This is a guide only, all school timetables are unique with their own special requirements. The build style which best suits your needs may vary.
Before any building commencing you must have completed the
It is vital every step is reviewed as the engine will not produce the best results if any of these checks have been overlooked.
We also recommend reading back over this 5 minute document before starting to understand the process
Pre-Timetable Analysis
Before going on to build your timetable, we advise you check each year in isolation as this will highlight any immediate issues. If a year group contains a lot of conflicts/doesn’t build in isolation then this will need to be looked at more closely before proceeding with the next year group.
Running the timetable engine
Go to Timetable > Timetable, you will see this screen, you will not be able to run the engine without having all green ticks. If you have any red crosses, we suggest you go to back to 6.0b. Pre Timetabling Generation-Checklist (EU) and review all checks paying close attention to 2.4 Curriculum if you have a red cross here. Once all green, press continue.
Test each year on their own
Note: If you have previously run the engine and can already see you have classes placed on the Timetable, you can unschedule these by going to the three lines under the curriculum, then select assignments to clear, select all, next then tick box and click clear. You will then be able to pin and these will stay in unscheduled until you are ready to place on the timetable.
Go to Timetable>Timetable Continue,
Pin Yr 2-6 in unscheduled. To do this, click on the class symbol then select All Classes
Leave Yr 1 unpinned.
Go to Dropdown next to Generate and click on restart
Timetable Generation > Restart
Build Strategy | Recommended |
Build/Optimisation time | 10/10 |
Ignore | Empty |
Retain pinned schedule, teacher and space assignments | Tick, select default/whole year |
Priority Settings | Recommended |
Critical: You can not stop an engine run on a restart, if you stop it will lose all the work done so far and will need to start again
Following the run, you need to check for any conflicts. Go to the sections along the left and click through each of the issues: Conflicts, Distribution, Teacher, Space and check along each of the tabs to review the issues.
Analyse conflicts report to ensure that Curriculum structure is correct (see Appendix 2 for definitions)
Issue | Analysing High Priority Issues-summary and suggestions to solve |
Activities Student Body Conflict | A student group has 2 classes at the same time. This could be 2 core group classes, A core group with a composite group, a line with a core or composite group. This is the worst conflict and has the highest penalty.
To resolve-Review your student groups, do all the composites work together that can work in the timetable. Review your planning groups, do your student groups for composite match any planning groups created. You must resolve this issue. |
Activities Teacher Conflict | A teacher has 2 or more classes in the same period.
To resolve-Are are the exclusive teachers correct, can they work given the structure eg two staff down to teach two classes in the same line. For single classes, not in a planning group, we have a new tool which allows you to right click on the class Change > Period and it will show you next to every period where the staff and space is free for that class. Review teacher allocation report alongside this, have you over allocated classes to a teacher. Is it impossible to timetable due to not enough teachers in the teacher list to be able to staff a composite? Eg 4 maths classes in a composite but only 3 teachers in a teacher list. Are your teacher lists correct, what is causing this clash, do you need to review the teacher or teacher list in School > Classes > Resources |
Activities Space Conflict | A space has 2 or more classes in the same period.
