Suggestion: a student set can't begin at a set of starting time

[Diego Froner]

Dear developers,

I have used FET for almost 8 years, and a very common complaint about students' set schedules is the start time in the last hours on Fridays. So, considering this, is it possible to implement a constraint to prevent a student set (or all students' set) from beginning at a specific set of time slots?

[Vangelis Karafillidis]

If I understand your problem correctly...
Can't you use the constraint "not available times" (for students)? For example, you can make the last hours of Friday "not available" for specific students sets (or all of them).

Vangelis.

[Liviu Lalescu]

Yes, or maybe force a set of students to have activities on Friday 1st hour or 2nd hour with the help of a constraint activities occupy min time slots from selection, activities = all the activities of that students set, selected = Friday 2nd (or say Friday 2nd and Friday 3rd), select with X or red, min occupied = 1 (or 2).

[Diego Froner]

Sorry if I wasn't clear about the problem. In summary, it would be the same as the constraint "a set of activities has a set of preferred starting times", but instead of "a set of activities", it would be "a student set."

For instance, if I have two time slots (7pm and 9pm), the allowed configurations for Fridays would be:

7pm - OCCUPIED
9pm - free

7pm - OCCUPIED
9pm - OCCUPIED

7pm - free
9pm - free

The not allowed configuration for Fridays would be:

7pm - free
9pm - OCCUPIED

[Vangelis Karafillidis]

You can choose the students set from the constraint's ( "a set of activities has a set of preferred starting times") UI. Does it solve your problem?

[Diego Froner]

I don't think it would solve the problem. Considering my last example, this case wouldn't be allowed if the 7pm and 9pm slots contain different activities:

7pm - OCCUPIED
9pm - OCCUPIED

[Diego Froner]

Examples. Look for Fridays, last day on the right.

1 - This should not be allowed:

https://1drv.ms/i/s!AnoWmWZLIF38hp5F3mmDKq3mAlHOGA?e=likzpL

2 - This is allowed:

https://1drv.ms/i/s!AnoWmWZLIF38hp5GvhKFtD4wGSpMlw?e=QxEuSz

3 - This is allowed:

https://1drv.ms/i/s!AnoWmWZLIF38hp5HzMTIo7YFiuXszA?e=qgYynw

4 - This is allowed:

https://1drv.ms/i/s!AnoWmWZLIF38hp5IdewzBrK0-Zksww?e=a3KWvH

[Liviu Lalescu]

I understood. If you have activities in Friday last hours, you must have activities in Friday before-the-last hours.

I think it is not possible with as it is now FET-6.22.0 official. It might be possible as a customization, I am not sure if perfectly or not-perfect-but-working. I am not sure it is possible to add this new constraint in the official FET, I don't know if a suitable name is available and also it is a very specialized constraint.

[Diego Froner]

It should resemble this window, but for the entire student set rather than specific activities:

https://1drv.ms/i/s!AnoWmWZLIF38hp5JmSvzniODzJxhsw?e=1hv5A5

A suitable name for this constraint could be 'A students set has a preferred set of starting times.'

The closest existing constraint is 'A students set begins early,' but these 'early' time slots are not configurable.

[Liviu Lalescu]

It might be indeed a good idea and constraint name. I will write down this suggestion (in the TODO file).

[Diego Froner]

Thanks.

Best regards.