SUPER DELUXE SCHEDULE BUILDER MANUAL

SUPER DELUXE SCHEDULE BUILDER MANUAL Rediker Software Phone 800-882-2994 2 Wilbraham Road Fax 413-566-2194 Hampden, MA 01036 www.rediker.com

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TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION BY RICHARD REDIKER, CEO OF REDIKER SOFTWARE... 6 ABOUT THIS DOCUMENT... 10 TECHNICAL NOTES AND SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS... 11 COMMON BUTTONS THE F KEYS... 12 GLOSSARY OF SCHEDULING TERMS... 13 SCHEDULING THE QUICK STEP GUIDE... 14 ACCESSING THE SUPER DELUXE SCHEDULE BUILDER... 16 SPECIFICATIONS: BUILD MASTER SCHEDULE... 17 WHAT IS THE MATRIX FILE AND WHY DO I GET ASKED ABOUT IT?... 20 SDSB MAIN MENU... 21 SET NUMBER OF SECTIONS PER COURSE... 22 SPECIFY SECTIONS SETTINGS... 25 OPTIMUM SIZES... 26 RESTORING OPTIMUM SIZE BACKUPS... 27 SAVING THE LIST... 28 TIMES, TEACHERS AND ROOMS... 29 TIMES... 30 ENTER/EDIT TIMES... 32 CREATE TIME POOLS... 33 ASSIGN TIME POOLS TO COURSES... 37 TEACHERS... 40 ASSIGN TEACHERS TO THEIR PRIMARY DEPARTMENTS... 42 EXCLUDED PERIODS... 46 SET MAXIMUM AND CONTINUOUS PERIODS... 47 PREFERRED TEACHERS... 48 ASSIGN ROOMS TO PREFERRED TEACHERS... 55 ROOMS... 58 ENTER/EDIT ROOMS... 60 CREATE ROOM POOLS... 63 ASSIGN ROOM POOLS TO COURSES... 68 ASSIGN ROOMS TO PREFERRED TEACHERS REVISITED... 70 3

BUILD SCHEDULE... 72 REDIKER SUGGESTS: BUILDING YOUR SCHEDULE TIPS AND STRATEGIES... 73 THE BUILD SCREEN... 75 THE BUILD SCREEN COLUMNS... 76 THE BUILD SCREEN CHANGING THE VIEW... 77 THE BUILD SCREEN BUTTONS... 79 THE BUILD SCREEN THE RIGHT-HAND SIDE... 80 ASSIGNING TEACHERS... 81 CHANGING YOUR SEMESTER DESIGNATION... 83 ASSIGNING ROOMS... 84 BUILDING THE SCHEDULE... 85 FIXED SECTIONS... 85 BUILDING THE SINGLETONS... 88 SAVING THE BUILD... 91 SCOREBOARD... 92 SCOREBOARD LISTS... 93 FINE TUNING... 95 SCHEDULE BOARD... 96 BUILDING THE DOUBLETONS... 99 FINISHED A SCHEDULING RUN NOW WHAT?... 100 RETRIEVING A BUILD... 103 EXITING THE BUILDER... 104 FINALIZE SCHEDULE (CREATE SECTION LIST)... 105 LOAD STUDENTS (PERFORMING SCHEDULING)... 107 CLOSING THOUGHTS... 110 APPENDIX 1 CONCURRENT COURSES... 111 APPENDIX 2 - ADVANCED SPECIFICATIONS... 115 ADVANCED PARTIAL CHECK?... 116 ADVANCED TEACHER CHECK?... 117 ADVANCED STUDENT CHECK?... 118 SHUFFLE STUDENTS AFTER A COURSE IS UNSCHEDULED?... 119 OVERNIGHT MODE?... 119 SORT ORDER?... 120 FEWER UNSCHEDULED STUDENTS VS LOWER OVER OPTIMUM COUNTS?... 121 REFINE MODE SETTINGS?... 122 ASSIGNING TEACHERS AND ROOMS WHILE BUILDING?... 123 HOW TO MAKE TIME COMBINATIONS FOR MULTI-SECTION COURSES?... 124 HOW TO DETERMINE THE BEST COMBINATION?... 125 LOGIC SCHEMES... 130 4

APPENDIX 3 INTERACTIVE BUILDING... 132 INTERACTIVE SCREEN UPPER PORTION... 133 INTERACTIVE SCREEN LOWER PORTION... 134 INTERACTIVE SCREEN STUDENT PORTION... 137 INTERACTIVE SCREEN TEACHER/ROOM PORTION... 138 USING THE INTERACTIVE MODE TO BUILD YOUR SCHEDULE... 139 5

INTRODUCTION BY RICHARD REDIKER, CEO OF REDIKER SOFTWARE Welcome to Rediker Software s Super Deluxe Schedule Builder, the third schedule builder included in Administrator s Plus: 1. Classic Schedule Builder 2. Deluxe Schedule Builder 3. Super Deluxe Schedule Builder Each new generation of builder is designed to take advantage of the rapidly increasing power of computers. All three builders are in the current version of Administrator s Plus, and you may easily use the builder of your choice. SCHEDULING PLUS: A BRIEF HISTORY Administrator s Plus began in 1979 on a Commodore PET computer when I was a chemistry teacher at Longmeadow High School, in Longmeadow MA. Although the first three modules soon took care of the school s needs concerning their Database, Attendance and Report Cards, we were still tied to a service bureau for help in building our schedule. Students entered their requests on punch cards (those things with hanging chads), which were tabulated by a mainframe computer at the service bureau, and a Conflict Matrix was sent back to the school. Using this matrix and a schedule board, the principal and guidance director built the schedule for the school. Once built, they sent the schedule back to the service bureau, where the mainframe attempted to load as many students as possible into their courses, keeping class sizes balanced. A few weeks later the results came back to the school and adjustments were made to the schedule, which then went back to the service bureau for another scheduling run. This back and forth process went on for months. In 1983, Scheduling Plus was born, which allowed Longmeadow to build its schedule much faster than using the expensive service bureau. Course requests could be quickly entered into the Commodore which produced the same conflict matrix produced by the service bureau, and even produced other reports to help build the schedule. The Perform Scheduling program was the loader which enabled the scheduler to get feedback about their schedule much faster than waiting weeks for the results to be returned by the service bureau. How did the people who built Longmeadow s schedule know how to do it? How did they know how to use a conflict matrix? They learned from their predecessors using the Master/Apprentice method of learning. Because not all schedulers have a Master to learn from, a number of companies offered seminars across the country. I attended many of those seminars and learned from numerous masters. I soon started offering my own scheduling seminars. While the computer was an invaluable tool in helping build a schedule, it was a tool to be used by a trained scheduler. Scheduling Plus was a huge success, and in 1985 it, along with the rest of Administrator s Plus, was ported from the Commodore to the PC. With the advent of the more powerful 486 computers around 1990, I started to dabble with how the computer could actually help build the schedule. 6

My goal was and still is to provide a software program that could build a school s schedule simply by pressing a button. Many people have tried, but nobody has totally succeeded even today (2009). While the current Super Deluxe Schedule Builder is the most advanced schedule builder ever, by 2010, I expect to be very close to my goal. However, I do not feel that any program can ever totally replace a scheduler who knows his or her school and can point the computer in the right direction. CLASSIC SCHEDULE BUILDER The Classic Schedule Builder was our first schedule builder, and it has built schedules for thousands of schools for the past 15 years. Instead of the human schedule builder manually looking at each course and using the matrix to build the schedule, the computer could offer assistance in an interactive mode, and even do the schedule all by itself. It used the same logic that I saw human schedule builders use. Still, there were limitations, mainly imposed by the power of the computers available at the time. Using a matrix provided only a best educated guess as to when courses should meet. You would not know how good your schedule was until you actually used the loader to try to load students into their classes. DELUXE SCHEDULE BUILDER With computers becoming much faster, development on a new Deluxe Schedule Builder began around 2000, and it was released in 2004. With new features and capabilities came new complexity. Some of the features found in the Deluxe Schedule Builder include: 1. Automatically divides all courses into sections based on the number of requests and the optimum size. In the Classic builder, the user had to do this manually. 2. Allows a preferred teacher list to be created, making it easier to assign teachers to sections each year. 3. Builds the schedule looking at all courses at once. In the Classic builder, building singletons never looked at doubletons and beyond, while building doubletons never looked at tripletons and beyond. Now, no matter what courses you are building, all other courses are considered. SUPER DELUXE SCHEDULE BUILDER (SDSB) VERSION 2.3 The Super Deluxe Schedule Builder is the most ambitious schedule builder ever. The first version was released for the 2005 school year, and the 2008 version includes even more amazing features. Some of these features include: 1. TEACHER POOLS: The builder will select a teacher from the pool of preferred teachers for the course. It will first try to use the most preferred teacher, but will use another teacher from the pool if that would allow more students to be scheduled. 2. CONCURRENT COURSES: Previously, if there were courses that needed to take place at the same time with the same teacher in the same room, it was necessary to duplicate requests and only schedule one of the courses. Concurrent courses enable the builder to consider both courses when selecting a meeting time and both courses in the group will get the same meeting time, teacher and room without the need to duplicate requests. 3. SELECT SEMESTER: The builder will select the best semester, trimester or quarter for courses that are not All-Year courses. 7

4. TIME POOLS: Previously, it was assumed that all courses met exactly one period per day, and that they met that same period each day of the week. Time pools allow for courses that meet only some days in the rotation, or meet more than one period on some days. 5. LOAD TESTING: Previously, the conflict matrix was used to make a best educated guess as to the optimum meeting time of each section. With more powerful computers, the Super Deluxe Schedule Builder now tests each possible meeting time using the actual loader, and then tell you which time is the best. 6. MAXIMUM PERIODS A TEACHER CAN TEACH IN A DAY & CONTINUOUSLY: As it places sections, the Super Deluxe Schedule Builder (SDSB) takes these new specifications into consideration. 7. INTERACTIVE MODE DRILL DOWNS: Click on any student or teacher name to see their current schedule at that moment of the build. 8. INTERACTIVE MODE: See the names of students who would be scheduled and would not be scheduled depending upon which times you select. 9. PREREQUISITES: You may enter a prerequisite for any course. When building semester and quarter courses with prerequisites, the SDSB will make sure the courses are placed in order in the proper semester or quarters. 10. LINKED COURSES: The SDSB takes linked courses into account as it builds a schedule. 11. GRAPHICAL SCHEDULE BOARD: Allows you to see your schedule on your computer as it would have appeared on your old manual schedule board. 12. OPTIONAL FEATURES TO IMPROVE THE SCHEDULE Look Ahead for staff and students. Looks at all of their courses and not just the one currently being scheduled. This can take much longer, and requires a powerful computer with a lot of memory. Refine: Goes back and tries alternative meeting times for already-placed courses. Better Balance vs. Fewer Unscheduled Students: You set whether more importance should be given to a better balance or to fewer unscheduled students. 13. SAVES AND RETRIEVES ANY BUILD: At any point in the building process, name and save the current build. You can save hundreds of builds and easily sort them by date or name, allowing you to easily retrieve the one you want. After a retrieve, everything in the builder will be EXACTLY as it was when the build was saved. 14. EXCLUSIONS FOR INDIVIDUAL PERIODS: For example, you may exclude E1. Previously, you could only exclude E. 15. FILTER BY MAJOR AND MINOR COURSES: Allows you to schedule your major courses before your minor courses. 16. MAY FILTER BY COURSES WITH MORE THAN 8 SECTIONS: For example, you can now choose to display only 11 section courses. Previously, all courses with more than 8 sections were always displayed together. 8

17. ROOM POOLS: Optionally enter the preferred room for each course and for each teacher. Rooms may have different maximum sizes. The Builder will try to select a room from the pool that matches both the course and teacher preference but if it cannot, it will use the most preferred room for the course. IN CONCLUSION: Please enjoy the Super Deluxe Schedule Builder. Any and all feedback is welcome. A recently-received a comment began: The results we had were pretty good. 98.5% of our students had all of the courses they needed, and all courses were in balance. These are AMAZING results. Your results, of course, will vary with the complexity of your school s schedule. As you read this manual and begin to use the SDSB, remember that as with any builder, it still requires a trained user with scheduling experience. If you cannot attend our seminars, we have scheduling consultants at a small fee to help those inexperienced users. Although our tech support can help you with specific questions about the builder, they cannot be expected to build your schedule for you. Thank you again for using Administrator s Plus, and enjoy the Super Deluxe Schedule Builder. Richard Rediker CEO 9

ABOUT THIS DOCUMENT This document should be used by anyone who is going to use the Super Deluxe Schedule Builder to help them build their school s schedule. For first time users, it is recommended that you read this document from cover to cover (skipping areas that do not apply) and then follow the topics in order. If you have used the SDSB before, look for the Quick Step Guides at the beginning of each section. These guides provide a list of suggested steps to follow for each module of the program. As you read through the document, you will see five icons. These icons hopefully will provide you with quick information regarding the program. Helpful Hint: Helpful Hints are found throughout the document. They provide extra information regarding usage of the program. How Do I: The How do I sections provide step-by-step instructions on how to perform a certain task. New Feature: Indicates a new feature that has been added since the last publishing of this manual. Quick Step Guide: These provide a general order of how to proceed through each section. Rediker Suggests: These sections provide our recommendations and suggestions that we have gathered from helping thousands of schools build schedules. One other note in this document you will see the term Builder. This is a specific reference to the Build Schedule module of the program. It is within this module where the actually building of the schedule (selecting meeting times) takes place. We are constantly working to improve our software based on feedback from you, our customers. Because of this, this manual may not always match what you see on the screen. If you have any comments or suggestions on this manual, please e-mail us at doc@rediker.com. We will keep the most up to date version of this document on our manuals page: http://redikersupport.com/manuals/manuals.html 10

TECHNICAL NOTES AND SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS System Requirements: The minimum system requirements needed to run the Super Deluxe Schedule Builder are: Must be on at least version 4.6.21.01 of Administrator s Plus to run any version of SDSB 2.3. (If you are not on version 4.6.21.01 or higher of Administrator s Plus, either upgrade or refer to the SDSB manual written for version 2.0.85.01.) Screen Resolution must be set to 1024 x 768. Due to the processing involved, it is recommended that you have a machine dedicated to schedule building and that this machine have at least a 1.7 MHz processor with at least 2 GB of RAM. Technical Notes: There are certain things that you as a user should know about SDSB and you should let your tech person know as well. SDSB no longer runs from an executable on your local C:\ drive. It runs directly from the RS4 directory so all users will be on the same version once you update Administrator s Plus. As with all of our builders, files are stored according to User. This means that if you are working in the SDSB as Supervisor and then you login as yourself and go into the SDSB, what you see in the builder will be different. It is recommended that you use one user login for scheduling. Even though the SDSB is no longer running directly from your local C:\ drive it is still copying files down locally. Because of this, you may get an Error 70: Permission Denied message when first entering the builder. If you do, close the SDSB and get everyone else out of Administrator s Plus. You should then be able to access the builder without any errors. 11

