Timetable Daily: Covers Tab

Modified on Thu, 14 Aug at 12:59 AM

The Covers Tab

The Covers tab has the following properties:

Each lesson, event or yard duty which needs a teacher or room (a cover cell) will appear here.
Covers for the same time appear in the same column.
Covers for the same event or same absent teacher appear in the same row.
Covers associated with a lesson have the class code appearing above the white cell, colour coded in the faculty’s colour.
Cover status is at the top left hand side of the grid. It shows the current status of covers and the number ‘x covers remaining’ which still need to be assigned. This may be either room covers or teacher covers, or a combination of both. It is red when there are covers remaining and turns green when all covers have been assigned.
the number of covers remaining in each period is shown in a light blue square in the top right hand corner of the period cell

Your job is complete when each cell in this panel has an entry!

There are several ways a cover cell can be created from the data you’ve just entered:

When a teacher is absent, each lesson or duty they miss results in a cover cell.
If an event has a certain teacher(s) explicitly specified, as that is equivalent to the teacher being absent from their normal cyclical classes/duties in order to attend this event.
If an event requests e.g. ‘3 ‘additional’ teachers’ (i.e. names not explicitly specified) then there will be three cover cells created for this event. These cover cells may be wider than the normal lesson covers, depending on the start and finish times of the event in minutes – i.e. they are shown proportionately by time, and not necessarily aligned to standard period bell times.
If an event requests specific rooms or additional rooms, then there will be cover cells created for:
* Lessons displaced by explicitly requested rooms and
* Each additional room required for the event.

After you have designated the teachers who are absent on the day, and designated any events that are occurring and may need staff or rooms, the next task is to actually cover what is required - clicking in each cover cell in turn and choosing a teacher or room to cover each cell. Each cover cell has two cover options to enable you to make a cover:

A person or house icon, which is shown on the left hand side of the cover cell and which will open the 'Alternatives' window. The Alternatives window is detailed below.
An 'Options' icon (three vertical dots in a square), which will appear when the mouse hovers over the right hand side of the cover cell.

Covering cells: Options

Clicking on the ‘Options’ icon opens the following menu:

Minimal supervision

A teacher who is teaching can be used to 'supervise' a class to initially mark the roll and check-in periodically, but not receive a cover ‘credit’. This is most commonly used for senior classes when a teacher is taking another lesson in a nearby room. When you select this option, you will be asked to specify who will do the minimal supervision. Note that Admin staff will be available to select when using this option and that you can select teachers that are unavailable or available to do a minimal supervision. The teacher assigned the minimal supervision will appear in the Covers table on the Daily Bulletin.

Merge

Options are given to merge the class requiring cover with another class. Students join with another lesson in another room. Details of the possible classes with which to merge, such as year, subject and numbers enrolled, are provided, so that it can be decided whether there is any suitable opportunity for a merge. Timetable Daily will also prompt you to merge classes in certain situations such as where the class to merge will fit into the room together with the existing class (i.e. there are sufficient empty seats available). The room to be used can also be selected.

When using the 'Merge' function on the cover screen, a class may not appear to be merged with another class if a scheduled exam event only partially overlaps with the class period. In such cases, although the timetable view and the cancelled classes report may display the class as cancelled, it is not technically cancelled in the system. For example, if an exam runs from period RC to period three and extends into the first 10 minutes of period four, the class in period five is still considered active. As a result, it will not be marked as cancelled and therefore will not be merged with another class on the cover screen

Undecided

This is the default state of all covers (except classes as configured to be automatically assigned ‘No Cover’). It displays as a blank white cell in the ‘need covers’ panel. Using 'Undecided' will remove any previously added teacher or room.

No cover

Class does not require a replacement teacher. The students are expected to work as normal, and in the normal room, but without a teacher. This is often used for senior classes with more mature students. A ‘No cover’ entry can be automatically assigned to certain covers. Go to ‘Daily > Settings> Covers’ tab to set these. However, you can override any ‘No cover’ setting by clicking on the cell and selecting an alternative or an option.

Online Lesson

Class does not require a replacement teacher. The class teacher is not present at school but will be delivering the lesson online. Note that this information is NOT sent to third party systems and is just a message.

Cancel lesson

Lesson is cancelled. Students do not attend the lesson, teacher gets an in-lieu and the room is now available for others.