To resolve-Are your space lists correct, what is causing this clash, do you need to review the space or space list in School > Classes > Resources |
Essential Spread | Where a class has spread essential checked and the activities of the class do not meet the spread request of the class a penalty is applied. **Please note this is currently not reporting correctly for Courses with Child classes. Please check these manually
To resolve-Check essential spread to see if any specialist spaces/doubles essentials are not flagged in School > Classes > Spread Check that all classes that appear in a line/planning group have the same spread, as this will cause issues if not eg one has 1,1,1,1,1 and others have 2,1,1,1
|
Course Spread Preferences Split Blocks | Where a class does not have spread essential checked and the activities of the class do not meet the spread request of the class a penalty is applied Classes with a double that occurs either side of a non teaching period are penalised unless allow split blocks is checked
To resolve-Check Spread/Class daily limit request to see if any classes have been given the incorrect spread and need to be updated Check that all classes that appear in a line/planning group have the same spread, as this will cause issues if not eg one has 1,1,1,1,1 and others have 2,1,1,1
|
Exceed Daily Limit | Limit Daily Activities per Course When a class has 2 activities on the same day separated by a teaching period with another class, the class is considered to violate the daily activity limit for the class and is penalised for each additional instance of the class **Please note this is currently over reporting so all periods for the class will appear in the Conflicts
To resolve-Consider the spread, do you have 6 periods of a class over 5 days with no doubles, would it help to create a 2,1,1,1 spread as opposed to 1,1,1,1,1,1. Look at the class that is exceeding daily limit, is the teacher part time so is forced to avoid certain days? What other reasons may be forcing the lessons to be more than once in a day? |
Teacher Day Off Preferences Penalty | For specified days off, if there are any activities on this day a penalty is applied. For non specified days off, for every day off missed due to activities a penalty is applied To resolve-Is this teacher on a class that appears more times than the number of days they are in, eg teacher in 3 days but on a class that has 5 sessions of 1 a day. Review multiple part time teachers, does more than one part time teacher appear in a planning group that has opposing days off forcing one to be on a day they do not work?
Check teacher day off to determine if Part time staff are across too many elective lines, this is both within one year and other years, even if not a problem in one year, this may become an issue the more years that come on and are being forced onto part time teacher days off. |
Teacher Period Off Preferences Penalty | For specified periods off a penalty is applied if there is an activity in that period.
To resolve-As above for teacher day off, is there a reason that is forcing a teacher in a period off, eg a must schedule for a class, during a period that has a teacher on that period where they are blocked to be off. |
Go to Reports > Teacher Allocations .Check teacher allocations to get an initial understanding of teacher load and flexibility and check a teacher has not been over allocated, do you need to review teacher lists and/or exclusive teachers to open up the allocations?
Make necessary changes to setup after analysing the above
Ensure that you resolve any issues, year by year, so you do not go into the engine run with “impossibilities” this will have a negative impact on the overall solution.
Greater flexibility (teacher and space lists) will result in a better result.
Ask the timetabler what changes they would make if they were doing this manually and use preference levels to manage this information, if still left with teacher and space conflicts, is this what you would usually expect.
Repeat steps 2-6 for Yr 2. Unschedule Yr 1 by going to the three lines under 1, then select assignments to clear, select all, next then tick box and click clear.
Pin Yr 1, 3, 4, 5, 6 in unscheduled as above. Yr 2 is unpinned.
Repeat above for each curriculum from Y1 to Y6 (and LCA if relevant).
Once happy each year has been tidied, it is always worth running an ‘All-In-One Build’ to see what results you get
Timetable Generation > Restart
Build Strategy | Recommended |
Build/Optimisation time | 10/10 |
Ignore | Empty |
Retain pinned schedule, teacher and space assignments | Leave unticked |
Priority Settings | Recommended |
Go through all the issues as before, for a first full run are there now any fundamental issues that need to be resolved, student body conflicts is the biggest challenge that must be resolved.
If all resolved, move on to a build pathway:
Pathway One - All-In-One Build
Pathway Two - Option Blocks First
Note: Pathway Two is useful if a viable result can not be obtained using Pathway One
Note: Both Pathway One and Two can use In Stages to direct the order that the year groups are added onto the Timetable.
Pathway One - All-In-One Build
Part I: Timetable Generation - All-In-One
All classes unpinned
Timetable Generation (Version 1)
Engine mode | Restart |
Build Strategy | Recommended |
Build/Optimisation time | 10/10 |
Ignore | Empty |
Retain pinned schedule, teacher and space assignments | Leave unticked |
Priority Settings | Recommended |
Hint: You should already have this as part of your final pre timetable analysis.
Hint: Check Timetable build score modal. If score is continuing to improve (lower) throughout the end of build phase, then this indicates a longer build time is required.To get this view, click on the ‘i’. If you cannot view this screen, contact eusupport@griddle.education to have this enabled.
