One of the new features released in Istanbul is the ability to modify an On-Call roster by changing, adding and removing users without affecting historical data. In previous releases, when a team member left, or a new team member joined a roster, the whole calendar was recalculated such that it appeared that the newly added team member was always there from the start of the roster or the leaving team member was never there. Worse still roster cycles were recalculated such that it ignored who had already completed their on-call duty roster. Istanbul has two new fields on roster member records: From and To.
The following scenario shows an On-Call team member, in this case Bushra, going on maternity leave. The Rota manager sets Bushra as available for on-call rotation To: 2016-03-31 when she leaves and available From: 2016-07-01 as her expected return as shown in the image below.
In fact it just so happens that although Bushra is available To: Thursday 31st March, she is on-call that week until Friday 1st April. The on-call application does not recalculate the remaining day, as it is not obvious who should cover Bushra's final day, rather this is then left to the rota manager assign another member to provide cover.
Setting Bushra's To date, allows the On-Call application to remove her has an available member from the next and subsequent roster member cycle as can be seen in image below there are now only 5 members available in the roster.
When Bushra returns from her maternity leave the On-Call application adds her back to the roster cycle and there are now 6 members available to the roster. It takes into account her order, relative to the other members in the team, in this case her order has not changed and therefore she is scheduled to be on call after both Guillermo and Manifah have completed their shifts.
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