Class to library

Students are 'sent' to the library as a 'message' which appears in Student bulletin. There is no option to link 'Library' with any actual room code - this option is just a message. Note that this information is NOT sent to third party systems.

View class list

Current class list for that period, taking into account students who are away on excursions or events.

Clear all covers for this teacher

This additional option will appear when a class has already been assigned a replacement teacher. Using this option will remove that teacher from all classes to which they have been assigned that day. This is useful when a casual teacher is no longer available and needs to be removed from all assigned classes.

Covering cells - Alternatives for teachers

Clicking on the person icon opens the following 'Alternatives' window.

Each time this window appears, it’s for a single cover, whose details are displayed for added confirmation. The number of students is also shown in case you are considering merging this class or assigning a different room.

You can vary the amount of 'credit’ a cover object has by editing the number in the ‘Credit’ field. A figure of '1' means the equivalent of a full teaching period. Zero means no credit. 0.2 may be partial credit. Duties get partial credit by default, based on proportion of a teaching period duration. You can also change the room for the selected class by clicking on the room code.

The ‘Alternatives’ window consists of multiple tabs, to help you see the various advantages of choosing each teacher. Each teacher will appear in only one tab, the first tab to which they belong.

Click the name of any teacher you want to assign the cover to. This will close the ‘Alternatives’ window, and your selected teacher’s code will then appear in the cover cell.

N.B. All the above applies equally to rooms, except there are less tabs appearing for room covers, as only 'Available' and 'Unavailable' options appear. To open the Alternatives window for rooms, click on the house icon.

Schools that are using Multi-Grid will need to have assigned a 'Main Campus' in 'Teachers > Teacher data' to ensure the Unavailabilities appear correctly in Tes Timetable Daily.

Tabs may have different columns appearing, e.g. the ‘#Extras’ column is not applicable to the Casuals tab.

Alternatives teacher tabs
On Call	Teachers who have on-call slots defined in the cyclical timetable for the period in question. If you want to introduce this system, see the Tes Timetable User manual’s Teachers > On-call roster menu.
Had cancel today	Teachers who are available this period for ‘in-lieu’ covers because they’ve had a lesson cancelled today e.g. due to an excursion or exam. Staff will only appear in the 'Had cancel today' tab and no other tap (like Available, Underload etc...), as Daily is taking this tab as a priority rather then any other tab.
Underload	Teachers who are available this period for ‘under-load’ covers because they’re under-loaded in the timetable (do not have a full teaching load).
Available	Teachers who are available this period for ‘extra’ covers because they have not reached their extras quota for the accounting period.
Casuals/ not here today	Casual teachers who are available this period for ‘relief’ covers. Casual teachers can be assigned to Long term replacements, automatically covering all that teachers lessons associated with that absence event – even if this means automatically covering several days or even weeks of lessons. Timetable Daily automates the process of assigning a long term replacement by popping up a message box: This question box appears only in this case: You’re covering a lesson on the first date of the absence You have selected a casual teacher to cover their first lesson There are no substitute teachers or other covers already assigned for any of the lessons
Unavailable	Teachers who are unavailable this period. Choosing a teacher from this tab will give the option of creating a 'lesson swap' or a teacher clash. A lesson swap will shift the selected teacher from their existing lesson to this lesson. The teacher's existing lesson will appear in the Covers tab needing a cover and they will be added to the Absences tab with absence reason ‘Lesson swap’.

