Rota suggestions

This page is for coordinators, and covers what rota suggestions are and where to find them.

What they are

Something happens that changes what the rota can do: leave is approved, a visit is cancelled, somebody leaves the team. WholeVisit works out what it would do about it, and offers you the answer.

A suggestion is only ever an offer. Nothing on the rota moves until you apply it, you see every change before it happens, and what you apply can be taken back in one go.

Where they appear

Straight after the action. Approve leave, block somebody for a client, book a client’s away dates, add a closed day, add somebody to the team or change their contracted hours, and the suggestion opens as a dialog there and then, on the page you are already on. Change a client’s preferred order and you get a quieter notice instead, “The rota has suggestions for this order.”, with “Review rota changes” and “Not now”.

Suggestions raised by anything else, such as a cancelled visit or somebody leaving the team, wait for you on the dashboard.

On the dashboard. The “Rota suggestions” card lists everything still waiting: “Changes the rota has an answer for. Review each to apply the swaps or put it away.” Each row names what it is about and how much it touches, such as “3 places” or “3 places · 2 visits to cancel”, with a “Review” button that opens the same dialog.

In “Waiting on you”. The panel at the top of the dashboard counts them, “2 rota suggestions to review”, and its “Review” button opens all of them in one dialog, stepped by what the rota would do — cancel visits, fill open places, swap people — with one Apply at the end for everything left ticked. Each suggestion is still applied on its own and can be taken back on its own. To put a suggestion away for good, open it from the Rota suggestions card and choose “Dismiss suggestion”.

One suggestion per thing

There is one open suggestion per subject: one for a leave request, one for a visit, one for a client, one for a person. If the same thing changes twice, the existing suggestion is worked out again rather than a second one appearing beside it.

A suggestion with nothing in it is never raised. Approving leave for a week with no visits in it, or blocking somebody for a client with nothing upcoming, changes nothing and says nothing.

The five states

• Waiting. Nobody has answered it yet. These are the ones on the dashboard.
• Applied. You ticked some rows and confirmed. The dialog then shows “Changes made” and offers “Take back this change” or “Take back these 3 changes”.
• Dismissed. You chose “Dismiss suggestion”. The suggestion is closed for good and nothing on the rota changed.
• No longer applies. Something later made it moot: the visit it was about was cancelled, leave was withdrawn after cover had been arranged, or every place it proposed was filled some other way — by hand, by auto-fill, by another suggestion. A suggestion that loses some of its places keeps the rest and drops the filled ones, so what you see is still true when you press Apply. The dialog says “No longer applies” when nothing is left.
• Taken back. You applied it and then undid it. The dialog says “Taken back”.

Every one of those steps is written to the audit trail, with who did it and when.