Duplicate the version and run under the same conditions (Version 2)
Duplicate the version and run under the same conditions (Version 3)
Use the Issues report on the left side of Timetable screen to analyse and compare the 3 solutions, focusing on the option blocks (see Appendix 2). Check:
Teacher conflicts
Space conflicts
Teacher Time off
Split Block
Exceeds Daily Limit
Spread
Identify the solution with the least amount of critical errors in option blocks, is it viable?
Yes - Move forward with this version (go to step 7)
No - Duplicate the version and run Timetable Generation (Version 4) using settings below.
Engine mode | Restart |
Build Strategy | Recommended |
Build/Optimisation time | 20/20 |
Ignore | Empty |
Retain pinned schedule, teacher and space assignments | Leave unticked |
Priority Settings | Custom Weights. Adjust weights accordingly to focus on particular issues you have found in the previous rounds(see Appendix 3 below) |
Repeat till you have a viable solution you can move on with to start working on any conflicts you are able to work on manually or compromise on (go to step 7).
In your viable solution, resolve any issues through
manually move classes/planning groups
optimisation with continue and custom weights manual timetable changes
change teacher/space per lesson (split classes)
Note: If you would like the engine to build year groups in a particular order, then you can specify this using In Stages, please follow all the above steps but in Build Strategy select ‘In Stages’
Note: Please re read 6.1a. Understanding the Timetable Engine (EU) for more details on In Stages if needed
Note: In the video I have stated that each stage will go on one at a time, so a run time of 10/10 would be each stage is 30 minutes, so this example would run for 30 mins x 5 stages = 150 minutes. Since the video has been made this has been made more effective and the time reduced, so it is actually now 1 minute for the first build stage, so now would like 1 + 10 + 10 = 21 minutes per stage, so 21 x 5 = 105 mins, saving 45 minutes.
Part II: Timetable Generation Improvement – Manual
Manually move option blocks-right click move a class (red) or planning group (blue) then select which period to move to.
To decide where to move classes/planning groups
i Decide which line/planning group/class needs to be moved based on conflicts
ii Timetable grid view - Change Teacher/Space/Period - NEW FEATURE - now has preference level on teacher options if predetermined conflicts is checked. This instantly shows how many conflicts there would be if you made the change, if you then click on the change it will give the detail, only changing if you press confirm.
For single classes
Timetable>Timetable right click > Change > Period/Teacher/Space
For planning groups
Timetable>Timetable right click > Change > Period
Red shows student body conflicts, orange shows teacher conflicts and yellow shows space conflicts
Click on any period to see the detail
Click confirm to accept change.
iii Duplicate tabs and have open the following give even more detail if needed
Timetable > Timetable each view will show how the timetable looks overall then by teacher and student
School > Classes to review the teacher and teacher list assigned to the classes you are looking to move
School > Teacher Lists for classes without an exclusive teacher to review alternatives
School >Space Lists to ensure you have enough spaces available for the curriculum set up and to look for alternatives
Timetable > Teacher and select the staff who appear in the planning group to review when all available
Timetable > Timetable three dots and select Generate Planning Group Matrix (see detail in Appendix 4)
iv Continue to look for improvements by moving classes and planning groups that change the conflicts to acceptable compromises
Part II: Timetable Generation Improvement-All-In-One Optimising
Review your timetable and decide if there are any classes or planning groups that need to be pinned before you attempt a continue. You can select to pin whole year groups, or parts of year groups.
Critical : Pin all symbols for staff, space and period placement, else changes can take place, you can choose to pin All Classes, Single Classes or Planning Groups
Timetable Generation
Engine mode | Continue |
Optimisation time | 20 |
Ignore | Empty |
Priority Settings | Recommended |
Note: You do not need to tick the box to retain pins, as for a continue they will pin automatically.
Note: You may stop an engine run on continue and it will stop at the very point and save all changes, please refresh the screen to see the latest version. As before we suggest you check Timetable build score modal during the optimisation stage. If score doesn’t seem to be improving even after a a number of iterations increasing, you may stop the engine and not lose any improvements. To get this view, click on the ‘i’. If you cannot view this screen, contact eusupport@griddle.education to have this enabled.
