timetabling solutions · timetabling software version 8.1 is a sophisticated software program for...

Timetabling Solutions

Everything You Need To Timetable Your School Won whole of state tender to supply South Australian Government schools 1999 – 2014 Won whole of state tender to supply Tasmanian Government schools 2006 – 2014 Supplier to Brisbane Catholic Education schools 2007 – 2014 Used by over 60% of independent schools in Australia Used in NZ, China, UK, Malaysia, Vietnam, United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and more Exports data to popular administration systems, reporting packages and eLearning packages (your system

can be added for free)

Our products are supported by (22) staff who understand the market and their clients, backed by sophisticated, professional and thorough processes. Timetabling Solutions is 100% Australian Owned

TIMETABLING SOLUTIONS iiii Everything you need to timetable your school

Table of Contents Timetabling Software ........................................................................................................................................................ 3

Student Options Module ................................................................................................................................................... 4

Timetable Development Module ...................................................................................................................................... 6

Daily Organiser Module .................................................................................................................................................... 8

General Access Module..................................................................................................................................................... 9

TimetableFind Module (alternative to General Access for those schools with Apple machines) ..................................................... 10

Web Preferences®(students submit subject selections online) .................................................................................................. 11

Web Choices® (multi user access to change student courses) .................................................................................................... 12

Timetabling Data Store ................................................................................................................................................... 13

Importing and Exporting Data ......................................................................................................................................... 16

Exporting Data to Popular Systems................................................................................................................................. 17

System Requirements and Limits .................................................................................................................................... 18

12 Month Software Maintenance Agreement ................................................................................................................ 19

Professional Services ....................................................................................................................................................... 20

Traning and Support ....................................................................................................................................................... 21


Timetabling Software Version 8.1 is a sophisticated software program for constructing, managing and publishing your timetable. It is developed and supported by professional timetablers and used by over 60% of independent schools in Australia. The program is designed in modular format to enable schools to tailor the installation and use of the program to suit their needs. Different modules make it easier for the user to see the logic behind the timetabling process.

Student Options Module Define the Student Options parameters Enter/import Student Options information Define grid constraints Create the grid Print class lists and summaries Import grid into the timetable

Timetable Development Module Define timetable parameters If required, import grid lines Enter/import Timetable Development information Perform checks Construct timetable automatically or interactively Publish to General Access, iClassmate, TimetableFind (Macs) and

Student Administration systems

Daily Organiser Module Connect Daily Organiser with timetable file Define structure of Daily Organisation Enter staff and class absences Assign replacements Publish to General Access, and TimetableFind (Macs)

General Access Module Read only access for staff, students and administrators Installed easily on your network in 2 minutes Print, view or send to MS Excel All timetables and class lists with or without photos One license provides unlimited installations per site

Web Preferences® Fully hosted web application that allows students to submit subject

selections online


Student Options Module

The Student Options module enables students to be offered a choice in their course of study and you assign options to students based on their nominated preferences. This module then creates the best grids to satisfy student, curriculum and resource requirements. This module can also be used just to enter student details to obtain class lists, individual student timetables, etc.

The student options file (*.sofx) stores information about students, including: • Student Details and Preferences • Options • Grid lines • Classes • Curriculum rules to check what the students have chosen Our data files are easily transportable and are approximately 1MB per 750 students.

You can have more than one student file. You can organise your files to include students in: • The whole school • Two or more Roll Classes • A Year Level • A Roll Class Generally, a student options file will consist of students who select from the same choice of options, usually this is the same year level. However, you can easily change your file structure later to cater for acceleration and other curriculum requirements. Using the Import facility you can combine year levels into one file or separate a file into different groups.


Timetabling Solutions’ automatic line generation algorithms will create your subject blocks to quickly and effortlessly produce the best solution.

Once student subject preference information has been entered, the sophisticated tools in Student Options can instantly create a clash matrix and automatically calculate the number of sets required to meet student requests. To create the subject blocks, simply specify the number of desired lines or blocks then use either automatic or manual functions (or a mixture of both) to create subject blocks.

Powerful tools are available to guide the creation of the blocks. These include the ability to group different subjects together in the blocks using functions such as Join or Exclusively Join. In addition it is possible to ensure that groups of subjects are spread across different lines using resource tools.

Once the blocks are created it is a simple process to assign students to classes and to move assigned students between classes. Rules can also be created to ensure that student allocations conform to pre-determined curriculum requirements (for example, each student must take at least one of…).

The module gives a large number of reports based on fields such as roll class, house, home group, year level and gender.

Student Options is connected to the Timetable Development module to give individual timetables for each student, from within both modules.