COMMON BUTTONS THE F KEYS Those familiar with Administrator s Plus know that the function (F) keys are used extensively throughout the program. They are also used in the SDSB. The usage of these keys is, for the most part, universal but there are always exceptions. The chart below displays the key, its common usage throughout the SDSB and any exceptions. COMMON USAGE EXCEPTIONS ABORT ADD Exits you out of any screen without saving changes. Enables you to add to a list. In PREFERRED P TEACHERS, enables you to import a preferred teachers list. In the CONSOLE screen, it is the Search key. EDIT Enables you to edit a value in a list. In SET NUMBER OF SECTIONS, enables you to rename optimum size saves. In the CONSOLE screen, enables you to rename saved builds. Causes an action to occur (i.e. calculating the number of sections or assigning meeting times). In both CREATE TIME POOLS and CREATE ROOM POOLS, displays a Time or Room lookup. LOOKUP Displays a lookup. In SET NUMBER OF SECTIONS, ASSIGN TIME POOLS AND ASSIGN ROOM POOLS, it is the Search key. In the CONSOLE screen, it brings you into the INTERACTIVE screen. DEL ALL DELETE PRINT SAVE Deletes all of the entries in a screen. Deletes a specific highlighted entry (i.e. a course or a time pool). Generates a print out. Saves any changes you have made and exits you out of some screens. In the CONSOLE screen, displays courses in conflict with the highlighted course. 12

GLOSSARY OF SCHEDULING TERMS Like everything, scheduling has its own language, and terminology and the specific terms may vary depending upon who you talk to but the meaning is the same. Below is a list of terms that you will see in this manual along with our definition of each term. BLOCK/PERIOD CONCURRENT COURSES CONFLICTS CONSTRAINT COURSE COURSE LENGTH DOUBLETON LINKED COURSES OPTIMUM SIZE PREREQUISITES REQUESTS ROOM POOLS ROTATION SECTION SHUFFLING SINGLETON TEACHER POOLS TIME POOLS Time(s) and day(s) a section meets. Two or more courses being treated as a single course when finding meeting times. A teacher or room not getting assigned to a section due to a similar time between 2 or more courses. Any obstacle, real or imaginary, that restricts a possible meeting time for a section. A class or subject. These will be different for honors, non-honors or team-taught courses. Choices are Year, Semester and Quarter, or Year and Trimester. A course that only has two sections. As your number of sections increase, you will see term like Tripletons (i.e. three sections), Foursection, Five-section, etc. Two courses that MUST have the exact same rosters in section one of both courses and all subsequent sections. Total number of students allowed in a section before shuffling. A course that must be taken prior to taking another course. Students' desired courses. Grouping of rooms that can be linked to certain courses. Order of meeting times for your schedule. A meeting time, teacher and room of a course. Moving students from one section to another in order improve the balance between sections. A course that only has one section. Grouping of possible teachers that are qualified to teach specific courses. Grouping of possible meeting times that can be linked to courses. 13

SCHEDULING THE QUICK STEP GUIDE The following guide is designed to outline the basics of the schedule building process using the SDSB. Create a New Year and run Beginning in the New Year. Add any new students or staff to the Data Base. If you know you are going to have staff openings but have yet to fill those positions, we recommend that you create place holder staff called New English, New Math, etc. When you hire teachers to fill these positions, you can go into Database New Files and edit that staff record. Check Block Rotation. Add any new courses that will be offered in the upcoming school year. Enter course requests for all students. Our schedule builders use student requests as the foundation for suggesting the number of sections for each course, the meeting times for those sections, etc. It is very important that you have entered the majority if not all of your student requests prior to entering the builder. Perform simple tallies and print the tallies list. Even though the SDSB will calculate the number of sections for you, printing out the tallies list is useful to help identify any data entry issues (e.g. students inadvertently entered into the wrong course). At this point, you are ready to access the SDSB. Set number of sections per course. The program will automatically calculate the number of sections you need per course based on student requests and optimum size. It is in SET NUMBER OF SECTIONS where you will set how the program handles semester, quarter or trimester courses, including a setting where you let the Builder pick. Create time pools (optional) (if you did this last year, you will not have to re-enter information but you may want to verify the information and make any needed changes). A time pool is a collection of times linked to a specific course and from that pool, the Builder will select the best meeting time for the course. If you have courses that meet more than one period a day (labs, double periods) or they do not meet every day, you may need to set up time pools. Verify and/or change preferred teachers, exclusions and department settings (if you did this last year, you will not have to re-enter information but you may want to verify the information and make any needed changes). We now have the ability to create and use teacher pools. A teacher pool is a group of preferred teachers that are qualified to teach a specific course. The Builder will select the best teacher(s) from this pool to teach the course. Enter in rooms and correlate those rooms to specific courses (optional) (if you did this last year, you will not have to re-enter information but you may want to verify the information and make any needed changes). If you want to assign rooms to sections prior to leaving the builder, you will need to enter those rooms under ENTER/EDIT ROOMS and then assign those rooms to courses. 14

Enter the Builder (Build Schedule). You will be seeing all active courses with sections in this screen. Assign Teachers to sections based on the preferred teacher list (otherwise the Builder will assign a teacher from the pool). Designate any semester or quarter courses that must meet during a specific semester/quarter (otherwise the Builder will pick for you if that is the setting in Set Number of Sections). Set any fixed sections (i.e. sections that must meet at a specific time). Use the desired mode (interactive, automatic or a combination) to build meeting times. You may elect to build all sections all at once or only a specific group of courses (e.g. singletons, semester, course number range, grade level). Save builds and refine as needed until you are pleased with the results. The Builder will automatically save builds at various stages in the process but you can always manually save a build. Use refine, interactive mode, etc to fine tune the meeting times until you are pleased with the results. Create the section list. This writes the information in the builder back to the Master Course list. Up until this point, mostly everything you have been doing has been confined to the Builder. Run Perform Scheduling to load students into sections. Review the totals for each grade level in the scheduling log. Review other reports (staff master schedule, section lists, partial student schedule) and make any necessary changes. You may want to go back into the Builder to make changes or you can make changes directly in the section list. Look over each student s schedule and tweak as needed. There will come a point where you have done everything that you can on a global scale (e.g. change meeting times, teachers, etc.) and now you will need to go through students schedules manually and make any necessary changes. Enjoy your summer because you will be done!!!! 15

ACCESSING THE SUPER DELUXE SCHEDULE BUILDER To access the Super Deluxe Schedule Builder, click Build on the Shortcut Bar or go to Tools and select Super Deluxe Schedule Builder from the menu. If you chose Build from the shortcut bar you will see the Use Which Schedule Builder menu. 16

SPECIFICATIONS: BUILD MASTER SCHEDULE When the Super Deluxe Schedule Builder opens, you will see the BUILD MASTER SCHEDULE SPECIFICATIONS screen. The screen has been redesigned so that specifications that go together are grouped together. There are four main specification groupings: Rotation, Teacher, General Settings and Student questions. The Builder will be using these settings when determining meeting times. SPECIFICATION #1: USE WHICH ROTATION IN BUILDER? Which rotation do you want the Builder to use when assigning periods? This is important because the Builder will look to the rotation when determining the maximum periods a teacher can teach in a day and consecutively (specifications 4 & 5). SPECIFICATION #2: LAST PERIOD IN YOUR SCHEDULE? What is the last period you want to build out to? This should auto-populate because the Builder is reading the rotation that you specified in specification 1. If you are unsure, click on the View Rotation button to see your rotation. What is the last period? SPECIFICATION #3: MAXIMUM TIMES A PERIOD MEETS IN THE ROTATION? A period may meet anywhere from once to several times during a rotation. Setting this specification tells the Builder the maximum number of times any period meets during the rotation. For example, if you are on a two-day block rotation (day 1: ABCD and day 2: EFGH) then the most a period meets in the rotation is once. If you have a five-day rotation with periods meeting every day, the maximum times a period meets is 5. 17

SPECIFICATION #4: MAXIMUM PERIODS A TEACHER CAN TEACH IN DAY? Tells the Builder the maximum number of periods teachers can teach in a day. This is a universal specification, meaning that it applies to all teachers. You change these settings on a per-teacher basis under SETUP S TEACHERS SET MAXIMUM AND CONTINUOUS PERIODS. SPECIFICATION #5: MAXIMUM PERIODS A TEACHER CAN TEACH CONTINUOUSLY? Tells the Builder how many periods a teacher can teach in a row before getting a free period. SPECIFICATION #6: USE MINIMUM NUMBER OF PERIODS? Setting this specification to Yes causes the program to try to put as many sections in the least amount of periods possible. This is recommended because it places courses with fewer sections in the same periods, thus allowing courses with more sections to be distributed evenly among a greater number of periods. SPECIFICATION #7: MAJOR COURSES HAVE PRIORITY 0 TO? The Builder has the ability to schedule your major and minor courses separately. You set priority in Enter Courses. Priority ranges from zero (0) to five (5) with zero being the highest priority and five being the lowest priority. This specification is asking up to what priority is considered a major course. In the example above, major courses will have a priority between 0 and 2. SPECIFICATION #8: DEFAULT SCHEDULE VIEW? When viewing student/staff schedules in the Builder, what do you want the default schedule view to be: a line or a grid? Grid schedules will only show courses that the student has been scheduled into, whereas the line schedule will show scheduled courses along with conflicting courses. SPECIFICATION #9: USE COURSE NUMBER OR COURSE ALIAS? Do you want to use the course number or the course alias? In most screens, the course number will be displayed. This setting gives you the option of displaying the course alias instead of the course number. SPECIFICATIONS A & B: START/END GRADE? Allows you to control which grade levels to consider when the conflict matrix is created, and at which grades levels requests you are looking. INCLUDE ACTIVE/INACTIVE STUDENTS? This specification allows you to control which students course requests will be considered when the conflict matrix is created. SPECIFICATION C: CUSTOMIZE SC The Super Deluxe Schedule Builder now has the capability to support a 10-Day rotation! Click on the Customize SC button to bring up a menu where you can select to edit your rotation. Once you have set your specifications, click Done. 18

CUSTOMIZE SCHEDULING AND THE TEN-DAY ROTATION Some schools have a need for a ten-day rotation and in the past, the program had a limit of only 8 days. We have expanded the Builder to handle a 10-day rotation. Days are listed from 1 to 0. Zero is representative of the 10 th day. Not all versions of Administrator s Plus can handle printing a 10-day rotation in the Scheduling Report Writer. Please make sure you are on the most recent version of Administrator s Plus. If you have questions, call Technical Support. 19

WHAT IS THE MATRIX FILE AND WHY DO I GET ASKED ABOUT IT? Scheduling Plus used to base its section placement decisions on the conflict matrix and teacher availability. The conflict matrix is created based on students course requests. The Builder uses this information to suggest periods that have the least probability of causing conflicts. Using the conflict matrix, the Builder would make the best guess as to where courses should be placed. The Super Deluxe Schedule Builder uses load testing when placing courses. That means that it is actually trying to load students as if you were performing scheduling and it provides you with information regarding the number of students who could be scheduled and who could not. It is looking at actual conflicts and not potential conflicts. After accepting the specifications, the program will automatically create a course matrix file. The file is created and stored in the user s directory. It is only necessary to build this file once unless course requests or specifications change. If a matrix file already exists, you will be asked whether or not you want to replace it. As long as you have not made any changes to student course requests or specifications #9, A or B (start grade, end grade and active/inactive settings) you do not have to rebuild the matrix file. Upon leaving the schedule builder you will be asked whether or not you want to delete the matrix file. If you plan on using the Builder again without changing specifications or requests, choose not to delete this file. 20

SDSB MAIN MENU OPTION #1: ENTER COURSES GO TO APPENDIX 1 Accesses your master course list and enables you to set concurrent courses. Concurrent courses are courses that will occur at the same time with the same teacher in the same room. An example could be French 5 and AP French. Once concurrent courses are set within a course group, the Builder will consider both courses when selecting a meeting time and both courses in the group will get the same meeting time, teacher and room without the need to duplicate requests. OPTION #2: REQUESTS (REPORTS) Displays the tallies and sign-up lists for you to print. OPTION #3: SET NUMBER OF SECTIONS PER COURSE GO TO PAGE 22 Calculates how many sections per course you will need. This calculation is based on the number of requests and the optimum size of the course. If you prefer, you may manually enter the desired number of sections for a course. This option must be used first because before building, you must break up courses into sections. OPTION #4: SETUP TIMES, TEACHERS AND ROOMS GO TO PAGE 29 Define and assign time, teacher and room pools. Time pools are groupings of time when you want specific courses to meet. Teacher pools are groupings of teachers that you want to teach certain courses. Finally, room pools are groupings of rooms that can be linked to certain courses (i.e. computer labs, art rooms, science labs, etc.). OPTION #5: BUILD SCHEDULE GO TO PAGE 72 Suggests the best meeting time for each section. OPTION #6: FINALIZE SCHEDULE (CREATE SECTION LIST) GO TO PAGE 105 Creates a new section list based on the sections and times suggested in the Builder. OPTION #7: LOAD STUDENTS (PERFORM SCHEDULING) GO TO PAGE 107 Loads students into sections. To begin building your schedule, highlight option 3 and click Next. 21

SET NUMBER OF SECTIONS PER COURSE Set Number of Sections is the first step. This program calculates the number of sections you will need for each course. The calculation is based on the number of requests and the optimum size of the course. Quick Step Guide to Set Number of Sections Click on Start Over With All Courses. This will clear out last year s entries and bring in any new courses that you might be offering this year. Click on Calculate. The computer will automatically calculate the number of sections per course based on the number of requests and the optimum size. It will only calculate sections for courses that currently have zero sections. Click on Settings. Schools with semester and/or quarter courses can tell the Builder how they want these courses treated. There is a new setting which allows the Builder to pick the semester/quarter for you. Verify section totals with department heads or head of school, and if necessary make changes. 22

It is recommended that you click on Start Over With All Courses when you first enter this screen. This will clear out last year s entries and bring in any new courses that you might be offering this year. It will also remove any courses that are inactive. If this is your first time using the Builder, you do not need to click on Start Over With All Courses. You will be seeing all your active courses in the screen regardless of whether or not they have requests. However, only courses with section values will appear in the Builder. If, however, you only want to view courses that have requests, check the box in lower left-hand corner, Hide Courses Without Any Requests. By default, this list is sorted primarily by number of sections and secondarily by number of requests. Initially, you will have zero sections for each course, so in reality the list is sorted by number of requests. The Super Deluxe Schedule Builder will calculate the number of sections you need for each course automatically. Click the Calculate [F5] button and the computer will automatically calculate the number of sections per course based on the number of requests and the optimum size. It will only calculate sections for courses that currently have zero sections. A warning message will pop up stating this when you click Calculate. Continue by clicking Done. 23

After calculating, all courses that had requests will now have sections. If after looking through the list changes need to be made to the number of sections, double-click in the # of Sections column and edit the values. Use your arrow keys to move up and down within a column and when you are finished editing entries, click Save [F10] to save your changes. Helpful Hint: If you are decreasing the number of sections for a course, you will see the following warning message. If you have already built meeting times for the course, those meeting times will be deleted from the builder for that course. Once you return to the Builder, you will have to reschedule the course. 24

SPECIFY SECTIONS SETTINGS Originally, the specify sections settings enabled users to tell the builder how to initially split these courses up. In version 2.2 of SDSB, two new features were added. The first enables you to identify the type of school and the second is a setting which lets the builder pick how to distribute Semester, Quarter or Trimester courses. School Type: Now you can identify the type of school you have - Semester & Quarter or Trimester. Please note that you cannot have both Semesters and Trimesters. In the Builder under quarter, if your school type is Trimester, you will see T, T1, T2 and T3 designators for quarter. These designations are for the builder only. When you create your section list, sections will have a Q1, Q2 or Q3 designation. How to Distribute Semester and Quarter Courses: Equally Among All Semesters or Quarters Divides the sections equally between 2 semesters, 4 quarters or 3 trimesters. It may still be necessary to change your quarter designation if you have multisection courses that all meet within a specific semester, quarter or trimester. All Will Meet Semester 1 or Quarter 1 Builder Picks (New for version 2.2) Semester: S, S1, S2 Quarter: Q, Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 Trimester: T, T1, T2, T2 Leaves all courses at semester 1, quarter 1 or trimester 1. You will have to change the quarter designation in the Builder. Enables the Builder to choose the best semester, quarter or trimester. This is gives the Builder more flexibility when choosing meeting times for courses. Even with the option selected, you still have the option of manually locking a section into a specific semester, quarter or trimester. 25

