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Lessons & Scheduling131 linked articles

Student Availability and Scheduler Overlays

Octavia can store recurring weekly student availability and show it back to you while you are scheduling. You can view and edit this from the student's Availability tab, and you can also show it as an overlay in the Sche

Where to Edit Student Availability

Open the student in My Students, then go to the Availability tab.

This page shows the student's weekly availability as time blocks on a calendar. You can:

  • add a new block
  • move a block
  • resize a block
  • delete a block

Student availability can come from more than one place. Some times may have been confirmed by the family through the Family Hub, while others may have been added by a teacher or admin from the teacher app.

Available vs Not Available

Student availability currently supports two kinds of recurring weekly time block:

  • Available — a time the student is generally able to attend lessons
  • Not available — a time the student should not be scheduled

These two kinds are shown differently in the teacher app so you can tell at a glance whether a block is helping define possible times or ruling them out.

How This Connects to Family Availability Requests

If you send an availability request to a family, they review and confirm times in the Family Hub. Those confirmed times feed back into the student's availability record.

Teacher-managed availability is related, but separate:

  • families can confirm or update their availability through the Hub
  • teachers and admins can also record availability directly in the teacher app

This means the student's availability can reflect both family input and teacher-side scheduling knowledge.

Seeing Student Availability in the Scheduler

In Timetable Planning, you can expand the Student availability overlay section to show student availability blocks on the Scheduler calendar.

You can:

  • show availability for selected students
  • show all available student overlays for the current teacher view
  • hide the overlay again when you want a cleaner calendar

This overlay is designed as a visual scheduling aid. It helps you see student timing constraints without leaving the Scheduler.

How Not-Available Blocks Appear

In the Scheduler overlay:

  • regular availability blocks keep the usual coloured background
  • not available blocks use the same colour family, but with a faint diagonal stripe treatment so they are easy to spot without overwhelming the calendar

This makes it easier to understand why a student may not be schedulable in a particular window.

How Availability Affects Rotating Scheduling

For rotating timetables, Octavia currently uses:

  • the teacher's own availability
  • the student's not available blocks as exclusions

In practice, this means the Scheduler can avoid placing a rotating student into a time they have been marked as not available for.

The student's positive available blocks do not currently drive rotating placement. They are useful for visibility in the overlay, but the rotator does not currently treat them as "only schedule inside these exact times" windows.

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