When the week banner reads "Availability submitted", that means the guide app has collected and synced this data for every guide on the roster. The Configure / Tours / Guides screens here are illustrative — the source of truth lives elsewhere on the platform.
This dashboard turns a roster of guides, a catalog of tours, and a week of guide-availability into a published schedule. It works in three loops:
The four buttons in the subheader each open a configuration modal. Set them up in this order for a new city:
Open the city picker (top-right) and click Add city at the bottom. The modal walks through up to three steps:
What import does for you:
If the typed name doesn't match a catalog (or you skip the CTA), the city is created blank and you go straight to step 1 below.
Defines your AM / PM / EVE windows. Each block has a name ("Morning"), time ("08:30 – 13:30"), and short key ("AM") used in pills.
Your product catalog. Each tour belongs to a tour type (Walking or Driving), a start time and duration, and one or more blocks it can run in. The dashboard infers offered tour types for the city from this list — if you have only Walking products, Driving sections never appear in the calendar.
Your roster, plus a checkbox matrix of which guide is certified for which tour. Only certified guides count as primary coverage for that tour's products. Editing certs is the single biggest lever — it changes Product Gaps and Primary Uncertified KPIs immediately.
Color and label each priority rank. Three ranks ship by default (P1 blue, P2 green, P3 orange). Add more ranks if you run a deeper backup bench; remove ranks you don't use. Colors propagate to every pill, badge, and modal.
Every cell in the schedule holds a stack of guides ordered by priority. The rank means how the section is run if the schedule is challenged on the day:
When you click Auto-populate schedule on an availability-ready week, the suggester fills every section using the configured roster, certifications, and the per-guide signals below.
| Signal | What it does |
|---|---|
| Certification | Hard requirement for P1. Uncertified guides can only land on P3+. |
| Score (70–95) | Hidden quality score. Higher score → more certifications and a stronger P1 candidate. |
| Hours balance | Targets even distribution. Guides with negative hours (under-booked) get prioritized first. |
| Preferred ⭐ | Guides marked preferred are nudged toward higher-visibility blocks (e.g. Saturday morning). |
| Tour-type variety | Tries to keep each guide on a healthy mix of Walking + Driving where they're certified for both. |
| Cross-tour conflict | The suggester never puts one guide on Walking and Driving in the same block. Same-guide assignments across tours are flagged in the Cross-tour conflicts KPI. |
A section where the highest-ranked certified guide is P3 or lower. The tour can technically run, but you'd be promoting a bench guide to P1 on the day. Resolve by adding a certified guide at P1, or by adding the certification to an existing P1.
Any cell change (Replace, Remove, Add backup, drag-reorder) overrides the suggester for that section. Re-running the suggester later will respect those manual edits.
The forecast is a per-week, ops-only briefing that tells the suggester how deep to stack each section. It replaces the old busyness slider and is optional — if you don't set one, scheduling falls back to the default 1–3 stack from guide availability alone.
| Level | Default stack target | Use when |
|---|---|---|
| Low | P1 only | Quiet shoulder weeks; historical low patterns. |
| Normal | P1 + P2 | Standard week; this is the baseline if no forecast is set. |
| High | P1 + P2 + P3 | Long weekends, conferences, school breaks. |
| Peak | P1 + P2 + P3 + P4 + P5 | Canada Day, July 4, Memorial Day — auto-extends ranks to P5. |
Stack depths are configurable per city from the bottom of the forecast modal (Niagara might be P5 at peak; another city might cap at P4). The selected level's depth shows in the dropdown next to the label.
The modal opens with a row of one-tap chips (e.g. Canada Day weekend, FIFA Toronto event, Quiet shoulder week). Tapping a chip pre-fills the level, scope, note, and the days the spike applies to — the rest of the week is set to Normal automatically. You can edit any field afterward.
A forecast can target Walking only, Driving only, or Both. Out-of-scope tours fall back to the Normal baseline. Example: a FIFA event in Toronto skews driving-only — Walking sections stay at default depth.
The lower half of the modal lists each day Mon–Sun. Each day defaults to Inherit week but you can override to a different level (or back to Normal). Use this when a holiday only affects part of the week.
