Covering lessons and time off

Coverage is one board with two things feeding it: a teacher who has booked time off, and a teacher who cannot make one particular lesson. Both end up in the same place, and nothing moves on a calendar until you assign someone.

Time off

A teacher requests time off from their own portal. It arrives on your Coverage page as pending, showing you exactly which lessons the dates would affect before you decide.

• Approve it and those lessons go onto the coverage board. You can put the whole set on, or pick a subset — some lessons you may simply cancel instead.

• Deny it and nothing changes on anyone's calendar.

The ad-hoc lane

For "I'm ill tomorrow", a teacher posts that single lesson straight to the board without a time-off request. It behaves identically from there — the board does not care which lane an entry came from.

Teachers volunteer, you decide

Teachers see the open board in their own portal and offer to cover what suits them. If an offer clashes with something already on that teacher's calendar it is shown as a warning, not a block — a teacher who knows they can make it work is allowed to say so, and you see the same warning before you accept.

Assigning is always your decision. Nothing is automatic, and no lesson changes hands because a volunteer was first.

Assigning a substitute

1. Open the request on the board and look at who has offered.

2. Pick one and assign them.

3. That lesson occurrence moves to the substitute — the rest of the series is untouched.

4. The family is notified that their child has a different teacher, so nobody arrives to a surprise.

Two people cannot assign the same request twice: the first accept wins and the second is refused outright rather than quietly overwriting it. If you change your mind, an assignment can be reverted, and a request you no longer need can be cancelled.

The count in the sidebar

The number beside Coverage is how many lessons are still on the board with nobody assigned. It reaches zero when every one is covered or cancelled — which is the point: it is a queue, not a notice.

Delegating the board

You do not have to be the one watching it. A manager you have given the Scheduling grant works the board exactly as you do — approving and denying time off, assigning a substitute, undoing an assignment, and cancelling a request. Grant it from Settings → Managers.

The grant is what draws the line. A manager who holds Billing or People but not Scheduling does not see Coverage in their sidebar and cannot open it.