Advice on creating timetables and managing substitutions

[alfred]

Hello,
I'm new here and I need some advice on software for creating a timetable for teachers and which can arrange substitutions for absent teachers (manual input is fine too).
Regarding the first point, I've found FET and unitime amongst the open source options. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each solution? As for the second point, I'm not entirely sure whether they're capable of doing this (FET Substitutions Manager?).
Thank you

[Liviu Lalescu]

Hello, alfred, and welcome to the forum!

I never worked with Unitime, I cannot write about it. FET is appreciated by our users for automatic timetabling. Substitutions are more difficult in FET, but maybe you could do them with some tricks, or maybe with our listed additional software. I have to mention that I only made a few timetables with FET (meaning data input), and I never did teachers' substitutions.

You are welcome,
Liviu.

[Volker Dirr]

About your substitution request:
See here in the forum under "FET Tools".

[alfred]

Thank you for your fast reply. Yes, I was talking about this FET Substitutions Manager. It seems really promising. If I am not wrong, it is a third party project. What are you advice about it?

[Liviu Lalescu]

Unfortunately, I did not work with mrtvillaret's software, nor with other software from that category. I only tested a bit some of them.

Edit: @mrtvillaret , maybe you would like to see this topic.

Edit: you might want to start a topic there.

[Volker Dirr]

The advantage of FET Substitutions Manager is, that it is for free and it is running with a web browser.
Maybe compare it with TiTiTo. That is more powerful (e.g. you can even move a longer chain of activities for substitution, ...) but it is not free nor running in a web browser.
Since we don't know your exact needs you might just try both to find out what software fits more your need.

[mrtvillaret]

Hi Liviu, Alfred, Volker — thanks for the mention and the kind words!

I'm the author of FET Substitutions Manager. It's free, open-source, and runs entirely in the browser — it reads FET's XML export directly (no manual re-entry of the timetable) and handles daily teacher substitutions, exam invigilation duty, and PDF reports for staff. Substitutes are suggested according to a configurable priority ranking, so it's aimed at the day-to-day of a secondary school where other teachers already on site can cover an absence.

There's a public demo if you want to try it: gestor.alienamrt.org, the source code at github.com/mrtvillaret/fet-substitutions-manager, and more info on the dedicated board here: lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/forum/index.php?board=48.0.