handle multiple conditional requirements around when a participant has access to an entry. The tool did not disappoint. All access is conditional and set via formulas. This flexibility seemed like a puzzle at first, but proved easy to apply as you can easily stack multiple access rules and review what has been applied in a way that is easy to follow.

Automations

How do you make sure participants do not forget to enter their scores? It's detrimental to the competition if they don't. While considering the options around this, I found my favorite new feature so far: Automations. If a participant forgets to enter scores for any of the games played "today," they will receive a reminder in Pigment and via email to still do so. If a participant forgets to enter scores for any of the matches played 'today,' they will receive a reminder in Pigment and via email. The e-mail directs them to the "Predict Scores" board. The automation is based on a formula that calculates whether the entry is complete. When the outcome of the formula changes, the automation is activated. No more excuses to forget!

Converting data into views

Pivoting, formatting and adding data feels very easy and intuitive in Pigment. From the game results, you can easily create a group table to see the current standings in the groups. Even the scored points of the participants come together well in a "Leadershipboard". Pigment makes it easy to add and remove dimensions in a view without having to rebuild tables or redo calculations.

How long did it take to set up this model? One day of focused work was all it took. Except for filling in the game results, the model is fully automated. Pigment provides functionalities that were not originally in the design but added value (e.g. Automations).

Several more additions can be implemented in the model, such as:

• Predicting the tournament's top scorer,
• Predicting the team with the most cards,
• Predicting the number of penalty kicks awarded,
• Importing match results from an external source.

The flexibility of the tool makes it easy to implement while the model is live. I will certainly do this while we enjoy the tournament and prepare the model to serve us in the next big tournament; the World Cup in 2026.