Lags/bubbles due to COVID-19

[Miguel Freitas (PT)]

Good Morning!

First of all, I leave my public thanks for this fantastic software!

I am responsible for making the schedules at my School, but the classes must be out of phase/in bubbles, because of COVID-19. That is, they cannot come in at the same time, they cannot take breaks at the same time, and they cannot go to lunch at the same time.

Basically, the schedules should have this form:



What is the best way for me to enter times/schedules? Thanks.

[Liviu Lalescu]

Hello, and thank you for the appreciation!

If I understand correctly, the only problem is the teachers' timetable: each activity has duration 1 (with 6+1+5 slots per day), but if teacher T teaches 2A/2B 10:00-11:00, he cannot teach for instance 3o Ciclo 09:20-10:10 and 10:20-11:10, because these times overlap.

I think you need a customization to say exactly this. Each activity will have maybe a tag, from 1 to 6 (1A/1B to Secundario), and the constraint above.

If I understood wrongly, please correct me.

[Miguel Freitas (PT)]

I've already changed the image, so that you can better understand what i need. Each group has to come in at different times, have different breaks and go to lunch at different times.

I see 2 problems: one is an issue pointed out, that there are blocks that, in different cycles, overlap.
The other is the question of how to enter the times/hours: for example, the first time in the morning for group 1 is 09:00-10:00 but for group 2 it is 08:10-09:10. How should I enter the hours/periods per day?
Should I enter in 10 minute intervals? Won't the timetable be too confusing and illegible?

[Liviu Lalescu]

OK, I saw that you changed the image, now, but why did the values change? (I could understand the Portuguese terms.)

The first problem, which I pointed out, is that teachers should be prevented to have two activities at the same real time.

About the second problem, you could simply add 6+1+4 hour per day and not available constraints as needed for students. Then you will simply consider the slots as needed. Or, as you say, consider a FET hour = 10 real minutes. But this is unnecessarily complicated.

[Miguel Freitas (PT)]

OK, I saw that you changed the image, now, but why did the values change? (I could understand the Portuguese terms.)

The first problem, which I pointed out, is that teachers should be prevented to have two activities at the same real time.

About the second problem, you could simply add 6+1+4 hour per day and not available constraints as needed for students. Then you will simply consider the slots as needed. Or, as you say, consider a FET hour = 10 real minutes. But this is unnecessarily complicated.

I have changed the values, to try to make the clock-in and clock-out times as close as possible, to avoid teachers having too much time on hold for the next class if they have to teach a different group.

Regarding the second problem, I still don't understand the solution pointed out. The suggestion was to launch 6 times in the morning, 1 at lunch and 4 times in the afternoon. But how can I guarantee, on the one hand, that teachers don't have overlapping classes and, on the other hand, that they don't have gaps?

For example: Teacher A will teach group 3 from 08:30 to 09:20. But he can´t teach the second time in the morning to group 2, nor the first time of the morning to group 1, since the classes started at 09:00.

How can I guarantee these conditions, without using actual hours or breaks?

[Liviu Lalescu]

Sorry, I did not think that you need to care about the teachers' gaps. In this case, you need 10 minutes FET hours.

Sorry, also, your situation is more complex than what I firstly thought.

Then, remain more problems: each activity should have a duration which is the shortest in your timetable: it seems it is 50 minutes = duration 5 (*10=50 minutes), if I am not mistaking. Then, you will add not available slots for the students, for instance Group 1 won't be available from 9:50 to 10:00, so that each activity can start only as permitted for that group.

You cannot have 0 gaps for teachers. Only make a progressive approach on diminishing them to the lowest possible value, as you find solutions.

And for overlapping slots for teachers, in many cases the 10 minutes FET hours will take care of it. But maybe in rare cases, since the activities will have all duration 5 and in the timetable there are even from 13:00 to 14:40 = duration 10, you might have a superposition. So in this case a customization might be needed.

The timetable will look larger with 10 minutes FET hours, but this is not a theoretical problem and can be taken care of.

[Miguel Freitas (PT)]

Thanks for the reply.

Yeah, I wasn't seeing any other solution either, other than adding 10 minute hours.

Besides all the work it will take (I already have the schedules done in 50 minute hours), I'm also worried about what the final look of the timetables will be like.
With 7 daily 50 or 60 minute classes, that will give about 40 or 50 10 minute FET times. Will the schedules have 40 or 50 lines?
Is it possible to improve the look of the timetables?

[Liviu Lalescu]

You're welcome!

Yes, the timetables will be long. Depending on the table, you will see each 10 minutes FET hour separately or not. This can be customized and improved tailored exactly for your case. Unfortunately, it is Volker who did HTML timetables export and I know little about this.

After you generate the timetable and export as CSV file, you'll have the day and hour of each activity in the CSV results. This is short.

[Miguel Freitas (PT)]

I wanted to leave feedback that I managed to solve my problem, with times of 10 minutes. It took some work to convert all 600+ lessons already released as 50-minute lessons.

I leave the recommendation to have a form of direct conversion between different times, for example, converting all 50-minute lessons into 5 10-minute lessons. I don't know if it will be possible.

Thank you for your help!

[Liviu Lalescu]

You are welcome, and I am glad it worked!

If you mean you edited each activity from duration 1 to duration 5, this should be easily possible by editing the .fet XML input file. This is an example:

<Activities_List>
<Activity>
   <Teacher>Tanja</Teacher>
   <Subject>MA</Subject>
   <Students>5a</Students>
   <Duration>1</Duration>
   <Total_Duration>4</Total_Duration>
   <Id>21</Id>
   <Activity_Group_Id>21</Activity_Group_Id>
   <Active>true</Active>
   <Comments></Comments>
</Activity>
...
</Activities_List>

Adjust Duration and Total_Duration.

If you mean something else, let me know.

[Miguel Freitas (PT)]

Maybe you could add that option to the software? Easier for beginners. Anyway, thanks for the tip.

And, once again, thank you for this awesome free software! If i can, i will try to make a donation, for helping you in this great project.

[Liviu Lalescu]

I added your suggestion in the TODO. Unfortunately, it would be a very seldom used option I think. There might be more users preferring diverse variants of your suggestion, and I am not sure how to add.

About the donation, thank you for this kind thought! Donations are always highly appreciated.