Building the timetable

Sidebar → Classroom → 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: the Setup tab

Classes and subjects come from the Classes & subjects page, and staff from Staff. Everything else the timetable needs is on the Setup tab of the Timetable page — four numbered steps you work down once, listed down the side with a tick when done or what is still missing. Click a step to open it beside the list. Generate all classes sits under the steps and says what it is waiting on. Until you have a timetable, the page opens on Setup.

1. Bell times — the shape of your day: which days you teach, what time each period starts and ends, and what each period is for. Each level has its own, so JHS and SHS can run different bell times. Shifts, Saturday classes and online groups live here too (below).
2. Periods per week — how many lessons of each subject a class gets, and whether they come as double periods. A bar shows the fullest class against the periods its week holds, and turns amber before you save if the subjects no longer fit. Leave a box blank for the default (core 5, elective 3).
3. Who teaches what — who teaches each subject to each class. Nothing can be scheduled for a subject with no teacher, so this is usually where an empty timetable comes from. It opens on the gaps; All shows every allocation, grouped by class, subject or teacher. Each teacher picker lists the people who teach that subject first, with how many periods they already carry. Fill the gaps automatically suggests teachers from their staff profiles.
4. Teacher availability (optional) — times a teacher can't be timetabled, such as a part-timer's free day. It also names anyone given more periods than their week holds.

Generate all classes sits at the bottom of the list. It stays off, with the reason, until every class subject has a teacher.

On the Classes & subjects page, an open class sets its class teacher and its subject teachers too — the same list as step 3, one class at a time, so the two screens can never disagree. Lessons already placed keep their teacher until you regenerate or edit them.

Your school's week

A schedule can teach on any days of the week — Monday to Friday, Monday to Saturday, or only Saturday. Tick the days at the top of the schedule.

Each period is one of:

• Lesson — the only kind the timetable fills in, and the only kind that counts toward a teacher's load.
• Break — break, lunch, assembly.
• Self-study — prep and supervised study.
• Activity / club — sports, clubs, co-curricular time.
• Online, own time — independent online work students do at home.

The last four show on everyone's timetable so the day reads the way it really runs, but nothing is ever scheduled into them.

A period that is only some days

Assembly on Monday, worship on Friday. On a lesson period, the Not taught on line lets you pick the days and name what takes the period instead. It stays a normal teaching slot on the other days.

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.

Shifts, Saturday classes and online groups

Setup → Bell times also holds extra schedules. Each has its own name, days, periods and usual way of teaching, and you choose which classes follow it:

• Replace their normal day — for a shift school, or a group taught entirely online in the evening. It becomes those classes' main schedule.
• Add to their week — Saturday classes, revision sessions, an evening online group on top of normal school. A class can follow several schedules, as long as they never overlap in time; the system refuses a combination that would put a class in two places at once.

For an added schedule, set Periods per subject on this schedule — say two Mathematics and one English on Saturday. (Setup → Periods per week shows the same numbers in a column per extra schedule.) These come on top of the normal weekly periods. A subject left at 0 is not taught there, so Generate can never pile a whole week of Mathematics onto Saturday.

A level's own schedule can start from a preset too — Start from a preset on its card. When no level has set its bell schedule yet, Setup suggests the one that suits your type of school.

Start from a preset… at the top offers ready-made extra schedules — a GES day school, an afternoon shift, Saturday classes, an evening online group, an international day, a Montessori work cycle — with the ones that suit your type of school first. Every detail can be changed before you save.

When a class follows more than one schedule, the class grid shows a switch above it — Main week, Saturday classes and so on.

Removing a class from an extra schedule, deleting a schedule, or moving a class onto a replacing schedule removes the lessons that no longer fit. The confirmation tells you how many.

Online and hybrid lessons

Every lesson is in person, online or hybrid. A schedule sets the usual one — an evening online group is online by default — and any single lesson can be changed in its cell.

An online lesson needs a meeting link instead of a room. Set the standing link for a class and subject once — the Google Meet or Zoom room that subject uses all term — and every online lesson of that pair picks it up. Tick Use a different link for this lesson only for a one-off.

Students, parents and the teacher get a Join button on the lesson, from 15 minutes before it starts. Online lessons show an Online badge on the grid and print with ONLINE in place of a room.

Filling in the week

Generate fills in the week:

• This class rebuilds the class you are looking at.
• All classes rebuilds every class at once.

