Staff portal
Review before publish — without losing control of the source of truth.
Linked viewer accounts give each teacher read-only access to their own timetable, meetings, and duties. Collect questions before the version goes out, not after the email chain has fragmented across five drafts.
You will set the school timetable up first so the portal can show each teacher the views that already match your live data.
Signed in · Mrs Chen
Year 3 · Term 2 · Week 4
Reviewing draft v3 · before publish
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
P1 8:50 | Yr 3 Lit Room 4 | Yr 3 Lit Room 4 | Yr 3 Lit Room 4 | Yr 3 Lit Room 4 | Yr 3 Lit Room 4 |
P2 9:50 | Yr 3 Num Room 4 | APT Planning rm | Yr 3 Num Room 4 | APT Planning rm | Yr 3 Num Room 4 |
P3 11:25 | Spec · Music Cover Yr 5 | Yr 3 Inq. Room 4 | Yr 3 Inq. Room 4 | Yr 3 Inq. Room 4 | Yr 3 Inq. Room 4 |
P4 12:55 | Duty · gate Lunch | Yr 3 PE Oval | PLC Staffroom | Yr 3 Lit Room 4 | Duty · oval Lunch |
Before publish
Staff review
Read-only viewer
Access
One source of truth
Distribution
Live for every viewer
Republish
The review week, redesigned
Catch the questions while the draft is still draft.
The hardest part of publishing a new timetable is not generating it. It is the review week, when the assistant principal stitches together feedback from five PDFs sent at different times, plus three hallway comments and a "quick question" that turned out to be a real conflict.
Bell Path Staff Portal closes that loop. Each teacher gets a linked viewer account with read-only access to their own published views — timetable, meetings, duties — so they can review their week themselves before the principal hits publish. Questions land while the draft is still draft. The source of truth stays with the planner. The version emailed to the school is the one that has already been reviewed.
Best fit
- Schools where timetable review currently happens by emailing PDFs and waiting for replies
- Leaders who want a controlled review step before final publish to the whole staff
- Schools with part-timers, job-shares, and dual roles who need to verify their own week before it goes live
Four principles, one habit
A controlled review step before any PDF or email distribution.
Read-only
Viewers see the published view. They cannot edit the timetable — the source of truth stays with the planner.
Own week only
Each viewer sees their own timetable, meetings, and duties. Other staff schedules stay hidden.
Linked accounts
Invite from the workspace. Bulk invites, individual reminders, and a preview portal before anything goes live.
Republish flows live
When the planner republishes, every linked viewer sees the new version. No PDF round-trip.
Review flow
Turn timetable review into a workflow, not an email chain.
The old way: PDF → inbox → reply → version 4 → PDF → inbox → reply → version 5. The new way: one workspace, one current version, and the portal everyone reviews from.
Most schools build this into the habit immediately after timetable generation.
- 01
Generate the draft
Run the wizard, generate, and review the validation as normal. Nothing is published to staff yet.
- 02
Open the staff portal
Each linked teacher signs in and sees their own week. The planner can preview any staff member first.
- 03
Collect questions while the draft is still draft
Teachers flag the conflicts, the missing meetings, and the part-time misreads — before publish, not after.
- 04
Republish
Change, regenerate, republish. Every viewer sees the new version immediately. No five PDFs in five inboxes.
Where trust wobbles
Pressure points Bell Path is built to absorb.
These are the moments where a published timetable starts spawning version emails — and the planner ends up apologising for something the system should have caught.
Staff cannot see their timetable until a PDF lands in their inbox, by which time five versions are already in circulation.
Review feedback arrives in three formats — email, hallway, sticky note — and the planner is the only person who knows which version it applied to.
A teacher with a real conflict raises it after publish, which means everyone gets the "please ignore the previous version" email.
What Bell Path handles
A read-only portal sitting next to a source-of-truth planner workspace.
Portal coverage
- Linked staff viewer accounts that map each teacher to their own timetable, meetings, and duties
- Read-only access — the portal cannot edit the timetable, only show the published version of the relevant staff member
- Invite staff viewers from the workspace, including bulk invites and individual reminders
- Preview portal so the planner can see exactly what a given teacher will see before invites go out
- Same workspace as the live timetable, so a republish flows through to every linked viewer immediately
- Useful as the controlled review step before any PDF or email distribution
Why schools choose Bell Path
- The portal mirrors the published version — staff are reviewing the real timetable, not a stale PDF
- Linked accounts are read-only, so review never accidentally edits the source of truth
- Review questions surface while the timetable is still draft, when changes are still cheap
- The same workspace handles publish, portal access, and any later daily cover or coverage notes
Related stories
Schools that wanted the review step to be calmer.
Three job-share pairs, one dual-role specialist, and a timetable the team could finally publish with confidence.
A Victorian primary school moved from spreadsheet coordination and hidden staffing risk to one shared version the team could review and publish with far more confidence.
The planner did not need another hero effort. She needed a timetable process she could defend before term started.
An assistant principal moved from repeated evening rebuilds and Sunday-night second-guessing to a calmer timetable process she could defend before term started.
FAQ
Questions schools ask about staff portal for school timetables.
Can staff edit the timetable through the portal?
No. The portal is read-only. Each linked viewer account sees the published version of their own timetable, meetings, and duties. Edits stay with the planner so the source of truth never accidentally diverges.
Do staff need a separate login system?
No. Viewer accounts are linked from inside the same Bell Path workspace. You invite each staff member from the portal, they accept, and from that point on they see only the published views relevant to them.
Can I preview what a teacher will see before I invite them?
Yes. The preview portal lets the planner see the workspace as a given staff member would, so you can verify the views look right before sending invites or republishing.
What happens when I republish the timetable?
The republished version flows through to every linked viewer immediately. There is no separate PDF round to re-email, because the portal is always showing the current published version.
How does this fit with daily cover and absences?
The portal sits in the same workspace as daily cover, so when an absence triggers a CRT day sheet, the cover-affected staff still see their own published view through the same login they already use for review.
Ready when you are
Publish a timetable you can trust.
Bell Path helps assistant principals and principals move from spreadsheet stress to a calmer, fairer, more explainable planning workflow.
You will set the school timetable up first so the portal can show each teacher the views that already match your live data.