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Good morning,

I have read through the thread on block planning and am not sure if this is what I am looking for. I have used Stelto to plan our blocks in the past and want to know if this is something similar. I have the following scenario I want to solve and want to understand if it is possible with FET.

Students give us subject choices and we want to plan blocks with their choices. IN other words, I want to say that in grade 9 students will go (at the same time) to Physics, Chemistry, Maths and English - they go there 5 times a week and let's call this block 1. During block 2 they go to Physics, Maths, French, Economics, Accounting, during block 3 they go to Chemistry, English, Design, Geography and Maths.

Each student will have one subject they attend in each block, so student A might have in the three blocks Physics, Maths and Geography, another might have Chemistry, French and Geography and another English, French and Maths.

I just want to plan how the blocks are structured based on the subject choices, in other words, which subjects run together and how to structure it in the timetable.

I hope that is enough information.

Is FET a better solution or should we use StElTo and import that into FET?

Is there documentation regarding block planning or sample files. I have always created an "Official" timetable or used one that was previously created. A help file or sample data for block planning would be very helpful, thank you.

Good day,

I have been using StElTo and FET for some years, but have never used the import functionality. I saw Volker's video and imported it, but I am not getting all the subjects imported. It says the import is successful, but I have students with 7 subjects and their timetables are only showing 3 or sometimes even only 1. I am not sure how to export the StElTo file to show here, but I've attached the very basic FET file that I've imported. All these students should have 6 or 7 subjects. I've also attached a screenshot of the StEltTo elections/votes as well as the generated timetable in FET.

Any suggestions on what I am missing or where I am going wrong?

Good day,

Is there a way to structure StElTo to split a line in two? For example, some lines require 6 periods and other require 3. Is it possible to split the 6 lines into matching two with 3 periods eacch? Does it make sense?

Good day,

I have a scenario where students to go most of their classes in lines, for example, there are 6 lines with about 7 subjects in each line. They go to these classes 5 times a week. They have 30 lessons in total a week. Let's say that they have 3 other fixed periods, like test and assembly, it means that the timetable is filled to 28 lessons with 2 free lessons. They have 6 classes, but the way I've built it is by making one timetable for the entire group. This all works fine. Now I want to add the last two periods, for a subject called Skills, but the problem is that it is the same subject and the same teacher, split into 6 different groups. Does that make sense? In my opinion that is not possible.

Example:
Line1(5), Line2(5), Line3(5), Line4(5), Line5(5), Line6(5), Other(3), Skills(2)

Each line has 7 different teachers, the "Other" subjects are seen as a group with all teachers, Skills is one teacher for all 6 groups/classes.

By the way, I've created the lines using StElTo and then just created a subject in FET named Line 1 with all the required teachers.

Is there a way to solve this?

We are running a timetable of 5 days and I want each teacher to have one period (hour) "free" per day. This is easy to implement, but there is one day (a Friday), where we have one less period.
Monday - Thursday 8 periods
Friday - 7 periods

If I implement max 7 hours per day, then some teachers end up not having a free period on a Friday. Is there a way around it?

Thank you,
Adele

Hi everyone,

I've got a scenario where I've got a timetable that takes quite a while to build, but I've got a new requirement where a group of students can go to any of two teachers, not a specific teacher. So for a practical lesson they can go to either Teacher A or Teacher B. Is there a solution to this in FET Timetabler? If I specify a specific teacher, it doesn't build (I've let it run for over 5 hours multiple times), but without that constraint it does build.

Any help or guidance are appreciated.

Good evening everyone,

I have been using FET timetabling for years. I build various timetables for our different schools. One school's timetable is particularly tricky with lots of different combinations. I've always been able to get away with doing things the quick and easy way (or perhaps the only way I know how).

I use StElTo and then manually use that information in FET in a very basic format. I also can't import the exports from StElTo into FET as there are missing files.

Do the developers of FET provide a support/training function to assist me in showing how I can perhaps set the system up in a better way? Our basic rules aren't being met and timetable is not building. I'm not sure if it is because it's really impossible, or because I am setting it up in a limiting way.

Please let me know if such a service is offered and if so, at what cost.

Thank you very much in advance.

Adele

Good day,

Different aged group students have different breaks and teachers can have any of the breaks.

