Yard Duty Rota Generator

User Manual

1. Introduction

Welcome to the Yard Duty Rota Generator! This tool is designed to take the headache out of creating and managing your school's yard duty schedule.

It helps you automatically generate a fair and balanced timetable, allows for easy manual adjustments, and provides simple export options to share the rota with your staff.

2. Getting Started: Your First Timetable

Follow these simple steps to create a complete rota in just a few minutes.

Step A: Filling in Your School's Details

First, fill in the information in the Settings panel:

  • Full-Time Staff: List all full-time teachers, with one name per line.
  • Job Share Staff: For job-sharing partners, type their names on the same line, separated by a forward slash (e.g., Fiona / George). This tells the app to treat them as a single, balanced unit.
  • Zones: List all the different yard areas that need supervision, with one zone per line.
  • Break Times: Set the start and end times for your school's Little Break and Big Break.
  • Highlight Discrepancy: This number determines when a teacher's minutes are flagged in red. A value of 7.5 means a teacher will be highlighted if they are doing more than 7.5 minutes above or below the average for that week.

Step B: Choosing Your Mode

You have two options for generating a timetable:

  1. Single Weekly Timetable: This creates a standard one-week rota. It's perfect for a simple, repeating schedule.
  2. Three-Term Rota: This is a powerful feature for ensuring fairness over the whole year. It divides full-time staff into three groups and rotates which group has a lighter duty load each term, while still ensuring everyone participates.

Step C: Generate!

Click the "Generate Timetable" button. The app will create the schedule, and the settings panel will collapse to give you a clear view. You can click the "Settings" header at any time to expand it again.

3. Editing Your Timetable

The Golden Rule: The generated rota is a smart starting point, not a final answer. The real power of this tool is in making quick and easy manual adjustments.

  • Drag and Drop: Click and hold on any teacher's name in the timetable and drag them to a different slot to move their duty.
  • Adding Duties: Drag a teacher from the Teacher Bank on the left and drop them into any slot to add an extra duty.
  • Deleting Duties: Click the small × button on any teacher's tag in the timetable to remove them from that duty.
  • Live Minutes: Watch the Minutes Summary tables on the left. They update instantly with every change you make, so you can see the impact of your edits in real-time.

4. Saving & Exporting

Saving Your Settings

  • Click the "Save Settings" button to store your current staff lists, zones, and break times in your browser. The next time you visit the page, all your details will be loaded automatically.
  • IMPORTANT: This data is saved locally on your computer's browser. If you clear your browser's cookies or cache, the data will be lost. It is highly recommended to keep a master copy of your staff lists in a separate spreadsheet or document that you can copy and paste into the app if needed.

Exporting for Staff

Once your timetable is ready, use the Export buttons to share it.

  • Export to PDF: Creates a clean, print-friendly PDF document. It's perfect for printing and putting on a staff room noticeboard.
  • Export to Excel: Creates a colourful, fully-formatted, and editable spreadsheet file. This is the best option for emailing to staff, as they can open it in Excel or Google Sheets and make their own personal notes or tweaks.

How to Open the Excel File

The exported Excel file is a special .xml format. Here’s how to open it:

In Microsoft Excel:
  1. Open the Excel application.
  2. Go to File > Open.
  3. Browse to your 'Downloads' folder and select the yard-duty-rota.xml file.
  4. Excel may show a warning about the file format. This is normal. Click Yes or Open to proceed.
  5. The file will open as a fully editable, colored timetable.
In Google Sheets:
  1. Open Google Sheets in your web browser.
  2. Go to File > Import.
  3. Click on the Upload tab.
  4. Drag the yard-duty-rota.xml file into the window, or click to select it from your computer.
  5. Click Import data. The file will be converted into a new Google Sheet.

5. Troubleshooting & FAQ

  • "I don't like the generated rota."
    Remember, the generator provides a mathematically fair start. Its main purpose is to do the heavy lifting so you can make the final, human adjustments for your school's unique context.
  • "Why are some minutes highlighted in red?"
    This happens when a teacher's total minutes are higher or lower than the average by more than the "Highlight Discrepancy" value you set in the settings. It's a visual cue to help you spot potential imbalances.