Feature Proposal: Export/Import Teacher Not Available Times as CSV

[TongThanhKieu]

Dear Liviu,

First of all, thank you very much for your continuous work on FET. It is an outstanding timetabling tool that has been extremely useful for schools worldwide.

I would like to propose a new feature for your consideration:

Feature Request:
In the Time → All time constraints tab, please add two new buttons:

Export: to extract all existing "Teacher not available times" constraints into a CSV file (UTF-8 encoded).

Import: to load such constraints back into FET from a previously exported CSV (UTF-8).

Motivation / Use Case:

Many schools frequently update teacher unavailability data. Having an export/import mechanism would make it much easier to back up constraints, share them between different FET files, or update them in bulk using external tools like Excel.

Currently, this process requires manual editing or re-entering the constraints, which is time-consuming and prone to human error.

A standardized CSV (UTF-8) format would ensure compatibility and avoid encoding issues.

Possible Implementation Idea:

The CSV structure could follow a simple format with teacher ID/name, day, and time slots.

The Export button would write all constraints into a CSV file.

The Import button would parse a CSV file and add/update the corresponding constraints in the FET project.

I believe this feature would significantly improve usability for schools with large numbers of teachers and frequent schedule updates.

Thank you again for your dedication and for considering this suggestion.

Best regards,

[Volker Dirr]

the "add/update" part might be critical.
I think the "easiest" variant will be "if there is a single new not available time slot, then delete all values of the constraint and place the new ones".
Because if you don't do it that way and if you want to keep the old values, then it mean you also need a variant how to remove old values.

[Liviu Lalescu]

Dear TongThanh,

Thank you for your kind words!

I wrote down your suggestion.