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>> I think you mean Monday 1 and Monday 8, Monday 2 and Monday 9, etc.

Yes, that is exactly what I mean.

>> Yes, I was thinking of lunch as a FET hour.

Got it.

So for your proposed one day/14 hour format, would the main difference be that instead of making secondary year groups unavailable during week 2, I would make them unavailable during hours 8-14?  Then of course the time slots in my "no activities occupy max times slots" constraints would be hours 1/8, hours 2/7, etc?

Thanks.

>> No, I mean from the start you can input in FET 5 days and 14 "hours". The constraints activities max simultaneous in selected time slots will be modified.

I think I understand.  So before I start everything, create a 5-day schedule with 7 + 7 = 14 FET hours.  But why 7 + 7 = 14 FET hours?  There are 6 periods per day, so wouldn't it be 6 +6 = 12?  Each day there are also 3 small breaks, plus 1 longer lunch.  Are you factoring in lunch as a FET hour?

Thanks.

>> I think that you could add 5 days per week and 7+7 hours per day. So the timetable will be nicer and you may not need special timetable formatting.

Are you now speaking of how to best/easily output timetables for both primary and secondary schools, given the modified 10-day timetable you created for me?  If so, I will use this as a starting point when I get there.  Thanks again!

I was just thinking off the top of my head, and perhaps it wasn't fully thought out.  I was thinking that, as long as I was going to schedule and track break duty manually (through the use of a static, offline spreadsheet), I might as well create a new FET "timetable" for each school.  For example, the secondary timetable would consist of 4 FET hours (one for each break), and I could schedule teachers into each hour with various constraints.  Obviously this would not update automatically when I update my main timetable.  I would create a similar "timetable" for the primary school breaks, as their break times are different.  There are no shared resources to consider.

Anyway, that's an exercise I can probably test and carry out myself, offline, after the hard work has been done.  If we have to use a simple spreadsheet we will.

Thanks again for everything.  I will post back here with any issue, probably when it comes to formatting.

>> Anyway, I think breaks are easy to care about even manually.

What about separate FET files for breaks--one file for primary school and one file for secondary school?

Good to know about the rooms.

>> But you need to consider in advance how many breaks will each teacher supervise, so you will add one or two activities for each teacher. Can you allow this?

The format we would like to have for teacher break duty is: Teachers A and B are assigned to all breaks on Monday, Teachers C and D are assigned to all breaks on Tuesday, etc.  This typically results in each teacher assigned one or two days of break duty per week.  Would the constraints you described still be applicable to this format?

>> If you care about teachers' gaps

I'm still trying to understand gaps and how/if I should use them.  Gaps--as defined by FET--seem like they would be rarely important to us.  What is more important is the free periods for each teacher (and room).  The FET manual says that if a teacher is free first period or last period, these do not count as gaps.  But in our system they do count as free periods, so we need to track them, as well as all other individual free periods.  Anyway, I think the resolution your offered is still applicable here:  if I add dummy activities for each teacher, FET will be able to schedule teachers during break duty.  Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Am I understanding gaps correctly?  Am I correct that monitoring gaps would not provide much utility for my school?  Or can I still somehow make them useful in my timetable?

Regarding my output comment, that was not meant for you to investigate.  That was more of a note to myself that, when I finish creating this new timetable, I will have some additional formatting to do in order to make it look the way we want.  That may require some additional forum posts :-)

Thanks.

Apologies, you are correct.  I was misreading the times for period 6.

In that case, I can see that your timetable appears to meet the teacher and student requirements--thanks for being so patient.

The remaining features I'd like to see in this timetable are:

1.  The aforementioned rooms.  This may be a non-issue, since the only rooms shared between primary and secondary are the art room and music room (these are the rooms belonging to the shared teachers--the art teacher and music teacher).  Those subjects never use any other room, and no other activities ever use these rooms.  If I just use a subject-->preferred room constraint on each, I think this is then a non-issue?  Please confirm.

2.  Ideally I would like to be able to schedule teachers during all break times--in both schools.  Is this still possible?  Just off the top of my head, what about the possibility of creating a 'Week 3,' which would be completely unavailable to students?

3.  Output - The output for this new timetable will change.  I'll have to first re-build the timetable under this new format to see exactly how output is affected.

Thanks.

OK I am inching towards an understanding.  I had forgotten about the help buttons within the program.  That description helped. 

I think I understand the constraint and how we are using it to account for overlapping primary/secondary periods.

Are you perhaps missing a set of "no activities occupy max times slots" constraints?  I see that you have constraints in place so that the timetable does not assign a teacher for period 5 in school 1 and period 6 in school 2.  But what about the same constraint for period 6-school 1 and period 6-school 2?  Aren't those constraints necessary as well?  If you confirm this, then that validates my understanding of this constraint and timetable.

I do have additional questions about this timetable, but many of them may be resolved after I completely understand this constraint. 

Thank you very much for that!  I have taken a look and here are my follow-ups.

