Building the timetable

Sidebar → Planning & Setup → Timetable. Build the weekly schedule, let the system fill it in for you, check nothing is missing, and publish it to teachers, students and parents.

Before you build anything

Two things decide what the timetable can do, and both live elsewhere.

The period grid — Classes & Subjects → Divisions → the clock icon. This is the Monday–Friday shape of your day: what time each period starts and ends, and which slots are breaks. Each division can have its own, so JHS and SHS can run different bell times.

Teaching allocations — the first tab on the Timetable page. This says who teaches what, to which class. Nothing can be scheduled for a subject with no teacher assigned, so this is usually where an empty timetable comes from.

A period that is only some days

Assembly on Monday, worship on Friday. In the period grid, a lesson row has a Not taught on line: pick the days, and name what takes the period instead.

The period stays a normal teaching slot on the other days. Nothing will be scheduled into it on the days you picked, the grid shows the block, and it prints on the class timetable.

Do this rather than creating an "Assembly" subject. A fake subject follows you into marks entry and onto report cards for the rest of the year.

Filling in the week

Generate fills in one class. Generate all does every class at once.

Generate replaces what is there. For the class or classes you choose, the existing lessons are cleared and rebuilt. It cannot be undone.

The one exception is protected periods. Open any cell, tick Protect this period, and Generate will build around it instead of over it. The header shows how many you have. Use this for the lessons you have hand-placed and do not want a rebuild to move — the double period a lab needs, the class a part-time teacher can only take on a Tuesday.

You can also work by hand:

• Click any cell to add, change or clear the lessons in it.
• Copy day/week repeats a pattern you have already built onto other days, or onto another class in the same division.
• Import takes an Excel file. Export all gives you one back in the same shape, so the round trip is safe — the Protected column travels with it.

Whatever you do by hand is checked as you save it. A teacher already booked elsewhere at that moment, a room already in use, a slot that is not a teaching period — each is refused with the reason, rather than saved and left for you to find later.

Coverage: what is still wrong

The Coverage tab is the one to read before you publish. It carries a count in its label whenever something needs attention, and it is derived from the timetable as it stands — it does not disappear when you refresh the page.

Unassigned subjects. A subject on the curriculum with nobody allocated to teach it to that class. It cannot be scheduled at all until you fix the allocation.

Placement shortfalls. A subject that wanted five periods a week and got three. Usually the week is genuinely full, or the only eligible teacher is busy whenever that class is free.

Teachers over capacity. Somebody has been allocated more periods than a week physically contains for them — 45 periods in a 40-period week. This is a cause of the shortfalls above, not a separate problem: the extra periods cannot be placed anywhere, whatever the system tries. The panel names the teacher and the numbers. Reassign a class or a subject to somebody else.

The figure counts only the days they can actually teach, so a teacher who is unavailable on Friday afternoons has a shorter week and a lower ceiling.

Classes without a schedule. Nothing built yet.

Publishing

Nothing you build is visible to anyone else until you press Publish timetable. Until then the header says Draft only.

Teachers see the last published version, not your working copy. This is the part that surprises people. If you move a lesson and a teacher tells you their timetable still shows the old one, the change is fine — it just has not been published yet. Publish again and they will see it.

The same is true of students and parents in their portals.

Return to draft hides it again. Your lessons are not deleted; they simply stop being visible outside the office until you publish next.

Publishing does not send any message. If you want to tell people, use Messaging.

Printing

Preview class or Preview all classes, then Print.

The preview is the page as it will print, at the same proportions — if something does not fit, you will see it cut off on screen too, rather than discovering it on paper.

Sheets print A4 landscape, one class per page, days down the side and periods across the top. Tick Save paper to put two classes on each sheet.

Teachers can print their own from the Teachers tab, one at a time or all at once.

When the timetable looks wrong

A whole class is empty. Check Teaching allocations first — a class with no subject teachers has nothing to schedule.

One subject never appears. Look for it under Coverage. It is either unassigned or short of slots.

A teacher says their timetable is out of date. It has not been published since you changed it.

Everything moved after I pressed Generate. That is what Generate does. Protect the periods you want kept before you run it again.