Apr 26, 2025

We do monitor the support calls we receive as it helps us identify where people are having trouble using our applications.  Over the last few years there have been numerous instances where a school has tried to use the teacher’s year level selection to control which booking round they appear in.   Unfortunately the year levels are a global setting, so any change to the year level selections will immediately affect all booking rounds.

1. Unavailability only applies within a booking round

Previously if a staff member marked unavailability this would make them unavailable in all booking rounds for that time.  Based on the number of instances where teachers have used unavailability to control where they are bookable we are changing this to work that way.

Now, when unavailability is marked in a booking round the teacher will be unavailable at those times, but only in that specific round.  If there are any other booking rounds running concurrently with overlapping time slots, the teacher will be available for booking in those other rounds.

To be clear, integrity is still maintained so where there is an actual booking the teacher will not be double booked in a concurrent booking round.

The below shows two booking rounds with matching dates and matching time slots.  In the left hand image you can see a booking at 3:15pm, and as expected this time slot is unavailable in the right hand image (of the second booking round).   In the left hand image there is a time slot marked unavailable at 3:45pm, and while this is not bookable in the left hand round, it is available for booking on the right.

2. Maintaining teacher year levels has now moved to the School menu

The school menu now includes an entry for “Teachers by year level”.  This will display the same last of staff along with the year levels toggle buttons.  By moving this option to the school menu we hope to indicate that these settings apply across all booking rounds (which they do and always have and likely always will).  Generally the teacher year levels are only changed when there are staffing changes.

 

3. Teachers are now selected to be available in a booking round

Firstly, we have booking rounds based on teacher year levels and we have booking rounds that rely on staff being selected and we have booking rounds that don’t require any staff selection (eg events).   In this modification I’m referring to the booking rounds where we previously select teachers based on their year level.

Previously where teachers were involved in a booking round because of the year levels they taught, this has been changed and we now specifically select the teachers involved in a booking round.

For booking rounds like “Regular parent:teacher interviews” they now include a dialog where you can select the staff involved in a particular round.  Note, we still show the year levels because these are important to construct the lists of teachers for each year level.

 

4. Changing the year levels on a booking round

You will be familiar with the ‘Main settings’ dialog where you can select the year levels for a booking round:

When you create a booking round we generally will configure a default set of year levels.  What we also do is automatically select all of the staff that teach these year levels.  If you don’t change the year levels then no changes to the selected staff are required.

However, if you change the year level selection this will not automatically update the selected teachers, so we popup this dialog:

We have identified a change to the selected year levels.  At this point we can automatically update the selected staff based on the new year level selection, OR, you can choose to manually change the selected staff.  The normal option would be to let us update the selected staff for you.

To manually select staff click the “Teachers selected by year level” row in the booking round settings.  This one:

This will take you to the dialog where you will be able to select / unselect the teachers for this booking round.

5. New features – a quick tour

When SOBS Administrators and Round managers log into SOBS Parent Booking they will be presented with a quick tour, essentially covering the above topics.  They can skip the tour but it will keep presenting each time they log in.  If they click through the tour to the end it will be done and will not appear again.