Use the Issues report to analyse the solution, as before (see Appendix 2). Check:
Teacher conflicts
Space conflicts
Teacher Time off
Exceeds Daily Limit
Spread
If unhappy with results from recommended weights
Timetable Generation
Engine mode | Continue |
Optimisation time | 20 |
Ignore | Empty |
Priority Settings | Custom Weights. Adjust weights accordingly to focus on particular issues (see Appendix 3 below) |
Repeat Step 4 till you have a viable solution
Final stages to resolve teacher conflicts
Manual class changes
Split classes
Pathway Two – Lines/Planning Groups First
Pathway Two is useful if a viable result can not be obtained using Pathway One, or you would like to follow a familiar approach to your usual timetable build process and have worked in this way previously.
Part I: Timetable Generation – Lines and Planning Groups only
Go to Timetable > Timetable, decide the order you would like to add your lines. Most likely you would follow the order of 6,3,5,2 then decide the complexities of your TY and 1st year curriculum as to which to add next. When deciding the order, consider the number of exclusive teachers in that year, the structure of the year (many planning groups/more lines will make that curriculum harder to place), number of part time staff on lines in a curriculum etc. Once decided, you will pin all the years you do not wish to schedule yet in unscheduled and the curriculum you are working with you will pin just the single classes in unscheduled.
Note: This assumes you have yet to place any periods on the timetable, if needed you can first clear all periods by clicking on the three lines next to the pin symbols, select all under assignments to clear, next then click in box to confirm and click clear.
Timetable Generation
Engine mode | Restart |
Build Strategy | Recommended |
Build/Optimisation time | 10/10 |
Retain pinned schedule, teacher and space assignments | Tick, select default/whole year |
Ignore | Empty |
Priority Settings | Recommended |
Hint: Check Timetable build score modal. If score is continuing to change throughout the end of build phase, then this indicates a longer build time is required. Please note you may see a decrease in score if the engine is making a change that requires multiple steps (so making it worse before making it better scenario), but when the score stays static you can assume a longer time would not aid the build.
Use the Issues report to analyse the placed lines (see Appendix 2). Check:
Teacher conflicts
Space conflicts
Teacher Time off
Split Block
Exceeds Daily Limit
Spread
From this run, is it viable?
Yes - Move forward with this version (go to step 5)
No - Duplicate the version and run Timetable Generation (Version 4)
Engine mode | Restart |
Build Strategy | Recommended |
Build/Optimisation time | 20/20 |
Retain pinned schedule, teacher and space assignments | Tick, select default/whole year |
Ignore | Empty |
Priority Settings | Custom Weights. Adjust weights accordingly to focus on particular issues (see Appendix 3 below) |
Repeat till you have a viable solution (go to step 5).
In your viable solution, resolve any issues through manual timetable changes (see above)
Manually move option blocks
Adjust staffing on classes
Once you are happy with where your lines are, pin everything on the timetable in place for that curriculum, by clicking on all 3 pin symbols which will first unpin then click again to pin all classes in place for that curriculum
Move onto the next year, unpin the planning groups for that year, click on pin symbol to unpin then click again to select to pin only single classes, so in the next run all planning groups will be placed on the timetable
CRITICAL: If you do not pin in place the lines and planning groups in each year as you go, these classes will be moved when you start the engine and can create more conflicts
Repeat steps 2-7 until all curriculum with lines and planning groups are added
Recommended or In Stages
Build in Stages allows the user to add multiple years at a time in one go, for this method we would probably advise against using In Stages as you can’t correct each curriculum as you go. This pathway works on assumption you are getting one year correct for planning groups, correcting then moving on to the next. You may still wish to try adding just lines and planning groups by pinning all single classes for all curriculum then running restart with In Stages to see result to compare.
