Annual Leave Rounds¶

The Annual Leave Round is the staged, once-a-year process for allocating next year's annual leave. Instead of everyone booking leave first-come-first-served, the whole practice states what weeks they want during an open window, the choices are discussed and finalised together, and the agreed weeks are booked as approved leave in one go.

This guide walks you — the rota administrator — through running a round from set-up to lock.

How a Round Works in Brief¶

A round has four stages, and you drive every change between them:

Stage	What is happening	Who acts
Draft	You set the round up: the leave year, the open window dates, and the limits. Nothing is visible to clinicians yet.	You
Open	The selection window is live. Clinicians pick and rank the weeks they want.	Clinicians
Resolution	The window has closed. Submissions are frozen and you finalise the year on the Demand Board: move, cancel, or add selections, then convert the agreed weeks into approved leave.	You
Locked	The round is read-only history. Each clinician who got leave through the round receives one outcome email.	Nobody

Every stage change has a one-step undo (see Stepping Back), so a button clicked in error is recoverable.

A round is identified by its leave year (for example 2027) and there is one round per leave year.

Key terms you will see¶

Participant — a clinician who can make selections: anyone with a working term overlapping the round year that carries annual leave entitlement. Locums and trainees (FY/ST) do not participate.
Week Selection — a clinician's claim on one Monday-to-Friday week, ranked with a priority (1 = most wanted).
Round Cap — the most selections one clinician may hold: the round's default (4 weeks) or their entitlement in weeks, whichever is smaller.
Late-Year Limit — the most selections anyone may place in August–December (default 3), so leave does not pile up at the year's end.
Contested Week — a week where the number of people off (selections plus already-approved annual leave) would exceed 3. Contested weeks go to discussion — they are never automatically denied.
Demand Board — the year-at-a-glance grid of weeks showing who wants what. This is the screen you project during the resolution discussion.
Ghost — a dotted outline on the board marking where a selection originally sat before you moved or cancelled it, so the group remembers what was asked for.
Cover Check — an advisory pass/fail per week on the board: could daily minimum staffing still be met if this week's selections all became leave? Advisory only — it informs the discussion and never blocks anything.

Setting Up a Round (Draft)¶

From the admin dashboard, go to Leave Rounds and click Create Round.
Fill in the form:
Leave Year — the year this round allocates leave for. This cannot be changed later.
Window Opens At / Window Closes At — when clinicians can submit and change their selections.
Round Cap Default — the default maximum selections per clinician (see above).
Late-Year Limit — the maximum selections in August–December.
Click Create Round. The round is created as a draft and you land on its detail page.

While the round is a draft you can change any of these values via Edit Configuration.

If you create a draft by mistake (wrong year, wrong window), the round's detail page offers Delete draft in the Lifecycle section. Deletion is deliberately narrow: it is offered only while the round is still a draft and holds no week selections (a draft stepped back from open keeps its selections, and participant intent is history). The delete page asks you to type the leave year to confirm, and the deletion is recorded in the audit trail.

Before you open the round¶

Participants must exist. A clinician participates only if they have a working term that overlaps the round's leave year and carries annual leave entitlement. If nobody's terms reach into the leave year yet, the round refuses to open with a warning — create next-year working terms on the Clinicians page first.
Enter school holidays (optional, see School Holiday Overlays) so clinicians with children can target or avoid school-holiday weeks while selecting.
Set the Leave Booking Cutoff (optional). While a round is planned, you can block normal first-come-first-served leave booking for dates inside the leave year, so nothing is booked before the round settles. Set it on the Settings page (Setup → Settings & Tools → Settings in the sidebar; leave_booking_cutoff); releasing it is a deliberate manual act afterwards — the round page reminds you while it still blocks the year.

Opening the Window¶

On the round's detail page, in the Lifecycle section, click Open round.

The window is now live: participants see the round in their navigation and can select weeks. You cannot edit the round's configuration once it is open (step back to draft if you need to).

Announcing the round¶

While the round is open, the detail page shows a Round Emails section with two emails you can send:

Announcement — tells everyone the window is open, with the dates and a link.
Closing-soon nudge — a reminder near the end of the window.