Alternatives columns
Name	Teacher’s name
Code	Teacher’s code
Score	The figure reported in this column is the result of a complex formula whose aim it is to suggest the most appropriate teacher for this cover. The formula takes into account many issues which would normally be considered by an experienced daily organiser at a school. Several other factors are also considered by the software, that would not generally be considered if done manually, due to the effort of collating or analysing much smaller details. Some of the issues considered in the suggested teachers score include: Are they on-call (standby) for this period, or to a lesser extent - this day; Are they qualified for this subject, or perhaps in the same faculty; Do they have a heavy or light load today; Do they have any lesson cancellations today; If they are a casual teacher, are they already coming in today; Is this one of the teacher’s less preferred times.
This Cycle	Shows the current balance for the teacher for the cycle. Takes into account the underload or overload quota and the number of underload or extra covers completed in the cycle to this date.
Today	Shows the current balance for the teacher for today. Takes into account classes cancelled, in-lieu covers taken and the number of underload or extra covers completed on this day.
Normal	The teacher's normal cyclical underload/overload figure. e.g. +1 means overloaded by 1, and -1 means under-loaded by 1.
2 Week Covers	What covers or cancellations has this teacher had in the past two weeks. Each cell consists of a series of characters, one for each day. Hover over the character for details of the day and cover. . - means nothing I - means they were assigned an in-lieu cover U - means they were assigned an underload cover E - means they were assigned an extra cover V – means they were on an event 2 - means they took two covers, and so on for 3, 4 … X - means they had a lesson cancelled A - means they were absent C - means they were covering another class as well as their own as the classes were merged. The tooltip for this will show as 'undecided' <space> - displayed for weekends.
Extras this….	The number of counted extras this teacher has taken so far this ‘accounting period’. If a teacher is overloaded on their cyclical duties then the overload amount is added into this figure, i.e. the number of teaching cycles so far this year multiplied by their overload number. The 'FTE' from the ETZ file in 'Teachers > Teacher data' affects this value by multiplying it against each other. Eg. Extras this cycle is '2' X FTE of '0.6' = Extras this cycle is '1.2'.
Today’s TT	This field is shown as cells for each period. The characters have the following meaning: 7,8,9,10,11,12 - The teacher is teaching. The value shows exactly what year level the teacher is taking. Some users like to consider the level of teaching when considering cover options – it may be a big Yr9 class or it could be a small Yr12 class, so some knowledge of the teaching level can have a bearing. C - The teacher is covering a lesson for another teacher as well as their own as the classes have been merged. I - The teacher is covering a lesson that is in-lieu. E - The teacher is covering an event Ex - The teacher is covering an exam y - The teacher is taking yard duty (They are on duty) x - The teacher had a lesson but it’s been cancelled. The number following the x represents the year level of the cancelled class. <space> - The teacher is available - - The teacher is absent oc - The teacher is on-call * - The asterisk represents the period in question that you need to cover. D - The teacher is busy on one of the following class types: Roll call, staff meeting or a class with combined year levels (e.g.9+10). Grey Cell - The Teacher is unavailable.

Options and Actions

The column on the right hand side of the ‘Covers’ tab contains the date selector, a filter by type and a set of Actions.

Options
Date	Shows the calendar date for the selected day and the timetable cycle day (MonA). If you have been working on a date in the future, clicking ‘Today’ immediately takes you back to the current day. Scroll forward or back with the arrows.
Filter by type	All - All covers cell types (teacher or room) are displayed. Teacher - Only cover cells requiring teachers are displayed. Room - Only cover cells requiring rooms are displayed.

Actions
Publish Covers	Covers assigned to teachers in the Covers panel are not automatically published (visible) on teachers’ timetables within Timetable Daily till ‘Publish covers’ is activated and the ‘Publish Date’ (in the ‘Events’ panel) is reached. Hence, covers for events can be planned in advance without publishing these changes to other users till the future date. Day Sheets for casuals are also not published until ‘Publish covers’ is activated. Clicking ‘Publish Covers’ will open a dialogue box with the following options: 1) Publish – Publish daily changes to teacher timetables within Timetable Daily for the date range specified. 2) Publish and Sync with other system(s) – Publish daily changes to Timetable Daily and sync daily changes with other Student Information Systems (SIS), e.g. Sentral & Compass, for the date range specified. Dates: The default publish "To" date will be same as the "From" date, but can be easily edited to the desired publish date range. 3) Email daily bulletin to all permanent staff. 4) Email daily bulletin to all permanent staff and casuals with covers today 5) Email daily bulletin to all permanent staff with covers and casuals with covers today 6) None (daily bulletin is not emailed) Note: The options (3), (4) and (5) above will email the Daily bulletin to relevant recipients and will also attach the individual Day sheets for any teachers who have covers. You must configure your Day Sheets options via the Day Sheet generation feature.
Auto Cover	This will automatically cover all lessons needing a replacement – with the highest scoring teacher or room as required. This is done with reference to the scoring weights, so the more accurate the score weights, the more likely this feature is to provide good results. The auto-cover feature should be considered as a highly efficient method of initially applying covers which should be quite suitable for a large number of cover assignments. It is far more efficient to make changes to some covers, than to have to enter them all manually. Note that the auto-cover will respect the type selected in the 'Type' filter and only generate covers for the selected type. Therefore if 'Room' is selected, only room covers will be generated and when 'Teacher' is selected only teacher covers will be generated. When 'All' is selected, both room and teacher covers will be generated.
Clear covers	Clears all teacher and room covers for today. Three options available for teacher covers – All covers, Only casuals or Only permanent teachers

More Actions
Create event/absence	Use this button to create an event or an absence without having to navigate to those tabs. The create window that opens here is the same as the one that opens when you create an event or an absence from the Events and Absences tabs.
Move and replace lessons	This function will allow you to swap all of the lessons in one period of the selected day with another period on that same day. See the knowledge base article on 'Move and replace lessons' for more details.

