Gravity Forms
+ Staff Cover Requests

When a colleague is away, cover is usually arranged through a phone tree, a whiteboard and a group chat: two people say yes to the same lesson, another period goes uncovered, the worksheet stays on a desk and the reason for the absence travels round the staffroom. The Gravity Forms Staff Cover Requests add-on moves the whole job onto your own website. Staff report an absence on a Gravity Forms form with the days, the periods or shifts they will miss, a reason and notes only managers see, and the work set for cover.

A manager approves or declines it, and approval creates one cover slot per period. Colleagues who may cover, by role or cover group, receive a personal signed link for each slot, and the first to claim a slot gets it, even when several press at the same moment. Nobody can claim cover that clashes with their own absence or with cover they already hold, and managers can assign cover directly.

The dashboard shows uncovered, covered and cancelled cover by date, the daily cover sheet prints as a PDF or downloads as a CSV, and fairness counts show who covers most. Uncovered slots get one reminder before they start, every colleague gets a private calendar feed of their cover, and cancelling an absence frees and notifies its slots. For schools, clinics, shops and any team that covers shifts. For Gravity Forms 2.9 and newer.

When a logged-in member of staff sends the form, the add-on checks the dates, that the ticked periods and the reason come from your lists, that at least one period falls on those days and that the same periods are not already reported. The absence is saved in the add-on's own table, with the reason and notes kept for managers. Approving creates one slot for each day and period from your timetable and e-mails each colleague who may cover a signed personal link for every slot they are free for. A claim takes a short per-person lock, checks the colleague's own absences and the cover they hold, and then changes the slot from open to covered with one conditional update, so only the first claim succeeds. An hourly job sends one reminder for slots still open a set number of hours before they start. The daily sheet PDF is drawn on your server with a bundled PDF library, the calendar feed is plain iCalendar text signed per person, and no page or e-mail for covering staff shows the reason. Everything happens on your own server — the add-on makes no outside HTTP request beyond the licence and update checks.