Today board

Who this is for: Duty lead, Admin, Tenant owner
What you'll achieve: Build a day from your template, review gaps, and publish to notify staff

Requires role

rota.publish to build and publish

Before you begin

• Initial setup template exists with zone windows and lead assignments
• Staff directory is populated

What Today is for

Today is where you run the day. Build from your template and absences, fill gaps, mark people off, cover lessons, then publish so staff are notified. The board refreshes when the live revision changes.

Use Week when you want to see who is booked: by person, timeline, or duty area. Week is not a second Today board. You can still build a week from either page.

Choose the date

1. Open Today.
2. Use the week picker and day strip (Mon–Fri) to select a date.
3. Note each day’s status: Draft or Live.

Build a day

1. Select Build day (or Build week for Mon–Fri). Once a day exists, the button reads Rebuild day.
2. Wait for the cover engine to finish. Build week fills every school day, then recalculates the week again so Monday is not planned in isolation. That second pass uses each day's lunch windows (including last week's same weekday when this week is new), pinned personal breaks, and anyone who already missed a break earlier in the week.
3. Review the slot board: duty area, time window, assignments, compliance. Posts start as one-line rows grouped by time of day (Start of day, Morning, Lunch, Home time, After school). Open a row to Replace, Mark off, or assign cover. Unfilled posts and only-if-needed posts stay open. At-risk rows stay closed so a busy day stays scannable. The status tag still shows on the line. Two children's lunch sittings on the same post appear as two time cards (for example Dining hall 11:45–12:25 and 12:20–13:00). Split sessions (only those you created with Split session) appear as two cards on the same duty area (first half and second half). Lesson cover, change requests, email, and book supply sit under More for this day below the board. If someone on lunch duty could not be given a break, that note is in the same fold. Rebuild tries to swap another person onto a lunch post first.

Copy last week

To repeat last week's people and posts exactly, open the Week menu and choose Copy last week. That copies the previous operating week onto the week you have open, day by day. One-off swaps stay. The cover engine does not run. Days land as drafts. Live boards stay until you Publish week. Use this when you want the same rota, not a fresh plan from the template.

Chat can do the same: ask to copy last week onto this week or next week.

Find someone quickly

Type a name, duty area, or time in the search box at the top of the board. The list filters as you type. Search is stored in the URL as ?q=.

Filters

Use Duty area and Status filters to focus on problems. Filters are stored in the URL (?date=&zone=&status=&q=).

Compliance statuses

Status	Meaning
OK	Requirements met
At risk	Close to failing a rule
Unfilled	Below the post's minimum staff count
Only if needed	A person or grade you asked us to use last was needed

Open slot explanations/notes when you need to understand why someone was chosen.

Soft conflict warnings

After Build day or Build week, SchoolRota checks assignees against teaching timetable, weekly commitments, and duties at other sites (for multi-site trusts). Clashes appear as amber tags on the Today board and in Review week. They do not block publish.

Warning type	Meaning
Teaching clash	Person has a lesson overlapping the duty window
Commitment clash	Recurring commitment (PPA, meeting, etc.) overlaps
On lunch break	Recurring lunch break overlaps this duty. They stay until you rebuild or replace them
Cross-site clash	Same person is on duty at another site at the same time

Lessons needing cover

If someone marked absent today is still timetabled to teach, Today shows a lessons need cover panel listing each orphaned lesson with its time, teacher, class and room.

This appears only when teaching timetable is enabled (profile default or Admin override), you have imported lesson times (see Importing a teaching timetable), and someone with lessons is absent. Partial-day absences are respected, so an afternoon absence lists only afternoon lessons.

When class cover on the board is enabled in Admin cover policy:

1. Open on board projects the lesson as a class-cover slot on the draft day.
2. Assign cover shows ranked candidates (subject match, phase match, weekly class-cover load, and supply tag).
3. Auto-fill best matches assigns the top eligible cover teacher to each open lesson, preferring booked supply when no permanent subject match is available.
4. Not required clears the gap with a short note (for example class on a trip).

Duty cover still recomputes automatically. Class cover slots appear on the board titled Class cover · lesson · class, including room when known.

You can ask the same questions in chat, for example "which lessons need cover tomorrow?", "cover Mrs Chen's Maths with Mr Patel", or "auto-fill lesson cover for today".

Swap people and mark unavailable

On each assignee on a draft day:

1. Select Replace to open a searchable picker. Staff are listed in preference order. Filter by Often, Sometimes, Only if needed, or clash status, then pick a name.
2. Select Remove to clear that person from the post only (no absence recorded). This is a board edit, so a later rebuild can place them on that post again. Use Mark off when they are genuinely unavailable and the change should stick.
3. Select Mark off to record unavailability for this post only, from this post onwards, or the whole day. Cover recomputes automatically; review the draft, then publish.

The same Replace and Remove actions sit on each duty in Timetable → By person, with a menu to take someone off the day or the week.