Printing and Exporting the Covers table

There are several options for printing and exporting the Covers table information, other than via the Daily Bulletin and Day Sheets.

Print

The Covers table can be printed by using CTRL-P, which will open a print dialogue window. This print function prints exactly what can be seen on the web page - it does not add any additional information. For example, if a teacher name does not fit in the cell of the class which that teacher is covering, the name will not print in full. Only the portion of the name that is visible on the screen will be printed.

Export as a CSV File

This export can be generated by clicking on the 'Export to Csv' text in the top right hand corner of the Covers table. The export of the covers table as csv produces a text file which displays the information in Excel as shown below.

Export to Excel

The Export to Excel can be created by clicking on the "Export to Excel' text in the top right hand corner of the Covers table. The export of the covers table to Excel produces an exact replica of the Covers table, including colours, and shows all of the information in full, as shown below. Note that any conflicts/clashes will be shown with [C] rather than the red triangle that is displayed on the Covers page.

If you have multigrid campus and you have a exam event created on the Covers page please make sure that in the Grid Filter that you select the right campus as the Export to Excel won't work. For more information regarding how Multi-grid and Multi-campus Schools works in Daily please refer to: Timetable Daily: Information for Multi-grid and Multi-campus Schools.

Accounting for Extras

This section defines ‘when a cover is counted’ and how to equitably assign covers to staff. A ‘cover’ means any time a teacher is assigned to a date based event other than a cyclical lesson. There are two types of covers:

- a teacher covers a cyclical class on behalf of a teacher who is absent or taking an excursion

- a teacher is on an excursion/incursion/other daily event.

Each cover is assigned one of the following cover types:

Cover Types
In-Lieu	When a teacher has a lesson cancelled on a day, they are free to take a cover. When a teacher has 2 lessons cancelled on a day, they are free to take 2 covers today, and so on. Note: When a composite class (a class consisting of two or more vertically linked classes) is partially cancelled, that is, not all of the vertically linked classes are cancelled, the teacher will not be eligible for an in-lieu, as they are still required to teach the remaining students. An in-lieu cover is not counted as an extra. In-lieus reset daily. The in-lieu flag is independent of a class's load which means that an in-lieu is not affected by the teaching load of the cancelled class. For example, when a class with a zero teaching load is cancelled, the teacher of that cancelled class can still be assigned an 'In-lieu' when covering another class the same day. Note that there is the option of changing a cover to an extra in this situation if this is not considered by the school to be an in-lieu.
Underload	If a teacher is under-loaded, they can take covers up to their under load amount. As they take covers, this figure counts down. An underload cover is not counted as an extra. Under-loads reset each cycle. The 'under-load' value refers to the ‘LdLeft’ figure in E10 'Teachers > Staff Allocations’ (F4). In Timetable Daily, a positive number means the teacher is under-loaded, and a negative number means they're overloaded. Note that this is opposite to how it is displayed in the etz file. If this under-load/overload figure is not correct, go to E10 and either (a) modify the ‘MaxLoad’ figure in F4, or (b) modify their other duties via ‘Teachers > Allowances’. If you want the underloads for both weeks to be distributed evenly across the two weeks cycle then you may consider the Work Allocation index Also, when using Work allocation index Timetable Daily does not have a concept of minutes. In Tes Timetable (E10) periods are counted as periods or minutes but in Timetable Daily they are counted as credits, where 1 credit is equivalent to the median length period.
Extra	When a teacher takes a cover in excess of their normal duties, the cover will be counted as an extra. Extras reset each ‘accounting period’. The ‘accounting period’ can be set to ‘Term’, ‘Week’, 'Fortnight', Cycle’, ‘Semester’ or ‘Year’. To set or change the accounting period, go to ‘Daily > Settings > Cover options’ tab.
Relief	A casual teacher is assigned. This is accounted for separately to regular teachers.

