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- Is there a User's Guide?
- How to switch to a different language?
- Is it possible to install the program on a Mac?
- Can the program export the timetable?
- Can the program import an existing database?
- What are the maximal numbers of students, teachers, groups, activities that the program can handle?
- What is the maximal number of days?
- What is the maximal number of lessons?
- Can the program be run from a server?
- Can several users work with the same file at the same time on a network?
- At the beginning of a new year, I would like to use the data of the previous year and only change some things. Is it possible?
- Is it possible to define lessons of different lengths?
- What if different groups have different lesson times?
- Is it possible to define the lessons as 10, 15 or 30 minute time periods?
- Do I have to enter all the students names?
- What if the same activity needs to be scheduled in double periods on some days and in single periods on other days?
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Is there a User's Guide?
No. Instead, the program contains over 100 interactive tutorials and explanations, which guide you through every aspect of using the software. These tutorials are located inside the Help menu's Show Me How to and Explain to Me sub menus. In every screen in the program, these sub menus contain the relevant topics to that screen. If you follow these tutorials and explanations step by step, you will learn everything there is to know about the program.
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How to switch to a different language?
When the program starts, it shows a splash screen at the bottom of which it says "English Version x.x.xx" (instead of the x's the version number is shown). Click on English and a list of languages will be shown. Choose your language and click on OK.
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Is it possible to install the program on a Mac?
The program is designed only for Windows.
However, a few of our users have succeeded in installing the software on a Macintosh using Virtual PC. We cannot guarantee this though, and have not tested this ourselves.
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Can the program export the timetable?
No. The program does not contain an explicit export feature.
However, it is possible to export to PDF format by using a printer driver such as: www.dopdf.com. After installing this driver, open the timetabling workspace and choose File, Print. Now click on Printer on the left, select Specific Printer and choose the PDF printer in the list of printers. Finally, select Print to File at the bottom of that page. Now, when you click on Print, the program will ask you to enter a file name. This file is a PDF file which will contain the timetable that you selected to be printed.
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Can the program import an existing database?
No. The program does not contain an explicit import feature.
However, since the program stores all the data in a simple XML file (you can examine the Sample School.xml file), there is a possibility of writing directly to this XML file. This would require either manual conversion of the data to XML format or using a small intermediate program that would convert your database to Lantiv's XML format.
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What are the maximal numbers of students, teachers, groups, activities that the program can handle?
Depends on the hardware and the inner complexity of the timetable. In general, the software is not designed for thousands of objects, more in the vicinity of hundreds.
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What is the maximal number of days?
Seven. Each file of the program can contain up to 7 days.
If you need to construct a timetable for more than 7 days, you would need to use more than one file (which is quite cumbersome).
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What is the maximal number of lessons?
In the interactive mode - unlimited.
In the automatic mode the maximum is 16.
If your database contains more than 16 lessons, you will not be able to enter the automatic mode. You will still be able to use all the interactive features, print the timetable and issue reports, but the automatic construction will be disabled.
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Can the program be run from a server?
No. It is client based and has to be installed on every client's computer.
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Can several users work with the same file at the same time on a network?
No. The program is not designed for simultaneous use of several users. The user that saves the file last will overwrite the other users' changes if they both saved the same file.
It is, however, possible to open the same file from several computers on a network for read only purposes. That file can reside on a server or on one of the computers. There is no substantial difference in speed in opening a file from a local computer compared to a networked computer (assuming the network is a LAN).
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At the beginning of a new year, I would like to use the data of the previous year and only change some things. Is it possible?
Yes. You simply need to make a copy of the previous year's file by doing the following. Launch the program and open the previous year's file. Then, choose File, Save As from the menu. Type the new file name and click on Save. Now you have a new file which contains all the data of the previous file. You can now make the necessary adjustments in the new year's file, which you have just now created.
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Is it possible to define lessons of different lengths?
No. All the lessons in the database need to have the same length.
The program allocates activities to time slots - each time slot is one lesson (one cell). The Quantity field of each activity in the Database specifies how many time slots (lessons, cells) it should occupy during the week. It is not possible to define this quantity in exact minutes or hours.
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What if different groups have different lesson times?
If there are no common teachers who teach in both kinds of groups, you can define the lessons in the database without times (simply as numbers: "1", "2", etc.) and you will have no problem.
If there are common teachers, there is a problem because scheduling a teacher in lesson 1 for group A means different timing than scheduling the same teacher for group B in that lesson. In such case you would have to schedule the common teachers interactively (and use your own judgment) and fixate their cells so that the automatic timetabling engine does not "touch" their timetables, because the automatic engine is not aware of the time differences and thus cannot take them under account during the automatic construction.
There is actually another possible solution to this problem, and that is to define the lessons as a time scale of 10, 15 or 30 (or other) minutes. But this has a disadvantage, as you can read below.
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Is it possible to define the lessons as 10, 15 or 30 minute time periods?
Yes, this is possible. You can create a series of lessons such as "8:00", "8:15", "8:30", "8:45" etc. Each lesson in this case takes 15 minutes. All the lessons have the same length, which is OK. In the Activities page of the Database, you can define the lengths of the activities according to the time that they take. For example, an activity that takes 45 minutes and should be scheduled twice a week would have a length of "3" and a quantity of "6". This allows you to have activities of completely variable lengths.
The disadvantage of this, is that the automatic timetabling engine can only handle up to 16 lessons. It will be disabled if your database contains more than 16 lessons. Therefore, if each lesson is 15 minutes, for example, the program will automatically schedule only up to 4 hours. You will still be able to use all the interactive features of the program though.
Note: if you define the lessons as a time scale of 15 minutes, for example, define each 4 lessons as sub lessons of the whole hour lesson. For example, define "8:00", "8:15", "8:30", "8:45" as sub lessons of "8:00-9:00". This affects the appearance of the timetable, which will be neater. This is the only use of the definition of sub-lessons.
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Do I have to enter all the students names?
No. You can construct the timetable without entering the students at all.
The only requirement is that if you use sub groups, you would have to tell the program which sub groups conflict with each other (have at least one common students and thus cannot be scheduled at the same time). For example, if you have two groups which cannot be scheduled at the same time because some students take them both, you need to enter at least one student in the Students page of the Database who is enrolled to both of these groups. Then the program will never schedule these groups at the same day and lesson.
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What if the same activity needs to be scheduled in double periods on some days and in single periods on other days?
Split such an activity to two activities. They will both have the same group, subject and teacher, but different quantities and lengths.
For example, if you have an activity with a total of 8 weekly periods, 6 of which need to be scheduled in double periods and 2 in single periods, you should create two activites: one with a quantity of 6 and a length of 2, and the other with a quantity of 2 and a length of 1.
Later on, in Constraints entry you can also define a maximum of Lessons per Day for the second activity to be 1, so that the program does not schedule the two single periods on the same day. And finally, if you want to avoid the case of the program scheduling 3 or more periods on the same day (two double and one single for example), you should also define a maximum of 2 lessons per day for the involved subject.
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