Automatic placement
During the construction of the timetable, it is advisable to allow EDT to place a maximum number of courses, if possible all the courses.
During an automatic placement, all the users are transferred to Consultation and all the courses that are not locked can be displaced.
Verification and preliminary configurations
Verify the data
- Go to the tab Timetable > Teachers >
List. The potential occupancy rate (POR) and the number of overtime hours (AOH) are good indications of potential errors (example: a negative AOH that originates from a forgotten course). you also can print the states of the services from the tab Timetable > Teachers > 
Form and
have them validated by the teachers.
- Go to the tab Timetable > Classes > List.
Example indicating an error: two half-classes do not have the same number of course hours.
Verify the feasibility of the timetable
During the automatic placement, all the entered constraints (Constraints effecting the timetable) are complied with.
To know if all the courses to be placed and the specified constraints are not incompatible, launch the constraint analyzer (Constraint analyzer) and if necessary make the corrections.
Specify the placement preferences
- Go to the menu Placement > Launch an automatic placement.
- In the tab Placement preferences of the popup window, select the wanted options:
- Do not count the ranges around the midday as gaps: for the classes/teachers: in this case, EDT does not search at all costs to fill the last slot of the morning and the first slot of the afternoon, contrary to the gaps during the day.
- Consolidate the courses: from the beginning of the day or around the midday.
- Consolidate the courses in fortnights in the same range: to avoid a gap in one week out of two.
- Distribute the courses of the same subject in fortnights in the 2 weeks: to have the same number of hours in each of the weeks. If you have 5 courses with 2 in fortnights, EDT will place when possible a course in F1, the other in F2.
- Time maximums of the subjects and/or teachers and classes: you can loosen the constraints of the time maximums by taking the average over two weeks.
Customize the calculation criteria
Placement
In most cases, proceed by series of courses to place all of the courses. Process the most difficult to place courses first. For example, place in the following order:
- the high school's specialization courses,
- the complex and co-teaching courses,
- the courses with less than 5 possible places (number to be adjusted according to your base),
- the long courses (more than one hour),
- the remaining simple courses.
This order can be modified according to the type of institution (for example, in vocational schools, long courses are often the majority and difficult to place). It is important to process the courses that require many resources first.
Launch an automatic placement
The stages that follow must be repeated for every series of courses. Do not go to the following stage until all the courses of the series are placed.
- Go to the tab Timetable > Course > List.
- Conduct an extraction of the series of courses to be placed (the predefined extractions of the menu Extract can be very useful): only the extracted courses are taken into account by the calculator (Extract the data). View the column Status: all the extracted courses must be de-positioned
, with the exception of
the locked courses (Locking of the courses in the same place). - Launch the command Calculation > Launch an automatic placement.
- In the popup window, verify and if needed modify your placement preferences (see above) and options.
- Stop at the first failure: allows you to understand and solve the failure manually.
- Solve the failures: only activate this option if EDT could not place all the courses of the series during the first attempt and that you are working on just a few courses (the option includes the first attempts of the solver and slows down the calculation).
- Click on the button Launch the calculation you will be transferred to Exclusive Usage the time it takes for the calculation.
- In the list of courses, if will find the extracted courses: in black, the courses that have been placed; in red, the course that EDT did not succeed in placing and are said to be in failure
. Use the tools found below to place the last courses of the series before moving to the next series. - Once all the courses of the series have been placed, you can lock the (non de-positionable) courses to avoid de-positioning them by mistake during a manipulation. For this, select them, right-click and choose
Lock non de-positionable. - Make a copy of the base so that you can at any moment return to this stage of the placement (Copy of the base).
Note: if you want to cancel the placement of the courses, select them in the list of courses, right-click and choose De-position (De-position).
Resolution for the course in failure
Identifier the courses in failure
- Go to the tab Timetable > Course > List.
- Sort the list by clicking on the column Status. The courses in failure are displayed in red at the top of the list.