Intermediate Features¶

Toodle extends its basic tutor management functionality with additional tools for allocation planning, academic scheduling, workflow approvals, communication, and reporting.

These features help academic staff manage larger workloads while improving the experience of tutors and students.

Allocation Planning and Management¶

Toodle provides additional allocation management capabilities beyond creating individual tutor assignments.

Academic staff can inspect staffing requirements, existing assignments, validation results, and pending allocations before making decisions.

Allocation Warnings and Overrides¶

The allocation system evaluates academic marks, availability, timetable conflicts, weekly-hour limits, and course staffing requirements.

Validation results distinguish between assignments that satisfy the requirements and those that require additional review.

Where permitted by the applicable allocation policy, staff can provide an explanation for an exceptional or pending assignment.

Selected allocations can also be locked to protect them from unintended changes.

Allocation Assistance¶

The allocation engine supports checking proposed assignments against the system's eligibility and scheduling rules.

Staff retain control over the final allocation decisions.

These capabilities help reduce repetitive manual checks while preserving oversight of staffing decisions.

Timetable and Academic Scheduling¶

Toodle maintains course teaching sessions and tutor availability to support academic scheduling.

The system supports recurring weekly sessions as well as date-specific information used in calendars and allocation validation.

Timetable Management¶

Authorised staff can create, update, and remove scheduled teaching sessions.

Session details include:

Day of the week.
Start and end times.
Session type.
Venue.
Associated course.

When a timetable change affects existing allocations, the system can reassess the affected assignments and identify those requiring review.

Availability Exceptions¶

Tutors can maintain recurring availability alongside dated exceptions.

A dated exception records a change to the tutor's usual availability for a specific day.

These exceptions allow the application to consider circumstances where a tutor's availability differs from their normal weekly pattern.

Academic Terms and Holidays¶

Toodle stores academic terms and holidays to support date-aware scheduling.

This information helps distinguish valid teaching dates from non-teaching periods.

Administrators can manage academic calendar information, including retrieving term-date information from the Wits website for review.

Course Applications¶

Students and tutors can apply to tutor courses that are accepting applications.

An application includes the selected course, requested weekly hours, and a motivation.

Academic staff can review applications alongside the applicant's marks and suitability.

Applications can be approved or rejected, with review information recorded for the applicant.

Approved applications can result in tutor allocations and the appropriate user-role updates.

Tutor Mark Verification and Import¶

Toodle provides mark-management tools for academic staff.

Students can submit course marks as part of their academic information, while authorised staff verify or reject those submissions.

Staff can also import marks from CSV files.

The import process supports reviewing recognised users and validating the information before saving the selected records.

Verified marks are used in tutor eligibility checks.

Timesheet Approval and Disputes¶

The timesheet system supports a structured submission and review process.

Tutors record work and submit completed timesheets. Academic staff review the hours and either approve the submission or dispute entries requiring attention.

Disputed timesheets can be corrected and resubmitted.

Timesheet Deadlines¶

Toodle organises timesheets into monthly submission cycles, with the 27th of each month serving as the submission and review deadline.

A weekly timesheet is associated with the first monthly deadline on or after the end of that week.

The Timesheets interface displays relevant due dates and indicators for work that is due soon or overdue.

Automated Reminders¶

Toodle automatically generates reminders for workflows requiring attention.

The reminder system covers:

Workflow	Reminder Purpose
Timesheet submission	Remind tutors about outstanding or overdue submissions
Timesheet review	Remind academic staff about submissions awaiting decisions
Excusals	Identify requests requiring review near the scheduled session
Overflow claims	Remind staff about claims awaiting approval
Course applications	Identify applications awaiting review
Session swaps	Remind participants or reviewers about outstanding decisions

Reminders appear through the notification system and can also be accompanied by email.

The backend uses scheduled processing and notification deduplication to reduce repeated reminder attempts.

Overflow Work Management¶

Toodle supports managing additional tutoring work and replacement coverage.

Academic staff can create opportunities, while students and tutors can submit claims for available work.

Staff can review claims and approve or reject them.

For dated replacement work, the application can assign responsibility for a specific session occurrence rather than creating a recurring course allocation.

This supports more accurate coverage of sessions affected by approved excusals.

Notifications and Communication¶

Toodle provides in-app notifications and transactional email communication for important system events.

Users can receive updates about:

Tutor allocations and allocation changes.
Course applications and review outcomes.
Timesheet submissions and reviews.
Excusal requests and decisions.
Volunteering opportunities and claim outcomes.
Session swaps.
Outstanding tasks and deadlines.

Users can review notifications from the notification bell and mark them as read.

Email communication is provided through Brevo. Where applicable, notification records distinguish provider-accepted email requests from failed or skipped sending attempts.

Calendar and Subscription Feed¶

Toodle includes a calendar that displays the user's scheduled academic responsibilities.

The calendar provides week, month, and list views.

Events reflect relevant teaching sessions and date-specific changes, including approved excusals and transferred session responsibilities.

External Calendar Subscription¶

Users can create a private iCalendar (.ics) subscription URL.

Compatible applications, including Google Calendar, Outlook, and Apple Calendar, can subscribe to this feed.

Users can rotate or revoke the subscription token when necessary.

The feed provides read-only calendar information without requiring Toodle to make outbound Google Calendar API calls.

Reports and Academic Oversight¶

Toodle provides reporting tools to help academic staff monitor tutoring activity.

These include information about:

Tutor allocations and staffing.
Allocated working hours.
Tutor workload distribution.
Course staffing requirements.
Relevant budget and expenditure information.

Where supported, CSV exports allow data to be reviewed outside the application.

These tools support operational oversight and informed staffing decisions.

New students complete onboarding information relevant to tutoring eligibility.

This includes academic details, marks, availability, and working-hour information.

The application also provides course discovery and separate Courses and My Courses views.

The Courses view allows users to browse available courses, while My Courses focuses on the courses a tutor is allocated to or a lecturer coordinates.

These features make it easier for users to identify relevant work and navigate the system.

For practical walkthroughs, see Role Workflows.