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Timetable

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A timetable is a schedule placing all lessons into timeslots and rooms while observing given constraints.

Such placement is devised automatically by Skolaris. This produces results superior to manually created timetables.

The best way to create a timetable in Skolaris is using the timetable creation wizard.

Health and fitness

Health

Health of the timetable determines its feasibility. A fully healthy timetable satisfies all hard constraints, which is a precondition for its use in practice. Such timetable is said to be feasible.

Fitness

Fitness is a numeric representation of timetable quality. The ideal fitness of 100 % is hardly achievable in the real world. Commonly soft constraints (representing for example weak requirements or wishes from teachers) compete and cannot all be satisfied at the same time. Constraint weights and configuration then become important so that Skolaris can produce a timetable that satisfies the priorities of your organisation.

The fitness of a good timetable depends entirely on input data, so it is impossible to judge a timetable solely by its fitness value. However, this value is useful when comparing timetables based on the same data.

Troubleshooting timetable creation

Creating a timetable can be difficult and time-consuming, especially for large schools. We strongly recommend using the Timetable creation wizard. It performs important checks that can reveal problems with the data and guarantees the best probability of finding a timetable for your organisation.

If Skolaris cannot find a feasible timetable, rerun the wizard and try the following tips:

  • Check the reported warnings and the results of the data analysis carefully, they can contain information hinting at mistakes in data entry.
  • Check the effective configurations for class groups and teachers, even small mistakes usually lead to huge complications.
  • Lower the penalties for soft constraints. If they're too high, they prevent Skolaris from eliminating the hard constraint breaks effectively.
  • Step through the hard constraints and check if they're all really necessarily hard. If possible, change some of them to soft constraints and lower their penalties.
  • If a feasible timetable still cannot be found, you'll need to help manually, for example by rearranging and locking a few lessons or relaxing timeslot unavailabilities. If you've reached this step, don't return to the wizard, but continue working directly in the timetable screen.

Sometimes a slight kick in the right direction from the user can help achieve a good solution. If Skolaris seems unable to find the right place for a group of lessons, schedule them manually, lock them in place and re-run the optimisation.

Once you're comfortable with the process of creating the timetable, feel free to experiment with different constraint settings to achieve the best results.

Publishing

You timetable is finished, but how to present it to your students and staff? You can export it to PDF for printing out, or you can publish it using a shareable link, just like Google documents.

PDF printout

In the list of all timetables click the "more options" vertical dots in the row of the timetable you wish to print. Click Export as PDF. Skolaris will generate a PDF file and offer you its download. After you save the file, you can print it.

Internet

Open the timetable and edit its properties. You'll find the option to make it public. When a timetable is published, Skolaris generates a link which anyone can use to view the timetable on all devices such as mobile phones and tablets.

Use this feature to bring the timetable to the teachers and students easily and without hassle. The published timetable even automatically updates when Cover management is used for absences and substitutions!