OPTIMUM SIZES Optimum sizes are used by the Perform Scheduling program to limit the sizes of your sections. These limits could be based on teacher or room requirements. Adjusting your optimum section sizes based on the actual number of requests in a given school year may also result in better balanced sections. For example, if you look at PE 11/12, in the screen shot below, there are 4 sections for 83 students. Adjusting the optimum size of the course from 28 to 21 will allow for a better balance between the sections. To edit the Opt Sizes, you can click in the Opt Size column and manually edit the optimum sizes per course or the computer can adjust the optimum sizes for all courses in the list. If you want to restore your original optimum sizes, you will need to come back into SET NUMBER OF SECTIONS and under Optimum Size, click Restore Backup. (To find out about Restoring Your Optimum Sizes from the Backup, see page 27, otherwise go to page 28.) 26

RESTORING OPTIMUM SIZE BACKUPS The View screen will show you the Current Value of the course and the Backup Value. The Current Value is the current optimum size of the course. If you look at the screen shot below, you will see that the Current Value of PE 11/12 is 21 which is the value that we changed it to. The Backup Value is the optimum size of course at the time you made the backup. You may have multiple backups. Look at this list carefully. You are going to restore all of the values in this list so if you made multiple changes but you only want to restore one or two, you should just make the change directly in the Opt Size column of Set Number of Sections. 27

SAVING THE LIST Click Save [F10] to save this list and exit Set Number of Sections. Rediker Suggests: It is recommended that you print this list in course number order and give it to your department heads or head of your school to verify that the number of sections is correct. Click Print [F9] to print this list. 28

TIMES, TEACHERS AND ROOMS Option number 4 on the main menu is Setup Times, Teachers and Rooms. It is under this menu option where you can set up time, teacher and room pools. Time pools are groupings of time when you want specific courses to meet. Teacher pools are groupings of teachers that you want to teach certain courses. Finally, room pools are groupings of rooms that can be linked to certain courses (i.e. computer labs, art rooms, science labs, etc.). With the exception of setting preferred teachers, it is not necessary that you go into Times, Teachers and Rooms. Helpful Hint: If you used the SDSB in the previous year and entered times, teachers and/or rooms, you will not have to re-enter any of that information. It is recommended, however, that you go into these settings to verify that the information is still correct or if you need to edit and/or add any information. 29

TIMES One of the features of the Super Deluxe Schedule Builder is that it gives you the opportunity to set up time pools. A time pool is a collection of times that are linked to a specific course and it is from this pool that the Builder will choose a meeting time. There are two main questions to ask that will help you determine whether or not you need to set up time pools. 1. Does my school have courses that meet more than one period a day? Examples of these times would be AB1, AB, etc. They are commonly associated with lab courses and/or double-block courses. 2. Does my school have courses that do not meet everyday in the rotation? Examples of these times would be A135, A24, etc. These times are commonly associated with PE/Health courses, Unified Arts or Wheel courses (for middle schools). Using time pools will increase the time it takes the Builder to select meeting times. This should be taken into consideration prior to setting them up. Quick Step Guide to setting up Time Pools Enter in all of the possible times when courses can meet. This is an optional step, as entries will also be added to this list from Create Time pools. Create time pools to be associated with courses. Assign time pools to courses. Courses with a time pool associated with them will have a red triangle in the upper left hand corner of the course number column in the CONSOLE screen. If you determine that you need to set up time pools, click on Times from the Setup Times, Teachers and Rooms menu. 30

Once you click on Times, the Setup Times menu will appear. OPTION #1: ENTER/EDIT TIMES GO TO PAGE 32 Brings you into a screen where you can enter times that courses can meet. This is an optional step as entries will also be added to this list from the Create Time Pools option. OPTION #2: CREATE TIME POOLS GO TO PAGE 33 Allows you create time pools that will be assigned to courses. OPTION #3: ASSIGN TIME POOLS TO COURSES GO TO PAGE 37 Assigns time pools to courses. 31

ENTER/EDIT TIMES The Enter/Edit Times screen is purely optional. You can add new times directly when creating time pools. Those times will be saved back to this list. How do I?... Add times to the list: Click Add New [F2]. Type in the new time (up to 25 characters). Click Save [F10]. Repeat this process for each new time you want to add. Once you are finished entering/editing times, click Done [F10] to exit the screen. 32

CREATE TIME POOLS A time pool is a collection of times that can be linked to a course. The Builder will then pick the best meeting time out of the pool for that course. You may not have to create time pools as some come standard with the program. Helpful Hint: Time Pool Pitfalls 1. Not including All the possible time combinations in the pool. This limits the available times that the Builder can choose from. For example: You have an 8-period day with a 5-day non-rotating cycle. You need to create a time pool for a double-block period. What are the available times for the pool? AB, CD, EF, GH but don t forget BC, DE and FG. With the addition of those 3 times, your time pool has nearly doubled, which will increase flexibility in placing the course. 2. Entering times incorrectly. This could mean entering times on one line as opposed to separate entries, separating entries that need to be on the same line and/or typos. 3. Including times that you don t want the Builder to choose from. For example: You have courses that can meet two times a cycle. This means that courses could meet A12, A1B2, A1B1, etc. If you know that you do not want these courses to meet twice on the same day, you do not need to include A1B1, C1D1, F3G3, etc. in the pool. For illustrated steps on creating time pools see pages 34 through 36, otherwise go to page 36 to assign time pools to courses. 33

How do I?... Create a Time Pool: Click Add New [F2]. Type in a name for the time pool. Click on either Add New [F2] or Edit [F3] to add times to the pool. Enter in all of the possible times. Click Save [F10]. Repeat this process for each new time pool you want to add. Once you are finished creating all your time pools, click Done [F10] to exit the screen. In the example below, a time pool for a lab course is being created. Courses that will be using the times in this pool will have class every day either A or C block, plus once a rotation it will meet extra period B block. Click Add New [F2] and type in the name of the time pool. 34

Click on either Add New [F2] or Edit [F3] and enter times to the pool. When you have entered all of the possible times, click Save [F10] twice. 35

After you have created all of your time pools, click Save [F10]. If you want to print out the list of time pools, click Print [F9]. 36

ASSIGN TIME POOLS TO COURSES Once you have created your time pools, the final step is to assign these pools to courses. Remember that you do not have to assign time pools to all of your courses. Courses without time pools will default to meeting every day that the suggested period meets during the rotation. How do I?... Assign Time Pools to courses: Find the course you want to assign a time pool to by either scrolling the list or using Search [F6]. Highlight the course and click Edit [F3] or double-click in the Pool Name column. Select the pool from the drop-down and click Save [F10]. Repeat this process for each course that needs a time pool associated with it. Once you are finished assigning time pools, click Save [F10] to exit the screen. For illustrated steps on assigning time pools to courses see pages 38 through 39, otherwise go to page 40 Teachers. 37

In the following example, the Lab time pool will be linked to Chemistry. Find the course in the list and click Edit [F3]. Select the time pool you want to assign to the course. If you clicked on F6, a lookup of all of your available time pools will appear. Highlight the Time Pool you want to use and click Select. 38

After assigning all of the time pools to your courses, click Save [F10]. You can print this list by clicking Print [F9]. 39

TEACHERS Under the teacher s submenu you can assign teachers to departments, enter any excluded periods or other restrictions as well as assign teachers to the courses you want them to teach. You now have the ability to create teacher pools. A teacher pool is a group of teachers that are qualified to teach a specific course, so if the preferred teacher for that course is occupied the Builder can pick another teacher from the pool to teach the course. Quick Step Guide to Teachers Assign and/or verify that teachers are in their primary departments. If you have added new teachers, make sure that they have been added to the schedule board. Go to Setup Teachers Assign Teachers to Their Primary Departments Setup Schedule Board. Input and/or verify any teacher restrictions, including excluded period and maximum and/or continuous period exceptions. Assign and/or verify the linking of preferred teachers to courses. It is under Assign Preferred Teachers to Courses where you will create your teacher pools. Go to Setup Teachers Assign Preferred Teachers to Courses. 40

Once you click on Teachers, the Setup Teachers menu will appear. OPTION #1: ASSIGN TEACHERS TO THEIR PRIMARY DEPARTMENTS GO TO PAGE 42 Enables you to assign teachers to their primary departments. This feature is optional but if you would like to use our Schedule Board feature in the Builder, you will need to assign teachers to departments. If you choose to use this feature, you will be able to see a by-department lookup when you are in Assign Preferred Teachers to Courses. The Schedule Board is a graphical representation of your schedule. It is set up in a grid format with meeting times going down the left side and teachers (grouped by department) going across the top. It is not necessary to use the scheduling board but if you do, you MUST assign teachers to departments. OPTION #2: ENTER EACH TEACHER S EXCLUDED PERIODS GO TO PAGE 46 Input periods that teachers cannot teach. This is optional but recommended, especially if you have parttime teachers or teachers that can only teach a few periods. OPTION #3: ASSIGN PREFERRED TEACHERS TO COURSES GO TO PAGE 48 Assigns teachers to courses. This allows you to link teachers to the courses that you want them to teach. Once you enter the information in here, all you will have to do in the Builder is click on the Teachers button to assign teachers to courses. OPTION #4: SET MAXIMUM & CONTINUOUS PERIODS GO TO PAGE 47 This goes with excluded periods because it is here where you can set other restrictions. You might have a seven-period day where teachers can teach six out of the seven periods, with no more than four periods in a row. This option is where you can set exceptions for teachers that need different settings. OPTION #5: ASSIGN PREFERRED ROOMS TO TEACHERS GO TO PAGE 55 In version 2.3 of the SDSB you have the ability to create room pools. You can associate teachers with specific rooms and if it fits the schedule, the Builder will take teacher preference into account when placing courses in specific rooms at specific times. This menu option is found both under Setup Teachers and Setup Rooms. If you have not assigned teachers to their primary departments, select option 1. 41

ASSIGN TEACHERS TO THEIR PRIMARY DEPARTMENTS Assigning teachers to departments is necessary if you want to use our Schedule Board feature. The board displays teachers by department. Another benefit to assigning teachers to a department is that in both Assign Preferred Teachers to Courses and the Builder, you can limit your view to teachers within a specific department. This makes assigning and finding teachers easier because you looking at a smaller list. You can assign department information in one of two ways. Using the Copy Department from a Database Field allows you to copy the department assignment from the database to this screen. The other option is to manually enter the department information. How do I?... Assign teachers to their primary departments: To assign teachers by copying their department from a database field: Click on the Copy Department From a DB Field button. Highlight the field in the lookup and click Select. Helpful Hint: If you use the Copy Department from a DB Field feature, please be aware that the entry in the database field and the department entry MUST be an exact match (that includes spaces). To see what your department entries are, go to Scheduling Customize Scheduling and select Enter Department Names (#7) from the menu. To manually enter or edit a teacher s department: Highlight the teacher. Click Edit [F3]. Select the department from the drop-down. Click Save [F10] to save your department assignments. Once you are finished assigning teachers to departments, you can either click on the Setup Schedule Board button or Exit [Esc] to exit the screen. 42

If you are going to copy the department from a field in the Data Base: If you need to manually enter or change a department assignment: Once you have saved your department assignments, you are ready to set up the Schedule Board. 43

In the Builder, you can view your schedule in Schedule Board mode. This enables you to view scheduled courses graphically, which may make finding teacher issues or open blocks easier. In order to do this, you need to set up your schedule board. You now have the option of setting the board from this screen or from directly in the Builder. How do I?... Set up the Schedule Board: Click on Setup Schedule Board. Move teachers from the left side of the screen to the right side using the arrow keys. Click Done. Exit out of Assign Teachers to Their Primary Departments. Teachers on the left of the screen are available and teachers on the right will actually be on your scheduling board. Only teachers with departments will appear on this list. Helpful Hint: If you want to move the entire group of teachers, highlight the first teacher on the list and hold down your Shift key and click on the last teacher in the list. The list will be highlighted and then just click on the right-facing arrow. 44

Once the list is populated, click Done Departments. and exit out of Assign Teachers to Their Primary Helpful Hint: Once teachers are on the left side of the screen, you cannot use the Shift key to highlight a group of teachers. If you want to move teachers, you will have to do it individually. 45

EXCLUDED PERIODS You may have teachers that cannot teach particular period(s). You can enter their excluded periods in the Excluded Period screen. Periods can be full periods (i.e. A, B) and/or partial periods (i.e. A2, C5). How do I?... Enter Excluded Periods for Teachers: Highlight the teacher and click Edit [F3]. Enter in the period(s) that the teacher cannot teach. Arrow down the list to enter in exclusions for other teachers (if necessary). Click Save [F10]. Once you are finished entering excluded periods, click Save [F10] to exit the screen. 46

SET MAXIMUM AND CONTINUOUS PERIODS As part of the general specifications, you set the maximum number of periods a teacher can teach in a day and in a row. These are universal settings. You may have teachers that, for whatever reason, have different maximums. It is here where you would set those overrides. How do I?... Override the Maximum and Continuous Periods for a teacher: Double-click on the teacher. Enter in the overrides in one or both of the columns. Click Save [F10]. Once you are finished entering any maximum and/or continuous period overrides, click Save [F10] to exit the screen. In the screen shot below, teachers can teach up to 6 periods a day but no more than 5 periods in a row. 47

PREFERRED TEACHERS Assigning preferred teachers to courses allows you to link teachers to the courses you would like them to teach. Once the information is entered, one click assigns teachers to sections in the build schedule screen. It is now possible to have the Builder automatically assign teachers but you will still have to link teachers to courses here. Also, you now have the ability to create teacher pools. A teacher pool is a group of teachers that is qualified to teach a course. You will set these pools up in order with the preferred teacher(s) listed first followed by other qualified teachers. Helpful Hint: The Columns Course Information Teacher Information Crs # Course Number ID Teacher ID number. # of Sec Displays the number of sections from Set # of Sections. Teacher Name Teacher name. Course Name Course Name. SC Number of sections the teacher is teaching. Department Displays the department for the course. The department is designated in Enter Courses. Course Length Displays the length of the course. Excluded Periods Any periods that the teacher cannot teach. 48

How do I?... Assign Teachers to Courses: Highlight the course in the upper section and then highlight the teacher you want to teacher the course in the lower left-hand available teacher section. Click on the arrow pointing to the right to bring the highlighted teacher over to the preferred teacher side. Highlight the teacher and either double-click or click on the Plus sign to increase the number of sections. (You can use the minus sign if you need to decrease the number of sections.) Repeat the process for all courses and teachers. Once you are finished assigning preferred teachers, click Save [F10] to exit the screen. 49

If you linked teachers to primary departments, you can look at teachers that just teach in a given department. The department will change depending upon the course s department designation. Viewing teachers by department may help in setting up Teacher Pools because you will be looking at all teachers who are trained in a particular subject area. If they are then qualified to teach a variety of disciplines within that area, you can assign them as preferred teachers as well that is a teacher pool. 50

You now have the ability to create teacher pools. A teacher pool is a group of teachers that are qualified to teach a specific course, so if the preferred teacher for that course is occupied at a time that the Builder deems the best, the Builder can pick another teacher from the pool to teach the course. Helpful Hint: Why would you want to create teacher pools? 1. Increased Flexibility. If you have teachers that are qualified to teach a number of courses, creating a pool with all teachers that are qualified will give the Builder more options in selecting meeting times. 2. Control the number of sections a given teacher can teach. You can control how you want sections divided up between teachers. 51

