Glossary

A list of terms used in therota.com program, with links to pages giving more information on the terms.

Account

Refers to the rota's account and financial relationship with therota.com

Billing Account

This refers to a rota that is used for the invoices of other rotas. For example, an organisation operates several rotas, but all the rotas and invoices are handled in one place. In this instance the organisation can use one of their rotas as the billing account. This means that only one statement of account is required. In such situations, the non-billing rotas will never show any invoices due or receive any accounts related correspondence.

Broadcast

To Broadcast means to advise staff of the upcoming shifts by means of email or SMS. The program can do this, sending customized and individual emails or SMS to all staff, literally at the push of a button.

Broadcast Date

This refers to a future date which is the last date to which shifts have been finalized and broadcasted. Therefore it is the dividing point between confirmed shifts (up to and including this date) and unconfirmed shifts of a rota that is still being constructed. This date is relevant in areas such as Calendar View as it provides the cutoff point in the data that staff can see.

Calendar

When calendar is mentioned within the program, it refers to the area containing details of working shifts. See the Calendar page.

Casual/Contractor

This is a staff setting, the alternative to being an employee. As such Casual/Contractor staff are not part of the leave request system. Instead they have the ability to update their Availability so that a rota adminstrator can give them suitable shifts.

Key Administrator

There can be up to 3 key administrators. These users have complete access to the program and are responsible for setting the security levels of other staff. Key Administrators are defined in the Set Company page, which can only be accessed by an existing key administrator.

Master Account

When a workplace operates two or more rota, they can have the billing for them consolidated onto one account. This is refered to as the Master Account.

Part-Available

This is one of the Day Types. Particularly with reference to casual staff, it denotes that they are available for shifts for the time range value they have specified. This can be in the format of start after x, finish by y, or can work between x and y.

Settled Date

This date works in conjunction with the Broadcasted Date. It is only relevant to admin staff who are involved in Broadcasting. See the Broadcasting page for more information.

Shoulder Days (or Leave Shoulder Days)

These are days in a person's calendar that are part of a person's leave period but which are not classed as an official leave day. This is the normal state for weekends during a leave period. For example if a person takes Saturday 1st February to Sunday 16th February this is counted as 10 leave days and 6 shoulder days, depending on the setup of Weekly Availability.

Unfilled

An unfilled position is generated by either the Min By Shift settings, or by the creation of an event. These are empty positions within each day that you will need to fill, based on the criteria you have set.

User Levels

There are a choice of 5 different user levels that can be set for each person. These mostly concern the amount of data that can be viewed by the user. See the User Levels page for more information.

Volunteer

The Volunteer area works in conjunction with Min By Shift, Unfilled and Events. The Volunteer page gives staff the opportunity to take future shifts that have been opened to volunteers, subject to security, their availability and qualificationhe ability to do the shifts. See the Volunteer page for full specifications.