Duties

A duty is a recurring task in the office that someone has to do, for example answering the phone, the kitchen or being the first-aider on call. You set each duty up once on Duties, add the people who take it on and when, and the Duty rota widget on your TV shows who is on duty today or this week.

1. What a duty is and how to create one

A duty has a name and a list of assignments. An assignment is one person with a schedule that says on which days that person is on duty. Duties lists your duties in the order you created them, each with its assignments.

Open Duties and press New duty. When the list is still empty, the same button sits under "No duties yet".
Fill in the Duty name. It is required and can be 1 to 40 characters long. Good examples are Phone, Kitchen or first-aider.
Press Add duty. Press Cancel to close the window without saving.

A new duty starts with nobody assigned to it: the card says "Nobody is assigned to this duty yet." Saving needs JavaScript in the browser.

2. Add people and schedules

Press Add assignment on a duty to add a person to it. The form asks for a person and a schedule.

Name: the person. If your account has employees, you search your team and pick a colleague, or you choose the last option to type a name for someone who is not on the team list. Without any employees, it is a plain text field. A name can be up to 80 characters. When you pick an employee, their current name is used, not what you typed.
Schedule: how the days are chosen. It starts on Weekly. There are four kinds, and the form only shows the fields of the kind you choose:
- On one date: one Date.
- For a period: a Start date and an End date, both required. The end date may be the same day as the start date, but not before it.
- Weekly: tick the weekdays under On (at least one), choose how often it Repeats (every 1 to 8 weeks), and set a Start date and an optional End date (optional).
- Monthly, on a weekday: choose Which one (First, Second, Third, Fourth or Last), the Weekday, how often it Repeats (every 1 to 12 months), a Start date and an optional End date (optional).

Press Add assignment to save it, or Cancel to leave. Each assignment then shows the person and the schedule in words, for example "every 2 weeks on Wednesday". A duty can have as many people as you like, and their schedules may overlap: everyone whose schedule matches a day is on duty that day.

3. Who is on duty and how the rotation works

OfficeDash looks at each assignment separately. A person is on duty on a day when that day matches their schedule. There is no automatic hand-over from one person to the next: OfficeDash does not rotate people by itself.

To let people take turns, give each person their own repeating schedule. For example, Anna gets a Weekly schedule on Monday to Friday, repeating every 2 weeks, starting on a Monday. Ben gets the same schedule starting on the Monday a week later. Anna is then on duty in one week, Ben in the next, and so on.

The rules behind the schedules:

Start and end dates are included. A day before the start date is never on duty. An empty end date on a Weekly or Monthly schedule means it has no end.
Every N weeks counts calendar weeks from Monday to Sunday, beginning with the week that contains the start date. That week counts as the first one, so only the chosen weekdays on or after the start date match in it. The start date does not have to be a Monday.
Every N months counts months from the month of the start date. In a matching month, First to Fourth means the first to fourth time that weekday occurs in the month, and Last means its last occurrence.
"Today" is the date at the location of the dashboard that shows the widget, in that location's time zone, and the week runs from Monday to Sunday. The widget changes over at midnight there.

4. Change the schedule

To change an assignment, press Edit on it. It turns into the same form, filled in with the saved values. Press Save changes, or Cancel to leave it as it was.
To take a person off a duty, press Remove on their assignment. It is removed at once, without a question.
To change the name of a duty, press Rename, type the new name and press Save name. Press Cancel to leave it.
To delete a duty, press Delete on it. OfficeDash asks "Delete this duty and all its assignments? This can't be undone." Confirm with Yes, delete or press Cancel. All its assignments go with it. A Duty rota widget that points at a deleted duty shows "This duty no longer exists" until you choose another duty in its settings.

The buttons only appear if your account allows them: New duty needs the right to create duties, Add assignment, Edit, Remove and Rename need the right to edit them, and Delete the right to remove them. The account holder can always do all of it. When the subscription of the account has ended, saving is refused until it is active again.

Changes show on the TV after its next background refresh, which is every 5 minutes by default. You do not need to restart the TV.

5. Where it shows on the TV

A paired TV shows duties only through the Duty rota widget. A new dashboard does not have it on its starter slides, so you add it yourself: open the dashboard on Dashboards, press Add widget on a spot and pick Duty rota. Widgets are explained in Widgets and tile sizes and the editor in Dashboards and the slide editor.

Press Settings on the widget to choose what it shows:

Duty: the duty to show. The list offers your duties, starting from "Choose a duty". One widget shows one duty, so use two widgets for two duties. With no duty chosen yet, the widget says "Choose a duty in the widget settings".
Show: Today (the default) or This week.

What the widget shows:

The Today view has the heading "Phone · Today" (with your duty's name) and one card per person on duty today, in the order you created the assignments. When nobody is on duty, it says "Nobody on duty".
The This week view has the heading "Phone · This week" and one card per assignment that is on duty at least once this week, with the days as short weekday names. The cards are ordered by the first day on duty, then by creation order.
The widget fits all tile sizes from Full slide down to Small tile. The week view works on Full slide, Half-width column, Third-width column, Quarter, Wide tile and Tall tile. On the smaller tiles it shows today, even when This week is set.
The number of people that fit is 5 on Full slide, Half-width column, Third-width column and Tall tile, 3 on Quarter, and 2 on Wide tile, Small square, Narrow tile and Small tile. When there are more, the last place becomes "+3 more" or similar, so a list of 7 on a Full slide shows 4 people and "+3 more".
A person linked to a hidden employee is not shown. For a linked employee, the TV shows their current name and avatar. If the employee is deleted, the assignment stays with the name saved in it. A name typed as free text shows initials.

The pages at /tv/<slide> and the public demo at /demo show sample data, not your duties.