There may be courses for which you need or want to assign more than one preferred teacher, or you may have added more teachers to the pool for a singleton. When multiple teachers are assigned, you can control the number of sections each teacher can teach by highlighting the teacher and clicking on the Plus sign until you get the correct the number of periods. You can use the up and down arrow keys on the right side to move teachers within the list. Also now in the SDSB, you can split teachers up between sections. For example, in the screen shot below Mr. Carver can teach two sections of Biology but instead of listing him once with the number of sections equal to two, he is listed twice. 52

There may be times in creating teacher pools that you want to see what courses a teacher has already been assigned to. You can see the courses a teacher is already assigned to by right-clicking on the teacher name and choosing Assigned Courses. 53

Once you are finished entering the preferred teachers and excluded periods, click Save [F10] save the list and exit this screen. You can print the list by clicking Print [F9]. to Helpful Hint: You can print this list by teacher, course or department. It is recommended that you print this by department and give it to your department heads to confirm staffing needs. 54

ASSIGN ROOMS TO PREFERRED TEACHERS As part of the new room pool functionality, you can assign preferred rooms to teachers. When the Builder is trying to a find a meeting time for a course, it will consider teacher preference and if the teacher s preferred room works for both the course and the schedule it will be used. The course preference, however, which is established when creating room pools, will always have precedence when determining the best room for the course. If you have selected this option directly from the SETUP TEACHERS menu and have not set up rooms previously, the available room list in the bottom left will be blank. You can either stay on this screen and batch add rooms from a DB Field or you can go to ROOMS SETUP ROOMS ENTER/EDIT ROOMS to create your room list. For the purposes of this document, this section is going to focus on this screen from the perspective that the room list has not been created. Under the Rooms section of this document, you will see this section from the perspective that the room list has been created and room pools have been established. The batch function will take rooms that are in the selected data base field and populate the room list. It will also take the entry in the selected field and makes it the preferred room for the teacher. How do I?... Assign Rooms to Teachers if I have not gone into Setup Rooms Click on the Batch Add from a DB Field button. Select the DB Field from which you want to batch add rooms (e.g. Homeroom) and click Select. You will see a message asking if you want to add each new room it finds. Type in a room size and click Add New Room or use the same room size and add all new rooms at once. Make any adjustments to the list manually and then click Save [F10]. You will still need to go into Rooms Setup Rooms to make any adjustments to room sizes, create any room pools and/or assign rooms to room pools. For illustrated steps on using the Batch Add Room function see pages 56 and 57, or go to page 58 for information regarding Rooms. 55

Click on the Batch Add Rooms From DB Field button and select the field from the list. You will see a warning message regarding a room not being in the master room list. This message will come up if the program finds a room that is not currently in the master room list. In this case because a room list has not been set up, this message will come up for all rooms. Type in a room size and click on Add To Master List button or check the box to apply the same room size to all rooms. 56

Make any manual changes to this list by highlighting the teacher, then highlighting the room and clicking on the arrow buttons to move it to the right (available) or left (preferred) side. When you are finished making any changes, click Save [F10]. You can print this list by clicking Print [F9]. 57

ROOMS The Super Deluxe Schedule Builder allows you to set up room pools and then assign them to courses. A room pool is a collection of rooms that are linked to a specific course. Room pools are extremely useful if you have specialty rooms such as computer labs, science labs and/or art rooms where certain courses must meet. Room pools can be made up of as little as one room. The Builder will select the best room from the pool based on the number of requests and room size. It can also take teacher preference into account when selecting rooms. There are three questions to ask that will help you determine whether or not you need to enter rooms. 1. Does my school have courses that must meet in specialty room(s)? And if the answer is yes, do I want the Builder to keep track of them while building? Examples of these rooms would be science labs, computer labs, art or music rooms. If you want the Builder to take these courses into account while building, you are going to need to enter rooms and possibly set up a room pool. 2. Is my school at maximum room capacity? If all of your rooms must be used every period, creating room pools and letting the Builder choose rooms as it builds will assure that all courses are placed in a room and that rooms are not overbooked. 3. Do I want to enter rooms in the Builder prior to creating my section list? Once times have been generated, you can assign rooms to courses. This saves time because you no longer have to go into your section list. However, if you would like to do this, you will have to go into Enter/Edit rooms. Using room pools may increase the time it takes the Builder to select meeting times. This should be taken into consideration prior to assigning them to courses. Quick Step Guide to Creating the Room list Enter in all of the available rooms you have in your school. This list is copied over every year, so you will only have to enter rooms once. Create room pools to be associated with courses. Assign room pools to courses. Courses with a room pool associated with them will have a blue triangle in the upper left hand corner of the room size (rm sz) column in the build CONSOLE screen. Match preferred teachers to preferred rooms. Teachers that have preferred rooms associated with them will have a green triangle in the upper right hand corner of the teacher column in the CONSOLE screen. If you determine that you need to set up room pools, click on Rooms from the Setup Times, Teachers and Rooms menu. 58

Once you click on Rooms, the Setup Rooms menu will appear. OPTION #1: ENTER/EDIT ROOMS GO TO PAGE 60 Brings you into a screen where you can enter the available rooms in your school. You can import your list of rooms from your previous year s section list. If you want to assign rooms from within the Builder, you must use this option to enter rooms regardless of whether or not you set up room pools. OPTION #2: CREATE ROOM POOLS GO TO PAGE 63 Allows you create room pools that will be assigned to courses. OPTION #3: ASSIGN ROOM POOLS TO COURSES GO TO PAGE 68 Assigns room pools to courses. OPTION #4: ASSIGN PREFERRED ROOMS TO TEACHERS GO TO PAGE 70 Associate teachers with specific rooms and if it fits the schedule, the Builder will take teacher preference into account when placing courses in specific rooms at specific times. Click on option 1 Enter/Edit Rooms. 59

ENTER/EDIT ROOMS You must go into Enter/Edit Rooms if you want to assign rooms in the Builder. If this is the first time you have gone into this screen, it will be blank. You will need to either import rooms from a past year s section list and/or manually enter rooms and sizes. How do I?... Add rooms to the list: Importing Rooms from a section list Click Import [F4] and select Import rooms from a section list. Select the year from which you want to import rooms. (More than likely, this will be your current active year.) Edit [F3] room sizes and descriptions if necessary. Manually entering rooms Click Add New [F2] to enter rooms manually. Type in the room, description (if needed) and room size and then hit Enter. Repeat this process for each new room you want to add. Once you are finished making updating this list, click Save [F10] then click Done [F10] to exit the screen. to save the list and For illustrated steps on importing rooms from a section list see pages 61 through 62, otherwise go to page 63 to create room pools. 60

Click on Import [F4] and when the menu comes up, select Import rooms from section list and click Next. Highlight the year from which you want to import rooms and click Select. The import populates two columns, room and room size. Room is the actual number of the room and room size is based on the course s optimum size. The other column, room description, is where you can enter a description of the room. (Some examples are computer lab, music, gymnasium, science lab, etc.) 61

To edit the list, click Edit [F3]. You can use the tab key to move to a different column and the arrow keys to move up and down a column. When you are finished editing, click Save [F10] to save the list and click Done [F10] to exit the screen. Helpful Hint: Room Sizes It is strongly recommended that room sizes be entered for all rooms. If a room has a size of zero, this could cause problems for the Builder. If you have a room that will not be used for a class, remove that room from the list rather than giving it a size of zero. Once you have entered in rooms, you can create room pools and assign them to courses. 62

CREATE ROOM POOLS A room pool is a collection of rooms that is linked to a course. There can be a total of 999 entries in a room pool and you cannot duplicate entries. All of the rooms that you entered in ENTER/EDIT ROOMS are in the Default Room Pool. This pool can be used for all courses not assigned to a specific pool. The Default Room Pool Setting determines how the default pool will be used within the Builder. How do I?... Create Room Pools: Import Preferred Room List this will create pools based on the department setting of the course. Click Import Preferred Room List and select Import rooms from a section list. Select the year from which you want to import rooms. (More than likely, this will be your current active year.) Pools are created by department. Rooms are pulled from the section list. (These pool names can be edited.) Edit room pools as needed by highlighting the pool, clicking Edit [F3]. Change the name of the pool if necessary. Click on either Add New [F2] or Edit [F3] to add rooms to the pool or click on Delete [F8] to remove rooms from the list. Once you have entered all of the possible rooms where the course(s) can meet, click Save [F10]. Manually Create Room Pools Click Add New [F2]. Type in the name of the pool and then click on either Add New [F2] or Edit [F3] to add rooms to the pool. Once you have entered all of the possible rooms where the course(s) can meet, click Save [F10]. Once you are finished creating all your room pools, click Done [F10] to exit the screen. For illustrated steps on creating room pools see pages 64 through 65 for importing, and/or see pages 66 through 67 for manually creating room pools, otherwise go to page 68 to assign room pools. 63

IMPORT PREFERRED ROOM LIST Click Import Preferred Room List and select Import rooms from a section list. Select the year from which you want to import rooms. (More than likely, this will be your current active year.) Once the pools have been imported you may want or need to edit the pools. Highlight a pool you need to edit and click on Edit [F3]. 64

Make any edits to the pool and then click Save [F10]. Once you have saved the pool, you will see it in the list of room pools. 65

CREATING A BRAND NEW ROOM POOL Click Add New [F2] and type in the name of the room pool. Click on either Add New [F2] or Edit [F3] and enter rooms to the pool. When have entered in all the rooms, click Save [F10]. 66

Once you have finished creating all of your room pools, click Done [F10] assign these pools to courses.. You are now ready to If you want to print out the list of room pools, click Print [F9]. 67

ASSIGN ROOM POOLS TO COURSES Once you have created your room pools, the final step is to assign these pools to courses. You do not have to assign room pools to all your courses. Courses without a room pool associated to them will use the default pool. The settings of that pool were set in CREATE C ROOM POOLS. A message stating this, along with the setting, is in red at the top of the screen. Regardless of the settings, you can still manually assign rooms directly in the Builder. How do I?... Assign Room Pools to courses: Manually assign room pool to courses Highlight the course and click Edit [F3] or double-click in the Pool Name column. Select the pool from the drop-down and click Save [F10]. Repeat this process for each course that needs a time pool associated with it. Once you are finished assigning room pools to courses, click Done [F10] to exit the screen. For illustrated steps on assigning room pools to courses see page 69, otherwise go to page 70 for assigning preferred rooms to teachers revisited. 68

Highlight the course and click Edit [F3] or double-click in the Pool Name column. Select the room from the drop-down and click Save [F10]. Repeat for all the courses you want to assign room pools to. When you are finished assigning all of the room pools to your courses, click Done [F10]. You can print this list by clicking Print [F9]. 69

ASSIGN ROOMS TO PREFERRED TEACHERS REVISITED If you have already created a room list and established room pools, this screen is going to look slightly different than it did before. As part of the new room pool functionality, you can assign preferred rooms to teachers. When the Builder is trying to a find a meeting time for a course, it will consider teacher preference and if the teacher s preferred room works for both the course and the schedule it will be used. How do I?... Assign Rooms to Teachers if I have already generated a Room List and I want to manually select rooms from this list... Highlight the teacher under the Teachers list. Highlight the room and click on the right arrow to move the room for the available side to the preferred side. Repeat for each teacher and then click Save [F10]. For illustrated steps see page 71 or just skip right to Build on page 72. 70

Highlight the teacher. Highlight the room and click on the right arrow to move it to the preferred side. Repeat steps and for each teacher and then click Save [F10]. You can print this list by clicking Print [F9]. 71

BUILD SCHEDULE Option 5 on the main menu is Build Schedule, the Builder. It is here where you will actually build your schedule. This can be done interactively, where you pick the best meeting times based on the number of conflicts and teacher availability or it can be done automatically. Most schools do a little bit of both. Quick Step Guide to Building 1 Familiarize yourself with the CONSOLE screen. 2 Make any semester, quarter or trimester adjustments if needed. 3 Assign teachers if you want, or you could just let the builder assign for you. 4 If there are any sections that must meet in a specialty room (e.g. computer rooms, science labs), enter in those rooms. 5 If there are any sections that must meet at a specific time, enter in those meeting times and lock the period. 6 Limit your view to just the courses you want to schedule first usually we recommend that you start with your Singletons. 7 Click on Build All [F5] and/or use the Interactive Mode [F6] to select meeting times. 8 Look at the scoreboard. 9 Save the build and refine if needed. Repeat the process for your next group of courses. Click on 5 Build Schedule to go into the C CONSOLE screen. 72

REDIKER SUGGESTS: BUILDING YOUR SCHEDULE TIPS AND STRATEGIES The BUILD (CONSOLE) screen is where you are going to be doing most of your work. While everyone has their own strategy when it comes to scheduling, we have listed some basic steps along with our own tips and strategies for using the Builder. WHEN YOU FIRST ENTER THE BUILDER: 1. Familiarize yourself with the Console screen. 2. Assign your teachers. The Builder can assign teachers for you but if you assign teachers first it will save time in building and you can tell the Builder to change the assigned teacher if needed. 3. If you have courses that must meet during a specific quarter and/or semester, sort the list by the QTR column and make those adjustments and lock the quarter. 4. If you have courses that must meet in a specialty room (e.g. computer rooms, science labs, etc.), you may want to assign rooms to those courses only. 5. If you have sections that must meet at a specific time, put in those meeting times and lock the period. BUILDING SUGGESTED STRATEGY: We recommend that you build your Singletons first, followed by your Doubletons, Tripletons, etc. The reasoning behind this is that building a schedule is a lot like building a building. The foundation must be solid or else everything built on top of it may collapse. In terms of scheduling, Singletons and Doubletons are the foundation. You want to make sure that you have the fewest conflicts and over-optimum sections as possible before placing the tripletons and other multi-section courses on top of them. 1. Change the view so that you are just looking at your singletons. 2. Click on the Default Sort Order button. This will put the courses in order according to most requested by (singletons, doubletons, etc). 3. Click Build All [F5] or use Interactive [F6] to select meeting times. 4. Look at the scoreboard 5. Save the build and refine if needed. 6. Repeat the process for your doubletons following by the tripletons, four-section courses, etc. 7. When you are finished building all sections, save the build and refine again if needed. BUILDING ALTERNATE STRATEGIES: A lot of factors can affect your schedule. The more you know about your school, its vision and its priorities the better prepared you will be to strategize the best approach to schedule building. Example #1: One department or group of courses drives your schedule. In some schools the priority is science, in others music, and in still others it s AP and Honors courses. The placement of these courses is key to the overall schedule. You would want to place these courses first, lock the meeting times and then proceed building your singletons, doubletons, etc 73