The strip above the calendar is your at-a-glance health check for the week. Cards turn yellow when they need attention and red when they block publishing.
| KPI | What it counts | Goal |
|---|---|---|
| P1 filled | Sections with at least one guide assigned at P1. | 100% before publishing. |
| P2 backup filled | Sections with a P2 assigned. When a forecast is set this card relabels to Forecast depth met and counts sections that hit their forecast-driven target depth (P3 / P5 etc.). | ≥ 80% normally; 100% under High / Peak. |
| Unfilled sections | Sections with zero guides — tour cannot run. | 0. |
| Cross-tour conflicts | Same guide assigned to Walking and Driving in the same block. One person can't run both — always flagged. | 0. |
| Product gaps | Sections where no guide in the stack is certified for any product the section runs. Hard fail. | 0 — must clear before publish. |
| Primary uncertified | Sections where only P3+ are certified — see "Auto-suggester logic". | 0; soft warning otherwise. |
| Imbalance flags | Guides whose week-over-week hours fall outside ±6h of the city target. | 0; soft warning otherwise. |
The right rail (when no cell is selected) lists every flagged issue from the KPIs, grouped by severity, with a one-click action on each.
Each group caps at 6 visible items with a "+N more…" overflow. Resolving an issue removes it live — no save step.
Every week your dashboard shows is in exactly one of four states. Use the week navigator (‹ ›) and Today to move between them.
| State | What it means | Available actions |
|---|---|---|
avail_pending | Future week, no availability requested yet. | Ask team to submit |
avail_requested | Reminder sent; guides have not all responded. | Wait. Button is disabled. |
avail_ready | All guides have submitted; cells are still empty. | Copy from previous · Auto-populate schedule |
populated | Cells are filled (manually, copied, or auto). KPIs activate, Issues panel populates. | Edit, save draft, publish. |
The badge on the publish bar tells you exactly where the current week is. Each state corresponds to a specific button label and disabled-state.
| Badge | Button | Behaviour |
|---|---|---|
| Cycle · Phase 1 review | Publish → | Schedule built but never released. Click to publish. |
| Published · timestamp | Disabled | Live for guides. Nothing to do until you edit. |
| Unpublished changes | Publish changes → | You edited a published schedule. Re-publish to push the diff. |
Any cell edit on a published week (Replace, Remove, Add backup, reorder) automatically flips the badge to Unpublished changes. There is no separate "save" step before publishing.
Save draft snapshots the current week without releasing it. Use it before risky edits or to keep a "Plan B" version. Reopen any saved draft from the Drafts button.
On an avail_ready week, Copy from previous opens a list of populated past schedules (released or in-review). Pick one to clone all of its cells into the current week. Useful for repeating weeks (off-season) or cycling a known-good template forward.
Rows are blocks (AM/PM/EVE). Cells show every guide stacked on that block per day. Best for spotting holes — empty sections, missing P2, conflicts. KPIs and Issues panel are calibrated to this view.
Rows are guides. Cells show what that guide is running each day. Best for guide-level checks — fairness of hours, who's overworked, who's idle. The hours-balance ("+5h", "−3h") next to the name is your week-over-week target delta.
Both views read the same underlying data; switching is purely visual.
Click › until the subheader shows the week you're scheduling. Confirm the city in the city picker.
If the banner reads Availability not yet available, click Ask team to submit. Wait for the state to flip to Availability submitted.
Click Auto-populate schedule for a fresh build, or Copy from previous if last week's pattern still fits. The toast tells you how many issues were flagged.
Click Add forecast if there's anything unusual about the week — a holiday, a known event, an expected slump. Pick a suggestion chip or set the level by hand. Skip this if it's a normal week — the suggester does the right thing without it.
Work top-down through the Issues panel. Aim for: 0 Unfilled, 0 Product gaps, 0 Cross-tour conflicts. P2 below 80% and Primary uncertified above 0 are acceptable but should be intentional.
Click Save draft if you want a safe-point before more edits. Drafts are city- and week-scoped.
Click Publish →. Badge flips to Published · timestamp; the button disables until your next edit.
Both views show an empty-state with a direct shortcut to Guides & certs. KPIs all read 0 / 0 until guides are added.
If the Tours catalog has only Walking products, Driving sections never render. The opposite is also true. Add a product of the missing type to unlock those rows.
The week stays in avail_pending indefinitely. KPIs and Issues panel are inert until you populate. There's no implicit auto-collection.
Section shows in Product gaps (red, hard fail). Resolution: certify a guide for that product (Guides & certs), or add a tour to a guide who is already certified.
Section shows in Primary uncertified. Either elevate a certified guide to P1 (Replace) or add the certification to your existing P1.
Guide shows up in Imbalance flags. Either move sections off them or onto them; or set the city target to a different baseline if the whole roster is drifting.
Badge flips to Unpublished changes; the publish button reactivates as Publish changes →. There is no rollback in-app — re-publishing pushes the new state.
The destination cells are overwritten. Save a draft of the destination first if you may want to revert.
Existing pills keep their old colors. New rank colors apply only to newly-assigned guides at that rank.