- Up to 14 days and 16 periods in the timetable
- Input Rooms and what specific periods they are available
- Input Teachers and what specific periods they are available
- Input Courses that must be taught to each Class specifying the:
COURSE CODE
COURSE NAME
TEACHER
ROOM
PERIODS PER SESSION (In case of multi-period courses)
MAXIMUM NUMBER OF SESSIONS PER DAY
NUMBER OF SESSIONS IN THE TIMETABLE
PERIODS AVAILABLE - A grid with Days across the top &
Periods down the side where you specify the periods that
each course can be taught in.
- The program then takes all of these variables and attempts to
create non-conflicting Class, Teacher, and Room timetables
- Support for part-time teachers or teachers with limited teaching time by adjusting their Periods Available grid
- Courses can be tied together so that they are taught at the same time. For example, you might want Class 7A & Class 7B to come together for Phys. Ed. so that the girls in both classes can go with the female Phys. Ed. teacher and the boys can go with the male Phys. Ed. teacher. Another example would be where a school has a specific period for optional courses so they want to bring the students from a number of classes together at one time so that they can be split-up into the optional courses.
- Teachers prep. time can be scheduled, if necessary, by creating special prep. courses for teachers using ‘dummy’ classes and using the Builder to schedule the prep. time when the teacher has spare periods
- Courses which must be scheduled to meet at a particular time can be pre-scheduled
- A routine that can be run before running the Builder to try and detect input errors such as: having a Room busy for more periods
than the grid allows; having Teachers assigned to more periods than the grid allows; having Classes scheduled for more periods
than the grid allows
- The routine that actually builds the Master Timetable by taking the Room, Teacher, and Course Information files as well as the Tied Courses file and then attempting to create non-conflicting timetables
- The user can specify how hard the Builder should work in an attempt to eliminate conflicts by specifying the depth that the Builder will go into the timetable in order to move courses to alleviate conflicts ... the greater the depth, exponentially greater the time that the Builder will take to clear conflicts but the better the chances of building a complete timetable
- Any courses that cannot be fully scheduled are listed in a report after the Builder completes
- If the Builder cannot schedule all periods for a particular course, it will try to schedule as many periods as possible
- Datasets can be stored and restored so, if a timetable has been developed, you can store it, try making changes to improve it, but, if the subsequent timetable is not a good as the former, you can restore the better timetable
- All reports are PDF files so they can be viewed and discarded, viewed and printed, or viewed and saved to be retrieved later or to be sent to someone
- Coloured timetables can be produced for each Class, Teacher, and Room
- Timetables can be emailed to each teacher
- Free Teacher, Free Room and Free Classes lists can be produced
- A list of all Rooms and all Teachers can be printed
- A list of all Courses by Class, Teacher, and Room can be produced
- A list of Tied Courses can be produced
- Reports can be printed in colour to distinguish clearly among multiple courses, classes or rooms