Example #2: Certain teachers needs drive your schedule. Some schools have teachers with a lot of exclusions which will affect the ability of the Builder to place those courses. You would want to place these courses first, lock the meeting times and then proceed building your singletons, doubletons, etc BUILDING LINKED COURSES AND COURSES WITH PREREQUISITES: The Builder does consider both links and prerequisites when selecting meeting times, and knowing how the Builder handles these types of courses will help you in building. Linked Courses: Courses are linked when it is important that the rosters match, even though there may be a different teacher teaching the course or the courses might be meeting in different semesters. With linked courses, if a student has a request for both courses in the link, they will get into the same section of each course. If they cannot, then they are not scheduled in either course. You link courses in Enter Courses and the linking only goes one way. When building linked courses it is important to remember a few things: 1. The number of sections between the two linked courses has to match because there is a one to one relationship between the two courses. For example, Physics is course 201 with 3 sections, the course it is linked to, Physics Lab, course 202, also needs three sections. 2. When deciding on a meeting time, the Builder is going to try to find the best meeting time for each course in the link. In the case of semester courses, this may not be during the same period. For example, Sociology, course 301, is a semester course and it is meeting A block Sem1. The Builder may place Psychology, course 302, which is linked to Sociology, A block Sem 2, but it may not, depending upon what works better for the schedule. If you want to manually match up sections you can, but it may adversely affect the overall outcome of the schedule. 3. When you schedule the first course in the link, it will show that all of the students are unscheduled. This is due to the fact that the second course has not been scheduled yet. Do not panic, this is normal. Just schedule the second course in the link and Viola! students will be scheduled. Prerequisite Courses: A prerequisite course is a course that must be taken prior to taking another course. For example, English 9A is the prerequisite to English 9B. A student with a request for both courses must get into English 9A prior to English 9B. Prerequisites are very useful for semester and trimester schools where courses must fall in a particular order. You enter prerequisite courses in Enter Courses. When building prerequisite courses it is important to remember a few things: 1. When deciding on a meeting time, the Builder is going to try to find the best meeting time. In the case of semester courses, this may not be during the same period. If you want to manually match up sections you can, but it may adversely affect the overall outcome of the schedule. 2. When you schedule the first course it will show that all of the students are unscheduled. This is due to the fact that the requisite course(s) has not been scheduled yet. Do not panic, this is normal. Just schedule the requisite course(s) and Viola! students will be scheduled. 74

THE BUILD SCREEN The CONSOLE screen contains a lot of information about your sections. This includes the length of the course, the meeting time, the teacher, the room, the number of requests, the number of students not scheduled, and how many sections of each course are being offered. When you first enter the CONSOLE screen you will see all of the sections that you calculated in SET NUMBER OF SECTIONS. The check boxes at the bottom of the screen control what courses you are currently viewing. The default sort order will present the singletons followed by the doubletons, etc. The secondary sort is the number of requests in decreasing order. You can sort the list by clicking on the header of any column. For more details about the CONSOLE screen see pages 76 through 80, otherwise go to page 81 to assign teachers. 75

THE BUILD SCREEN COLUMNS There are 13 columns in the Console screen. The locks at the top of a column determine whether or not the cursor will stop in that column. Only columns with locks can be edited directly from this screen. COLUMNS # Indicates the course s relative position in the list. You cannot sort by this column. NUM COURSE QTR SCHED PER EXCL PER ID TEACHER ROOM RM SZ REQ UNSCH SC Displays the Course Number. Displays the Course Name. Indicates the length of the course (e.g. All Year, Quarter, Semester or Trimester). Is where the meeting time of the section is entered. (Double clicking in this column will automatically bring you into the interactive screen.) Shows the time(s) when a section cannot meet. Displays the Teacher ID assigned to teach the section. Shows the Teacher name. If you want to change the teacher, just edit the ID column. Displays the room. Shows the maximum capacity of the room. You set this in ENTER/EDIT ROOMS and it is tied to the room. Number of requests for the course. Number of students who may potentially not be scheduled for a course. Number of sections. 76

THE BUILD SCREEN CHANGING THE VIEW When building, it is recommended that you work with groups of courses at one time. This will allow you to fine tune your schedule as you go. CHANGING YOUR VIEW By Section Type By When the Course Meets By Priority When building, it might be helpful to build all of your singletons first, followed by your doubletons, etc. Use the check boxes to show only the courses you want to. You can show only all-year courses, courses that meet during a specific semester, trimester and/or quarter. Priority is set in Enter Courses. The range is from 0 to 5 with 0 being the highest priority and 5 being the lowest. On the specifications screen (see page 17), you set the cutoff for major courses. Using the check boxes you can schedule just your major courses and then the minor courses. There are several new features that affect the courses you are currently working with. These features are covered on the following page. 77

These features all affect your view and/or the order the courses you are scheduling. 1. Show all courses with at least one student in the grade level: Limits your course view to one specific grade level which will enable you to schedule that grade level first. This is useful because it lets you schedule all your senior courses so you are sure that they have what they need to graduate. 2. Schedule courses within a certain range of course numbers: Limits your course view to a specific range of course numbers. Certain departments or courses (e.g. Science, PE, Special Education or Unified Arts courses in Middle Schools) can run a schedule. By scheduling those courses first, this ensures that students get those courses and then the Builder can build around them in placing other courses. 3. Change the order of courses: Moves a course up or down in the scheduling list, which will allow the course to get placed early or later. Remember, the Builder builds from the top of the list down, and there may be occasions where you need to move a course (e.g. a doubleton, tripleton and/or a course with a lot of exclusions) up in the list so that course gets scheduled earlier. 4. Select or deselect a course (or all courses) to be scheduled: Keeps courses from being scheduled. If the box next to the course name is unchecked, that course will be ignored by the Builder. This enables you to remove individual courses from the building process without going into SET NUMBER OF SECTIONS and zeroing out the section. You can also deselect all courses and then select specific courses and build them first. This is useful if you have courses that go across departments and have specific restrictions (i.e. courses that all need the computer lab, but span multiple departments). Deselect all courses, then just select the courses you need to place first, and then lock those meeting times. 78

THE BUILD SCREEN BUTTONS THE BUTTONS Save Build Retrieve Build Schedule Board Schedule Report Refine Times Teachers (Rooms) Allows you to save the current build. You would save a build if you liked the results but you wanted to try something different. Lets you retrieve a previous build. Brings up the schedule board view. This is a graphical representation of your schedule. If you did not assign teachers to their primary department, you will not be able to use this option. Displays a report that lists the number of students looked at, what number would be completely scheduled, partially scheduled, etc. Refines your current build. Based upon specifications you set in Advanced Specifications, the computer will go back and try to reshuffle teachers, meeting times, etc. to find a better time. To use this, you must be in Default Sort Order. Times will bring up the submenu displayed on the left. (You will see this same menu when you right-click in the Sched Per column for an unscheduled course.) The first two items are Build All functions which will assign times to all displayed courses. The third option, interactive schedule, will bring you into the interactive screen. Schedule this course, the fourth option, will just schedule the highlighted course. The fifth and sixth options will unschedule all courses. Easy schedule brings up a very simplified interactive screen where you can select a time but not teachers or rooms. Finally, options eight and nine enable you to lock or unlock all times. Teachers and Rooms will bring up the submenus displayed on the left. (You will see these same menus when you right-click either in the ID/Teacher columns or the Room column.) These submenus give you the option to automatically or manually assign an individual teacher or room. You can also assign or remove all teachers for the displayed courses. You can lock or unlock teachers or rooms and you can view the teacher or room schedules. Courses The Courses submenu is displayed on the left. These options enable you to see a list of courses with either time pools or room pools assigned to them, as well as a grid schedule view of the highlighted course. Default Sort Order Displays the list by section type (singletons, doubletons, etc.) in decreasing order based on the number of requests. The program builds from the top down so default sort order is extremely important, especially when refining. 79

THE BUILD SCREEN THE RIGHT-HAND SIDE THE RIGHT-HAND SIDE Section View Course View Advanced Specifications View Log Auto Quick Schedule (Refresh) Highlighted Course Unscheduled Students Legend Shows you a list of all sections with meeting times. It will show the course name, number, opt size, number of requests, students currently scheduled, etc. Shows you a list of all courses, their priority, meeting times, percent scheduled, etc. Brings up an additional set of specifications that can be used to perhaps improve results when building. Brings up a log of what the builder did in either interactive, build all or overnight mode. By default, the program will automatically load test and update the scoreboard as you enter data. Depending upon the speed of your computer, this auto refresh may take a while. Unchecking this box will suspend auto-refreshing. The current highlighted course is listed in red. Lists any unscheduled students for the given course. Explains what the colored triangles in certain columns mean. 80

ASSIGNING TEACHERS Once you have familiarized yourself with the CONSOLE screen, the next step is to assign teachers to courses. If you entered your teachers under TIMES, TEACHERS AND ROOMS SETUP TEACHERS ASSIGN PREFERRED TEACHERS, you can have the Builder assign teachers to sections as it is selecting meeting times or you can assign the teachers prior to building. It is recommended that you assign teachers prior to building. Assigning teachers first will save time during the build. Also, if you have teachers with a lot of exclusions, assigning teachers prior to building will enable you to see who those teachers are in case you want to schedule those courses first. Even if you preassign teachers, you can have the Builder change the assigned teacher if needed. There are many ways to assign teachers to courses. Whichever way you use, excluded periods that you set for the teachers will appear in the Excluded Period column. How do I?... Assign Teachers to Courses Assign teachers to all courses Click on Teachers (or right-click in Teacher column) and select Assign All Teachers from the menu. With this option, you will see the following message regarding excluded periods. Excluded periods can be attached to the teacher or to the section. When a teacher is first assigned to a section, that section takes on the exclusion(s) associated with the assigned teacher. Even if that section already has exclusions with it, the teacher s exclusions will overwrite it. It is recommended that you assign teachers and then you can edit the exclusions as needed to fit the section. Click Yes at this warning. Manually assign teachers to courses Unlock the ID column. Type in the ID of the teacher you want to teach the class. OR Right click on the section and either manually or auto-assign the teacher. 81

Once you have assigned teachers, right-clicking in the teacher column or clicking on the Teachers button brings up a slightly different menu. If you do not have a teacher for a section, the teacher field can be left blank and the Builder will either assign a teacher automatically from the preferred list or if no teachers has been associated with the course, the Builder will select the best meeting time for the course based only on student requests. 82

CHANGING YOUR SEMESTER DESIGNATION When you were in SET NUMBER OF SECTIONS, you clicked on the Settings button and designated your school as having either Semesters and Quarters or Trimesters. You also set whether the Builder would pick the semester, divide sections equally or set them all to Semester 1. Those settings are going to affect what you see in the QTR column. Depending upon those settings, you may need or want to change the semester designation of some of your courses. How do I?... Change the QTR designation of a course Click on the QTR column heading twice to sort the list in descending order and scroll to the top of the list. If the QTR column is locked, unlock the column by clicking on the lock. Double-click in the QTR column and select the appropriate semester, quarter or trimester from the drop-down. Repeat as needed. When finished, click Accept [F10]. The program will take a few moments to recalculate schedules. Lock the QTR column. Helpful Hint: If you had selected Builder Picks and you manually changed the QTR designation for certain courses, you will see a red lock to the right of the cell. 83

ASSIGNING ROOMS The Builder now has the ability to assign rooms as it is selecting meeting times. If you have specialty rooms or if your school is at maximum room capacity, assigning rooms prior to building or during the build may help with the overall build. By default, the Builder will automatically assign rooms to sections as it is building. The Builder will take rooms into account when selecting a meeting time and it will not doublebook rooms. How do I?... Assign Rooms to Courses Assign rooms to all courses Click on Rooms and select Assign All Rooms from the menu. (This will assign rooms to all courses that have a room pool associated with them. This includes courses that are using the default pool.) Manually assign rooms to courses Highlight the course. Right-click or press the Rooms button and click Auto-Assign or manually assign room. OR Unlock the ROOM column and double-click in the column. Type in the room or click Lookup [F6] and select a room from the list, (If you only want to assign specialty rooms, you may want to manually assign those rooms.) If you just want to input room numbers so that you do not have to do it later, it is recommended that you do this after the schedule has been built. 84

BUILDING THE SCHEDULE FIXED SECTIONS Once you have assigned your teachers, verified your quarter designations and if needed, assigned rooms, you can build your schedule. The first courses you will need to place are your fixed sections. A fixed section is a section that must meet at a specific time. Usually these are singletons but you can fix any type of section or a specific section of a multi-section course. You will want to set the meeting times for any fixed section first and lock the time. The Builder will then build around these courses. How do I?... Schedule a Fixed Section Make sure that the SCHED PER column is unlocked. If needed, use Search [F2] to easily find the course in the list. Click on Edit [F3]. Type in the meeting time(s). Click Accept [F10]. Lock the time by right-clicking on the scheduled period column and selecting Lock Time from the menu. 85

Rediker Suggests: Placing Other Courses Early There may be other courses that you may want to place and lock before building the rest of your sections. These courses could be in a particular department, courses with a lot of exclusions or courses that everyone has to take. It might be beneficial to your schedule if these courses get placed early; however, unlike your Fixed Sections where you know the meeting time of the course, these courses can have any meeting time that will work within their constraints. To schedule these courses, you can either go into the INTERACTIVE screen where you pick the meeting time or you can right-click on the course to just schedule that course. 86

Once you have set your Fixed Sections and any other courses that you want placed early and locked, click Default Sort Order. This will place your sections in the recommended order for building. It places singletons sorted by number of requests, followed by doubletons, by number of requests, etc., with any locked sections being at the top of their respective grouping. The Builder builds from the top on down, so it is important that you are in Default Sort Order. Now in the Advanced Specifications, there is a specification which, when set to Yes (the default), will automatically set the list in default sort order prior to building. As part of this specification, you can change the order of the criteria it uses to sort. Helpful Hint: Locks Column Locks / : These locks are located at the top of certain columns and they determine whether or not you can manually edit the values in these columns. If the column is locked, your cursor will not stop in that column. If the column is unlocked, your cursor will stop in the column and you can edit the values. The program can still change the values in these columns regardless of whether or not the column is locked. Cell Locks : These locks are located in the right hand corner of a cell and it means that the value is locked. The program may not change it and the value will not be deleted when a Delete All function is used. In all columns except the Scheduled Period column, you can edit a locked value. If you want to change a locked meeting time, you will have to unlock the time and then edit it. Once you have placed your locked sections, you are ready to build the singletons. 87

BUILDING THE SINGLETONS The Singletons are the foundation of your schedule. Since there is only one possible meeting time for these sections, you will need to schedule them first and make sure that they are as conflict-free as possible before moving to the Doubletons. It is suggested that you limit your view to just your Singletons and build them using the Build All function, Interactively or a combination of both. How do I? Build the Singletons Limit your view to just your Singletons. Click the Select All check box to uncheck all the boxes. Click the Singletons check box to view just the singletons. Determine how you want to build. Build All [F5] The computer selects the meeting times for you. Interactive [F6] You select meeting times using the interactive screen. Interactive Building is covered in Appendix 3. 88

When you click Build All [F5] or select Build All, View Specs from the Times or Right-click menu, the ADVANCED SPECIFICATIONS screen will come up. Advanced Specifications are optional. Most of them will trade off speed in building the schedule for the possibility of better results. It is recommended that you just leave the defaults. There is brief description of these specifications on the following page. For more detailed descriptions, see Appendix 2. Helpful Hint: If you do not want to see the Advanced Specifications pop-up again during your building session, check the box next to Do not show again in this session or select Build All Now, Skip Specs from the Times or Right-click menu. Click Start Build [F10]. 89

