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Testimonials

I can now create a better timetable in less time.Philip MoonHigh School of Glasgow, Scotland
Brilliant, easy to use, wonderfully supported by a highly knowledgeable team.Keith IrvineBishops’ Stortford College Herts
TimeTabler and Options have been fantastic tools.

John Ridley
Tanglin Trust,
Singapore
With TimeTabler, 3 days’ work can be carried out in minutes.Ian CrabbeMarlborough College, Wilts
I have been really impressed with the support that I have received.Anne HoldenPortland Central,Australia
I found TimeTabler much easier to use …Beth LedgerAmman Valley School,Wales
TimeTabler has continued to be great value for money.Danny KotelHenry Lawson High School,Australia
We thoroughly recommend all three products … they save us a great deal of time.Ted Fenton, David WilliamsCokethorpe School, Oxon
I can recommend TimeTabler and Options to anyone.John MackenzieDunalastair School,Chile
I thoroughly recommend TimeTabler to any school.Charles BrenanNewland House School,Middlesex

Home / More about TimeTabler

TimeTabler – more details

TimeTabler is a reliable and proven computer timetabling program that can schedule your timetable for you.

timetabling (scheduling) a school timetable - about TimeTabler If you have not already read the introduction to TimeTabler, you will find it helpful to read that first.

This page gives further details about using TimeTabler:

  • the 4 main steps,
  • interactive scheduling,
  • automatic scheduling.


The 4 main steps in using TimeTabler

1

Entering the Basic Data about your school
You tell TimeTabler:

  • the number of days & periods in your week or cycle,
  • the names of your subjects, rooms and classes,
  • the names of your teachers, and their availability.

In the Tutorial, all this data has been entered for you.
Pages 10 & 11 of the Tutorial Booklet give you more detail.  

In the Full Version of TimeTabler, you will enter these details yourself … or more usually, you will import them (eg: from your MIS / Admin System).

 

2

Entering the Data (Curriculum) you want to timetable this year
eg.:   7AB    DSS    EF  GHi
simply means that you want to timetable:  
– two classes in parallel (7A and 7B)
– for a Double period (D) and 2 Single periods (SS)
– with teachers EF and GHi.

It’s as straightforward as that !
  You can enter the data in Batches (eg. a year-group at a time).   This is a big advantage of TimeTabler.
You have a choice of how you enter your Curriculum into the Curriculum Diagram – for example, you can use the Activity Wizard.

You may import your Student’s Options (Electives) blocks from our Options software.

In the Tutorial, all this data has been entered for you.   Pages 12 & 13 of the Tutorial Booklet give you more detail.

A key point  is that steps 1 & 2 only need to done once, when you first purchase & start using TimeTabler (Year 1).   Thereafter (Year 2 onwards) you can re-use all your data, just editing it as necessary.

 

3

Scheduling your timetable
You can do this:  
either: Interactively
or: Semi-automatically
or: Fully Automatically
or:
any combination.

The Interactive and Automatic methods are outlined below, and explained in the Tutorial.
And in the HelpMovies (video tutorials).
There are many other diagnostic tests and commands available to you. They are not essential, but you can use them as you become more familiar with the program.


The fully-illustrated 200+ page Manual describes dozens of timetabling tips and ‘tricks’ that you can use if you wish.

It also contains 24 Worked Examples covering a variety of curriculum models, including complicated ‘Sixth Forms’.

 

4

Printing & Publishing – and Exporting – your timetable

Printing
At any time during the scheduling, as well as at the end, TimeTabler will print out neat, clear timetables in a huge variety of formats.
You can quickly print:

  • staff timetables,
  • class timetables,
  • room timetables,
  • subject & department timetables.

And you can print them as:

  • ‘master’ timetables (for your wall, the staffroom wall),
  • and individual timetables for each teacher, class, room, subject or department.

And you can produce all of these as Web-pages for your school web-site, at a click of your mouse.

Exporting
Using the Export section of TimeTabler,  you can quickly transfer your completed timetable into
SIMS .net,  iSAMS / Ed:gen,  Arbor,  WCBS/PASS/3Sys/HUBmis,  SchoolBase,  Cloud School / Progresso,  Facility (CMIS),  RM-Integris,  Bromcom,  Horizons/Pupil*Asset, ScholarPack,  Room-Booking-System,  SWAN, Rediker-AdminPlus,  IES,  School2000,  BehaviourWatch,  SchoolPod,  SchoolBacs,  Pearson-Fronter (Phoenix) e1,  Denbigh Admin,  Tribal Synergy,  Sleuth,  OnTheButton,  Ed-admin,  TASS,  PowerSchool,  ManageBac,  Edumate,  Veracross, FACTS / PCSchool, etc, etc.
Because we are independent, we link to all the main MIS / SIS / Admin Systems in the United Kingdom and around much of the World.

And later you can use the powerful features of StaffCover for arranging the daily Cover of absent staff.

about TimeTabler

Click here to see a Video which explains these 4 steps in using TimeTabler .


Interactive scheduling

Whenever you choose this interactive method, TimeTabler does all the donkey-work (more than a million times faster than you could) and finds for you the ‘top’ activities that, at this point in the timetable, are the most important to fit.

For each of the ‘top’ activities the screen shows, in a clear visual display:

   – the times of the week where you can fit the activity,
– the reasons why the activity can’t fit at other times of the week,
– a recommended time of the week (as calculated by the program using a variety of methods and the ‘Principle of Compatibility’),
   – the consequence of choosing any of these times in the effect on the spread of lessons.

