Room group

The notion of a room group is specific to EDT. It implies that some of the institution’s rooms are interchangeable (labs, rooms with the same capacity, etc.) and guarantees that a course will have a room without you needing to indicate which one.

Setting up

Create a room group

1. Go to the tab Timetable > Rooms >  List.
2. If it is not already done, create the rooms that you plan to put into a room group (Room).
3. The group is entered just like a room: click on the creation line, enter the name of the group and validate using the key [Enter].
4. Double-click in the column No. to indicate the number of grouped rooms; this distinguishes a simple room group in the list.
5. You must now link the rooms to the group; you can do it before or after the placement, according to your needs (see below).

Link the rooms to a group before the placement

So that a room can be linked to a group, it must:

• have all its unavailability included in that of the group;
• not be linked to another group;
• be on the same site as the group, if site management is activated (Split-sites).

1. Go to the tab Timetable > Rooms >  Management of room groups.
2. Select the room group in the list on the left.
3. Click-drag a room from the list on the right to the central list to add it to the group.
4. Use the arrows on the right of the list to place atop the list the rooms that you want EDT to use first.

Link the rooms to a group after the placement

If you link the rooms to a group when the courses allocate to the group are already placed, EDT calculates the number of rooms required to meet the needs of the group.

1. Go to the tab Timetable > Rooms >  Management of room groups.
2. Select the room group in the list on the left.
3. The designation <<needed room>> appears as many times as there is a requirement for a room. Click-drag a room in the list on the right to the central list to add it to the group.
4. The rooms that can fill the needs of the group are displayed with a green bullet point; the rooms that only partially cover the needs of the group, with an orange bullet point. You need at least two partially free rooms to replace a needed room.

Use

Reserve a room of a group for a course

When you allocate a room group to a course, you reserve, for this course, a room of the group without deciding which one.

1. From the course form click on + Rooms.
2. In the popup window, select the room group (recognizable by the arrow that precedes it).
3. If you want to reserve more than one room for every course, double-click in the column No. and specify the number of rooms that you want to reserve for the course.

Automatically allocate the rooms to the courses

The automatic allocation of the rooms to the courses is conducted once the courses are placed and the timetable completed. You allow EDT to distribute the rooms of the group into the courses for which you have reserved this group

 Prerequisite  All the rooms of the group must have been linked to the group (see above) and you must have access to the courses.

1. Go to the tab Timetable > Rooms >  Management of room groups.
2. Click on the button Distribute the courses in the rooms on the bottom right. EDT takes into account:

• the sequence order of the rooms in the group,
• the limitation of the teachers’ or classes' movements (Split-sites),
• the preferential room of the teachers and classes (Room).

Optimize the distribution of rooms

The optimization allows to improve the distribution of rooms according to your preferred criteria.

 Prerequisite  The rooms have been distributed in the courses.

1. Go to the tab Timetable > Rooms >  Manage room groups.
2. Click on the button Optimize room distribution on the lower right.
3. In the popup window, choose to optimize according to the teachers or classes. If some classes or teachers need to be favored, tick them.
4. If you want some courses to keep the room group allocated to them, double-click in the column  to lock them.
5. Using the drop-down menus, choose your optimization criteria. By selecting Limit movement between non consecutive courses, resources are left as often as possible in the same room, without the need to associate them with a preferred room.
6. Click on the button Launch optimization.

Cancel the automatic distribution of the rooms

Once the rooms in the group have been allocated to courses, you can once again replace these rooms by their group.

1. Go to the tab Timetable > Course >  List.
2. Select the concerned courses.
3. On the cumulative course form, select the rooms, right-click and choose Replace by their group.

Use the room groups for other purposes

As a rule, the groups are used to manage a limited number of specific rooms. With a little imagination, the room groups allow you to manage other situations. Here are a few examples…

Management of the rooms with a variable capacity

Example: a gymnasium can hold 2 classes of 9th grade but only one class of 10th grade.

1. To symbolize the variable capacity of this room, create a group of 2 rooms (Gym A and Gym B), each one representing a half of the gymnasium.
2. Insert this room group in the courses of the 10th grade by entering 2 as the number of needed rooms in the column No.(because this public mobilizes all of the gymnasium, meaning the two halves that compose it, Gym A and Gym B).
3. Insert this room group in the courses of the 9th grade while leaving 1 as the number of rooms (only half of the gymnasium is necessary, Gym A or Gym B).

Limitation of the number of simultaneous courses of the same subject

Example: you want to impede the placement of more than 4 courses of Phys Ed at the same time.

1. Create a room group Phys Ed with 4 for the number of rooms.
2. Insert an occurrence of the group in all the Phys Ed courses.
3. Once the course is placed, delete the group of all the courses.