Helpful Hint: Advanced Specifications in brief 1. Advanced Partial Period Check? When building courses that do not meet every day in the rotation (e.g. courses that have a MWF or TH time pool), the Builder will look at previously-placed courses, and if it finds one that does not meet every day, it will try to find another course that it can place that will fill out that block of time. The default is ON. 2. Advanced Teacher Check? The Builder can look ahead at the courses that it needs to place for the teacher and will make sure that in placing the current course it leaves room for the teacher s other courses to be placed. The default is OFF. 3. Advanced Student Check? The Builder can look ahead at the courses that it still needs to place for each student requesting the current course and it then tries to place the current course in the best meeting time so as not to conflict with any courses yet to be placed. This will severely slow down the building process, which is why the default is OFF. 4. Shuffle Students After a Course is Unscheduled? If you unscheduled a course, students may be moved from one section to another in order to improve the balance between sections (i.e. shuffling). The default is ON. 5. Use Overnight mode (try alternate runs)? The program will try different iterations of the schedule, saving each build. This usually takes a lot longer than overnight and it is recommended that you keep the setting to the default, OFF. 6. Sort Order For Building? This will automatically place the courses in default sort order prior to building. This should be kept to the default YES. 7. Importance of fewer unscheduled students vs. Lower over optimum counts (Better Balanced Sections)? When determining a meeting time for a course, the builder takes into account the number of students who will be unscheduled and how many would be scheduled over optimum. This spec allows you to tell the Builder which is more important to you. The default value is 10, which means that 1 unscheduled student is 10 times more important than 1 student over optimum. 8. Refine Mode Settings? Refining is when the program will go back to courses that either have unscheduled students or over-optimum students and try to reschedule these courses. The defaults are 1 unscheduled student and 5 students over optimum. You can change these defaults and you can set whether or not the program will automatically refine at the end of building. 9. Assign Teachers and Rooms While Building? The program can automatically assign teachers and/or rooms for you during the build. This is checked by default. If you have set up teacher or room pools, you may want to check OK to change assigned teacher (room) if not locked, to allow the Builder to go back to the pool and select another teacher or room if it would work better for the schedule. With Rooms, you also have the ability to enable room shuffling. Once a room has been used for a course, the program may try to shuffle rooms if by moving a course from one room to another, more students can get scheduled. A. How to Make Time Combinations for Multi-Section Courses? When creating time combinations for multi-section courses, the program will create combinations starting with the first period in the pool, even if that period is full. This spec will have the Builder consider the number of students already scheduled in a period and if that period is full, it will not use that period when creating time combinations. B. How to Determine the Best Combination? The program has always used certain criteria when selecting the best meeting time for a course. You are now able to choose how you want the program to use the criteria when determining the best combination. 90

SAVING THE BUILD After you have completed a build, it is recommended that you do a save. Even though the program automatically saves builds whenever you do a major process, such as assigning or deleting (the program will always save a build upon exiting the CONSOLE screen), it is always a good idea to do a manual save. The reason is simple. Since you are the one naming the save, finding it later may be easier than trying to sift through auto-saves. You can manually save builds whenever you want. It is usually recommended that you do a manual save after a performing a scheduling run. How do I?... Save a Build Click on the Save Build button in the lower left of the CONSOLE screen. Type in the name of your build and click Save. Helpful Hint Saving Builds: When you save a build, you are saving a moment in time. If you make course changes (i.e. add or delete sections, change teachers, meeting times, etc.) and then retrieve a previous build, those changes will be gone. 91

SCOREBOARD When the singletons have finished building and you have done a save, you should look at the scoreboard. The Scoreboard provides you with a running account of your progress. At a quick glance, the Scoreboard provides you with information regarding your schedule, including the number of unscheduled courses, number of unscheduled students, total number of students who have been placed over optimum and the total number of students who are completely scheduled. Scoreboard categories that are blue indicate that you can click on them and bring up a list of students and/or courses in that category. These lists can be viewed and printed. In the example below, there are 8 Unscheduled Courses*, 8 Unscheduled Students, 4 Students have been placed over the optimum and 175 students are completely scheduled. THE SCOREBOARD Unscheduled Courses Unscheduled Students Total Over Opt Scheduled Students Brings up a list of courses that had students that were not scheduled. Displays a list of students who could not be scheduled. Shows a list of all course(s) that have students scheduled over the optimum. Total number of scheduled students. *Unscheduled Course and Unscheduled Student numbers may not always be equal. Sometimes the unscheduled course number is larger. The reason is that a student may be unscheduled for more than one course. 92

SCOREBOARD LISTS Clicking on any of the blue headings will bring up a list. These lists may be of courses and students (Unscheduled Courses), just students (either Unscheduled or Scheduled students) or just courses (Total Over Optimum). The screen below is showing the Total Over Optimum list. The screen shot below shows the Unscheduled Courses list. 93

When you first entered the SDSB, you specified the default view of schedules, either the Line or the Grid (see page 18). The benefit of the Line Schedule is that it displays both scheduled and unscheduled courses. The Grid Schedule only displays scheduled courses. Whichever schedule you initially are viewing, you can toggle to the other one and you can print either. The grid view only shows scheduled courses. 94

FINE TUNING Looking at the scoreboard lists will give you a clear picture of courses that you may want or need to try to reschedule before moving forward. Fine Tuning can be as easy as clicking the Refine button (see Appendix 2) and letting program do it for you, or you may want to take a more hands-on approach by using the interactive screen (see Appendix 3), rescheduling individual courses and/or using EASY E SCHEDULE. Refining enables the program to revisit courses that meet the criteria set in the Advanced Specifications. By default, the program will try refining a course if it at least one student could not be scheduled or at least 5 students are over the optimum. When refining, the program will unschedule the course and then try different meeting times, possibly different teachers and/or rooms, in order to get a better result. The EASY SCHEDULE is a very basic interactive screen. It will show you the course and staff schedule but not rooms. You cannot select different teachers but you can view different time options. It will show some details, including the number of students who could be scheduled and those who could not be scheduled. It just shows numbers, you cannot see the names of the students from this screen. How do I? Use the Easy Schedule Screen Right-click or click on the Times button and select Easy Schedule. Double-click under Times to change the time of the current course. Click on Get Details to see the stats for that combination. Click Select to save the new meeting time or click Cancel to go back the original time and exit the screen. 95

SCHEDULE BOARD One of the features of the Super Deluxe Schedule Builder is that it includes a Schedule Board view of your schedule. The Schedule Board provides you a graphical representation of your scheduled courses. Helpful Hint: In order to use the Schedule Board feature you must have assigned your teachers to their primary department and set up the scheduling board. This is done under TIMES, TEACHERS AND ROOMS TEACHERS ASSIGN TEACHERS TO THEIR PRIMARY DEPARTMENT. 96

The Schedule Board has Departments and the Teachers associated with those departments going across the top of the Board. Along the left hand-side are the meeting times. By default, course information is displayed in Multi-Line mode. This displays both the course number and course name in the grid. The display is controlled by the Day, # Section and Quarter options. The Day and # Section options are on the far left of the screen and the Quarter view is in the upper right. Day has check boxes that control how many days you are viewing. It refers to the number of days in your rotation and the numbers displayed are controlled by specification #3 (Max Number of Times a Period Meets in the Rotation) on the Build Master Schedule Specifications (see page 17). Unless you have courses that do not meet every day, it is suggested that you just check the Day 1 checkbox. # Section displays the different type of sections in different colors. This makes identifying your singletons, doubletons, etc. easier. Excluded Periods will always be in red. You can use the quarter check boxes to limit the type of course you are looking at. You can hide teachers or entire departments from the board by right-clicking and selecting Hide. When you are finished viewing the Schedule Board, just click Done. 97

TROUBLE-SHOOTING TIPS During your scheduling run, things may come up that you should address before moving forward. Some of these are: 1. Partially Scheduled Courses scoreboard This board will appear when you have sections that were not assigned meeting times. A course might not be completely scheduled for a number of reasons. You may have reached your teacher limitations for either Maximum Periods in a Day or Maximum Periods in a Row. (For example, science teachers teach 5 courses but each course meets 6 days, once a day plus one lab a week. If you have your maximum periods in a row set to 5, the science courses may not be completely scheduled.) Room availability could also be a cause of why a section could not be scheduled. (For example, you have one computer lab but 9 courses that need it.) 2. Sections that do not have teachers assigned to them A teacher may not be assigned to a course because their Maximum in a day or in a row limitation has been reached. They were not assigned to the correct number of sections under T TIMES,, TEACHERS AND ROOMS SETUP TEACHERS ASSIGN PREFERRED TEACHERS TO COURSES. (For example, last year when the list was set up the course only had one section, this year it has two. If you did not make that adjustment under ASSIGN PREFERRED TEACHERS TO COURSES, teachers will be missing from sections.) 98

BUILDING THE DOUBLETONS Once the singletons are done to your satisfaction, you are ready to move on to the Doubletons. A Doubleton is a course with two possible meeting times. Just like with the Singletons, you can click Build All [F5] times or you can interactively build the Doubletons. to have the computer select meeting Once you are finished with the Doubletons, save the build and fine tune if needed. Then you are ready to repeat the process for the Tripletons and beyond until you have finished the run. 99

FINISHED A SCHEDULING RUN NOW WHAT? A scheduling run is complete when you have scheduled all of your courses. Once a run has been completed, save it and take a look at the scoreboard. Are you pleased with the results? If the answer to this question is yes, great, it is time to exit the Builder, create the section list and load your students. If the answer is no, then there are some things you can do and reports you can look at that may help you improve your results. Other than the scoreboard, there are three other reports that may give you some insight as to the results of the build. The first is the Schedule Report. You can access it by clicking on the window or click on the Schedule Report button. within the scoreboard The SCHEDULE REPORT gives a general overview of the run. It is broken down by grade level and shows the total number of students in each grade level that was looked at. It also shows those students who were Not Attempted (NA), students who were Not Scheduled (NS) and students who were Partially Scheduled (PS), along with the reason(s) why, as well as those students who were Completely Scheduled (CS). Helpful Hint: If you have seen the Perform Scheduling log, this report is very similar to the Totals page. But this report shows all grades on one page, not one grade level per page. This report is useful because at a glance it could let you know the specific grade levels that are having problems. In the screen shot below, the 12 th grade has 8 students who could not be scheduled. In addition, there are two students in this grade who are missing course requests. Grades 9, 10 and 11 have a number of over-optimum sections. There are two other reports that may be helpful. They are the Scheduled Sections report and the Course View report. You access the Scheduled Sections report from the SCHEDULE REPORT screen, or you can access it directly from the CONSOLE screen by clicking on the Section View button on the righthand side of the screen. It is from the CONSOLE screen where you can access the Course View report by clicking on the Course View button right next to the Section view button. 100

The SCHEDULED SECTIONS report shows you all of the sections that have been scheduled. At a quick glance, you can see which sections are over their optimum size, the sections that have unscheduled students, as well as the sections that at have reached the room s maximum capacity. The COURSE VIEW report shows you any courses that have any unscheduled students. But more important, this report shows you the totals for that scheduling run. In the screen shot below, you see that of the 1313 requests that were processed, 1300 were successfully fulfilled (i.e. students were scheduled) which is a percentage of 99%...not too shabby. 101

Looking at the Scoreboard, Schedule Report, Course View and/or Scheduled Sections reports will give a good idea of where to focus your fine-tuning efforts. One of the ways to fine tune the schedule is to use REFINE. The program will revisit courses that meet the criteria set in the Advanced Specifications. It will then unschedule those courses (one at a time) and try different meeting times, teachers and/or rooms in order to get a better result. This process may take a significantly longer amount of time than building because the program may have to revisit courses several times. Refining can occur automatically while building (see under Advanced Specifications Refine Mode Settings Auto Refine) or you can refine after the build by clicking on the Refine button. Please note that refining may not always improve the build! It is strongly recommended that you save your build, prior to refining. When the program is finished refining, it is time again to take a look at the Scoreboard. Do you like the results of the refine or do you want to go back to your build prior to refining and try something else? 102

RETRIEVING A BUILD There may be times where you want to go back to either a previous build or a previous stage in the building process. For these cases, you will want to retrieve a previous build. There are three different types of build saves: Manual, Auto and Overnight. You can restore any of these saves. A manual save happens when you click on the Save Build button and actually save what you are working on (see page 91). The program will also automatically save builds at various stages in the process. This includes whenever you do a global action such as deleting all times, building all times, etc. Finally, if you use overnight mode (see Advanced Specs, Appendix 2 for more information) the program will save the build after each run. How do I?... Retrieve a Build Click on the Retrieve Build button. A warning message will appear asking if you want to save your current build. If you click on yes, you will see the save build screen. Type in the name of the save and then click Save. If you click No or have saved the current build, a lookup with all of the saved builds will appear. Select what type of save you want to restore: Manual, Auto or Overnight. Highlight the build you want to restore and click Retrieve [F10]. 103

EXITING THE BUILDER When you are happy with the outcome of the build, click Done [F10] to exit out of the Builder. It is very important that you are viewing the build that you want to keep prior to exiting out of the builder. This is because when you go to the next step, FINALIZE SCHEDULE (CREATE SECTION LIST), it takes what is currently in the Builder and writes it to the Section list. If you want to print a hard copy of the build, click Print [F9]. 104

FINALIZE SCHEDULE (CREATE SECTION LIST) The last step you need to do from within SDSB is to Create the Section List. This step is very important because up until this point, you have been primarily working within the confines of the Super Deluxe Schedule Builder. By creating the section list, you are taking what is in the Builder and bringing up to Administrator s Plus. If you saved multiple builds, make sure that the build you want to use is the one currently in the Builder. Click on 6 Finalize Schedule to create the section list. 105

The Build Section List specifications will come up. SPECIFICATION #1: ADD TO OR REPLACE EXISTING SECTION LIST? Setting this specification to Replace erases the existing section list in Administrator s Plus and replaces it with a new one. The new section list will reflect what you currently have in the Builder. Setting this specification to Add To adds sections to your existing section list. Due to the fact that you can now schedule all semesters and quarters at one time, it is highly unlikely that you will use Add To. However, if your school is K through 12 or even 6 through 12, you may need to build two different schedules. If this is the case, you will want to build the first schedule (usually your upper or high school schedule) and use Replace and then build the lower or middle school and use Add To. This will ensure that neither section list will be erased. SPECIFICATION #2: INCLUDE WHICH SECTIONS? Use the checkboxes to select the type of courses you want to include in the section list. By default, all of the boxes are checked. Unless you schedule Semester 1 separately from Semester 2, more than likely you will want to keep all of the boxes checked. When you have your specifications set properly, click Done. 106

LOAD STUDENTS (PERFORMING SCHEDULING) Once the section list has been created, it is time to actually load students into sections. This occurs when you run Perform Scheduling. This process can be run either from the SUPER DELUXE SCHEDULE BUILDER or from ADMINISTRATOR S PLUS SCHEDULING PERFORM SCHEDULING. The following two pages will briefly describe the Specifications and different menu items used in PERFORM SCHEDULING. If you would like more detailed information about PERFORM SCHEDULING, please refer to Chapter 9 in the Scheduling Plus manual. 107

The specifications screen for PERFORM SCHEDULING will come up. OPTION #1: RANDOM SCHEDULING? Allows you to choose whether or not you want to schedule over the optimum size of the course. When Random Scheduling is turned OFF, the program will try to keep sections from exceeding the optimum size, but if necessary, it will schedule students over. When Random Scheduling is turned ON, students will not be scheduled over the optimum size of the course. Please note that within the Builder, there is no way to not schedule over the optimum so if you set this specification to ON, your unscheduled counts will be higher than they were in the Builder. OPTION #2: INCLUDE WHAT IN THE LOG? Each time you perform scheduling, a log is generated. This log can display All Students, Unscheduled Students or just Totals. Each type of report will have a Totals page. Totals give you a statistical summary for each grade level similar to the Schedule Report in the Builder. OPTION #3: MAXIMUM ATTEMPTS MODE? The PERFORM SCHEDULING program tries to schedule each student by determining which sections will most likely be successful ones. Setting this to ON will make the program try numerous combinations to try to schedule students into all their courses. By setting this to OFF, the program will only try the most obvious combination. This will save you time, but students may be unscheduled who would not have been if more combinations were tried. It is recommended that you set Maximum Attempts Mode to ON. OPTION #4: OPTION #5: START GRADE FOR ALL GRADES? END GRADE FOR ALL GRADES? Allows you to control the grade levels that will be scheduled when the All Grades option is selected from the menu. OPTION #6: MAXIMUM MAJOR COURSES PER QTR? The maximum number of major courses a student can take in a quarter. The default is 99. OPTION #7: MAXIMUM MINOR COURSES PER QTR? The maximum number of minor courses a student can take in a quarter. The default is 99. OPTION #8: MAJOR COURSES HAVE PRIORITY 0 TO? Priority will be used by the Loader to differentiate between major and minor courses. This specification is used to determine the cutoff for major courses. The default is 2. Once you have set the specifications, click Done. 108

