Step 1 · Judicial chambers

Chambers request form

A page of its own, outside RiteTrack. Chambers staff open a link and fill it in — no application to learn, no licence to assign, nothing to install. It posts straight into the scheduling queue.

Session note · 16:52Today the 17 secretaries email Patty. If she takes a week off she returns to roughly 600 messages. This form is the replacement for that inbox — and keeping it outside RiteTrack means chambers never has to be onboarded to get it.

🔒 forms.alleghenycourts.us/family/listing-request

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Request a listing · Family Division

For judicial chambers. Submissions reach the scheduling office immediately.

No sign-in. The link is emailed once to each chambers and works from any county machine. Submissions are stamped with the chambers that sent them, and Patty sees them the moment they arrive.

New listing request

FD-REQ · draft

Judge

Matter type

Length

Venue

Half of day

FD number

Case name

Not before / how far out

Mirrors the "schedule it after ___" line chambers writes today.

Referring party

Plaintiff counsel

Defendant counsel

Session note · 36:42Counsel is a free-text field in FCSS today — it repeats whatever was typed last time, and there is no way back to a bar number. These fields read the participant table the custody module already populates.

Scheduling order

Note to scheduling

What scheduling receives

Submitting writes one record. It lands in the queue, it counts toward the trend report, and the order travels with it. No re-keying anywhere.

This judge's rules

How it reaches the queue

The form is a static page on the county web server. It posts one JSON document to RiteTrack over the documented interface, and the reply carries the request number back to the person who submitted it. Nothing else is exposed.

Hosting	County web server. No RiteTrack licence consumed by chambers.
Identity	Per-chambers link. Every submission carries the sending chambers and a timestamp.
Transport	Single authenticated POST to the listings endpoint.
Failure	If RiteTrack is unreachable the form holds the request and retries, then emails scheduling as a fallback.

Step 2 · Scheduling desk

Scheduling queue

One list, sorted by age. It replaces the read/unread trick in Outlook and the Microsoft List that has to be typed up separately.

Session note · 20:43Three systems doing one job — email in, a hand-kept list for tracking, FCSS for the actual scheduling. This is all three.

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Waiting to be completed

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Oldest in queue (days)

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Completed this month

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Waiting on chambers

Find a case

FD number, party, counsel, or judge

Session note · 4:30"Trying to find something" was on her list of dislikes. This searches listings and open requests together, which is the thing FCSS and the tracking list can't do between them.

Open requests

Session note · 25:14She reads her backlog by judge, using unread mail as the counter. These are the same counts, kept for her.

Age	FD #	Case name	Judge	Type of proceeding	Length	Venue	Not before / how far out	Referring party	Note	Order	Status

For the bench

My bench

Today’s listings, and one button: when the last matter wraps early, tell the scheduling desk the courtroom is clear. The room reads open everywhere the moment it’s tapped.

Judge McCrady · 9/30 email“Would it be possible to have a feature where a judge could notify Patti that the courtroom is vacant when they are done?”

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External · Counsel self-service

Attorney date form

The county’s 48-hour date-response form, online. Counsel opens it from the email link — no RiteTrack sign-in — and the answer lands against the case, where the calendar can act on it.

From the paper form“Within 48 hours of receiving this form, please email the completed form and your scheduling documents… Your case will be scheduled without delay if this form is not returned timely.” Here the deadline, the reminder, and the filing all happen in one place.

Judicial Scheduling Request Form — Adult Section

48-hour response

1 · Judge assigned to the case

The paper form lists seven judges plus “Other”; the portal offers the full bench.

3 · What you are wishing to get scheduled

2 · FD docket number

Case name

4 · Contact information for all parties

Plaintiff — name

Plaintiff — email

Defendant — name

Defendant — email

Counsel for plaintiff — name

Counsel for plaintiff — email

Counsel for defendant — name

Counsel for defendant — email

5 · Bad dates for all parties

Every date in the current month and the next three months on which any party cannot attend a proceeding on this case.

Scheduling documents

Responses received

Scheduling-office view — counsel never sees this. Each response attaches to its case in the queue, and the calendar warns if a listing lands on a reported bad date.

FD	Case	Bad dates	Returned

Scheduling · Events

Shift work

The recurring lists — motions, PFAs, exceptions, contempts — kept apart from the matters queue. A judge is put on the shift and it lands straight on the calendar.

Put a judge on a shift

Shift / event

Judge covering it

Date

Time

Length

Courtroom

No case numbers, no parties — the shift is the listing. The judge’s own rules still apply, Temporary-PFA Mondays included.

Scheduled shift work

Every upcoming shift across all seventeen judges. The month calendar’s All judges view draws the same picture.

Date	Time	Shift	Judge	Room

Step 3 · Listing

Judge week

The judge's rules are drawn on the calendar, so an available slot is actually available. Hatched means a standing rule blocks it. Shaded means the judge would rather you didn't.

Session note · 26:49"Someone who doesn't know the system looks at this and asks why we can't put it at 11:30." Now the calendar answers that question itself.

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Courtroom Teams Chambers Standing rule Judge prefers not Open

Standing rules in force

🔒 Visible to scheduling roles only

Step 4 · The question everyone calls about

Courtroom availability

Every courtroom, the whole day, one screen. An all-day matter reads as all day. Two judges can share a room at different hours — no chambers workaround required.

