Automated school timetabling with Predecessor of WebSAMS Timetabling Module - @PT

Alvin C. M. KWANCITE, The University of Hong Kong

&Ken C.K. Chung

REAL Logic Technology

Agenda Historical background Major differences between the decision-

support timetabling module, TESS, in SAMS and TT in WebSAMS

Timetabling functions that TT supports @PT Demonstration web-based TT vs. client-server based

@PT

Historical background (1/3) In May/June 2001, the Education

Department (ED), now Education and Manpower Bureau (EMB), in Hong Kong awarded a tender to NCS (prime contractor) to build a web-based school administration and management system (WebSAMS) for all government funded schools

school timetabling (TT) is one of the WebSAMS modules

Historical background (2/3) Prime contractor had contacted a

number of companies and arranged demonstrations to ED but ED were unhappy with those timetabling software packages

We demonstrated a timetabling system that one of us had built to ED in August 2001 and ED was happy with its performance

Historical background(3/3) Prime contractor subcontracted the

development of the timetabling engine (not GUI) to us in late August 2001

We further developed our own front-end and enhanced the scheduling engine to make @PT a standalone software package

Project status The timetabling engine of @PT has been

integrated to other WebSAMS components and the whole project is undergoing the user-acceptance test now

WebSAMS is expected to be delivered to more than 1,000 schools by the end of 2004

TESS vs. TT (& @PT)Semi-automatic Ask for user advice

whenever a dead-end is hit

Take many hours to finish scheduling

Interactive tuning Five timetables can be

viewed at the same time Three tuning operatorsTedious data preparation Need to re-enter data all

over again when certain data are changed

Fully automatic Try to resolve dead-end by

itself as much as possible Take a few minutes to

finish schedulingInteractive tuning No limit on the no. of

opened timetables Six tuning operatorsStreamlined data preparation Data re-entry is minimized Batch selection to reduce

editing effort

TESS vs. TT (& @PT)Do not support all typically

school timetabling requirements

Limited support on notion of class subject

Do not support non-successive day constraint

Difficult to learn and to useFoxPro reportNo bilingual interfaceLimited solution process

tracking support

Support all typically school timetabling requirements

Full support on notion of class subject

Support non-successive day constraint

Easy to learn and to use

Crystal report (TT) / Excel (@PT)

Bilingual supportSophisticated solution process

tracking with user-friendly GUIs

Demo Time

Edges of @PT over TT Supports better reusability of data

The impact due to changes in data to any previously generated timetable is reduced

Better GUI design to support faster timetabling planning

Improved scheduling engine to further reduce the number of violated timetabling requirements

Better interactive tuning support Does not subject to restrictions that TT encounters

in supporting complicated GUI in web environment

Final remarks TT is good but the web architecture that

it conforms to imposes serious restriction to its interface design, which in turn affects the usability of the software

Though TT is emerged from @PT, the new @PT release definitely outperforms TT in terms of usability and scheduling effectiveness