WowAce

Introduction

Order of Battle is a raid assignments planner mostly targeted for boss encounters. It allows you to create assignment templates and then drag and drop people from a roster frame to assign specific jobs for everyone. When you're done with assignments, you can send them to raid chat or some other channel.

Assignments are organized into plans. Typically one plan is for one boss encounter. You may create as many assignments templates for each plan as necessary. For example, one assignment template for ranged positions, one for melee positions, one to assign dps for adds, one to assign tanks etc.

Main window

You can open the main window by typing /oob show or clicking the DataBroker launcher. The top of the window contains a drop down box where you can select currently active plan. There is also a menu where you can create new plans, add assignments templates to plans, move plan in the plan list or delete plan.

The right side of the window contains the raid roster. You can drag and drop people from here to plans. You can also move people to different groups in the raid by dragging them in the roster frame.

The middle of the window contains all the assignments. Each assignment template has the assignment text and drop targets for people as well as a menu button for management, a drop down box to select the channel where the assignments will be sent and a button to send it.

Options

You can access options in the normal addons interface menu

The simulate option simulates a raid environment so you can play around with the addon without actually being in a raid. Show on load automatically shows the main dialog when the game starts up. Enable raid swaps enables moving people between groups in the roster frame.

Creating new plans and assignment templates

To create a new plan, click the Menu button at the top of the window and select New plan. You can then select this plan from the drop down box next to the menu button. After you have selected it, you may want to rename it using the menu button.

To create new assignment templates for the plan again use the Menu button at the top of the window and select New template. This will create an empty assignment template. Then use the Menu button of the new assignment template to change the template and add some text and drop targets.

Assignment templates

Assignment templates are just text with a few special features. You can create drop targets for people using curly brackets "{}". You can also add additional options between the curly brackets. In case of multiple options they are separated with a semi-colon. Available options are:

label=text - Sets a label on the drop target when it's empty.

tab - Use on the first drop target of a line if you want to indent it to match the drop target on previous line.

prepend=text - Adds text before the drop target but it is sent only if the drop target isn't empty.

append=text - Adds text after the drop target but it is sent only if the drop target isn't empty.

lf - Will not create a drop target but instead adds a line feed here when sending the message. This splits the message in raid chat or the channel you use to multiple lines.

star, circle, rt1, rt2, etc - Will not create a drop target but instead adds the specified raid target icon. The icon will display as text in the assignments window and as an icon when sent to a channel.

For example "{label=dps druid;tab}" creates a drop target with the label "dps druid" when there is no player assigned there. The drop target is also indented to match the first drop target on previous line. As another example "{}{prepend=+}" creates two drop targets. If both are filled then the sent assignment will be "player1+player2" if only first is filled then it will only be "player1". The + character is only sent if the second drop target is filled. Both append and prepend can be specified at the same time. For example "{prepend=(;append=)}" creates a drop target that will be surrounded by parenthesis.

Assignment text is split on separate lines in the main window according to line feeds in the template text. When sending the assignment in raid or other channel it will not be split on line feeds in the template but instead on "{lf}" tags. Empty drop targets are not sent but the text between them is. Consecutive space characters are truncated to single spaces.

You can enter an open curly bracket in template text by writing two of them. That is "{{" will become a single curly bracket without any special meaning. Note that you shouldn't escape closing curly brackets similarly. Currently there is no way to escape a closing curly bracket in the options of drop targets. You also can't add other tags inside options. For example you can't put {lf} in the append or prepend texts.

Setting assignments

To give people assignments drag and drop them from the roster frame to drop targets on assignment templates. You can select several people in the roster frame by holding down the shift button. You can also drag people from the assignment template to other assignments to change their assignments. When you set assignments, you will see a number next to the name of everyone. This is the group in raid they are in.

Clear assignments by dragging people to empty space from the drop targets or clicking them while holding the shift key. You can also clear all assignments by using the menu button.

Each assignment template has an option to count roster. If this option is checked then people who have an assignment will be drawn in gray in the roster. This will help you see who are still available for other assignments. People who have more than one assignment will also have a red background to alert that there may be something wrong. In addition anyone who is assigned to something and isn't in groups 1-5 will have their background drawn in red.