Session note · 10:08 & 49:43Two problems solved by the same picture: finding an open room took a dozen clicks through individual judges, and an all-day PFA listing displayed as morning-only — so a room looked free at 1:30 while the judge was on the bench in it.

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In a courtroom Remote / chambers Protection from abuse Open

Open right now

When someone calls asking for a room this afternoon, this is the answer without opening a single judge's calendar.

Room	Floor	Open windows	Total open

Step 5 · The request Patty gets weekly

Month at a glance

One judge, one month, everything on it — trials, conciliations, chambers days, time off. Print it or send it without editing a 300-page PDF.

Session note · 52:14The current workaround is printing every judge for the whole month, then deleting the other sixteen judges' pages one range at a time. Laura's version is a pen.

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Step 6 · Public facing

Wayfinding board

The hallway screens read straight off the listings. Nothing is typed twice, hearing officers included.

Session note · 11:44Thirty minutes every morning, if uninterrupted, retyping into the television screen what was already entered in FCSS — plus the hearing officers, who sit in the same room every single day. This screen is generated, not entered.

AC

Family Division

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3

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Courtrooms on this floor Updated live from the court calendar

Standing assignments

Hearing officers keep the same room. Entered once, here, and the board carries them forward every day.

Hearing officer	Room	Days	Hours

Step 7 · Public website

Public motions calendar

The month builds itself from the listings. Publish pushes it to the county site through the feed — or hand it over as a file if the site team would rather paste it.

Session note · 55:35Every month, all thirty days of the motions calendar are typed into the website tool by hand, with the FCSS calendar open on the other half of the screen.

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Date	Judge	Room	Time

Publish

Destination

Handoff format

Site ownership sits with the communications team; IT holds the connection. Once it's pointed at the feed, nobody in the scheduling office touches it again.

Step 8 · Court IT

Exports & API

Pick the columns, pick the order, save it as a named layout. What comes out is already shaped the way the receiving system wants it, so nobody reformats anything downstream.

Session note · 1:04:44The ask wasn't "can you export to Excel" — it was "can the export already be in our columns," so that Patty isn't reformatting a file after the system produces it.

Column layout

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Preview

Integration surface

REST	Two-way, documented. Read and write on every scheduling object.
Webhook	Fires on list, continue, cancel, room change. JSON payload, your endpoint.
Feed	Read-only URL per courtroom, per floor, per judge. What the screens consume.
iCal	Subscription per judge for chambers calendars.

No private back door — everything the screens use is on the documented interface, which is what makes the four-network situation workable.

Configuration · Restricted

Judicial preferences

The scheduling matrix, held in the system instead of a spreadsheet. Rules the calendar can enforce are on the left; the ones that only a person can weigh are notes.

Session note · 33:20Judges will object if their preferences are visible to each other. Read access here is limited to the scheduling role — and it's the answer to what happens when the desk is covered by someone else.

🔒 Scheduling administrators only · every change is logged

Rules the calendar enforces

Day begins

Day ends

Midday

Notes for the scheduling desk

Unavailability

Hold a single day, a range of dates, or a range of hours. The scheduling calendars show what the time is held for; public screens never do.

From date

To date

Leave blank for a single day.

Hours

Reason

Shown on the scheduling calendars so the desk knows why; never on public screens, feeds, or exports.

Court-wide holidays

Session note · 2:03Holidays are added to every calendar by hand today. One import covers the court year for all seventeen judges.

Court administration

Request trends

What the hand-kept list was really for. Same numbers, no typing — because every request already arrived as a record.

Session note · 18:33Two years of tracking has been worth it: seeing school choice build through June, emergency filings before the holidays, and which judges have room to help another department.

Requests by matter type · last 90 days

Queue depth by judge

Seasonality

School choice against emergency custody, by month of filing. The shape chambers already knows, now on the record.

Reporting

Reason for block out

Totals for held time over a period — how many bench days were blocked, and why. Partial-day holds count as half a day.

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to

Reason	Bench days	Judges	Share

Chambers self-service

Chambers block-out portal

Chambers signs in and holds their own Judge’s time directly — no email to the scheduling desk. It lands on the calendar the moment it is saved.

Hold time

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Signed in for

In production this comes from the login — chambers only ever sees their own Judge.

From date

To date

Leave blank for a single day.

Hours

Reason

Shown on the scheduling calendars so the desk knows why; never on public screens, feeds, or exports.

Chambers request form

Request a listing · Family Division

New listing request

What scheduling receives

This judge's rules

How it reaches the queue

Scheduling queue

Find a case

Open requests

My bench

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Attorney date form

Judicial Scheduling Request Form — Adult Section

4 · Contact information for all parties

5 · Bad dates for all parties

Responses received

Shift work

Put a judge on a shift

Scheduled shift work

Judge week

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Standing rules in force

Courtroom availability

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Open right now

Where every judge sits

Month at a glance

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Wayfinding board

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Standing assignments

Public motions calendar

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Publish

Exports & API

Column layout

Integration surface

Judicial preferences

Rules the calendar enforces

Unavailability

Court-wide holidays

Request trends

Requests by matter type · last 90 days

Queue depth by judge

Seasonality

Reason for block out

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Chambers block-out portal

Hold time

Currently held for this Judge