Messages

You are welcome! Unfortunately, I don't see any workaround for the problem with the official version of FET.

Hello Liviu,

I hope you're doing well.

I wanted to kindly follow up and ask if there have been any updates or new ideas regarding the issue we discussed earlier, specifically about randomly assigning section activities to teaching assistants while ensuring each section is explicitly handled by one TA, and that each TA knows exactly which groups they're assigned to.

We're still facing some generation difficulties when assigning these sections manually, especially at scale, and I was wondering if there's any workaround or improvement in recent versions that could help address this constraint more efficiently.

This follow-up is particularly important as we are now preparing to work on the new timetable for the upcoming academic year, and we hope to resolve these assignment challenges ahead of time.

I appreciate your continued support and look forward to your insights.

Thank you for all your help.

We are implementing the software on a large scale within the Computer Science Faculty, which includes over 50 professors, 100 teaching assistants, and two buildings with 30 rooms. Occasionally, we encounter a challenging issue where the software becomes stuck during generation, indicating "impossible activities." As a result, we often have to manually reassign the sections for the teaching assistants repeatedly until it successfully generates.

I understand that implementing a custom constraint might be difficult. If it's not feasible within the current system, do you have any alternative approaches or workarounds that could help us achieve random section distribution more efficiently?

Once again, I truly appreciate your time and effort in assisting with this.

ya max level of overlapping is 3.
overlap are allowed with same number of TAs, NO PROBLEM WITH THE SPACE we had more than 25 labs available each day.
So, maybe I'm teaching to Section 3 in Lab, and Eng Dina Atef is teaching to another Section in another lab at the same time.

OK, the file you created is good but has a problem maybe you may misunderstood me,
the whole year attend the lecture together -once a week, 1 activity- in the main hall with the professor then they are separated into sections to attend the practical part with the TAs,
so we have 1 Lecture assigned to Dr. Mahmoud Ismail only and tagged with Lecture, and 22 sections assigned to the TAs and marked as Lab-Practical,
So actually each group timetable Must Have 1 Lecture and 1 Lab-Practical.
the generated timetable for each group now contains only the Lecture. And the generated timetable for each TA contains the assigned sections but I don't know which one I should go to teach. I have 22 sections and I must be placed in exactly known 8 sections.
Section Timetable (Miss the practical Lab)
You cannot view this attachment.
TA timetable (Miss the number or name of each section)
You cannot view this attachment.

[manually]

Thanks for your reply, maybe my previous file wasn't organized cause it is our final file so it contains so may information, so I created another file You cannot view this attachment. as an example of the scenario in the post:

the subject: Probability and Statistics for the Year 2:
The year has one lecture.
the students are divided into 22 sections.
The sections are numbered 1 to 22 and have been entered into the program as groups.
The subject's professor is Dr. Mahmoud Ismail.
Teaching assistants:
Mohamed Emad - 8 sections
Dina Atef - 8 sections
Ahmed Hossam - 6 sections

I added the lecture and assigned it to the Dr. and give it the approbirate tag to take a place where the lectures were taught.
Now the problem is: how I add the 22 activities of the sections and assign each section to one of the TAs randomly.
the previous scenario I was following was like the picture:
You cannot view this attachment.
to add the TA and the tag that tells this is section and the subject then select 8 sections manually and enable Separately to add each section as an activity.

I want the TA to take the 8 sections randomly cause maybe the sections I selected manually wasn't good or sometimes the generation tells me that one of them is impossible to be placed.

Now, these are all the activities that take place in the college:

We have teaching assistants and professors, and we have lectures and sections. We have two buildings. The lectures are held in designated and equipped auditoriums, and the sections are taught in specialized and equipped labs.

Importantly, we have six different years, each representing a different academic year. Each academic year is divided into several sections. Every academic year has a set number of subjects, and each subject has both a lecture and sections. The number of sections per subject equals the number of sections in the academic year in which it is taught.

As for the lectures, they are assigned to professors, with each professor handling one or more subjects, which are taught in auditoriums. Each professor is accompanied by a number of teaching assistants who will teach the subject, and it is known how many sections each teaching assistant will take.

Now, I want the program to distribute these sections randomly without assigning specific sections to specific teaching assistants.

For example, the subject of Statistics for the second year:
The year has one lecture and is divided into 22 sections.
The sections are numbered from 1 to 22 and have been entered into the program as groups.

The subject's professor is Dr. Mahmoud Ismail.
Teaching assistants:

Mohamed Emad - 8 sections
Dina Atef - 8 sections
Ahmed Hossam - 6 sections


Now, I want to distribute the sections among the teaching assistants randomly in the best possible way without assigning specific sections to each teaching assistant. Additionally, I would like the generated timetable to display which teaching assistant is assigned to which section.