Timetable Generation In Stages to compare
Pin all single classes for all years, as before
Engine mode | Restart |
Build Strategy | In Stages |
Build/Optimisation time | 10/10 |
Retain pinned schedule, teacher and space assignments | Tick, select default/whole year |
Ignore | Empty |
Priority Settings | Recommended |
A stage field appears next to each curriculum. A number between 1 and 5 can be entered next to each curriculum to assign which phase that curriculum will be added to the timetable. Each curriculum can be added in its own stage or multiple curricula added in the same stage. If ignore is selected the curriculum will not be added
Note: Remember that each stage will go on at a time, so a run time of 10/10 would be each stage is 30 minutes, (10 minutes to build planning groups, 10 minutes to build isngle classes, 10 minutes to optimise), so this example would run for 30 mins x 5 stages = 150 minutes.
If you have a better result please do continue with this version, else return to your pathway two recommended build.
Part II: Timetable generation - Add Single Classes
Un-pin single classes. Keep option blocks pinned. To do this click on pin symbols to unpin all then click again to pin-planning groups.
Timetable Generation-using continue will add in all single classes
Note: If you didn’t previously add all planning groups, if you kept some pinned in unscheduled previously then you must use restart at this point and tick to retain pins
Engine mode | Continue |
Optimisation time | 20 |
Ignore | Empty |
Priority Settings | Recommended |
Use the Issues report to analyse the solution, focusing on the single classes (see Appendix 2). Check:
Teacher conflicts
Space conflicts
Teacher Time off
Exceeds Daily Limit
Spread
Timetable Generation-if not satisfied with result, run again this time with custom weights to improve
Engine mode | Continue |
Optimisation time | 20 |
Ignore | Empty |
Priority Settings | Custom Weights. Adjust weights accordingly to focus on particular issues (see Appendix 3 below) |
Use the Issues report to analyse the solution, focusing on the single classes (see Appendix 2). Check:
Teacher conflicts
Space conflicts
Teacher Time off
Exceeds Daily Limit
Spread
Repeat Steps 5 and 4 till you have a viable solution
Final stages to resolve teacher conflicts
Manual class changes (as before)
Split classes
Please do reach out for support in this process, if following all steps you are not finding good results, we can support you to check your file is viable and correct steps have been followed, but by following the full checklist and pre timetable analysis to correct your file before commencing your build, we are confident of good results. Please contact us at eusupport@griddle.education if needed.
Appendix 1 - Hints and Tips
Duplicates
Do not risk losing your work by running the engine over a working version, please do duplicate your file regularly, so you can compare and return to versions
Spread
If doubles are important, use ‘Doubles Essential’, without this, classes may be split over a break/lunch
Specialist Spaces
If a space is flagged as a specialist space in Setup> School > Specialist Spaces, then the penalty for a missed allocation is 10 x higher, consider this if as you go and see specialist spaces are not being prioritising
Managing home spaces
If most staff have their own classroom, the best way to manage this is by allocating all staff with a homespace, go to Setup> Teachers and go into each teacher and assign a homespace for those with one, then go to School> Space Lists and create a Homespace space list containing every homespace that has been allocated to teachers. Finally now go to School>Courses and add this homespace space list to every course who require a non-specialist space and teachers who will be teaching in their homespace.
When to press consolidate changes
Consolidate Changes - Consolidate is required if new classes have been created or the number of periods of an existing class has been modified; if planning groups have been created or modified, or if lists have been added to courses where there were previously no lists.
Critical: If you have any classes set to ‘must schedule’ periods, they will overrule any manual timetable changes you make and pressing consolidate will revert them back, so if you are making use of must schedule, make sure these are correct. Review these in School > Classes and must schedule tab
Appendix 2 - Analysing High Priority Issues
Issue | Summary |
Activities Student Body Conflict | A student group has 2 classes at the same time. This could be 2 core group classes, A core group with a composite group, a line with a core or composite group. This is the worst conflict and has the highest penalty. |
Activities Teacher Conflict | A teacher has 2 or more classes in the same period. |
Activities Space Conflict | A space has 2 or more classes in the same period |
Essential Spread | Where a class has spread essential checked and the activities of the class do not meet the spread request of the class a penalty is applied. **Please note this is currently not reporting correctly for Courses with Child classes. Please check these manually |
Course Spread Preferences Split Blocks | Where a class does not have spread essential checked and the activities of the class do not meet the spread request of the class a penalty is applied Classes with a double that occurs either side of a non teaching period are penalised unless allow split blocks is checked |
Exceed Daily Limit | Limit Daily Activities per Course When a class has 2 activities on the same day separated by a teaching period with another class, the class is considered to violate the daily activity limit for the class and is penalised for each additional instance of the class **Please note this is currently over reporting all periods for the class will appear in the Conflicts |
Teacher Day Off Preferences Penalty | For specified days off, if there are any activities on this day a penalty is applied. For non specified days off, for every day off missed due to activities a penalty is applied |
Teacher Period Off Preferences Penalty | For specified periods off a penalty is applied if there is an activity in that period |
Appendix 3 - Priority Settings - Weights
The preset Priority Settings focus on the following areas:
Improve Class Spread - improve spreads, at the expense of conflicts
Primary School - Only use this if advised by the Griddle team.