Timetable Development Module

This module is the keystone of Timetabling Solutions’ suite of timetabling software. Its numerous exclusive features assist you in the preparation, planning and construction of your timetable. Once your timetable has been completed it produces a wide range of printed and electronic reports and seamlessly sends your information to other systems within your school. The Timetable Development module allows you to address any curriculum specific constraints and easily manages multi-campuses. This module is designed to allow you to accurately and efficiently set up different curriculum structures to be used in different parts of your school. The user-friendly design has been created to support timetablers in the craft of creating their school timetable, regardless of their experience.

The timetable file (*.tdfx) is easily transportable and stores information about the timetable including: • Teachers, Rooms, Courses & Schedule of Classes

When you define your timetable parameters, you define: Timetable structure, periods and days, doubles, triples and quadruple periods, teacher movement between sites, loading of periods, home group period, yard duty areas, yard duty sessions, yard duty time names.


As well as being easy to use, the Timetable Development module contains powerful tools and algorithms that will enhance the process of creating school timetables. This unique set of tools can identify potential problems and then suggest possible solutions giving you full control of the process. Features such as Blocking Patterns, Clash Matrices, Look Ahead Tests, Autostaffing, Teacher and Room on-off listings, Teacher Faculties (pools/groups) and Room Usage Records (RURs) give the timetabler the tools to schedule the most difficult and challenging school curriculum structures. Editing tools allow you to make changes easily, including features to show teacher, room and seating availability. In addition, this module manages yard duty allocations automatically (or manually if you prefer) and allows user defined load weightings to one decimal place. Non-timetabled time allowances and the ability to schedule meetings are also available.

The Timetable Development module allows a range of modes for scheduling classes, teachers and meetings: • Blocking Pattern and Allocations • Class Allocations • Interactively, using the Lookahead Test • Automatically, using the Auto Allocate function • Auto staffing tools solve teacher clashes • Automatically Create Yard duty rosters

Once the timetable is complete there is a wide range of tools available: • Master Timetable Reports • Individual Teacher Timetables • Individual Student Timetables • Yard Duty Rosters • Class Lists • Exporting to School Information Management Systems (MIS)


Daily Organiser Module

The Daily Organiser module is designed to assist in the management of daily administrative tasks such as selecting replacement teachers to cover teacher absences, lesson cancellations, student absences, student excursions and changes to student attendance at lessons. The daily amendments can be viewed through the school network using the General Access module.

The Daily Organiser module can be set up to handle three different types of replacements from within your own staff: “Under allotted”, “In lieu of” and “Extras”. The “Under allotted” have less than a full teaching load/duties. These people can be given uncounted replacements before anyone else. “In lieu of” replacements can be given to staff who have lost a class today for example, where students are attending an excursion.

These teachers need to be used on the day that they have lost the class. “Extras” can be used for the remaining staff. Often schools have industrial regulations governing this type of replacement e.g. no more than 18 extras per year, or no more than 1 extra over a 10 day cycle. The Daily Organiser module can also handle short term or casual replacement teachers that are termed “Emergency Teachers.”


General Access Module

The General Access module provides network access to individual teacher, room and student timetables, student lists, student activities and school bulletins. Students’ and teachers’ photos can also be displayed.

The General Access module is included in the purchase price of Version 8.1.


TimetableFind Module Provides an alternative to General Access for those schools requiring an Apple Mac application

TimetableFind is a native Mac OS X application that can be run on all Macintosh computers on your school network and no additional licenses are required. TimetableFind reads the same data as General Access, from the same folder that contains the General Access data. Version upgrades of TimetableFind are supplied to schools whilst on a Software Maintenance Agreement.

The features include:

Lists of students attending any special activities, for which timetable changes have been made in the Daily Organiser module

Automatically amended lesson lists resulting from timetable changes made in Daily Organiser

Can generate general student lists (by roll class, house, year level, home group, gender or any combination)

Ability to sort on codes or names Student and teacher photographs appearing on

screen with individual timetable displays if required

Publish information from Timetable Development and Daily Organiser modules

Cycle timetables for teachers, rooms and students Print all teacher class lists on separate pages Daily changes to teacher, room and student

timetables Teacher and message bulletins from the Daily

Organiser module Lists students attending each lesson Lists of students that attend lessons taken by a

certain teacher or in a certain room


Web Preferences®

Web Preferences® is a fully hosted web based application that allows students to submit their subject preferences online. Two editions are available: Web Preferences Lite (included with your annual Software Maintenance Agreement) Set maximum number of units that students can select Create Rich Text Initial instructions, Selection instructions, Receipt instructions and Offline instructions Create Student Status Report displaying who has and has not submitted preferences Upload and download data with Student Options files