If a choice is greyed out, it says why — usually a subject with no teacher — and links you straight to Setup → Who teaches what.

Rooms. Give a class a home room (Classes & subjects → open the class → Edit class details) and Generate puts its whole-class, in-person lessons there whenever the room is free. Two classes can share a home room — say a morning and an afternoon shift — and the room is never booked twice. Lessons split between several electives, and online lessons, are left without a room. A lesson you add by hand starts in the home room too.

Protected periods are kept. Open any cell, tick Protect this period, and Generate builds around it instead of over it. A lock shows on the grid. Use this for 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.

Changed your mind? After Generate or Clear, an Undo button appears above the grid. It puts back exactly what was there before.

You can also work by hand:

• Click any cell to add, change or clear the lessons in it. Each teacher in the list says whether they are free at that moment or busy elsewhere, and each room whether it is in use.
• Drag a lesson onto another period of the same class to swap the two (on a computer). If the move would clash, it is refused with the reason.
• Swap with another period (inside the cell) does the same from a list: periods that swap without a clash are marked; the rest say why not.
• More → Copy a day or week repeats a pattern onto other days, or onto another class on the same schedule.
• More → Import from Excel takes a file. More → Export all classes gives you one back in the same shape, so the round trip is safe — the Schedule, Mode, Meeting link and Protected columns travel 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. If something already clashes, the cell is tinted on the grid and names the other class.

Finding your way around

The Timetable tab shows the week by class, by teacher or by room (View by, above the grid).

• Classes — a list of the level's classes sits beside the grid (on a phone or a tablet held upright, it is the Class list above the grid). Each class carries its state: Empty, N clash, N no teacher, N to place, Changed (since you last published) or Done. Every subject has its own colour, the same in every class, so a week is quick to read. Printouts stay black on white.
• Teachers — every member of staff, busiest first, with a bar for their periods against the school's weekly maximum. Pick one to see their week; print one teacher or all of them from there.
• Rooms — when each room is booked and when it is free. It is read-only: change a lesson's room in the lesson itself.

Still to place, beside a class's grid, lists the periods the class needs that are not on the grid yet. Pick one, then a free period: the periods where it fits are outlined, and the others say why not (the teacher is busy, say). It stops once the last period is placed, and Undo puts things back.

What still needs fixing

A line above the grid counts what needs attention — Show opens it, with a button for each item, and Open Setup takes you to the step that fixes it. Read it before you publish.

Subjects without a teacher. Nobody is allocated to teach that subject to that class. It cannot be scheduled until you fix the allocation.

Subjects short of periods. 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: the extra periods cannot be placed anywhere. Reassign a class or a subject to somebody else. Setup → Teacher availability lists them.

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.

Teacher workload — every teacher's weekly periods — is the list under View by → Teachers.

Publishing

Nothing you build is visible to anyone else until you press Publish timetable. Until then the header says Draft only; after a change it says Updates pending and how many classes changed.

The publish dialog says what changed in each class (lessons added, taken off, or given another teacher) and whose week that touches. If clashes, unplaced periods or subjects with no teacher are still open, it says so — you can publish anyway, or Fix first.

When you publish, choose Publish and announce to the changed classes to open a prepared message to their teachers, students and parents, or Publish only. You can announce later with Announce last update in the header.

Teachers see the last published version, not your working copy. 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. Their timetable says when the version they are looking at was published.

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

Unpublish hides it again. Your lessons are not deleted.

Printing

Print… opens a preview of the class you are looking at; switch to all classes, or to teachers, from the preview.

The preview is the page as it will print — if something does not fit, you will see it cut off on screen too.

Sheets print A4 landscape, days down the side and periods across the top. A class with a Saturday or online schedule prints one sheet for each. Tick Save paper to put two on each sheet.

Teachers print their own from My timetable → Print my timetable.

When the timetable looks wrong

A whole class is empty. Check Setup → Who teaches what first — a class with no subject teachers has nothing to schedule.

One subject never appears. Check whether the class offers it (Classes & subjects → open the class → Subjects), then Setup → Who teaches what. If it has a teacher, it is short of slots — see the line above the grid.

Electives are missing. Electives are added from the students enrolled in the class. A class with no students yet gets its core subjects only.

Nothing is scheduled on Saturday. Set the Saturday periods per subject on the Saturday schedule — a subject at 0 is not taught there.

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

Everything moved after I pressed Generate. Press Undo, then protect the periods you want kept before you run it again.