Overview
This setting controls whether Teachers can declare their own personal availability through their Portal dashboard, and if so, for which specific purpose(s) they are allowed to do so. Teacher availability is a schedule of time windows that a Teacher marks as available, unavailable, or subject to a limitation. These time windows are later used by several parts of the application – such as timetable planning, parent-teacher meeting bookings, and staff attendance tracking – to know when a Teacher can or cannot be scheduled or approached.
By default, this setting is empty, which means Teachers cannot configure any part of their own availability. An administrator must actively choose at least one purpose (referred to below as a “concern type”) before Teachers gain access to the self-service “Availability” option on their dashboard.
What This Setting Does
The setting Allow Teachers To Configure Their Availability For/Allow_Teachers_To_Configure_Their_Availability_For (Settings > General Settings > Teachers Portal Rights > Basic Settings) is a multi-select list. An administrator can pick one or more of the following purposes, each representing a different reason a Teacher might record their availability:
- Parents’ Meetings – availability used for parents (or guardians) to book a meeting slot with the Teacher.
- Timetable limitations – time windows in which the Teacher declares themselves unavailable for regular class scheduling, so the timetable planning process avoids booking classes for them at that time.
- Online Courses Availability – time windows in which the Teacher declares themselves available specifically for online/virtual course sessions.
- General Work (Office Hours) – the Teacher’s expected on-site working hours.
- General Work (Office Hours) – Virtual – the Teacher’s expected remote/virtual working hours.
Only the purposes selected here are offered to Teachers when they open their own “Availability” option in the Portal. If no purpose is selected, the “Availability” option does not appear on the Teacher’s dashboard at all – the self-service feature is effectively switched off.
This setting applies identically to K-12 and Higher Education institutions.
Main Settings / General Settings / Teachers Portal Rights / Basic Settings / Allow Teachers to Configure Their Availability For
Here you define the tasks for which teachers can declare availability.
Setting -> Active
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Figure 2
Setting -> Inactive
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Where It Is Used
- Teacher Dashboard: once at least one concern type is enabled, an “Availability” option appears on the Teacher’s own Portal dashboard. Opening it lets the Teacher add, edit, or remove their own availability slots, choosing only among the concern types allowed by this setting.
- Recurring or one-time slots: a Teacher can mark a slot as a recurring weekly time window (for example, every Monday) or as a one-off exception tied to a specific date range (for example, to mark a week of unavailability).
- Parents’ Meetings slots: when this concern type is allowed and selected, the Teacher can also specify which grades/classes the slot applies to, the type of meeting, the duration of each booking, and whether the slot is visible to staff only.
- Administrative configuration: this setting only affects Teachers configuring their own availability. Administrators and secretarial staff can still set or edit a Teacher’s availability, for any purpose, regardless of this setting, through the Teacher’s own profile record (Availability And Constraints tab) or through the dedicated “Teacher Availability” screen available from the Timetable module.
- Downstream processes that read availability: timetable planning (Timetable limitations, Online Courses Availability), the parent-teacher meeting booking feature (Parents’ Meetings), and the staff attendance check-in/check-out process (General Work (Office Hours) and its Virtual variant).
Business Logic / Behavior
- If the list is empty (the default), Teachers have no self-service access to their own availability; only administrators or secretarial staff can record it for them.
- Each concern type is tied to a specific business process, so enabling a concern type hands that specific responsibility to the Teacher: Parents’ Meetings lets the Teacher manage their own bookable meeting slots; Timetable limitations lets the Teacher declare when they cannot be scheduled for classes; Online Courses Availability lets the Teacher declare when they are available for online/virtual sessions; General Work (Office Hours) and its Virtual variant let the Teacher declare their expected working hours.
- Even if a Teacher attempts to submit an availability slot for a concern type that is not enabled, the system only keeps the concern types allowed by the administrator – anything outside the allowed list is discarded.
- This setting does not restrict what administrators or secretarial staff can configure on a Teacher’s behalf; it only restricts what the Teacher can configure for themselves.
- This setting behaves the same way for both K-12 institutions and Higher Education (college) institutions – there is no difference in its availability or behavior between the two modes.
Example(s)
Example 1 – Enabling Parents’ Meetings self-service
Alpha Institute wants Teachers to manage their own parent-meeting schedule instead of the school office doing it manually. The administrator opens Allow Teachers To Configure Their Availability For and selects Parents’ Meetings. From that point on, Maria P., a Teacher at Alpha Institute, sees an “Availability” option on her Portal dashboard. She adds a weekly slot every Tuesday from 15:00 to 17:00, marks it as Available, and selects Parents’ Meetings as the purpose. Parents can then book a 15-minute meeting with her within that time window directly through the Portal, without contacting the school office.
Example 2 – Enabling Office Hours self-service
Beta College wants Teachers to record their own expected office hours so that staff attendance check-ins can be validated automatically. The administrator selects General Work (Office Hours) in this setting. George S., a Teacher at Beta College, uses the “Availability” option on his dashboard to declare that he is on-site Monday to Friday from 09:00 to 13:00. When George checks in outside of this window, the attendance process can flag or restrict the check-in unless a staff member has separately been given permission to allow check-ins outside a Teacher’s declared availability.
When to use
When to Enable
- The institution wants Teachers to manage part or all of their own availability directly, instead of relying on administrators or secretarial staff to record it for them.
- Parent-teacher meeting bookings should be handled through Teacher-managed time slots rather than manually scheduled by the office.
- Teachers should be able to declare their own online/virtual course availability.
- The institution wants Teachers’ declared office hours to be used as a reference for staff attendance and check-in validation.
When to Disable
- The institution prefers that only administrators or secretarial staff record and maintain Teachers’ availability, timetable limitations, or office hours.
- The institution does not use parent-teacher meeting bookings, online course availability tracking, or office-hours-based attendance validation, and therefore does not need Teachers to self-manage any availability.
- Leave the list empty (its default state) to hide the self-service “Availability” option from all Teachers’ dashboards.
Notes
This setting is found under Settings > General Settings > Teachers Portal Rights > Basic Settings, alongside other Teacher-related portal permissions.
A separate related permission, “Allow users to add General Work Checkin/out records outside the Teacher scheduled availability” (User Roles and Rights), determines whether staff attendance check-ins are strictly validated against a Teacher’s declared Office Hours availability, or can be recorded outside of it. This right is most relevant once the General Work (Office Hours) or General Work (Office Hours) – Virtual concern types are enabled here.
Before enabling a concern type, make sure the related feature is actually used by the institution – for example, Parents’ Meetings self-service is most useful when parent-teacher meeting bookings are already part of the school’s routine, and the Office Hours concern types are most useful when staff attendance/check-in tracking is in place.
Administrators and secretarial staff are never restricted by this setting – they can always configure a Teacher’s availability for any purpose through the Teacher’s own profile or through the Timetable module’s dedicated availability screen.