So let's say
Period 1 08:00 - 08:30 everyone has class
Period 2 08:30 - 09:00 everyone has class
Period 3 09:00 - 09:30 grade 1 to 3 have break, but grade 4 - 6 have class
Period 4 09:30 - 10:00 grade 4 to 6 have break, but grade 1 - 3 have class
Period 5 10:00 - 10:30 everyone has class
Period 6 10:30 - 11:00 grade 1 to 3 have break, but grade 4 - 6 have class
Period 7 11:00 - 11:30 grade 4 to 6 have break, but grade 1 - 3 have class
Period 8 11:30 - 12:00 everyone has class

I did not specify any breaks on FET, just managed the "students not available" set.

Now i want teachers to have at least one of those two breaks, but most teach grade 1 to 6.

Is there a rule where I can say I want each teacher to occupy a maximum of one period between period 3 and 4 and also only only period between period 6 and 7. I don't mind which one it is and it doesn't have to be the same on every day.

O hope the question is stated clearly. 

Thanks in advance,
Adele

Good day,

We have science practicals that happen in a laboratory. There are too many to fit into the lab for the week. Is there a way that I can mark all the practical periods and then say those periods can overlap, but can't overlap more than once in a weekly cycle, i.e. that I can say this week Physics has a prac and next week Bio has a prac.

It can place however way it wants, there are no other timing constraints, as long as there are not more than 1 clash in a weekly cycle between activities with a certain tag.

I hope this makes sense.

Thank you,
Adele

Good day,

Firstly, thank you for a great tool!

I want to use StElTo to schedule my students into classes (I've been using it successfully before). I have one subject that has more hours than the other subjects I want to schedule. E.g. Mathematics has 6 hours, all other subjects have 4, 2 or 1 hours. Is there a way that I can split mathematics and let it run with the courses with 4 hours and the rest with the courses of 2 hours? I know this is possible by splitting mathematics into 2 subjects. The trick is that I want the same students in the maths4 and the maths2 courses.

Is that possible?

Thank you,
Adele

I've been doing our school's timetable for about 2 years. I probably did 6 or so different timetables during the past year due to changes in lockdown, etc. So have some experience and idea of how the program works. Our setup is not that complicated, we're only a high school with 5 grades. Each grade has multiple classes, for example 8Blue, 8 Red, 8 Yellow, 9 Blue, etc.

The basic setup in our school works as follows. Students choose subjects based on a predefined list, so they can choose between Business, Economics and Computer Science or they choose Biology, Accounting, Geography, etc.

We only have one teacher per grade per subject, so grade 8 Biology is always Mr. X and grade 10 Biology is always Mr. Y, etc.

I set subjects up as, e.g. Grade 9 Key 1: Bus/Eco/Comp and Grade 9 Key 2: Bio/Acc/Geo, etc. I then allocate the teachers for those subjects and specify that it's the entire grade 9 group that has these subjects 4 periods a week.

Is this the right way to do it? Is there a better way? Out timetable is a bit more complicated now as we are growing, but it's really battling to build and I hardly have any constraints in, apart from one teacher that only works later during the day and the normal minimum days between activities and a very limited amount of fixed periods and one room that's not available on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Other than that there aren't constraints.

Firstly, is this the optimal way of doing things?

Secondly, how do I manage the rooms best? We have some teachers that share a class. Now in my circumstances above the biology might need to happen in the science lab, but the accounting teacher shares with the business teacher, so there it needs to be the business class. I couldn't get multiple rooms to work properly, so I've created another teacher called Venue: Business and just allocate that to all the business and accounting classes (with the actual business or accounting teacher too) so that they don't overlap. How else will I get it right? For now all Venue: Geo, Venue: Afr, Venue: DT and Venue: Eng periods are allocated to a single teacher only, Ive taken extra teachers away and still battling to build.

Thirdly, we have a test period and I don't care when the test period is or which teacher invigilates. I have a list of 15 teachers that can invigilate those periods, but as soon as I allocate teachers manually, the timetable really doesn't want to build. Is there a way that I can tell FET that these 15 periods (they are different times and not linked to each other at all) can be taken by any of these list of teachers?

Our school starts this coming week and I have no working solution. I've spent over 100 hours on this timetable and pulling my hair out right now. Any help will be appreciated.

I've attached my timetable. I think I'm so used to it now that I'm missing some basics.

I also attached a multiple generation of 5 minutes for my timetable. I can set it to one hour too, mostly it builds in either under 2 minutes or it doesn't. But as I said, many constraints haven't been implemented, just want to know if there's a better way of doing it, because when I add the constraints I want, it doesn't generate at all.