Cover Credit

Most of the time, a cover is for a single period, and it has a credit of '1' . However, note:

When there are teaching periods of different lengths in the cycle, Daily assigns a credit of 1 to the median length period and calculates the credit for the other periods as a fraction of the median period. For example, if the median length teaching period is 50 minutes, all 50 minute periods will have a credit of 1, 35 minute periods will have a credit of 0.7 and 60 minute periods will have a credit of 1.2
The Accounting method selected in Daily > Settings > Misc will affect the credit applied to events.
If a teacher takes an excursion or other event, and they are explicitly listed on the event, then, regardless of which accounting method is selected, it will not count as an extra, rather it is a replacement for their normal teaching duties.
If a teacher is assigned to an excursion or event as a cover, the cover will have credit if the first accounting method is selecting but will not have credit if the second accounting method is selected.
Supervision and exam events will always have credit, regardless of which accounting method is used.
If a teacher is assigned to cover a period but does not have enough 'underload' or 'in-lieu' credit available to take a full period, they will be credited with an extra for that period. Multiple credit types cannot be assigned to a single cover.
Playground duty, or indeed any duty in a non-teaching period, will get a fractional amount, depending on the length of the period.
No provision is currently made for teachers who are absent for half a period.

Changing a Cover to an Extra

Occasionally a teacher may need to be given credit for a cover as an extra rather than an underload or an in-lieu. An example of this is when the Daily Organiser wants to keep some underload covers available for later in the cycle when they are more likely to be needed. For these situations, the 'Extra' checkbox on the alternatives panel may be selected. When selected, the cover type will change from an underload or an in-lieu and the teacher will be given the credit as an extra.

The following conditions apply to this function:

Only covers with credit can be changed to an extra. If a cover has zero credit, the Extras checkbox cannot be selected.
Only covers of type 'underload' or 'in-lieu' can be changed to an extra. Casual/Relief covers cannot be changed to extras.
Extras covers cannot be changed to underload or in-lieu covers.
For Irish schools, a cover cannot be both Personal and an Extra (S&S), as Personal covers do not have credit.

No Credit

In some circumstances, a teacher may be given a cover which should not count towards their Extra, Under-load or In-lieu tallies. Some examples are 'buddy' covers and covers in exchange for relief from other activities.

In the Alternatives panel there is an option available called 'No Credit'.

When this is selected, the cover credit will become 0 and the cover type will be classed as 'No Credit'.

'No Credit' covers have the following properties:

Will have zero credit
Will not count as an Extra, In-lieu or Underload
Will display on the Daily Bulletin, Day Sheets and Reports as 'No Credit'.
Will be displayed with 'N' in the 2 week covers column in the Alternatives panel.

Reports will display 'No Credit' covers information as follows:

The Covers report will display 'No Credit' in the 'Type' column for covers with zero credit
The Statistics report displays a column for 'No Credit' covers where these are tallied
The Teacher Covers Summary report displays 'N' for 'No Credit' covers

Note that the cover type will be changed to 'No credit' even if a casual teacher is assigned so it is recommended that this option is only used for permanent teachers. Casual teachers should always be assigned a cover of the Casual/relief type so it is wise to check that the 'No credit' option is not selected when a casual teacher is assigned.

Behaviour of Cover of classes with an Associated Room Booking

When a class with an associated room booking requires cover or is cancelled, Timetable Daily will behave as follows:

Case 1

When a replacement teacher is added, the following message will appear.

By selecting 'Move booking', the room booking will remain with the class but will be associated with the replacement teacher.

By selecting 'Delete booking' the room booking will be deleted and the room will revert to the original room.

The same message will appear if the covering teacher is changed. Selecting 'Move booking' will ensure that the room booking remains with the class.

Case 2

When a class has been covered with a replacement teacher and the option to 'Move booking' has been selected, when one of the following options is then selected from the options menu

Undecided
No cover
Online Lesson
Class to library

the following warning message will appear.

By selecting 'Move booking' will return the booking to the original teacher and therefore it will stay with the class.

By selecting 'Delete booking' the room booking will be deleted and the room will revert to the original room.

Case 3

When 'Cancel lesson' is selected from the options menu the room booking will be deleted automatically.

Case 4

When covers are cleared by one of the following methods by using one of the following options:

Clear all covers for this teacher (options menu)
Clear covers (options panel) the room booking will return to the original teacher automatically

Case 5
When auto cover is selected, the room booking will be moved to the cover teacher automatically.