Why a Frontline job alert filter can match nothing, and how Sub Hero's new filter editor heads it off

A job alert filter that matches nothing looks exactly like a quiet week. No alerts arrive, and nothing tells you the filter is the reason. On Frontline Absence Management the usual cause is small: a school or job title typed a little differently from how your district writes it, or two schools entered so that a job has to be at both. Sub Hero's filter editor has been rebuilt to stop those mistakes before you save. You pick schools and job titles from the names your district has actually posted, every line says what it does in plain words, and each option shows how many of your recent jobs it would have caught. This post explains how it works, what it can't do, and who has it today.

Why a filter can quietly match nothing

Frontline shows each job with the school and the job title your district typed in. A filter works by looking for your words inside those names. That makes it unforgiving in ways that are easy to miss.

• A name written differently. You type the school the way you say it, and the district writes it with an abbreviation, or the other way around. The filter looks for words that never appear.
• A school typed as a job title. Some districts put the school name in places you would not expect, so a name entered in the wrong place matches no job.
• Two names that both have to match. "School A and School B" sounds like either one, but in a filter it means a single job at both schools, which never happens.
• Stray characters. Quotation marks around a name, a trailing space, or half a word that only appears inside longer words.

None of these produce an error. The filter saves, it just never matches, and the result is the same silence you would get on a slow week.

Pick names from your district's own list

The biggest change is that you no longer type a school or job title from memory. When you limit a filter to certain schools, Sub Hero shows the schools your district has posted, each with how many jobs Sub Hero has recently seen there. You tap the ones you want. Job titles, teachers and districts work the same way.

You can still type part of a name. Typing "Elementary" offers to add every school with that word in its name, and shows how many schools and recently seen jobs that reaches before you add it. If you type a name your district does not use, Sub Hero says so and offers the closest name it does use, so a near miss is one tap to fix. Quotation marks typed around a name are dropped, since no school name contains them.

Adding a second school adds it to the same list, so a job at either school fits. The "both schools at once" mistake can no longer happen by adding a school.

Every line says what it does

A Sub Hero filter is made of options. An option is a group of conditions a job has to fit together, such as a school, a job title and a length. If you have several options, a job only has to fit one of them.

Inside an option, each line is a plain statement of what it does right now: "School: any school", "Length: longer than 4 hours", "Days: Mon to Fri". A line that limits nothing says so in one line, with a Limit button that holds its choices. You no longer read a filter as a field, an operator and a value.

Each option also shows how many of your own recent jobs it fits, for example "Fits 6 of your 34 recent jobs." If an option is on and fits none of them, the page says so in red before you save, so a filter that would send nothing is visible while you can still change it.

Or describe what you want

If you would rather not build a filter by hand, you can describe it in your own words, such as "full days at two elementary schools, no PE", and Sub Hero proposes the filter. The proposal shows up as an unsaved change you can read line by line, and nothing is saved until you review it and tap save. The written description is a preview feature with a daily message limit.

Who has it today

Accounts created since September 25 have the new editor now, on the web at app.getsubhero.com and in the Android app once it has its latest update from the Play Store. Older accounts keep the editor they have for now. Your saved filters are not changed by the switch, so there is nothing to redo.

What the new editor doesn't do

• It only knows names Sub Hero has seen. The list comes from jobs Sub Hero has seen posted in your district. In a district we have seen little of, a school may not be on the list yet, and the editor will say "not seen yet" rather than call the name wrong. You can still add it.
• "Fits 6 of your 34 recent jobs" looks back, not forward. It counts jobs you have already been shown. A new account with only a few jobs will see small numbers until more come in.
• It can't make jobs appear. A correct filter only alerts you when your district posts a matching job.
• It can't see your Frontline non-work days. Days you have blocked off in Frontline are not visible to Sub Hero, so set days in your filter if they matter.
• It doesn't win jobs someone else booked first. An alert arrives within seconds of a job matching, but another sub may still take it before you do.

For how alerts and auto-accept fit together, see what each Sub Hero plan includes. For other ways to hear about Frontline jobs, including Frontline's own app, see what the free Frontline app's notifications cover.

Where Sub Hero fits

Sub Hero is an independent service for substitutes on Frontline Absence Management, not affiliated with Frontline Education. It sends an email and push alert within seconds of a job matching your filters, and on Pro it can accept a matching job for you, with 5 auto-accepts included a month. The new editor makes those filters harder to get wrong, but it works from the names your district posts and the jobs Sub Hero has seen, and it cannot see your non-work days or book a job another sub already took.

Learn more: app.getsubhero.com

Plans start at $6.99/month. Works with Frontline Absence Management.