Good day,

Is there a way to temporarily disable some activities without deleting them? I have a timetable that doesn't want to build. I don't have any constraints - not even rooms, apart from the normal days between activities constraints. I want to remove some activities temporarily to see where the problem lies. Can I disable an activity like you can disable a constraint? I gets to about 85% of the activities and then just hovers up and down there.

Or is the best way to make a backup, delete some things and then go back to the backup?

Thank you,
Adele

I have a 9th grade class which I don't know how to schedule as the timetable does not build. I am not an expert in FET Timetable, but have used it for quite basic timetables in the past. I also don't know if I'm setting it up correctly. I have the following information. I also don't use subgroups and not sure how to set it up.

We have 4 home classes - we thought those 4 classes can go together to English and Maths, so that is pretty easy - as all students have english and maths. S0 9Blue will go to English as a class and to maths as a class and 9Red will do the same (at different times) etc.
We have 39 periods a week.
I know how many students chose each of the other subjects
English is 69 students - 5 periods per week in a class
English is 69 students - 4 periods per week in a class and 2 periods together the entire grade
Two foreign languages are split also 29/40 students  - 5 periods per week
They also have assembly and assessment where the entire grade will be together during those 3 periods.
Those are quite straight forward. The problem comes in with the following, which all has 4 periods per week and they choose 5 subjects. I've calculated and out of the 69 students there are 40 unique subject choices.
Physics: 60 (split into 4 groups)  -
Chemistry: 59 (4 groups)
Accounting: 25 (1 group)
Design: 19 (1 group)
Biology: 45 (2 groups)
Computer Science: 47 (2 groups)
Economics: 26 (2 groups)
Business: 51 (2 groups)
Geography: 13 (1 group)

One subject is taught by one teacher only and students will have no free/off periods.

I would like to split the groups into as evenly as possible, i.e. Biology has 45 students, so 22 and 23 would be ideal.

Is there any way that I can set up FET to assist with this? The way I am doing it is not working. What I do is I would, for example,
create a subject called Physics/Chemistry/Biology/Computer Science and then add the 4 teachers to it and all the 4 grade 9 classes to the activity with 4 periods per week.

I understand why the timetable doesn't build (there are too many periods that they go together during a week so that maths, for example is more periods than what is free on their open periods. I hope that makes sense.

I am really desperate for a solution and think I've read before that sub groups can possibly solve the problem, but I don't know how to set it up.

I've added some information as I've read about MAPR and BP and still confused about which one to try.
Any detailed help will be greatly appreciated.

PS: Just come across student election tool, so will look at that too and give feedback.

We have students who made subject choices and want to know what is the best way to schedule the information into a timetable.

E.g. 10 students chose Business/French/Computers/etc. and 15 chose Business/Spanish/Geo/etc.

is there a way that FET TImetable can tell us how to divide the classes as to best fit the values into groups of teachers?

I would ideally want to limit class sizes as well, e.g. no class size is allowed to go over 25 students.

If not, does anyone know of a program that can tell me how to schedule my subjects?

We have 25 periods a week now and some subgroups only have 21 or so periods a week - so they have some free periods during a week.

How can I force certain days to be full and others not, for example, I want them to have no free/off periods during a Monday and Wednesday.

Is there a way to accomplish this? I don't want to place activities during fixed times as my timetable has trouble building then, but any activities can be placed during those days.

Thank you.

Hi All,

What is the correct way of adding more than one room to an activity? I have an activity where a group of students split (let's call it physics, biology, computer science). The class splits to the physics lab, computer lab and biology lab. How can I enforce that in FET?

What I've tried is creating 3 rooms (Bio, Phys, CS). I've also created 3 tags (Venue: Bio, Venue: Phys, Venue: CS) and linked the rooms to the tag. On the activity I specified the 3 tags. Is that the wrong way of doing it? I get the following error when I try and generate.

Cannot generate timetable, because for activity with id=12 you have no allowed preferred room (from preferred room(s) constraints).

Thank you,
Adele

I want to limit teachers to teach a max 3 out of 4 last periods of the week.

A teacher should not teach Monday to Thursday's last period, but can have any one of the 4 days' last period off.

E.g. they can teach Monday, Tuesday, Thursday period 9 and not Wednesday or Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, but not Tuesday.

Is there any way to do it for a specific set of teachers?