Management System

Why This Is Being Built

Testwood Lakes Sailability operates six Hansa 303 dinghies, each session carefully matched to a sailor's needs and abilities. Coordinating bookings across boats, skippers, and sailors with varying support requirements has traditionally relied on paper systems with inevitable access constraints.

This system was developed by a volunteer to give TLS a purpose-built booking tool that reflects how the organisation actually works: sessions booked by coordinators and skippers, sensitive sailor information accessible to those who need it, and a clear view of what is happening on the water on any given day.

Design Goals

The system was built around a set of practical principles from the outset:

• Fit for purpose, not over-engineered. Rather than adopting a complex commercial system designed for large leisure centres, this tool is tailored to the specific rhythm of TLS — Monday and Thursday sailing days, up to five hours of sailing, six known vessels.

• No new infrastructure. The entire system runs within Google Workspace, which TLS already uses. There are no additional servers, hosting costs, or third-party subscriptions.

• Accessible on any device. Whether an office coordinator is planning ahead on a desktop, a skipper checks the schedule on their phone before driving to the lake, or a volunteer at the pontoon needs to look up a sailor's support notes — the same interface adapts to each situation.

• Maintainable by volunteers. Configuration changes — new boats, adjusted session times, revised charges — are managed through a readable configuration file rather than a locked admin panel. Session rates are editable by authorised administrators without any redeployment.

Integration with the TLS Sailing Days Calendar

Rather than maintaining a separate list of when sailing takes place, the system reads directly from the existing TLS sailing days Google Calendar. The booking interface automatically respects days when sailing is cancelled, bank holiday exclusions, and any future changes to the programme — with no duplication of effort. The sailing calendar remains the single source of truth.

Exploiting Google Workspace Resource Management

Google Workspace includes a professional resource booking system — the same infrastructure used by large organisations to manage meeting rooms and shared equipment. TLS's six Hansa dinghies are configured as bookable resources within the Workspace Admin Console.

This gives the booking system a solid, reliable foundation: resource availability is enforced at the platform level, bookings appear in Google Calendar's own views for coordinators who prefer them, and integration with existing Workspace tools requires no custom synchronisation. The dinghy booking interface provides an accessible, sailing-specific front end to what would otherwise require navigating Google's own resource calendar.

What the System Does

The system provides a complete set of operational functions, accessed through six tabs:

Calendar. A booking calendar showing the day's schedule across all six dinghies, with skipper and sailor names for quick identification.

Book. A booking form for creating new sessions — selecting dinghy, skipper, sailor, session type, duration, and charge. The form surfaces the sailor's support notes, previous session notes from the skipper, and cancellation and emergency contact details from the membership record.

By Person. A person lookup for finding all upcoming sessions involving a named skipper or sailor, with the ability to cancel directly from the results.

Sail Log. A session log searchable by sailor, skipper, or both — returning the complete session history for the selected person or the intersection of sessions where a particular sailor sailed with a particular skipper. Skipper's notes are shown where recorded.

Maintenance. A maintenance tool for marking dinghies out of commission for a specified period.

Statistics. A summary panel showing the current year's sailing figures — total sessions, individual sailors seen, hoist sessions, and a comparison with the previous year — with a link to the full statistics page.

Sailor Information and Continuity of Care

Each sailor has a membership record holding their reference number, support notes, and contact details for cancellation and emergency purposes. When a sailor is selected for a booking, this information is drawn directly from the membership record and displayed to the coordinator.

After each session, the skipper can add brief notes — progress made, anything to be aware of next time. When that sailor is next booked, those notes appear automatically in both the booking form and the session detail, giving the incoming skipper immediate context without needing to consult separate records.

Contact information is held in three forms: the sailor's own details, a cancellation contact (which for an adult sailor may be the sailor themselves), and an emergency contact. The system handles the common scenarios — adult self-referral, parent or carer as both contacts, or separate cancellation and emergency contacts — and surfaces the right information clearly.

Membership Management

A dedicated membership editor gives the membership secretary a structured tool for maintaining sailor, volunteer and care-group* records, without needing access to the underlying spreadsheets.

For sailors, the editor provides a searchable list with status chips (Active, Minor, Hoist required), a drill-down from the dashboard into specific groups — for example, sailors with mailing list consent given but not yet added to the group — and individual record editing covering contact details, date of birth, RYA level, care group, GDPR consent fields, and registration status. The session history banner on each record shows the sailor's last session date and next booked sessions directly from the booking calendar.

