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Rota change requests
Who this is for: Staff who need a duty changed; duty leads and admins who approve cover
What you'll achieve: Ask to come off a duty from My schedule, then rebuild the rota with the same allocation rules used for any other cover run
Staff: request a change
- Open My schedule.
- Find the duty on My day, My week, or My month.
- Select Request change, confirm, add an optional note, and send it.
- You get an inbox notice that the request was received. The duty shows Change requested until a duty lead decides. You can Cancel request while it is pending. If your school uses auto-approve, cover rebuilds as soon as you send the request.
- When a duty lead approves or rejects, you get another inbox notice (and a staff-app alert on a real device). An approval updates My schedule to the new cover.
You can only request a change for today or a future day, and only for a duty assigned to you.
This is not a full-day absence. If you will be off lessons as well, the office or a duty lead should still record an absence.
Duty lead: review and approve
Duty leads, admins, and owners are notified in-app and by email when someone requests a change. The person who sent the request does not receive that lead copy (they already know they asked). The email for leads links to Rota requests.
- Open Rota requests in the sidebar, or the Rota change requests card on Today for that date.
- Read the note, then Approve and rebuild or Reject.
- Approval:
- Marks you unavailable for that duty window only (other duties that day stay in play)
- Runs the same cover engine as Rebuild day: availability, working patterns, skills, weekly load, commitments, lunch allocation, and last-resort policy
- Publishes automatically if that day was already live
- If publish is blocked by your cover policy (for example an unresolved teaching clash), the draft still exists. Clear clashes on Today, then publish from Today or Timetable.
Rejecting leaves the current rota as it is. The requester is notified either way.
Auto-approve vs manual
Admins set this in Admin → Cover rules → Staff rota change requests (or chat: set_rota_change_request_policy).
| Mode | What happens |
|---|---|
| Manual (default) | Duty lead must approve. Cover rebuilds only after that click. |
| Auto | Cover rebuilds as soon as staff send the request. Duty leads still get the email so they can see what changed. |
Every create, cancel, approve, reject, auto-approve, and policy change is written to the Admin → Audit log.
Assistant
Staff can ask chat to request a change (request_rota_change) or list their requests. Duty leads can list the queue and approve or reject (approve_rota_change_request, reject_rota_change_request). Approval still goes through the same preview card as other mutations.