You can then choose if you want to fit one of the displayed lessons, and where to fit it.
You can accept the program’s recommendation, or you can ignore it entirely.
The machine does all the hard work while you remain in control.  Marvellous !
The machine works at high speed on all the facts that it ‘knows’ : you make careful judgements based on all that you know about the school, its resources, its classes and its personalities.
The machine aims for a complete solution while you aim for quality.
This symbiotic partnership of human timetabler and machine is an extremely powerful one.

TimeTabler has an even more powerful feature: if at any time during the scheduling you come up against a problem lesson that will not fit in, then you can use the FIT command.

The machine will then search for ‘musical chairs’ moves on the timetable that will allow your problem lesson to fit in.  (Some of these ‘musical chairs’ moves are described in Keith Johnson’s book ‘Timetabling – A Timetabler’s CookBook’ pages 154-159.)

The program initially searches for 2-step solutions and prints out for you any that it finds.

If you are not satisfied with the quality of any of those solutions you can tell it to search for 3-step solutions, or 4–
step solutions, etc. Wonderful !
In fact, if you want, you can go up to 16-step ‘musical chairs’ moves until you find one with the desired quality !

From the list you choose the solution you want and the machine then fits it instantly. The free Tutorial gives more details of this very powerful feature.  This can ensure success and save you hours.


Automatic Scheduling

Whenever you choose this automatic method, TimeTabler repeatedly finds, and fits, the top of the ‘top’ tightest activities.

It does this by repeatedly making an enormous number of fast calculations on your timetable data, entirely automatically
… you can go and teach a class if you wish – and then come back and see the result !

You will decide what the machine should do if it comes up against a problem lesson that will not fit in.
The choices are:
– a)
the program returns to Interactive timetabling so that you can look at the problem yourself, and if necessary use the FIT command described above, or
– b)
the program uses ‘AutoFit’ to find its own solution and then continues immediately with automatic scheduling.
The free Tutorial gives more details.

Of course in this automatic scheduling the machine cannot ‘know’ anything about the personalities of your staff – it is only ‘number-crunching’ at high speed.  But it means that TimeTabler does allow you for the first time to do several trial ‘what if’ timetables to see the effect of modifying your timetable data.
Changing just one teacher in one of your Maths Sets can sometimes have a dramatic effect on the rest of the timetable.
Now, with TimeTabler, you can fine-tune your data before you make the final run.

You can move backwards and forwards between Interactive and Automatic timetabling as often as you wish, so you can have the best of both worlds.

The free Tutorial version of TimeTabler allows you to practise all these features, and more.

The speed of TimeTabler allows you to try many ‘what if . . . ’  scenarios before making a decision.
What if . . . you are considering changing to a 5-period day . . . or to a 2-week timetable . . . or to Maths sets in Year 7 . . . or . . . ?  With TimeTabler you can try it first.  Quickly !


Tutorial download

From the download page you can download, free :

  • the Tutorial Booklet (as a .pdf file for reading in the free Acrobat Reader), and
  • the TimeTabler Tutorial program, with the demonstration data to save you time.

screenshot of timetable software - about TimeTabler
TimeTabler : this is the screen for entering details of Subjects.
Every screen has a
Help button, and a HelpMovies button, to explain what each part does.
You can see more examples of the screens by clicking here.

Users’ comments

quote by User
Click here to see what other timetablers have said about us.
See what experienced timetablers say.
                    

FAQs – Frequently Asked Questions
Click here to see the Answers, or make an Order.


Introduction
Click here to move to the first page, for an introduction to TimeTabler.


PDF Description
Click here to see a PDF introduction to TimeTabler.


Buy TimeTabler now      Download the Free Tutorial

If you have any queries, please e-mail them to: ask@timetabler.com
We will answer any questions you may have about using the software with your particular curriculum.

Home / More about TimeTabler

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Basic Data

BasicData-thumbnail

This shows the Main Menu, and Step 1 : the Basic Data screen, with five big buttons.

Each button leads you to an entry screen.

To enter your data you would start at the left, and work your way across to the right.

Look how straightforward it is, compared to other programs !

And the fully-illustrated printed Manual explains each step, in detail.

 

Subjects Screen

subjects screen

This is the screen for saying which Subjects you will want to timetable.

You can return here at any time to edit / alter your data.

You can give each Subject a colour – this helps during scheduling, and for the printouts.

Visual Builder Screen

visual builder screen

This is the main screen on which you do the actual scheduling.
You can sit at this Visual Builder Screen and drag-and-drop to ‘drive’ through the timetable.
 
At first sight it looks very complicated.  To see what each part will do for you, please click on: www.timetabler.com/kb/UsingtheVisualBuilderScreen.pdf

Class Timetable Screen

 

visual builder screen

 

This shows you the Class Timetables, so you can see the pattern while you are scheduling lessons.
  
There are similar screens for the Staff Timetables and for the Room Timetables.
 
If you use dual monitors you can see these more easily and spread them out over the bigger area.

All the buttons, and the symbols, are explained when you click on the button.

The Printout Menu

This shows you some of the possibilities for the Printouts.
 
Within each of these, there are millions of ways of fine-tuning the exact design of the Printouts.

They can be printed on paper, or produced as web-pages, at the click of a button.

A professional result.
 

The 'master' Class Printout Screen

Class timetable printout screen

This shows you the Preview Screen , so you can design the ‘master’ Class printout, before printing it.
 
There are similar screens for the Staff Timetables and for the Room Timetables.
 
You have total control over the design, the font and the colour, the column widths, the labels, etc, etc.
 
All the buttons and the controls, are explained when you click on the button.