When the school timetable doesn't add up: conflicting constraints and waivers
With many teachers, buildings and preferences, there may be no timetable that meets everything. ScholaVerse TT tells you what doesn't fit and suggests what to change, instead of leaving you to search by trial and error.
Two different cases
- The timetable can't be generated. Some mandatory rules can't hold together, for example a class with more lesson hours than the hours available in the calendar.
- There is a timetable, but some preferences are left out. For example a teacher doesn't get the free day they asked for, or has more free periods than expected.
Conflicting constraints: what to fix and where
When the timetable can't be generated, ScholaVerse shows two kinds of report:
- Data to fix: data that doesn't add up even before generating, such as a chair with more hours assigned to classes than it has, or a missing walking time between two buildings.
- Conflicting constraints: the smallest set of rules that can't hold together.
Each report explains the problem, suggests what to relax and links to the right page: a teacher's availability, a chair's settings for one class, pinned lessons, the walking times of a building, the calendar. A counter tells you how many you've fixed. When you're done, you regenerate.
The data check also runs without generating: you find it in the school's Overview and in the Guided Setup.
Preferences left out: waiver scenarios
When the timetable has been generated but some preferences are left out, click Suggest waivers. ScholaVerse looks for which rules to relax to better meet the most important ones and suggests up to three scenarios, from the smallest change up. The current timetable isn't touched until you decide.
Each scenario shows:
- the waivers, value before and after, for example maximum consecutive hours of a subject from 2 to 3;
- the comparison between the current and the proposed timetable;
- the preferences that would still be left out;
- the proposed timetable with the moved lessons highlighted.
What can be relaxed and what can't
Waivers can concern:
- the school's daily limits;
- teachers' discouraged or preferred hours and, only if you ask for it, their unavailable hours too;
- a subject's distribution, its maximum consecutive hours and its maximum hours per day;
- a pinned lesson;
- a calendar hour that isn't enabled;
- a teacher's limits in one class, such as hours per day and returns.
Subject hours, chairs, classes, room availability and class groups are never touched.
Apply it, and go back if it doesn't convince you
Applying always asks for confirmation. You can apply a whole scenario, which becomes the new timetable, or only some waivers, and then a new generation starts.
Every applied waiver stays in the history with author, date and the timetable's quality before and after. You can undo a single waiver or a whole step: the previous value always comes back. If you changed that value by hand in the meantime, ScholaVerse shows it and asks for a second confirmation. When undoing you can also restore the timetable from before that step.