For volunteers, the editor covers contact details, workspace email, first aid certificate and expiry, skipper and competency flags, mailing list consent, and volunteer status. Two live checks run automatically when a volunteer record is opened: a Google Workspace directory lookup confirming whether the volunteer holds an active domain account, and a mailing group membership check verifying whether their email address is currently in the volunteers@ group. Where either is out of step with the recorded data, the field is highlighted for attention.

The dashboard gives the membership secretary an at-a-glance view of both populations: counts of active, inactive, and pending sailors; hoist and minor flags; mailing list consent status with live group verification; and for volunteers, first aid certificates expiring within 30 days, outstanding membership fees, and consent not yet reflected in the mailing group. Any count is clickable and drills down to the filtered list.

All membership data remains within the TLS Google Workspace environment and is accessible only to users in the designated membership groups.

Sailing Statistics

A nightly automated process reads the booking calendar and publishes a summary to a publicly accessible statistics page at stats.testwood.org.uk. No login is required to view the statistics — they are intended as a lightweight public record of TLS's activity.

The page shows:

• Total sessions sailed in the current year, with a month-by-month comparison against the previous year

• Sessions per dinghy, broken down by month

• Number of unique individuals who have sailed

• Hoist sessions — sessions using the hoist and sling for sailors who require it

• Session type breakdown (Leisure Sail, Skills Practice, Assessment, Taster)

The statistics are the data TLS already collects and reports to the RYA. Having them calculated automatically and available in one place reduces the administrative burden at the end of the sailing season.

Security and Privacy by Design

Sailor support information — medical notes, hoist requirements, support needs — is sensitive personal data. The system handles this with a clear separation:

• The session schedule (which boat, which time, which skipper) is visible to all authorised users and is embedded in the TLS website calendar.

• Sailor reference notes and personal contact details are drawn from the membership record and displayed only within the session detail panel, which automatically clears after a configurable timeout.

• Contact details shown in the booking form and session modal are always read directly from the live membership record — they cannot be edited through the booking interface, only through the dedicated membership tool.

Access to the system requires a TLS Google Workspace account. All data remains within the TLS Google Workspace environment.

GDPR and Data Protection

The system has been designed with data protection requirements in mind from the outset.

Consent is captured formally for new sailors through a Google Form* with digital signature, recording the date, the person giving consent, and their role. Image consent and risk statement acceptance are recorded separately.

The membership editor tracks mailing list consent, the date consent was given, and — through a live check against the Google Group — whether that consent is currently reflected in the actual mailing list. The membership secretary can see at a glance where consent has been given but the person has not yet been added, or where someone is in the group without a consent record.

Fields for data erasure are reserved in both the sailor and volunteer records — erasure flag, date, authorising officer, and notes. When a subject access request or erasure request is received, the system supports the membership secretary in identifying all data held. The erasure process (replacing personal fields with a marker rather than deleting the row) preserves the integrity of session history records without retaining the personal data*.

Access Control

The system uses Google Workspace group membership to control access at different levels, with no redeployment needed when membership changes:

• Coordinators — day-to-day booking operations

• Administrators — session rate editing and configuration changes (IT team and Finance)

• Membership — volunteer and sailor record editing (Membership Secretary and Data Protection Officer)

• GDPR — data subject functions restricted to the Data Protection Officer

Session Rates

Session charges are managed through a dedicated rates editor, accessible only to the admin group. Rates support two tiers (for example Individual and Corporate/Group) across four session durations (30, 45, 60, and 90 minutes), with a No Charge option always available. Rate changes take effect immediately on the next booking form load, without any redeployment.

Office, Phone, and Waterside Use

The interface is designed for three distinct contexts:

In the office — a full schedule grid gives coordinators a clear overview of each sailing day, with the ability to book, cancel, and view maintenance blocks across all six boats at a glance.

On a phone — a responsive layout switches automatically to a stacked list view in portrait orientation, with Info and Cancel actions clearly available. In landscape the full calendar grid is accessible.

At the pontoon — a shared tablet, signed into a dedicated device account, would provide immediate access to the day's schedule and sailor support notes without requiring individual logins*. TLS is currently seeking a suitable device donation for this purpose. If you are able to help, please get in touch.