Clicking either takes you to a compose page: the suggested text is pre-filled and editable, the full recipient list is shown, and the send button carries a deliberate confirmation dialog because it is a bulk email. The closing nudge offers a second send option: send only to participants who have not yet filled their quota — the compose page splits the preview into "yet to fill" and "at quota" groups so you can see exactly who each button reaches.

Monitoring participation¶

The Participants table on the round detail page is computed live on every visit and shows, for each participant:

Selections vs cap — a progress bar and count (for example "3 of 4 weeks"), coloured green when at the cap, amber when partial, red when none.
Last login — when the clinician last signed in, coloured green if it was after the window opened, red if they have not logged in since, and "Never" if they have never signed in at all.

Use this table to decide who to nudge.

Closing the Window and Running Resolution¶

When the window closes, click Close window (begin Resolution).

Submissions freeze. The Demand Board becomes editable — open it with View the demand board on the round page (clinicians see it too, read-only).

Working the Demand Board¶

The board shows the whole leave year as a grid of weeks. During Resolution it displays priorities, ghosts, and the cover check. The actions:

Move a selection — drag a clinician's chip to a different week. A ghost stays behind at the original week; drag it back to clear the ghost.
Cancel a selection — click the chip and confirm cancellation. A ghost stays behind as the record of the request.
Add a selection — the + button on any week lets you add a selection for any participant (this is also how you can exceed someone's round cap deliberately, which the submission rules would not let them do).
Cover Check — shown per week: pass or fail for "could minimum staffing still be met?". Recomputed live as you edit. Use it to steer the discussion, not to veto weeks — the only hard tripwire is the contested-week count.
Contested weeks are highlighted: more than 3 people projected off. These are exactly the weeks to discuss as a group.

Priorities are advisory input for the discussion — the system never mechanically enforces them. The board is meant to be projected while the group talks.

Converting selections into leave¶

When a week is agreed, convert it:

Resolve uncontested weeks — the bulk button books approved leave for every currently-uncontested selection in one click.
Convert remaining weeks one by one as they are agreed.

Conversion creates the leave as approved: one full-week leave request for partners, one request per working day for salaried clinicians. Converted requests are marked as round-originated. Unconverted selections are simply left unallocated — nothing is booked for them.

Locking the Round¶

When everything is converted (or consciously left unallocated), click Lock round.

The round becomes read-only history; the board stays viewable (via View the final board) but nothing can change.
Each clinician who had leave booked through the round receives exactly one outcome email summarising what was booked for them. Nothing is emailed during Resolution — lock is the batching point.
The clinician-facing round page becomes an outcome view: the weeks booked, and the selections that were not allocated.

After locking, remember to release the Leave Booking Cutoff (clear it on the Settings page under Setup → Settings & Tools in the sidebar) if you set one — until you do, clinicians cannot book remaining-year leave through the normal flow, and the round page will keep reminding you.

Stepping Back¶

Each lifecycle change has a one-step undo, shown on the round page when applicable:

Button	Undoes	Worth knowing
Revert to draft	Opening the round	Configuration becomes editable again.
Reopen the window	Closing the window	Participants can change selections again. Moves, ghosts, and conversions made during Resolution remain.
Unlock the round	Locking the round	The board becomes editable again and further conversions are possible; leave already booked stays approved. Refused once a newer round exists.

Each step back is a deliberate, audited action (a confirmation dialog spells out the consequences) and clears the undone transition's timestamp.

School Holiday Overlays¶

Clinicians with children often want to align (or avoid) school holidays. The practice sits across two local school-holiday patterns, so each district's ranges are typed in once a year — there is no automatic feed.

Manage them under Leave Rounds → School Holidays:

Click Add Period (or Edit on an existing one).
Enter the district (for example "District A"), a name for the range (for example "February half-term"), and the start and end dates.
Save. Ranges for the same district render in one colour on the selection grid.

Overlays are display-only: they help clinicians target or avoid weeks on the grid but affect no validation rules. Ranges are not tied to a particular round — the grid shows whichever overlap the leave year being displayed.