Web Preferences Manager (available for purchase on 12 month subscription, price available on request) In addition to Web Preferences®, the Manager also has options to; Create Preference Groups, allows subjects to be grouped for preference selection. For example, choose at

least 1 Maths subject from this group, choose at least 3 subjects from this group Control the minimum number of preferences that a student must enter for a group of subjects and the total

number of subjects/units that a student must select overall Enter Reserve (or backup) preferences for a group of subjects that allows a student to enter preferences

plus reserves from the available subjects Restrict the subjects a student can select through the use of prerequisites and restrictions

For example, if a student does not have the required prerequisite to study Yr 11 Home Economics then the subject does not appear for selection

Create Study Streams that allow students to make selections relevant to a particular Study Stream Upload your school logo to be displayed on the student portal Generate a wide range of reports showing who has and has not submitted and how many times, including

what they have submitted. Reports on how many students have requested a particular subject and allows the administrator to view trends in what is popular, in real time. All reports can be scheduled to be emailed


Web Choices®

Web Choices® is a fully hosted web based application that allows multiple users to access and change student preferences/subjects and print timetables. It consists of two modules; a Data Migration Utility and a Web Choices Portal

The Data Migration Utility is used to manage files and users. The administrator can:

• Upload data from Student Option files and Timetable files to the Web Choices portal • Create and manage multiple user accounts • Download data from the Web Choices portal to Student Options files

The Web Choices Portal can be accessed by multiple users to:

• Enter and edit student preferences • Assign students to classes • Print student timetables

Web Choices® is available on a 12 month subscription. Price available on request.


Timetabling Data Store (TDS) * TDS under development, not readily available ** V9 (upgrade from V8.1) under development, not readily available

The Timetabling Data Store (TDS) is a fully hosted web application and provides centralised SQL Server storage of timetable data and access via web services to a variety of devices and systems, including a SIF interface.

It is designed as an enterprise system with full multi-level permissions and access control allowing the administrator at the school to determine which fields third party applications can read/write to. Administrators can create user accounts and set edit permissions to basic timetable data (students, teachers, rooms, subjects) with any change being logged, displaying the Date/Time, User and Action they performed.

Your timetabler has access to a private Project Folder for storing working files and a Published Folder that populates the TDS data for other users/systems to read/write. E.g. Timetablers create a Spring Term timetable now and schedule it to be published in 10 days time. When published all users/systems that have been granted access can read/write the new data, but not before the published date.



TDS Multi Users can add Students, Teachers, Rooms and Subjects directly to the TDS Students, Teachers, Rooms and Subjects can also be added to a Timetabling File, so it is

then available for editing in V9

TDS Welcome Page lists all changes on the following tiles. Unallocated = number of these items added to the TDS but not in a timetabling file Green text indicates items added to the TDS; Red text indicates items deleted from the TDS



Fully hosted by Timetabling Solutions, no software to install or maintain Data is encrypted, safe and secure Administrator at your school controls user accounts, 3rd party connectivity, read/write levels Data added/edited/deleted in the TDS can update V9 Student files and Timetable files

NOTE: TDS is under development, with a release planned for mid/late 2014. V9 is under development, with a beta release planned for mid/late 2014


Importing and Exporting Data

These features of Version 8.1 enable the easy flow of data between your administration system and your timetabling software. They have been designed to ensure ease of use, flexibility and reliability.

Importing Version 8.1 imports information generated by other programs, using CSV, text files or Excel. Student details, option details, subject preferences, teachers and rooms can all be imported simply and easily. Please note: Some administration systems do not have the facility to easily import data from outside their system.

Exporting Version 8.1 can be configured to create export files for any of its data fields in a simple text format, with or without inverted commas. The delimiter may be comma, tab or pipe. This file can then be manipulated by the user to be read by any administration system or other software package.


Exporting Data

Popular administration systems have been added to a drop down list. Additional systems are added upon request.

We currently export to the following systems, please tell us if yours is not there so we can add it in for you at no cost: Accelerus, App4 Students, aSchool, CASES21, Catholic Education SA, DayMap, Deltalink, Denbigh, eDiary, EDSAS, Edumate, eMinerva, LearningPoint, MarkBook, Masterfile, MAZE, Millennium, MyExtras, Parent Teacher On-Line, PC School, Principal, Quad, ReportCard2.0, ReportCard3, ReportMaker, SACS, SchoolPro, SEQTA, Sentral, SIMON, SM Reports, SWIFT, STAR, Synergetic, TASS, VASS, Yard Duty Records.


