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Scheduling and bookingsFor staff

The duty rota

How the rota shows who is on and when, built from published availability minus leave, with each instructor's bookings for the week alongside.

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The duty rota answers one question at a glance: who is on, and when. It is not a separate thing you keep up to date. It is built from what the system already knows.

Where it comes from

The rota is published availability, minus leave. When an instructor publishes when they are available and books leave when they are off, the rota falls out of that automatically. You are never reconciling a rota against a leave calendar, because the rota is already the one minus the other.

Bookings alongside

Against each instructor's week, the rota shows the bookings they already have. So you see not just that someone is on Tuesday, but that their Tuesday is already half full. That is the difference between a rota that tells you who is theoretically available and one that tells you who can actually take a student.

Using it to plan

Because availability and bookings sit together, the rota is where you spot the gaps: the instructor who is on but unbooked, the day that is thin on cover, the person who has quietly filled up. You act on that here, rather than discovering it when a student calls wanting a slot.

Keeping it true

The rota is only as good as the availability and leave behind it. Encourage instructors to keep their own availability current and to book leave as soon as they know about it. Do that, and the rota is always right, with no one maintaining it as a task.

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