Timetable creation wizard
The wizard will help you check your data and create the timetable for your school.
Check data
This step is what we call a static analysis. It uncovers fundamental problems with your data that might prevent timetable creation or just satisfaction of some soft constraints.If there are warnings, please examine them carefully. Warnings shown in red are critical and prevent running the optimisation. You must fix all critical issues to proceed with the timetable creation.
Configure constraints
You can assign importance to some common aspects of the timetable here. This greatly influences the result of its automatic creation.The entered settings are saved in a constraint configuration set with the name of the organisation. You can find it under Constraint setup in the Configuration section of the main navigation. You can make adjustments to it there at any time.
The settings presented in the timetable creation wizard are extremely simplified. If necessary, you will have complete control over all constraints when you edit the configuration set later.
Analyse data
We call this step the dynamic analysis. Using a combination of data and constraints it finds problems the static analysis cannot discover. Once you've successfully completed the dynamic analysis, there's a good chance your timetabling data is error-free and a timetable can be assembled. However, it's never certain.Collect information
Enter the name of your new timetable. Skolaris allows you to create any number of timetables from the same data, so use the names to distinguish between them.Create timetable
Click Find timetable to start the main Skolaris workhorse. Our combination of powerful algorithms gives you the best chance to find a great timetable based on your preferences automatically. To maximize the probability of finding a feasible timetable, the wizard runs the automatic optimisation process in three stages.Stage 1: Search for a feasible time schedule
Room assignment and soft constraints are disabled during this stage of the timetable creation.Stage 2: Search for a feasible room assignment
Soft constraints are disabled during this stage of the optimisation.Stage 3: Full timetable optimisation
This stage usually takes a long time as all constraints and their weights are taken into consideration. It's best to let Skolaris finish the optimisation process. We suggest to let it run overnight or even longer if required.Once the timetable optimisation has finished, close the wizard to view the resulting timetable.
Results
The automatic optimisation can finish with several different results.A. Skolaris has found a feasible timetable
This is the best feasible timetable that Skolaris found, based on the combination of data and constraints. At this point please close the wizard and inspect the timetable.If the fitness is very low, you might want to open the timetable snapshots panel and see if there's a better timetable available. Such timetable will not be feasible (that's why the wizard will not present it as the result), but usually will be of much better overall quality. If that is the case, you might load it and try dealing with its infeasibilities by turning off the soft constraints momentarily and running the optimisation. If 100 % percent health is reached, re-enable soft constraints and run the optimisation yet again. This will usually result in a high-quality timetable relatively quickly.
If you feel certain timetable aspects are not to your liking once the fitness is rather high, this suggests inconsistency between the settings and your subjective preferences. You might want to revise constraint weights and rerun the full optimisation. The schedule will be adapted to the new requirements.
It is difficult to set up the aspect weights completely right from the beginning. If you're having difficulty with balancing the schedule, please consult our extensive Case study which documents the process of setting up aspect weights based on expectations of many timetable features and can help you get into the right mind set.
B. A feasible time schedule could not be found
This doesn't mean the solution does not exist, and Skolaris may be able to find it by rerunning the wizard. However, before doing so, we recommend double-checking all constraint configurations, timeslot and room availability limitations and lesson teacher assignments. Skolaris reports many common problems, but some conditions preventing successful scheduling may slip by the diagnostics.If you skipped the data analysis in the previous step, this is a good time to use it.
See the timetable help for more troubleshooting options.