System Requirements and Limits

System Requirements For successful installation and use of Version 8.1, your system must meet the following requirements: Microsoft Windows XP, VISTA, 7, 8 or 8.1 (32 or 64Bit) 2 Gigabyte (GB) of RAM Minimum screen resolution of 1024 x 768. We recommend wide screens with 1280 x 800 A keyboard, mouse or compatible pointing device

Microsoft Office 2003-2013, Excel and Word are recommended for use with many reports. Prior to release, the program is put through an extensive testing program. The Product Lifecycle page on our website displays our support policies. We use the Microsoft Access database file structure for our data files. However, we register our data files in Windows and if a user double clicks one of our data files, the associated module will open and load the data. Our printing engine provides users with the ability to save any of our reports in PDF (Adobe Acrobat), HTML (able to display in any web browser), RTF (can be opened by Microsoft Word), as text files or as formatted Excel workbooks.

Limits Version 8.1 can be used to timetable any type of school curriculum structure. There are no limits to the number of students, teachers, rooms or classes that can be timetabled using Version 8.1. The only practical limits when using Version 8.1 are set by the field sizes of the program’s data model. These are:

Student Options Module Limits > Lines on Grid - up to 40 > Number of Sub-Grids - up to 9 > Student Code - up to 15 alphanumeric characters > Student Name - up to 40 characters > Subject Code - up to 15 alphanumeric characters > Subject Name - up to 40 alphanumeric characters > Number of subjects students can select from per year level - up to 255

Timetable Development Module Limits > Days in cycle - up to 20 > School sites timetabled simultaneously - up to 4 > Number of Periods per day - up to 36 > Teacher Code - up to 15 alphanumeric characters > Teacher Name - up to 40 characters > Room Code - up to 15 alphanumeric characters > Room Name - up to 40 alphanumeric characters > Class Code - up to 15 alphanumeric characters > Class Name - up to 40 alphanumeric characters


Software Maintenance Agreement The following products and services are supplied under your 12 month Software Maintenance Agreement Free Version Upgrades

During your 12 months of Software Maintenance, any upgrade that is released is automatically given to you free of charge.

Unlimited Installations You may install and activate Version 8.1 on as many machines as you wish. Software Registrations are available from www.timetabling.com.au

Timetabler Classroom You are able to access and print all training lessons, access our searchable knowledge base and other support material for timetablers.

Free Installation & Tech Support This includes any installation support occurring outside the guaranteed 60 days of purchasing the program for computers that meet the System Requirements. All installation support and bug fixes are supplied free. (Training calls on “how to” use the software are deducted against the 5 hour phone/email support that you receive with your initial purchase)

Web Preferences Lite Fully hosted web based application that allows students to submit their subject preferences online. Features: opening/closing status, rich text messages, set maximum preferences, set maximum submissions.


http://www.timetabling.com.au/

Professional Services

Timetable Construction by Consultation We can analyse your school's requirements and recommend a curriculum model. We can analyse your current timetable and make recommendations as to how to achieve more constraints or use the functions of the program differently to improve your timetable. We have many clients with more than 1,000 students who have their timetable constructed by our consultants in five days, 9am to 4pm. Many schools bring their partly completed timetables and work with a consultant to finish the construction of their timetable. Bookings are essential. Dates in September, October, and November are generally booked out 12 months in advance.

Estimate of Time

To construct a usable, clash free draft timetable starting from a clean sheet with firm data entered, checked and ready to timetable is two days plus one day per 200 students. [e.g. Five days, 9am to 4pm, for a school of 600 students.] This estimate of time assumes the school's representative is working with us. Each day this cannot occur will increase the estimate by an extra day.


Training and Support

Training lessons are also available for download in pdf from our website for schools with a current SMA.

We use GoToMeeting.com to provide online training and bespoke support. Clients only require an internet connection and can use the microphone/speakers on their machine for the audio. No phone call charges apply and no additional fees apply to use this service with Timetabling Solutions.

Share my screen function allows participants to change presenters quickly and easily You decide whether to use a webcam or just your screen 5 hours of “how to” support is provided with your software purchase Live support is available Monday to Friday 9am – 5:30pm EST. Support outside these days/times is available

on request


Timetabling Concepts, Overview and Advanced Training courses are run by Timetabling Solutions Trainers who all have a background working and timetabling in schools. All of our Trainers also construct timetables year round for schools with all different types of structures and curriculum requirements as part of our professional services. Regular courses are held in Australia (Geelong, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth). Courses are conducted outside Australia on request.

Our training lessons are available for download via our website


timetabling solutions · timetabling software version 8.1 is a sophisticated software program for...

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