Hello!
When a teacher is absent (for example for 1 day), what is the suggested way for changing the timetable just for this specific day? It seems that it's very easy to unlock the activities from a generated timetable (for 1 day) and generate a new one. But, what I need is a way to make the teacher's activities for the specific day INACTIVE (and some other changes, such as min days per week for this teacher, min hours per day for students sets, etc.). Is there any way to do this? Or is it easy for you Liviu to add two buttons [Deactivate and Activate activities] (and make some new programming) in the Lock/Unlock activities window (or in another window)? I think that this would be helpful for changing the generated timetable when a teacher is absent...
Thanks!
Hmm.. yes, only "inactive" might be also nice trick. I think that is not too difficult to code.
The "problem" is, that it will effect a lot off other constraints (like you said yourself already). So you might need to deactivate them also (but sadly you normal don't know which one should be deactivated; so that is a "try and error"-choose.). That will be difficult to code and also difficult to use for a user.
Of course the advantages are:
- you might get a "perfect" solution.
The disadvantages:
- this way of timetabling might be much to slow. (of course, if you have luck, then it will give you a perfect solution in a second. But if you don't have luck, then you need to disable a lot of activities and constraints until you get a solution)
- there might be many changes in the timetable (so it might confuse a lot of teachers and students. You might not have enough time to tell all of them the timetable changes)
At daily work you haven't got enough time to care about such stuff. You get a call from a teacher that he is ill and you need to have a solution in a few seconds.
So in normal case you do that with an other kind of software. A software that tries to move forward activities (from first or last period) and, (if it fails; and it might fail often; depending on your timetable) show you the teachers' free periods to do a substitution planning.
You can do that with TiTiTo.
Maybe have a look at that.
see:
http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/forum/index.php?board=36.0
I do not have experience handling absent teachers. Please see Volker's answer above. We can talk some more, if needed.
Thank you both Liviu and Volker!
Volker, I had already downloaded TiTiTo, but I didn't understand how it works... :( Another tool is Fet-Read (by Nouvakis) which seems to do what I need, but I not familiar with the graphical user interface. Liviu, is it too difficult for you to add one more window (like the Lock/Unlock window) -with the necessary code of course- for generated timetables in order to make the specific activities of the absent teacher inactive? If you it, I think that I can achieve what I need.
Did you saw the manual in the main directory of TiTiTo? There is a quick guide on page 4 and a more detailed description in the whole manual.
Let me know what i described too bad. I will try to explain more detailed then.
Quote from: alex on December 19, 2015, 04:43:37 PM
Liviu, is it too difficult for you to add one more window (like the Lock/Unlock window) -with the necessary code of course- for generated timetables in order to make the specific activities of the absent teacher inactive? If you it, I think that I can achieve what I need.
So, you want to select a day and a teacher and inactivate their activities? It is easy.
But is it too difficult to just write down on paper the id-s of these activities and deactivate them in the activities dialog?
I am reluctant to add this in the official FET, as it seems to me a bit of a peculiar request (unusual might be a better term). I have no experience in this field, but I think not many people would use this.
Would you like a custom version? It should be easy to make, from my part.
Anyway, TiTiTo and FET-read have special functions for absent teachers substitution (I think) and might be more suitable.
When an activity is split (for example a subject is taught for 3 times per week) how can I find the specific ID for the activity for this exact day?
See the teachers' timetable from the FET interface. Click on a cell. It will show the id, in the details text.
It is not possible to see the exact id in the HTML results. You have a file activities.xml, with the day, hour, and room for each activity, but I don't know if this is useful.
Thank you Liviu
I think that this is going to solve by problem! :)