Hi there,
If I a know that a teacher is going to be in a leave of absence beforehand, I would like to alter the timetable so that that other teachers do not have to do all the obligatory (in our case) substitutions.
I have been wondering how I could try to implement this without creating an all completely new timetable with the teacher having been temporarily deactivated, but instead trying to create a timetable which would try to retain as much as possible the structure of the original timetable, while eliminating all his/hers deactivated activities - something like rearranging the activities on a daily basis - vbviously to the extent that this could be achievable.
I suppose the duration of the leave could a day, a number of days or even a week.
How to try it? Lock all other activities and deactivate his/hers? Day by day?
I am sorry if this has been asked before, but i have not pinpointed it in the forum.Thanks for all the help.
It's depending on how long he is absent. If he is absent for 3 month or more, then i recommend to generate a totally new timetable. If he is absent for a few weeks, then you can try to lock all the other activities and generate again. It is very easy if an other teacher can do all his work, but it will be more complicated (in worst case even impossible) if other current teachers must do his work.
If he is absent only for a short time, then i recommend to import your FET file into TiTiTo and use that tool.
see:
https://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/forum/index.php?topic=1539.0
Generally speaking and in most cases, FET can handle these situations. But, it depends on your dataset.
1) If you need a completely manual approach, you can try the FET-read tool by Petros Nouvakis. But, I think that FET-read works correctly only with activities involving groups or subgroups. If your activities involve years, I think it's a good idea to use other approaches.
2) If a teacher is absent for one or two days (not the whole week). If you need an automated approach, you can use FET for most cases. Open the .fet file from the fet-results, change its name (if you care about keeping your older timetables) and generate again. Then go for example to Teachers -> Time Horizontal. Click on each one of the activities of the absent teacher for the specific days that he/she is going to be absent (for example Wednesday). On the upper right part of the window the information of each activity is going to be displayed. Write down the id of each one of these activities. Then, select all the activities (and not just the activities of this teacher) of the specific day and unlock them all. Then select all the activities (and not just the activities of this teacher) of this specific day and lock them to days (100%). Then go to Data -> Subactivities, filter the activities of the specific teacher and deactivate the ones with the id you wrote down. Then use the constraints "students not available times" and abstract (make not available) the latest hours of each one of the groups that are affected by the teacher's absence. Most of the time, you should take care of constraints of the type "Min days per week" for this teacher. If "min days" = 5 (for most schools) and the teacher is absent for one day, you should modify the respective constraint for this teacher and make "min days" = 4. Then generate again.
3) If a teacher is absent for the whole week. Again you open the file from the fet-results, you change its name (in order to keep your old timetables), you generate, you go for example to Teachers -> Time horizontal, you unlock all the activities of the timetable (and not just the activities of this teacher). Then select again all the activities of the timetable and lock them to days (100%). Then go to Data -> Activities (or Subactivities) and filter the activities of this specific teacher. Select them all and deactivate them. Use the constraints "students not available times" and abstract the latest hours for each one of the student groups that are affected by the teacher's absence. You should also take care of the constraints of the type "min days per week" for this teacher, and deactivate (or delete) it. Then generate again.
In most cases the above approaches should work. By locking the activities to their respective days, you don't change drastically the timetable of your school.
You should be very careful if (for example) the absent teacher has common activities (teachings) with other teachers (multiple teachers on a single activity), so deactivating these activities is wrong. Also, if you have some types of constraints for teachers/students, it might be impossible to use this approach, unless you modify and/or deactivate these constraints.
Vangelis.
Than you very much both for the various ideas and tools for tackling the issue and for the very detailed instructions.
You are welcome Nikandros.