Upon clicking Done, you will see the PERFORM SCHEDULING main menu. It is at this menu where you select the grade you want to schedule if you want to schedule one grade level at a time or you can select All Grades to schedule all of the students within the grade range set in the specifications. Once you select the grade level or all grades from the Main Menu, the Select Scheduling Mode menu will appear. OPTION #1: QUICK CONFLICT CHECK The program will determine which students can be scheduled without conflicts. It also lists students who could not be scheduled. Because the Super Deluxe Schedule Builder has done this for you, there is no reason to run the Quick Conflict Check. OPTION #2: PERFORM ACTUAL SCHEDULING STUDENTS WILL NOT BE PARTIALLY SCHEDULED The program will attempt to schedule students into their requested courses. However, students who have conflicts or who would have to be placed in full sections will not be scheduled into any of their courses. OPTION #3: PERFORM ACTUAL SCHEDULING STUDENTS WILL BE PARTIALLY SCHEDULED Similar to option 2, except with this option, students who can not be scheduled into all of their requests will be partially scheduled into their remaining requests. Requests for courses that could not be scheduled will be dropped. These course requests are not actually deleted from the student s records. This is the option that we strongly recommend that you use. OPTION #4: UNSCHEDULE This option unschedules students that have been scheduled using either Options 2 or 3. You may unschedule either the entire school or a single grade level. If you have made changes to your section list and want to re-run the schedule, you must unschedule your students first. LOCK ALL SCHEDULED COURSES? You can lock students into previously scheduled sections. It is not related in any way to the locks in the Super Deluxe Schedule Builder. OPTION #5: Select what you want and then click Next then program will schedule students into sections.. You will then see a message about Shuffling and 109

CLOSING THOUGHTS Because you are actually load testing students as you build, it is unlikely that you will have to return to the Builder once you have created your section list. If you need to make changes to meeting times these can be made in ENTER COURSES. There are a number of very helpful reports that you can look at when trying to determine where you need to make schedule adjustments. o Perform Scheduling Log: SCHEDULING PERFORM SCHEDULING and click Done at the SPECIFICATIONS and select VIEW MOST RECENT LOG from the PERFORM SCHEDULING menu. This is the log that is generated when you Perform Scheduling. Look at the Totals page. It will let you know at glance if there were any students dropped from courses. o Sign-up List: SCHEDULING SIGN-UP LISTS and for specification number 6, choose Print Students Without Sections. In version 4.6.16, we added a feature to the sign-up lists where you can print students without sections. This means that if you perform scheduling and you see that 12 students got dropped from 12 th grade English, you could run this report to find out exactly who these students are!!! o Partially Scheduled Student Report: SCHEDULING SCHEDULING REPORT WRITER PARTIALLY SCHEDULED STUDENT REPORT (TASK NUMBER 11). This report is printed by student for each student who could not be scheduled into all of their courses. o Staff Master Schedule: SCHEDULING SCHEDULING REPORT WRITER STAFF MASTER SCHEDULE (TASK NUMBER 17). This report is printed for all staff on one page. It is useful because it shows in a grid-like format what teachers are free when. o Section List: TOOLS EXCEL WIZARD SCHEDULING PLUS SECTION LIST. You can also print this from ENTER COURSES, but Excel will enable you to sort the list by any column which might help you identify issues. It is in the Section List where you can see the current size of a section which will help you see any balance issues. IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS OR NEED ASSISTANCE, PLEASE DO NOT HESITATE TO CALL REDIKER TECH SUPPORT AT 800-882-2994. 110

APPENDIX 1 CONCURRENT COURSES Concurrent Courses are separate courses that take place in the same room at the same time with the same teacher. They have also been called Combo Courses. These courses usually do not have enough requests to run on their own so they are combined with a similar course. Why would a school have concurrent courses? 1. A course might not have enough requests to justify a stand-alone section. For example, you have a course, French 5 Honors, that 10 students have requested, and you have another course, AP French, that 3 students have requested. There are not enough requests for a stand-alone section of AP French, but the teacher is willing to add those students to their French 5 Honors class and just give those students some extra assignments. 2. They want their classes to have a blending of both Honors and Non-Honors students while maintaining course differentiation for Report Cards and Transcripts. What have schools done in the past to schedule these courses? Since the Builder will not double-book a teacher, schools have been told to give students with requests for one of the courses a request for the other course and just build one of the two courses. For example, give students with requests for AP French an additional request for French 5 Honors. In the Builder, you will only build French 5 Honors. After creating the section list, you will need to go into Scheduling Enter Courses and for AP French, manually create a section that has the same meeting time, teacher and room as French 5 Honors. Then prior to loading students, you would have to batch drop the requests for (let s say French 5 Honors) for all the students with a request for AP French. Whew. What will concurrent courses do and not do? With the concurrent course feature, you will be able to group courses. These course groups will be considered as one course when building. So that when the program is determining a meeting time it will consider students with requests for all the students with courses in the group and it will assign the same meeting time(s), teacher(s) and room(s) for all the courses in the group. You will no longer have to duplicate requests, manually add sections after the build is complete, etc. Concurrent courses will not, however, combine the courses in terms of Report Cards or Grade Quick. Teachers will still have separate rosters for each course and separate Grade books. Quick Step Guide to setting up Concurrent Courses Create a Course Group from within Enter Courses. Concurrent Courses will have a purple triangle in the upper left hand corner of the course number column in the build console. 111

Currently, the concurrent course option is only available from within the Super Deluxe Schedule Builder under Enter Courses. How do I?... Set Concurrent Courses: Click SET CONCURRENT COURSES from the ENTER COURSES submenu. Click Add New. Type in the name of the Course Group. Highlight the courses that are going to be part of the group and click on the right pointing arrow. Click Done [F10]. Repeat this process for each Course Group you need to create. Once you are finished creating all your Course Groups, click Done [F10] screen. to exit the For more information on creating concurrent courses, see pages 112 through 113. 112

In the example below, a course group called Woods is being created. Click SET CONCURRENT COURSES from the E ENTER COURSES submenu. Click Add New [F2]. Helpful Hint Invalid Course Screen If you have any invalid course groups, this screen will come up when you enter the Builder. It lets you see the reasons why a course group is considered invalid. 113

Type in the name of the Course Group and then highlight the courses you want in the group and move them to the Selected side of the screen. Click Done [F10]. Once you have finished creating all of your course groups, click Done [F10]. 114

APPENDIX 2 - ADVANCED SPECIFICATIONS Advanced Specifications are optional. Most of them will trade off speed in building the schedule for the possibility of better results. Helpful Hint: Regardless of whether or not you go into Advanced Specifications, this screen WILL pop up when you click on Build All [F5]. When the screen appears, check the box in the lower left to disable this pop-up. 115

ADVANCED PARTIAL CHECK? This specification applies to courses that do not meet every day in the rotation (e.g. courses that meet MWF or TH) and that have a time pool. The Builder will look at previously-placed courses and try to find other courses that will fill out that block of time. By default this specification is ON. For Example: A PE course meets three days out of the rotation (MWF). It goes with a Health course that meets two days (T Th). Three sections of PE have already been placed in blocks A, B and D. With Partial Period Check turned on, the Builder, when placing the Health course, will look to fill up the partiallyscheduled periods. So even though Health could be placed C & E, the Builder should place Health A, B and D on the days opposite PE. This will fill up that period as if it were occupied by a course that met every day. Day 1 (M) Day 2 (T) Day 3 (W) Day 4 (Th) Day 5 (F) A PE Health PE Health PE B PE Health PE Health PE C D PE Heatlh PE Health PE E 116

ADVANCED TEACHER CHECK? This specification looks at teacher assignments so that they get all of the sections they have been assigned to teach. While determining a meeting time, the Builder will look ahead to make sure that in placing the current course, it leaves room for future sections to be placed. By default, this specification is turned OFF. Having this specification turned ON will slow down the speed of the build, but if your school has semester and/or quarter courses mixed with all-year courses or courses that meet partial periods (e.g. MWF), it is recommended that you turn this specification ON. This setting only applies if you are doing a Build All function and if you have pre-assigned teachers prior to building. For Example: Mr. McNair is teaching a full load of courses. He has 4 semester singletons and he is teaching 3 sections of an all-year five-section course. With Advanced Teacher Check turned on the Builder should place the four singletons in such a way that enough periods are left open for the three all-year sections. Semester 1 Semester 2 Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 A Semester Course Semester Course B All Year Course C D Semester Course Semester Course E All Year Course 117

ADVANCED STUDENT CHECK? This specification is similar to the Advanced Teacher Check, but instead of looking at teaching assignments, it is looking at student requests. While determining a meeting time, the Builder will look ahead to make sure that in placing the current course, it leaves room for future sections to be placed. The program looks at all of the students who requested the course. It then looks ahead to what else they requested and tries to place the course in the best meeting time so as not to conflict with any future courses to be scheduled. By default, this specification is turned OFF. Having this specification turned ON will greatly slow down the speed of the build. This is because the program is literally checking future conflicts of every student who has requested the course. However, similar to the Advanced Teacher Check, if you have semester and/or quarter courses mixed with all-year courses, it is recommended that you set this specification to ON. Just like with the Advanced Teacher Check, this setting only applies if you are doing a Build All function. 118

SHUFFLE STUDENTS AFTER A COURSE IS UNSCHEDULED? This specification only applies when you are in INTERACTIVE MODE. If you unschedule a course, students in that course will be shuffled. They may be moved from one section to another in order to improve the balance between sections. By default this is turned ON. OVERNIGHT MODE? Overnight mode applies only to the Build All functions and affects just the courses that you are currently viewing. In Overnight mode, the program will override logic schemes and try several different iterations of the schedule. This really will take all night and possibly several nights, so make sure that you turn it on when you can spare the time. For example: You have three courses (100, 200 & 300). These courses are singletons and in scheduling, periods A, B and C are selected. If Overnight mode is turned ON, the program will go back and try other choices for the courses. So, if it placed course 100 in A the first time but it could have also been placed B, D or E, during subsequent runs, the Builder will go back and try each different meeting time and then continue with the run. It will do this for every course you are currently viewing. When Overnight Mode is finished, click on Retrieve Build and then select Overnight Mode to see the saved runs. Usually the first run, which will be one of the last ones on the list, will be the best build. 119

SORT ORDER? By default, the recommended order for building is singletons, sorted by number of requests, followed by doubletons, by number of requests, etc., with any locked sections being at the top of their respective grouping. This is called the Default Sort Order, and it is important because the program builds from the top of the list down, so usually you would want to keep this set to Yes. You now have the ability to change the criteria and the order of that criteria used for the Default Sort Order. Click on the Set Default Sort Order button to bring up SET DEFAULT SORT ORDER screen. Highlight the criterion you want to move and use the right/left arrows to either add it or remove it from the list and use the up/down arrows to change the order of the criteria. Click on the Reset to Default button to get back to the order seen in the screen shot below. Helpful Hint: Reasons Why You Would Want to Change the Sort Order: 1. Your school has a lot of Exclusions and those courses should be scheduled first. 2. Your courses are in numerical order with the core courses being first and those should be scheduled first. 3. Required courses that All students must take need to be scheduled first. 120

FEWER UNSCHEDULED STUDENTS VS LOWER OVER OPTIMUM COUNTS? This specification only applies if specification B (How to determine the best combination?) is set to Use Criteria as Tie Breakers. When determining the best meeting time for a course, the Builder looks at both fewest scheduled students and the lowest over optimum. Ideally, you would like all of your students to be scheduled and your sections in perfect balance. This setting enables you to specify, if given a choice between better balanced sections and more students scheduled, which is more important to you, and to what comparative degree. Basically, you are telling the program how many students over optimum are equivalent to a single unscheduled student. If the slider is in the middle, the program will give equal importance to both Better Balance and Scheduled Students. Moving the slider to either the left or the right will shift the balance towards one factor at the expense of the other. Most schools are willing to have more students scheduled at the expense of overoptimum sections. The default setting is 10. This means that one unscheduled student is ten times more important than one student over optimum. The slider is very sensitive so it is recommended that you keep the default at 10. 121

REFINE MODE SETTINGS? One of the ways to fine tune the schedule is to use Refine. The program will revisit courses that meet the criteria set in the Advanced Specifications. In Refine, the program will unschedule the course and then try different meeting times, possibly different teachers and/or rooms in order to get a better result. Refine Mode Settings? The program will only refine a course if it meets one of the criteria set here. The unscheduled student setting is set to 1. So if just one student did not get the course the program will revisit this course when refining. The default is one. The over-optimum setting is set to 5. If five or more students are scheduled over the optimum section size of a course, the Builder will try to unschedule and reschedule this course when refining. The default is five. Auto Refine? Turns Refine Mode on automatically. As the program is building, it will go back and refine courses that meet the Refine Mode criteria. Having this checked will significantly increase the time it takes to build. 122

ASSIGNING TEACHERS AND ROOMS WHILE BUILDING? TEACHERS: If you have not assigned teachers prior to selecting any of the Schedule functions (i.e. Build All, Schedule Course, Assign Times, Interactive etc.), teachers will be assigned to sections as the Builder is determining the meeting times. It will pull the teachers from the preferred teacher list. If you have set up teacher pools, you may want to check Change assigned teacher if not locked, to allow the Builder to go back to the teacher pool and select another teacher if it would work better for the schedule. The default is to assign teachers if none assigned but not to change teachers. This setting also affects the default teacher settings in the INTERACTIVE screen. If Assign Teachers is checked, the Builder will automatically assign the preferred teachers when you enter the interactive screen. You can change the teacher assignments once in the INTERACTIVE screen. ROOMS: Similar to teachers, if you have not assigned rooms prior to selecting any of the Schedule functions, rooms will be assigned to sections as the Builder is determining the meeting times. It will select rooms using both the course and teachers preferences if possible. If not, it will select a room based solely on the course preference. If you have set up room pools, you may want to check Change assigned room if not locked, to allow the Builder to go back to the room pool and select another room if it would work better for the schedule. Because room sizes can vary and this can affect which course(s) can be assigned to specific rooms, an option to Use room size while scheduling is checked by default. This means that the Builder is looking at the room size as the hard limit to the number of students who can be placed into a specific section. By default, this setting is checked, but be aware that this may affect the Unscheduled Student and Course counts on the scoreboard, because students may not be scheduled over the optimum size of a course if that course has already hit maximum capacity for the room. The final room specification regards shuffling. Sections may be moved from to another room in the pool in order to resolve conflicts. By default this setting is checked. 123

HOW TO MAKE TIME COMBINATIONS FOR MULTI-SECTION COURSES? When creating time combinations for multi-section courses, the program will create combinations starting with the first period in the time pool and work its way through the other times until it reaches the maximum combination limit set in LOGIC SCHEMES (see page 129). Even if the first periods are full, it will still start with them. By checking this box, the program will look at the number of students already placed in each period. If a period is full, it will not use that period when creating combinations. For example: English 9 is a four-section course. The school has a six period day (A F). Periods A and B are totally full for the 9 th grade. The Builder is trying to place this course. Without this specification checked, period A and B will be used in every time combination the Builder creates even though they are both full. By checking this specification, the program will see that A and B are full and start creating the time combinations with C. 124