Recommended - gives a balanced result, taking ALL factors into account
Reduce Conflicts - reduce teacher and space conflicts, at the expense of spread
Reuse Components - composite student groups are used across multiple groups of courses. Only use this if advised by the Griddle team.
Custom - focus on particular issues in your timetable result e.g part-timers, teacher conflicts, exceed in a day, depending on your priorities
It is possible to change the weights shown in the screenshot above by typing a new value into the box. When doing this, remember two things in particular:
Each weight is a penalty, so if for example there is a teacher conflict the penalty score would be 8,000, 2 teacher conflicts would be 16,000 etc. The higher the number the less likely it is that you will encounter the issue.
Changing a weight may affect other issues - for example, you may make the course spread weight higher than the teacher conflict weight and the result would be better spreads but more teacher conflicts.
Issue | Min/Max Weight | Description |
Teacher conflicts | 1/500,000 | Avoid teacher conflicts |
Space conflicts | 1/500,000 | Avoid space conflicts |
Teacher Time Off | 1/500,000 | Avoid conflicts on teacher time off (day off or period off) |
Limit activities each day | 1/75,000 | Avoid a class appearing multiple times on the same day (not including doubles) |
Split doubles | 1/75,000 | Avoid doubles straddling recess or lunch |
Course spread | 1/75,000 | Honour the spread requests |
Teacher preferences | 1/75,000 | Use highest preferenced teachers |
Teacher load | 1/75,000 | Avoid overloading teachers |
Home space | 1/75,000 | Allocate classes to the home space (either teacher or core group) |
Space stability doubles | 1/75,000 | Make sure doubles are in the same space for both halves of the double |
Space preference* | 1/75,000 | Use highest preferenced spaces |
Space stability* | 1/75,000 | Try to keep the same space for all activities of the class |
Part-timer symmetry^ | 1/75,000 | Same day off each week |
Evenly spread classes across weeks^ | 1/75,000 | Share out activities between each week of the cycle |
Reuse Components | 1/80,000 | For components of composite student groups that are being used across multiple courses. Leave at 1 if this does not apply to you, move to 80,000 if needed. |
*Soft weights: these weights will never outweigh the other weights. A soft weight at its maximum is still many times lower than a hard weight at 1.
^These weights only apply to 2 week cycles.
Appendix 4 - Additional Tools
Planning Group Matrix
This looks at Teacher and Space lists on classes and not actual assignments and is intended as a tool prior to staffing and generation.
Essentially it identifies any class where there is only a single teacher or space option and then makes sure that there is not an equivalent in another PG. If there is, this is a conflict between the two.
Go to Timetable > Timetable : 3 DOTS > Generate Planning Group Matrix
HINT: You may find initially it doesn’t load, refresh screen and it then will
Then select from the dropdown which year group to compare, this will easily help you identify which lines can be set against each other. For example 5L1 and 6L3 have a clash as shown by the grey box, which if clicked on will show 2 teacher clashes on named classes. This is useful when using manual moves to find best places for planning groups.
HINT: If you have 2 Art teachers in a list on every Art class, and have 2 Art classes in a single PG, it will not identify that another PG with an Art class will conflict. We hope to improve this situation down the track. However, for Irish schools that have a high percentage of Exclusive teacher assignments this will certainly pick up these types of conflicts.