I have seen all of the "a set of activities occupies max time slots from selection" constraints you added.  But I still am trying to figure out exactly what they are accomplishing in this timetable.  I'd like to fully understand it before I process the other questions.  Can we consider a more simplified version of your timetable that only contains two activities--one for each year group--that are not split.  If I then add the max-time-slots constraint for this activity (see attached screenshot for the exact constraint I added), what exactly is it changing about my timetable?  I have also attached the resultant timetables.

It *seems* like you are employing the constraint to ensure that activity 1 is only scheduled during week 1, and activity 2 is only scheduled during week 2.  But doesn't the "y1 is unavailable during week 2" constraint already ensure this?  I feel as I am misunderstanding something, hence the clarification request.

Are start/end times specified anywhere in your timetable?  Or does it only make reference to periods now?

Also (and I'm sorry if I didn't mention this earlier), can this process be simplified if it is known that the only resources shared between primary and secondary are 3 teachers (and 2-3 rooms)?

Thanks.

Thanks very much for this.

>> I think I cannot care about rooms.

Does this mean that the software will not check for room conflicts?

>> There are many constraints to be added. 5*6*n_teachers. Each time a teacher changes his activities, you need to update his constraints.

What are these constraints?  Is there a way to somehow import constraints?

>> I do not yet care for short breaks. Let's see for now if it works without short breaks, and we'll try for these maybe later.

OK.  Ideally though I would like those short breaks to be included in the timetable (for scheduling teacher break duty).  But if it comes at a huge hassle, I guess I could pass.

>> You need to make the teachers not to work on both 9-10 week 1 and 9-10 week 2, then on 10 week 1 versus 10 week 2, then on 11 week 1 versus 11:10 week 2, then on 12:40 week 1 versus 13 week 2, then on 13:30 week 1 versus 13 week 2, then on 14:20 week 1 versus 14:10 week 2. Each day.

This appears to be instructing me to make every teacher unavailable for every period and every day, for both weeks.  Is that what you intended?  Or am I correct that week 1 will correspond to primary and week 2 to secondary?  In that case, would I need to tell FET that secondary teachers are not available at any period during week 1, and primary teachers are not available at any period in week 2.

>> For that, use the magic constraint activities occupy max time slots from selection.

If my above supposition is correct, why can't I just use Data-->Time constraints-->Teachers-->A teacher's not available times?  Wouldn't this accomplish what I described above?  Can you explain to me (or point me to documentation that explains), "a set of activities occupies max time slots from selection?"  The online manual doesn't seem to contain information on it.

>> use the magic constraint activities occupy max time slots from selection. Max occupied = 1, selected slots = two slots, activities = all activities of the teacher.

What two slots would I select?  Each primary/secondary pair?

>> If you have some exercise, you might add these constraints fast enough.

I didn't understand this--what do you mean exactly by this?

>> Of course the students are not available on week 1 or on week 2.

Can you clarify this?  As I understand, this means that all students and all teachers are unavailable for all lessons in both week 1 and week 2.  For sure I have misunderstood something above. 

Thanks.

OK thanks. 

I'm pretty sure I understand your explanation of adding teacher break duty to the timetable.  Am I correct though that you have explained how to have FET display break duty for each teacher on the timetable?  I am looking more for FET to carry out assigning each teacher one or two random days on which to perform break duty.  Does FET have that functionality?

>> But there is really a problem with the duration, if you cannot specify the duration of each activity from the start.

Are you referring here solely to my other issue about primary/secondary schedule differences?  Or are you speaking her about a more general, more serious issue I have with my timetable in terms of period duration?

Thanks for your help.

I've attached a jpg showing the schedule for each school.  Note that the start and end times most periods are different between the two schools.  Additionally, the duration of the lunch period is different.

>> I meant the problem is that you need to define the duration of the activity in FET before generating the timetable. This is the problem.

I can't define the duration of the activity because the activity does not define the duration, the period defines the duration.  In other words, my science lessons are not 60 minutes in duration.  Periods 1, 2, and 3 are 60 minutes in duration, regardless of the activity scheduled for each.  Am I understanding everything correctly?

What is the best way to insert a lunch period?  Should I add it as a break time or an activity?  The answer to this may depend on the answer to my next (related) question.

Is there a way to have FET schedule teachers to work during break times?  Once or twice a week each teacher is required to work 'break duty,' which involves them standing outside with the students during break so they don't kill each other.  It would be nice for us if FET could schedule these and include them in statistics.

Our breaks are 10 minutes in duration, and only occur three times a day.  We also have the aforementioned lunch period, which is 50 minutes in duration.

Thanks for the reply.

>> you then need to specify the exact duration of each activity (so each activity will have a specified duration of 4, 5, or 6).

I assume that I should do this after the timetable is set in stone (or at least close enough to stone)?  We are still tweaking it.

>> Maybe you could show us a model of the timetable (picture, pdf).

I would love to.  What exactly do you mean by 'model' though.  How about the schedule (periods, start and end time of each period) for each school (primary and secondary)?  What else should I post?