HOW TO DETERMINE THE BEST COMBINATION? The program has always used certain criteria to select the best meeting time for a course. These criteria include most unscheduled student count, number of sections already placed in a specific period, etc. You are now able to choose how you want the program to use the criteria when determining the best combination. There are two options: Use criteria as tie breakers, which is the default, and Use all criteria and enter a weight for each one. USE CRITERIA AS TIE BREAKERS In the event that two or more combinations have the same scoreboard numbers (i.e. unscheduled and over optimum), the program will go to the next criterion to determine the best combination. If it is still a tie, the program will go to the next one, etc. until it can resolve the tie. With this option, you can change the order in which you want the program to consider the criteria. Clicking on the Enter the Order of Criteria button will bring up CRITERIA FOR SELECTING THE BEST COMBINATION screen and it is in this screen where you can change the order and the criteria used. For more information on Use Criteria as Tie Breakers see pages 125 and 126. USE ALL CRITERIA AND ENTER A WEIGHT FOR EACH ONE All criteria will be considered when picking the best meeting time based on the weights you have entered. Each criterion will have a weight from zero to one hundred, and to determine the best combination for a course, the program will multiply the weight by the relative rank of the combination. The combination with the most points is the best. Using this option, you can also set different weight criteria for the different section types. Once this option is selected, the buttons for Create Weight Schemes Schemes to Courses will become active. and Assign For more information on Use All Criteria and Enter a Weight for Each One see pages 128 and 129. In the INTERACTIVE screen, you will see the Why? button. If you click on this button, a screen will come up with an explanation as to why one combination was chosen over another. Depending upon how you want the program to determine the best combination, the Why screen may look different. See page 136 for screen shots of how the Why explanations are affected by these settings. 125

USE CRITERIA AS TIE BREAKERS There are eight different criteria that can be used. These criteria are numbered one to eight but you can place them in any order with the exception of #1 (Best Score). This criterion is always first when using this method. 1 Best score (fewest unscheduled and over optimum): This is always ranked first and is related to the overall scoreboard numbers. The combination with the fewest unscheduled students and the fewest over optimum is considered the best. 2 Most conflicts in opposite sem/qtr: In placing Qtr/Sem courses, the Builder will try to place courses with the most conflicts opposite each other, which will help fill in the period for the year for students. Courses conflict because students have requests for both courses. For semester/quarter courses, conflicting courses indicate that the requests match. So, by placing these courses opposite each other, students will have a place to go throughout the year. 3 Most unscheduled count in the full period: When placing courses that meet partial periods (i.e. A135), the builder will try to fill that period for the full week by placing another partial-period course that meshes with the first (i.e. A24), thus filling in the week. 4 More number of times in a combination: When placing multi-section courses the program can spread them out over multiple periods or it can double up (or triple up) these courses in a few periods. Do you want the number of different meeting times to be considered when creating a combination? 5 Sum of scheduled students of individual times: This looks at the total number of students who are currently scheduled at a given time. 6 More students already scheduled in primary grade level: This comes into play when placing courses that have students in multi-grade levels. The primary grade level is the grade level that has the most requests for that course. 7 Number of equivalent sections for the combination: Places sections in period(s) with the most number of sections already scheduled. 8 Section balance: Looks at sections with the better balance between loaded students. 126

You can set the order to best fit the needs of your school. If your school does not have courses that meet partial periods, remove it from the order. If section balance is important to your school move it up in the order. When using this method, the items on this list will be looked at in order, in the event that two or more combinations have the same scoreboard. In the example below, Best Score will be used as the first tie breaker, followed by Section Balance, etc. 127

USE ALL CRITERIA AND ENTER A WEIGHT FOR EACH ONE There are ten different criteria that can be used. For this method, you are going to put in a value between 0 and 100 for each criterion. For each combination, the program will multiply the weight by its relative rank. 1 Fewest unscheduled: Fewest unscheduled students for all courses (scoreboard number). 2 Fewest over optimum: Fewest students over optimum for all courses (scoreboard number). 3 Most conflicts in opposite sem/qtr: In placing Qtr/Sem courses, the Builder will try to place courses with the most conflicts opposite each other, which will help fill in the period for the year for students. Courses conflict because students have requests for both courses. For semester/quarter courses, conflicting courses indicate that the requests match. So by placing these courses opposite each other, students will have a place to go throughout the year. 4 Most unscheduled count in the full period: When placing courses that meet partial periods (i.e. A135), the builder will try to fill that period for the full week by placing another partial-period course that meshes with the first (i.e. A24), thus filling in the week. 5 More number of times in a combination: When placing multi-section courses the program can spread them out over multiple periods or it can double up (or triple up) these courses in a few periods. Do you want the number of different meeting times to be considered when creating a combination? 6 Sum of scheduled students of individual times: This looks at the total number of students who are currently scheduled at a given time. 7 More students already scheduled in primary grade level: This comes into play when placing courses that have students in multi-grade levels. The primary grade level is the grade level that has the most requests for that course. 8 Number of equivalent sections for the combination: Places sections in period(s) with the most number of sections already scheduled. 9 Section balance: Looks at sections with the better balance between loaded students. 10 Fewest scheduled students in the primary grade level: This may become a factor when placing multi-section courses. As periods begin to fill up, you may want to find combinations that include meeting times that have the fewest students in the primary grade level. This will help fill the scheduling needs for the students in the primary grade level for that period. 128

You can also set different weight criteria for the different section types. You can then assign these weight schemes when you are in the LOGIC L SCHEMES screen. Below are some examples of how you may want to set Weight Schemes for different types of courses. Remember that every school is different and these are just examples. If you have questions specific to this using this feature, you should call tech support. Singletons, for example, may have higher weights for fewest unscheduled students, sum of scheduled students of individual times, number of equivalent sections for the combination, etc. and lower weights for section balance, fewest over optimum, etc. Tripletons, on the other hand, may have high weights for fewest unscheduled, fewest over optimum, section balance, etc., but lower weights for more students already scheduled in primary grade level. 129

LOGIC SCHEMES Logic schemes are used by the program to determine how many combinations it needs to create while building and how many of those combinations should the program balance check. You never have to go into logic schemes and you can only access it from the AD DVANCED SPECIFICATIONS screen. BUTTONS AND MANY SECTION MODE Use Many Section Mode Save Logic Scheme Retrieve Logic Scheme If this specification is checked, courses with more sections than periods will have the meeting times spread out over all of the periods. By default, this specification is checked but it is recommended that you uncheck this specification. This allows the Builder to pick the best meeting time even if another section of course is already scheduled during that period. You can customize these schemes and save them to be used later. Use this to retrieve a saved logic scheme. There are three schemes that come standard with the program: Default (see the screen shot above), Maximum Results (see the screen shot on the following page) and Maximum Speed (which makes only 2 combinations). 130

COLUMNS Course Type Weight Scheme # of Combinations to Create # of Combinations to Balance Check Singletons, Doubletons, etc This refers to the weight schemes that you have the option of creating from the Advanced Specifications screen. You can create different schemes for different types of courses and you would make those assignments here. Number of possible time combinations you want the builder to create. If you are using time pools, this number should match the number of times in your time pool. Out of those combinations what are the Minimum and Maximum combinations to balance check. The minimum default is Fewest Conflicts. The maximum number of combos to check is 20. Click Done [F10] to save the logic schemes and exit out of the screen. 131

APPENDIX 3 INTERACTIVE BUILDING The interactive screen is used by those schedulers who want a more hands-on approach to building. Using the interactive mode gives you control over the schedule because you are the one choosing the meeting times. The interactive screen shows you teacher, student and room conflicts for all of the times in the time pool. It also shows section balances for different meeting time combinations. Based on the information provided, you can then select the time you want the course to meet. Helpful Hint: Why Build Interactively? There are several reasons why schools would schedule interactively. 1. You have control over your schedule because you are the one choosing the meeting times. 2. If your school is run by a specific department (i.e. Science), you may want to build all of the courses in that specific department first and interactively is a way to do that. 3. You have finished building and now you want to fine tune certain courses but you need to see what they are in conflict with. THE INTERACTIVE SCREEN: A QUICK LOOK You can resize any column on this screen and if you move your cursor to the salmon line, you can resize some of the quadrants. For detailed information on this screen see pages 133 to 138 or skip to page 139 for information on building interactively. 132

INTERACTIVE SCREEN UPPER PORTION The upper portion shows all of the times in the time pool that is associated with this course. It shows the number of students who could be scheduled if all of the sections of that course fell during any one of the times in the pool. The column with the grey arrow (circled on the screen shot below) indicates that the list is sorted by that column. Click on any column heading to sort the list by that column. THE UPPER PORTION COLUMNS Time Lists all of the times in the time pool. Sch Displays the total number of students who could be scheduled into that period if all sections of this course fell during any one of the times in the pool. Unsch Gr Sec Displays the total number of unscheduled students. These students may not be unscheduled for this specific course; however, they will be unscheduled for at least one of their courses. Displays the number of students by grade level who have requested a course whose sections have already been given a meeting time. Shows the number of sections already scheduled for a given period. 133

INTERACTIVE SCREEN LOWER PORTION The lower portion shows the different time combinations. Depending upon what options are checked at the bottom of the screen, you may not be seeing all of the combinations. Use the checkboxes at the bottom of the screen to include combinations with teacher and/or room conflicts. If the course you are looking at has more than one section, it is vital that you balance test. Balance testing will show the balance between the sections. Click on the Go button to Balance Test the time combinations. THE LOWER PORTION COLUMNS Time Sch Unsch Sect. Balance Scoreboard Gr Sec Max Sz Lists all of the time combinations Displays the total number of students who could be scheduled in the course for the given combination. Displays the total number of unscheduled students. These students may not be unscheduled for this specific course; however, they will be unscheduled for at least one of their courses. Displays the balance of the different sections. In order to get the section balance, you must balance test the time combinations. Shows the affects a given combination will have on the Scoreboard totals. Displays the number of students by grade level who have already been placed for a given combination. Shows the number of sections already scheduled for a given period. Shows the maximum size of the section. 134

INTERACTIVE BUILDING LOWER PORTION CONT D Click on the Sort By Best Combo button to sort this list by the best combination. Please note that once you Balance Test, the order of this list may change. See the following page for screen shots of Why? E A is a better combination that E F. 135

Depending upon what you had set to determine the best combination (see pages 125 through 129) under the ADVANCED A SPECIFICATIONS, the WHY? screen may look different. The example below is the WHY? screen when the Criteria is being used as Tie Breakers. This example is the WHY? screen when All Criteria are used and a Weight is Entered for Each One. 136

INTERACTIVE SCREEN STUDENT PORTION The student portion shows the names of the students who could be scheduled if the course is placed during the highlighted combination, as well as the students who would be unscheduled. It is very important to note that just because a student is listed as unscheduled, that does not mean that they will not be scheduled in the course you are currently working with. It means that they will not be scheduled in at least one of their courses which may or may not be the course you are currently viewing. Double-click on a student to see their schedule to get an idea of which course may not be scheduled. 137

INTERACTIVE SCREEN TEACHER/ROOM PORTION The teacher/room portion provides information regarding teacher and room availability. By default, the teacher and room boxes only show the preferred teachers and/or rooms that are available for the selected time. You can change the teacher view to show that you are looking at available teachers from either the department or all teachers. For rooms, you are viewing the preferred rooms for the Course. You have the option to change the view to included teacher preferences or all rooms. By changing the selected time, unchecking the show available for the selected time checkbox, and/or changing the category (i.e. Preferred, Dept, All or Crs, Staff/Crs or All), your teacher/room options will change. 138

USING THE INTERACTIVE MODE TO BUILD YOUR SCHEDULE The INTERACTIVE screen is used by those schedulers who want a more hands-on approach to building. The following 9 pages will cover using the interactive mode to schedule Singetons, Doubletons and a multisection course. Chorus is the first course to place. Chorus has been placed C. The next course to place is Sociology which is a Semester course. 139

Because Sociology is a semester course, the section values are halved. As you can see, there are.5 sections scheduled into periods A and C (for the first half of the all-year courses scheduled into those blocks), one section scheduled into period F (for the first half of the two courses scheduled) and.2 sections scheduled into period G (for first half of the one period scheduled for that block). Sociology has been placed F. The next course to place is Ancient History which is also a Semester course. 140

One of the features of the Interactive screen is that it allows you to view data from different perspectives. From these buttons on the bottom of the INTERACTIVE screen, you can view schedules (teachers or room), the Schedule Report (see page 99), and you can view conflicts by either Quarter or Semester. Ancient History should be placed F Semester 2. 141

The next course is Geometry, a Doubleton. The concepts of interactively building Doubleton courses are similar to those of Singletons. The biggest difference is that now you are dealing with two meeting times instead of one, and because of this you will want to check section balance before selecting a meeting time. As you can see, there are 4 combinations that are considered the best (G C, G A, E G & D A). All of these combinations will result in at least one being unscheduled for a course. The key in a situation like this is to look at each student s schedule and make a decision. There are times where, as a Scheduler, you will have to make a difficult decision. The program provides a lot of information to assist with the decision, but the ultimate choice is yours. In the example above, the first combination G C will result in a senior, Juan Belmonte, not being scheduled for Woods 3, an elective. If either G A or E G is selected, a junior, Eugene O Neill, will not be scheduled into Woods2, also an elective. If D A is selected, a senior, John Cage, will not be scheduled into Band. John has been in the Band since his freshman year. Based on the information above, G A is the combination selected because Eugene O Neill, the junior, can always take the elective next year whereas the seniors can not. 142

The next course is Algebra 2, also a Doubleton. Helpful Hint: Balance Testing Balance testing is when the program actually tests each time combination in the loader. Once finished, it will display the balance of each section. The best combination(s) will have the least unscheduled students and the most balance between the sections. By default, the initial number of combinations to test is the total number of combinations with the least amount of unscheduled students. However, you change this amount to test as many combinations you want. It is important that after balance testing, you make sure that the time combinations are sorted by best combo. Click on the Sort by Best Combo button to sort the list by best combination. 143

The next course is English 11, a Tripleton. Tripletons and higher are considered multi-section courses. Interactively building multi-section courses is different than building Singletons and Doubletons. For multi-section courses, section balance begins to become a bigger issue. Most of the time you will select one of the combinations created by the program; however, there may be occasions when you may want to try to create your own combination. If this is the case, click on the Make a Combination Scratch Pad button to create your own combination. 144

MAKE A COMBINATION SCREEN Helpful Hint: Finding Your Way Around the Make a Combination screen Scheduled & Unscheduled students for different times in the time pool Teachers Rooms Students Combination This shows the number of scheduled and unscheduled students for times within the time pool. To select a time, simply highlight it and drag it down to the Combination section. Displays the preferred teachers for the course. Use the drop-down to view all teachers. To select a teacher, simply highlight it and drag it down to the Combination section. Displays the room pool associated with this course. This may be the default room pool. Use the drop-down to view all rooms. To select a teacher, simply highlight it and drag it down to the Combination section. These two lists get populated once you select a time for the combination. It displays students who could be scheduled and those who could not. Drag and drop times, teachers and rooms to create a new combination. 145

Once you have made a combination, you can click Select the Clear Combination button and try again. to input those times or you can click 146

Once you click Select on the SCRATCH PAD screen, the combination you created will be written back to the INTERACTIVE screen as a possible time combination. You can select the created combination if you wish or choose another combination. 147

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