On a live (published) day without a draft, Mark off still works and creates a new draft. To add or replace people without recording an absence, choose Edit this day. That copies the live board into a draft and keeps current assignments. If a later rebuild was already published, SchoolRota ignores any older leftover draft and copies from the live board instead. There is no weekly duty cap unless a school has set one. Staff already at that cap can still be assigned, with a warning. Someone on a lunch break is not auto-placed, but you can still assign them after confirming they will miss that break. Use Rebuild day only when you want the cover engine to start again from the template. Rebuild keeps pinned people, then replaces unpinned Sometimes or Only-if-needed template staff when Often (or other higher-preference) cover is free.

Unfilled posts on a draft show suggested covers and an assign control. Soft-conflict hints appear when you pick someone with clashes.

Book supply for the day

When a supply or agency teacher is coming in, open More for this day and use Book supply (or the same panel on Absences). Pick someone already in the pool, or add their name and book the day in one step. Do not add day-only cover in Staff. Mark Confirm when they arrive, or Didn't show if they do not. No-shows leave the cover pool and the live board rebuilds those duties. See Recording absences.

Lesson-cover candidate lists include a Supply only filter so you can quickly route open lessons to agency staff already booked for the day.

Not a hard block

Soft warnings help duty leads review cover quality. Nothing blocks publish until an admin opts in.

Admins can set Cover policy (Admin) to Block publish for teaching clashes, weekly block clashes, open class-cover gaps, or any combination. Cross-site warnings always stay warn-only.

When a proposed day has teaching or weekly-block clashes, Today shows Resolve clashes. SchoolRota tries explainable replacements (preferred/acceptable staff with fewer teaching or weekly-block clashes), skips locked posts and last-resort unless you ask for them, and will not double-book someone already on overlapping duty. Anything unclear is left for manual Replace. Chat can do the same with resolve_clashes_for_day.

Cover policy (optional)

Under Admin → Cover policy you can choose independently for each kind of issue, so a school that protects PPA can block on weekly blocks without blocking on lessons, or the other way round.

Setting	Applies to	Warn only (default)	Block publish
Someone is teaching a lesson	Lesson times imported from a spreadsheet or your MIS	Amber teaching clash tags; publish allowed	Day publish refused while a lesson clash remains
Someone has a weekly block	Recurring blocks such as PPA, phonics, intervention or meetings	Amber commitment clash tags; publish allowed	Day publish refused while a weekly block clash remains
A lesson still needs class cover	Absent teacher lessons still open for cover	Publish allowed while lessons need cover	Day publish refused while any lesson still needs cover

Week publish and auto-week publish behave the same way: clean days publish and blocked days are skipped, so one clash never holds up the rest of the week.

Draft edits, rebuild, and swap suggestions still work in block mode so you can fix the board before publishing.

Board summary

Above the slot filters, the Board summary card gives a plain-language recap after build or recompute:

1. Select Explain board to expand the summary.
2. Read the overview paragraph and bullet sections (gaps, soft conflicts, engine notes).
3. Optionally select Polish with AI when the AI helpers feature is enabled. This rewrites the structured summary as short prose. The board itself is never changed.

Interventions

The Intervention card (under More for this day, with uncovered lessons) lists intervention weekly blocks for the selected day, or the operating week. Duty leads see school-wide blocks, clash counts, confirmed misses, and suggestions to confirm or dismiss so the weekly email stays accurate. Staff see their own blocks and misses. Open missed work keeps the intervention filter. This is staff time that did not happen, not a pupil register.

Export the board

The week toolbar has Export day (spreadsheet, CSV, print, or PDF) and Export week (same week pack as Exports and Timetable). Day export follows the current Duty area filter when one is set.

Email rota (compact)

After building a day, duty leads can use the compact Email PDF/Word rota controls under More for this day (same options as Exports: this day, on-rota vs all staff, PDF or Word).

Publish

1. Select Publish day, or Publish week for Mon–Fri. Review week opens a step-by-step check first.
2. Review unfilled posts, teaching or weekly-block warnings, and any At risk same-time duties at another school.
3. Confirm publish: this locks the day and notifies staff per your notification rules.

Explicit confirm

The engine proposes; a duty lead or admin must confirm Publish. The exception is an approved staff rota change request: that rebuilds cover and republishes if the day is already live.

Same-day changes

Use Mark off on an assignee on Today, or record an absence elsewhere. Review the new draft proposal, then publish again. For swaps without an absence, build or rebuild a draft first, then use Replace.

Staff can also request a change from My schedule. Pending requests for the open day appear on this page. Approve to rebuild cover with the usual allocation rules.

What happens next

• Recording absences
• Missed work
• Timetable views
• Exports

Troubleshooting

Problem	What to try
Empty board after build	Check template slots and assignments in Setup
Cannot publish	Need rota.publish (duty lead / admin / owner)
Board not updating	Wait for SSE refresh (~15s) or reload the page
Amber clash tags on staff	Teaching and weekly block clashes are soft by default. Whether they refuse day publish depends on Admin → Cover policy. Same-time duty at another school is refused by auto-fill; a confirmed manual assign shows At risk and does not block publish. Sequential duties at different schools on the same day are allowed