Timetable setup
Who this is for: directors · Where: Timetable setup in the sidebar.
What this page is for
Two settings the timetable is built from:
- Bell schedule — when lessons start and end, and how long each break is.
- Teacher availability — the days and hours each teacher can work.
Neither affects the journal, homework or exams. They matter once you start scheduling.
Bell schedule
Building one
Start from Build from a rule: give the first lesson's start time, how long a lesson lasts, and how many there are per day. That fills the table.
Then edit the individual breaks. Between every pair of lessons there is a break box in minutes — change it and everything after it shifts. This is the reason breaks are stored rather than calculated: a real school has a ten-minute break after most lessons and a twenty-five-minute one after the third, and no single rule captures that.
You can also edit any start or end time directly, add a lesson, or remove the last one.
What is checked
Problems appear under the table as you edit, and a schedule with errors cannot be saved:
- two lessons overlapping
- lessons out of order — lesson 3 starting before lesson 2
- a lesson that starts and ends at the same time
- the same lesson number used twice
- a schedule with no lessons at all
An unusually long lesson is a warning, not an error — it may be a typo, but a double period is legitimate, so it does not block you.
More than one schedule
- Days — leave every day unselected and the schedule covers the whole week. Select specific days and it covers only those, which is how a shorter Saturday is expressed. The most specific schedule wins on a given day.
- Shifts — a school running two shifts keeps one schedule per shift.
- Default — exactly one schedule per year and shift is the default. Setting a new one clears the old.
Teacher availability
Pick a teacher and set two kinds of constraint.
Limits
Maximum days per week, lessons per week, lessons per day, and the earliest and latest lesson they may be given. Leave a field empty for no limit.
These are hard — the timetable will not exceed them.
There is also avoid free periods between lessons, which asks the timetable not to leave a teacher with a gap in the middle of their day.
The weekly grid
Below the limits is a grid of days against lessons. Clicking a cell cycles it through four states:
| State | Colour | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Available | plain | no constraint |
| Not available | red | hard — never scheduled here |
| Prefer not to | amber | soft — used only if nothing else fits |
| Prefer this | green | soft — chosen first when there is a choice |
If every constraint were absolute, a school with a few tightly-booked teachers would get "no timetable is possible" instead of a working one. Amber and green bend; only red cannot.
The Whole day row at the top is the common case — "I do not work Fridays". A whole-day setting shows faded on every lesson of that day; setting a single lesson overrides it, so "out all Friday except period 1" is expressible.
Without one there are no lesson rows to click. Build the bell schedule first.
Teachers can set their own
A teacher sets the same thing from Settings → Availability. They see and edit only their own; you see and can change everyone's. Whoever saved last wins, so agree who owns it rather than both editing the same week.
Rules and limits
- A schedule with errors cannot be saved. Warnings do not block.
- One default schedule per academic year and shift.
- Up to 20 lessons in a schedule.
- One availability record per teacher per academic year.
- Red is absolute, amber and green are preferences.
- Only directors edit the bell schedule. Teachers edit their own availability; directors edit anyone's.
What comes next
With a bell schedule saved and availability recorded, go to Timetable to build the week and publish it.
Troubleshooting
"It will not let me save." There is an error under the table — overlapping lessons, or a lesson that ends before it starts. Warnings, in amber, do not block saving.
"Changing one break moved everything." That is intended: lessons after a longer break start later. Edit the times directly if you need a specific one to stay put.
"The availability grid has no rows." No bell schedule yet. Create one first — the grid is built from its lesson times.
"A teacher changed what I set." Teachers can edit their own availability, and the last save wins. Their entry is not restricted, only visible to them and to you.
"I set Friday unavailable but one lesson still shows green." A per-lesson setting overrides the whole-day one. Click that cell until it is plain or red.