How are Rooms assigned to Lessons during Scheduling ?
You can assign rooms to your lessons as you schedule, or leave them room-less and assign rooms at the end, or a combination of the two.
During Scheduling: There are 4 ways in which rooms are assigned to lessons during scheduling:
-- 1) By default, when you schedule a lesson, a room is assigned based on the (up to 3) “Favourites Rooms” you have given that Teacher. These are labelled “1st Room”, “2nd Room”, “3rd Room” on the Teachers screen.
Note: If you find that a teacher is not being assigned his favourite rooms, then go to "Basic Data -> Preferred room for each subject" and check the setting in the drop-down box toward the top-left of that screen. If it says "his/her Main Subject only", this means that a teacher will only be given a room if s/he is teaching his/her main subject (as defined on the Teachers screen). This means that a Maths teacher, for example, will only be automatically assigned a room for his Maths lessons and not for his Further Maths lessons (or any other subject).
Many schools prefer this arrangement as they don't want a teacher who takes History, RE and Geog to have all those lessons placed in the History rooms. But you may want to change that in your case.
-- Or: 2) You can give the class its own “Home Room” – all that class’s lessons are then placed in that room.
-- Or: 3) You can use “Teacher/Room Pools” for your specialist rooms – to select any of your 4 science labs (say).
-- Or: 4) You can use “Room Types” – an alternative way to select specialist rooms; any of your 4 science labs (say). This ensures that if you have 4 labs, then no more than 4 lessons requiring a lab will be scheduled at the same time.
Note:
i) Different methods can be used for different activities.
ii) Many schools leave all (or some of) their rooming (apart from their specialist rooms) until the end of scheduling - you can do either or both in TimeTabler - see 'Post-Scheduling Rooming' below.
iii) If you have a multi-site school, you can say which site each room is on, and which site each class is on. Then classes on site-1 are only given rooms on site-1, etc.
Make a Change: What to do if your rooming is not as you’d like, and you’d like to change it:
Possible Reasons:
1) You decided to leave your rooming until the end of scheduling.
2) Check that you have not made a mistake in setting-up whichever of the above 4 methods you have used for each Activity.
2) Check that you have not made a mistake in setting-up whichever of the above 4 methods you have used for each Activity.
3) If you are on a split-site school (or have used "Sites" for any other reason), check this: Lessons-are-not-being-allocated-rooms
Then apply one or more of the 'Retrospective Solutions' below.
Consistent rooming (During or Post-Scheduling):
On the Class Timetable view (at scheduling), you can double-click on any lesson to see its details, and then click the “Room” button here:
…. and you are given help in finding a consistent room for all the lessons of this activity. So if the activity has 4 lessons across the week, you can see which rooms are free for all 4 lessons, and quickly choose one and have all 4 lessons put in that room.
Retrospective Solutions (Post-Scheduling Rooming):
If you need to assign rooms now, post- or mid-scheduling, then there are several ways to do this globally at "Check & Tidy -> Room Sweep" ... or at "Check & Tidy -> Rooming Overview -> Global Room change" (or at "Check & Tidy -> Rooming Overview -> Post-allocate" which will use your choice of "his/her Main Subject only" or "all the subjects that s/he teaches" to give your lessons rooms post-scheduling).
"Room Sweep" can be an especially powerful method, as it looks to find the best room for each of your lessons based on (up to) 10 rules / factors.
You can also go to the "Room Timetable" at any time, and drag-&-drop lessons to new rooms.
Try to find the method that best helps you to get the rooming you want, but if you have any questions, let us know.
This article refers to: TimeTabler
See also: the Manual, and HelpMovies numbers 13, 18 , 27B, 53
By the TimeTabler Team