Compulsory teaching hours for teachers

[Liviu Lalescu]

Hello!

I have a user (Azu Boba) reporting the wish below. Maybe you can tell me: do you also need this? Is there any tricks you can use to solve this?

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Currently there is no option in FET to set desired teaching times for a
teacher. You can do the opposite, set undesired/unavailable times for a teacher, but it's not the same thing. Sometimes you just want a teacher to teach on a specific hour (usually on his/her request) without specifying the subject/class. E.g. teacher X wants to start teaching on the first hour every Wednesday, without specifying subject/class in order to maximize flexibility. I think this new restriction will be a very helpful addition. Currently, I have to generate multiple timetables and browse the results in order
to pinpoint cases where the specific restrictions are met.

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Thanks for looking into it!
Yes, currently I am forcing the activities into the slots I want but
usually it takes a lot of restrictions (teacher not available usually)
that I need to remember to remove as soon as I find a desirable solution in order to keep the general timetable flexible for future changes. Here in Greece, desired and undesired slots have about the same weight. The thing is that not all teaching hours have the same time length (1st hour 45min, 2nd 45min, 3rd 45min, 4th 40min, 5th 40min, 6th 40min, 7th 35min) and some teachers require first hours for some classes in order to teach more time consuming subjects (the subject might vary but the necessity for the time slot doesn't). That necessarily doesn't that they object to teach late hours too.
Also, it is easier to add only one restriction like the one I am  describing to drag e.g. the teaching hours of a teacher earlier in a day
than to add multiple not available restrictions at the late hours in
order to accomplish the same thing. Also, those late hour restrictions
might make the timetable too rigid and usually without serious reason.
There are also many other examples but are much more complex.
Generally I think that this is something that a lot of other timetable
organizers would want. Truthfully, it was the 2nd thing I noticed  missing after the not-so-easy lock/unlock of activities that you
currently solved.

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[Volker Dirr]

I don't need that at hour school.

I know a reason why it can maybe usefull, but i am not sure if that also mean a like that constraint, because you favour teachers by that. So even if this feature is someday added, i highly recommand to talk about that to the college in a meeting.

Yes, i think there a already today workaround possible if you just want to care about starting time of the teacher. They are not 100% the same, but pretty close.

First of all you need to add a period more then you have (add period 0).

Then add to pseudo activities (just with the teacher name) into the period before he want to start school.

Example:
a teacher want to start in the first period. So add a pseudo activity into period 0.

a teacher want to start in the fourth period. So add not available in period 0 to 2. Add pseudo activity into period 3.

The trick is, that you also need a max gaps constarint to use this workaround.

Should i explain more detailed?

[Chafik Graiguer]

Browsing and reading the forum threads, I came across this thread:

Currently there is no option in FET to set desired teaching times for a teacher.
[...]
. I think this new restriction will be a very helpful addition. Currently, I have to generate multiple timetables and browse the results in order
to pinpoint cases where the specific restrictions are met.

Yes
It would be very nice to have such an option
because, sometimes, some teachers wish to teach in specific hours or days . That necessarily doesn't mean that they object to teach in other hours or day
but it is preferable for them to teach in the desirable times
We could actually acheive this by setting "Not availale", but it is more restrective

[Liviu Lalescu]

Browsing and reading the forum threads, I came across this thread:

Currently there is no option in FET to set desired teaching times for a teacher.
[...]
. I think this new restriction will be a very helpful addition. Currently, I have to generate multiple timetables and browse the results in order
to pinpoint cases where the specific restrictions are met.

Yes
It would be very nice to have such an option
because, sometimes, some teachers wish to teach in specific hours or days . That necessarily doesn't mean that they object to teach in other hours or day
but it is preferable for them to teach in the desirable times
We could actually acheive this by setting "Not availale", but it is more restrective

I'm sorry, cannot do that (at least for now), too difficult.

[silvia]

this is exactely one of the things we would like to have, but we are doing for now with the other option:
adding a constraint for that specific teacher that says preferred slots and I assign a 90% weight or something like that.

[Chafik Graiguer]

but we are doing for now with the other option:
adding a constraint for that specific teacher that says preferred slots and I assign a 90% weight or something like that.

Actuually, there is no such constraint for teachers !
do you mean constraint: "a set of activities has a set of prefered time slots" ?

[silvia]

yes, only that those activities have no students set and no subjects. only the name of a teacher. sorry for being so little specific :-)

[Corfiot]

Wouldn't the teacher be considered "occupied" wherever that activity is placed? Effectively displacing the teacher's other (and real) activities? Does this actually work?

I think you may need to go with each activity prefferred slots...

[silvia]

I have added a time constraint for activities. that activity has teacher1, no students, no subject. It's not an activity, it's only a time constraint. Every activity for THAT specific teacher will be placed preferebly 1st time in the morning, if possible, but if the timetable is impossible, the activities will be placed somewhere else, because I don't give it a 100% weight.

Hope it is more clear now.