Hours & closures — when the pool is open

Use Reach → Website → Hours (the page is titled Hours & closures) to set the pool's regular hours, seasonal dates, and one-time changes. Managers and admins can open it. The old Pool hours and Closures addresses now lead here.

The page has four parts, which you can jump between from the links at the top:

• Today: a sentence saying whether the pool is open now, a link to what members see, and the Close the pool now control.

• Changes: a calendar (or a list) of one-time changes such as holidays, swim meets and closures. Select a day, or Add a change, to add one; select an existing one to edit or remove it. A closure with hours shows them, for example "Closed · Weather 2 pm–6 pm".

• Weekly hours: the regular opening and closing times for each day of the week, for the season named on the card.

• Seasons: the dates the pool is open this year, and a form for a new season.

Add the season dates and weekly opening and closing times. Use Add a change for holidays, events and other one-time changes. Closed and Only part of the pool take optional From and Until times; leave both empty to close all day. Over several days the times are one stretch: From is the time on the first day and Until the time on the last, the days between are closed all day, and the calendar shows each day's part. Editing a closure keeps its times unless you change them. After saving, use View on your site to check what members see.

Weekly hours save as one week. If a day is missing an opening or closing time, or closes before it opens, nothing is saved at all: fix the day the message names and save again. In the rare case a save stops part-way through, the message names exactly which days were saved, so you know what is live.

For a same-day closure, use Close the pool now with a clear reason. Members see it on Home. When the pool reopens, select Reopen: it ends the closure and requests an all-clear email (never a text). Sessions and bookings the closure canceled are not restored. Removing a change from the calendar tells nobody. Keep visiting rules and longer explanations on the public Hours & visiting page.

Close the pool now asks how you want members told. Email is ticked for you and the Portal banner is always on. Text message appears only when your club has texting set up, and goes only if you tick it. The message after you close repeats what you chose, or says that no closure email or text was sent because closure notices are turned off in Automatic emails. Either way, families with lap swim bookings the closure cancels are emailed about those, and households that were waiting for a canceled lap swim session are emailed that their waiting list closed.

When a change closes the lap lanes, the form says what that means: it cancels every lap swim session the change covers and emails the families who had booked them and the households waiting for them. You don't pick individual lanes. Closed, or Only part of the pool with Lap lanes, cancels all lap swim in its dates and times. Another part of the pool cancels none, and Opens later and Closes early change the opening hours only.

On the Lap swim calendar, Close lap lanes opens this same form right there, without leaving the calendar, with Lap lanes already selected, starting on the day you are looking at (or today, if that day has passed). Review the dates, times and affected bookings before saving; the form links back here for changes made earlier.

In Seasons, change a season's name, start or end and select Save. A new name alone saves at once.

Changing the dates changes which lap swim hours run on the dates in between. When a season starts earlier or ends later, its hours take over days the year-round hours ran. When it starts later or ends sooner, the year-round hours take those days back. So before it saves, the page checks what the new dates do to the lap swim schedule. If that changes no session, the dates save at once. Otherwise a box lists:

• the lap swim sessions that nobody has ever booked and that will be removed, by date, so each date follows the hours that now apply. Those hours make their sessions for the dates coming up soon straight away, and for the rest as those dates come near. If you had changed one session's lanes for its date only, that line says the change is lost.

• the sessions that stay as they are because they are booked, or once were. They can't be removed here: to run the new hours on one of those dates, cancel the session on the Lap swim calendar.

Select Save and move these sessions to save the dates and make those changes (the button reads Save these dates when nothing would be removed and only booked sessions are listed), or Cancel to change nothing. If the schedule or its bookings changed while you were looking, nothing is saved and the box says "The schedule or bookings changed since you looked. Check again." Select Check again to see the new list. Sessions that have already started, extra sessions and sessions you canceled are never changed.

You can't delete a season while lap swim hours still use it. Remove those hours on the Lap swim page first (Weekly schedule), then delete the season. Its weekly pool hours go with it; exceptions and closures stay.

Members can be emailed or texted only about the whole pool closing today, once the closure has started, which is what Close the pool now does, and about the all-clear when you reopen that closure. A change for a later day, for part of the pool, or for later today shows on the portal only: Add a change has no option to email or text, and a connected tool asking to is refused with a message saying why. The notices say "the pool is closed", so they would not be true of those changes.

When you notify members, each household's primary contact gets the email, and anyone in the household who chose to get copies of club emails gets a copy. The text goes to the primary contact if they turned on texts, and to anyone else who turned on texts and chose to get copies. The club then records what actually went out. The record is written after the sending finishes, so the counts treasurers and admins see in the Audit log are the households really emailed and the texts really sent; an earlier entry for the same notice holds only how many it was meant for. A household with no email address on file, or whose email was stopped (for example, an address blocked after a bounce), is not counted, and neither is a text that was not sent.

The notice says how long the pool is closed and why, using the reason you picked. If you set a reopen time on a later day, it names the day too, for example "until 10 am on Monday, June 14". The text starts with your club's name so members know who it is from, and ends with "Reply STOP to unsubscribe." Keep the reason short: as a rule of thumb, about 40 characters or less keeps the text to one message (the exact limit depends on your club's name and the reopen wording).

Each notice goes out once per closure, so a second click does not email or text everyone again. If something interrupts the sending, the notice unlocks after about fifteen minutes, but this page has no button to send it again: if members still need telling, send a message from Messages.

A connected tool can also close a single day with a one-day hours exception marked closed. (The Closed choice in Add a change makes a closure instead.) Saving a closed day cancels that day's open lap swim sessions that have not started, extra sessions included. The families booked on them are emailed that the club canceled, and households waiting for one are emailed that the waiting list closed. They see the exception's label as the reason, or "The pool is closed that day." when it has none.

• The tool shows the sessions and households first, and asks for your approval when a session has bookings or a waiting list. If a booking arrives before you approve, the save is refused and you look again.

• Turning an open day into a closed day, or moving a closed day to another date, cancels that date's sessions. Saving a closed day again, or changing only its label, cancels nothing.

• Deleting the exception does not reopen the sessions it canceled, and tells nobody.

A change to the pool's hours can only cancel lap swim sessions. Nothing brings them back.

• Removing the change leaves the sessions it cancelled still cancelled. The confirmation says so.

• Narrowing the change, by moving its start later, its end earlier, or trimming its dates, does the same for the hours you gave back. The message after you save says so.

There is no way to restore a cancelled session, and the daily job that creates sessions skips any date and time a cancelled one already occupies. If lap swim should run after all, treat it as a change of plan rather than an undo: remove or narrow the change, then add an Extra session on the Lap swim calendar. An extra session needs a start time that no other session on that day has, cancelled ones included, so start it a few minutes later. The families who were booked have already been told their reservations were cancelled, and they will have to book the new session.