Setting up your period grid

What am I looking at?

This screen shows the period pattern of the timetable cycle - how many days in the cycle, how many periods per day, where lunch falls, bell times and so on.

If you have multiple campuses then they can each have their own period grid, with the only constraint being that they must each have the same number of cycle-days, and that you must define accurate start and finish times so that we can align periods of the different campuses. Use the toolbar to select a different campus.

How do I make changes?

You can directly edit the name of each day or each period by clicking into that cell. If you edit the name of a particular period in a particular day, then only that period gets renamed, but if you change a day name or a row name, then that change is propagated along the column or row (although individual periods can subsequently be renamed).

You can create a new day by typing text into the blank day column on the far right of the screen—a new column will then appear in case you want to add more days. Conversely, delete a day by deleting the day name. Similarly, you can create a new row by typing text into the row header at the bottom of the screen, or right-click and select 'insert row'; and you can delete a row by deleting its name, or right-click and select 'delete row'.

You can change the start/finish times in the same way. You can choose whether to have 'gaps' between periods to account for walking time or have the finish of one period equal the start time of the next.

It is also important to assign a type to each period. You can see the existing types by the colours of the periods. You change the type (either of an individual period or a period row) by right-clicking on that cell. There are 4 types:

• Teaching periods: White. The algorithms deal only with teaching periods, although lessons can be manually assigned to other period types. The start/stop times of teaching periods must be strictly non-overlapping.
• Recess/lunch: Avocado green.
• Out-of-timetable: Yellow. These periods exist as slots that you can put 'out-of-timetable' lessons in, typically before-school or after-school slots where typically senior students take specialist lessons or lessons that you are unable to fit into the main timetable.
• Unused: Grey/black. This type is used when different days have different numbers of periods, or recess/lunch occurs in different positions.