Attendance, checklists, and shifts

[Dennis_Yu]

Hi all,

I have a rather complex and specific set up, and I’m looking to pick everyone’s brains to see if I can find a solution.

Here’s my situation:
I am running a business to do with coaching and I want to be able to handle attendances and shift assignments in AT.

So I have a table with all the Coaches
A table with all the students

I want to have a table where I can keep track of all the available hours of my coaches, and which students are assigned to specific time slots for the coaches.
And the coaches must be able to mark the students attendances to keep track of their progress as well.

I am currently on the pro plan, if that helps.

Would this be too much for AT to handle?

[TheTimeSavingCo]

Dennis_Yu:

which students are assigned to specific time slots for the coaches.

You already have the Coaches and Students table, so I think I would create a Sessions table. It would have linked fields to Coaches and Students and the date time start and end of the session, and also include the details of when each session was, who was coaching it, and which students were involved

Dennis_Yu:

I want to have a table where I can keep track of all the available hours of my coaches

Hmm, how would you use this information? If you just need it visually, you could use the Calendar view of the Sessions table and see the empty slots perhaps?

Dennis_Yu:

And the coaches must be able to mark the students attendances to keep track of their progress as well.

Hmm, it seems unlikely that your coaches will all have Airtable accounts as you’d need to pay for the Pro plan for them all, so perhaps there could be another Attendance table that included linked fields to the Sessions and Students table

The coach could then use a form to mark attendance by:

1. Selecting the session they’re marking attendance for
2. Selecting the students that are present

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I’ve made a whole bunch of assumptions about how you’d like to work tho; let me know where stuff might not work for you and I’ll see what else I can suggest

[Dennis_Yu]

Thanks for your response Adam

Adam_TheTimeSavingCo:

You already have the Coaches and Students table, so I think I would create a Sessions table. It would have linked fields to Coaches and Students and the date time start and end of the session, and also include the details of when each session was, who was coaching it, and which students were involved

This is what I have set up right now as well.
But the sessions table became extremely crowded really quickly.
For 1 Coach, I would have 12 records each day, meaning in a month, there would be 360 records, and 4380 records. (because I want to capture their availability so I know when I can slot more students and classes for them)

Another problem would be to set up recurring classes on a weekly basis, how would that work if I have a new class, I’m not sure how to set the automation to book the same session every week for a set, let’s say 16 weeks.

Adam_TheTimeSavingCo:

Hmm, it seems unlikely that your coaches will all have Airtable accounts as you’d need to pay for the Pro plan for them all, so perhaps there could be another Attendance table that included linked fields to the Sessions and Students table

The coach could then use a form to mark attendance by:

1. Selecting the session they’re marking attendance for
2. Selecting the students that are present

This is actually a great idea, is there a way for the form to already show the student’s names in the forms?

[TheTimeSavingCo]

Dennis_Yu:

For 1 Coach, I would have 12 records each day, meaning in a month, there would be 360 records, and 4380 records. (because I want to capture their availability so I know when I can slot more students and classes for them)

Hmm, in my head there would only be records created for sessions that were taking place actually. With this, we could then refer to the calendar view to see the empty slots for each coach, giving us a visual representation of when we could slot more classes in

If we’re going to need this programatically I think we’re going to end up with that many records since each time slot is technically a unique value

It does feel like this is a different “type” of data though, and that this workflow of class planning can be moved into another base with a different set up specifically made to tackle this issue

For example, a possibility might be to create a table where each column represents a time period within a 16 week block (e.g. 9am to 11am - Block 1), with each record representing a coach. The goal would then be to try to ensure every cell was filled or something

You’d end up with something like 40-50 fields to represent a year or so, but after the initial setup you could duplicate that base for the next year I guess

(This feels like it would work, but also feels super weird, and I’m hopeful someone else has a better idea)

(Also let me know if this is something you want to actually do; I’ve got a script lying around to create a bunch of fields with names automatically somewhere so I can just put this together for you and send you a base for you to duplicate)

Dennis_Yu:

Another problem would be to set up recurring classes on a weekly basis, how would that work if I have a new class, I’m not sure how to set the automation to book the same session every week for a set, let’s say 16 weeks.

Hmm, there are a bunch of different ways I could recommend handling this depending on the final setup, but broadly, in terms of increasing difficulty of setup, you’d have:

1. Using an external service like Make or Zapier
2. Using automations to paste a comma separated value into a linked field, forcing record creation
3. Using a script

Dennis_Yu:

This is actually a great idea, is there a way for the form to already show the student’s names in the forms?

Unfortunately I don’t think so. The only way to list options out like in the below screenshot is with single select or multiple select fields

You could do some workarounds where you create specific multiple select fields for each class based on the students that are supposed to attend and it could be automated as well, but I’m not sure if you think it’s worth the effort it’d take to make them