How to account for more than one schedule?

[panyadee]

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.

[Liviu Lalescu]

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.

I think this is a non-issue, even if you work with home rooms for teachers or subject preferred room. Because the teacher will not be in two places at the same time -> the room will not be used by two activities at the same time.

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?

I think maybe you could add 3 more FET-hours, so that you have: 1, 2, SB1 (small break), 3, Lunch, 4, SB2, 5, SB3, 6. Make all the students unavailable in the SB slots. 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? Then, if you don't care about teachers' gaps - that's all. If you care about teachers' gaps, you need to add dummy activities for each teacher, 5*3-number_of_supervised_breaks, preferred times SB.

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.

Sorry, but I do not understand. You mean you would like to see only a real week in the HTML timetables (see the timetables in a nice format, not in a FET format)?

[panyadee]

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.

[Liviu Lalescu]

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?

In standard FET you could add say one activity of subject break for A and two activities of subject break for B, with preferred times on Monday.

Otherwise, if you would like FET to automatically choose two teachers for breaks, you can use a trick, but it is overkill. Also, FET might choose all three activities for teacher A. You can use for this trick FET rooms = real teachers. Preferred rooms of the activities = Room A or Room B; rooms A and B are available only on Monday.

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

>> 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?

I think you understand correctly, you don't need to use gaps constraints for teachers. Maybe for students?

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.

OK

[panyadee]

>> 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?

[Liviu Lalescu]

I am not sure I understand.

I thought breaks are once for both schools. If not, you could apply the same constraints - activities occupy max time slots from selection, for breaks.

You said you didn't like two files.

[panyadee]

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.

[Liviu Lalescu]

OK, I will wait for your results without thinking to the problem of breaks - I will leave you this pleasure

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.

Also, I thought now, it is good that you do not care about teachers' gaps, because you couldn't do that with my tricks - not with 10 days, not with 5 days.

[panyadee]

>> 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!

[Liviu Lalescu]

>> 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!

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.

This change must be made at the start of anything. After you added constraints/activities it is too late.

[panyadee]

>> 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.

[Liviu Lalescu]

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

[panyadee]

>> 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.

[Liviu Lalescu]

I think yes. I do not understand your 1/8 and 2/7. I think you mean Monday 1 and Monday 8, Monday 2 and Monday 9, etc.

[panyadee]

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

Yes, that is exactly what I mean.