Overview
The concept of the timetabling function is simple.
Enrolments are given a Lesson Length, which is part of the information contained in the Lesson Type (or the Ensemble Code, for ensembles). They are also assigned to a Teacher.
Enrolments are allocated to a day and time in the teacher's Schedule.
Using the Schedule as the template, Calendar Entries are created for all of the lessons in the upcoming term.
These calendar entries are then used to generate Attendance Records for the rolls. For more on this topic, see Manage Attendance.
But we all know that scheduling is not that simple! Students have availability restrictions, schools have requirements that you need to accommodate, teaching staff have their own needs, and so on. So the complexity in this module comes from the complexity of the real world requirements you're contending with.
Setup
Before you can fill out the schedule, you need a few things in place.
Lesson Types
See Manage Tuition Fees for guidance.
Enrolments
Enter your tuition enrolments with their lesson lengths.
Make notes on the tuition enrolments regarding any timetabling constraints.
Make sure to categorise them as "TT" or "Tch/TT" so that they will be visible in your timetabling screen.
See Manage Tuition Fees, Manage Tuition Enrolments, and Use Notes for guidance.
Calendar Exclusions
If a student or a group of students is unavailable for lessons at a particular time or day, you can set up Calendar Exclusions so that any lessons scheduled at those times will show up as a clash.
See Calendar Exclusions for guidance.
Ensembles
It's best if you have already set up your ensembles and group lessons, with their days and times and staff allocated, so they will appear in the teachers' schedules, which will help to avoid scheduling clashes.
See Manage Ensemble Enrolments for guidance.
Timeslots
Before scheduling enrolments, you can create all the timeslots that your teaching staff are likely to need.
See Manage Timeslots for guidance.
Rotation Tag
If your school requires lesson times to rotate across the day, to avoid having students missing the same class every week, you use the Rotation Tag to accomplish this.
Fortnightly lessons are managed in the same field.
See Rotating and Fortnightly Lesson Times for guidance.
Scheduling
With all of the above in place (or as much as possible for the time of year), you're ready to start scheduling. See Use The Scheduling Tool for guidance.
Rooms Schedule
Note that the entries you make in the Schedule also populate the Regular Bookings tab in the Rooms file.
Go to Home > Resources > Rooms and select the room you have scheduled the lessons in to see these bookings.
Calendar Entries
The Schedule above is essentially a template for that teacher's weekly timetables. You will now use that Schedule to create Calendar Entries for this teacher.
Note that items on the schedule generally show in white, but any booking that has future calendar entries in place will be shaded green.
See Work With Calendar Entries for guidance on this step.
Rotating and Fortnightly Lessons
If you have rotating, fortnightly, or alternating lessons, please see Rotating and Fortnightly Lesson Times for more detailed guidance on how to manage this.