The following subset of procedures are all primarily used within Timetabler

This user guide is to assist the Scheduling Specialists and Records & Systems team in coding within Infosilem Timetabler.  This guide also deals with business practices in handling and organizing information required for scheduling purposes.

Introduction

The purpose of this booklet is to provide guidance in handling business practices unique to the University of Waterloo, regarding Infosilem Timetabler scheduling software.  This guide is also an overview on important coding necessary for specific ties, constraints and block offs for courses.  This is not a complete training manual but rather a collection of important notes gathered to assist in scheduling.  Areas of focus in this guide include:

• Business practice regarding force time in Registrar managed space

• Difference between courses that need to be coded as conflict-free in the system vs. courses where cohorts of students are enrolled.

• Ensuring ‘Instructor Constraints’ are coded properly.  

• Adding/deleting courses

• Adding/deleting components

• Adding/deleting deliveries

• Creating ties

• Creating scheduling groups

• Creating block-off types

• Creating academic groupings

• How to add room characteristics

• How to do room block-offs and grey out times.

• How to create a TBA instructor

• Creating new patterns (e.g. 3x1h Non-standard – TWR)

• How to code alternate pavilions

• Reviewing coursers that do not have time requests on them

• My Views:  Course, Delivery, Professor, Room, Section

Business Practices

Forced times

When a time or a room is forced in the system, make sure that the PAM box is checked.  

Open

Conflict-free Courses

Timetabler - Conflict free Academic blocks

There are certain courses on the Schedule of Classes that must not conflict with each other due to specific groups of students needing to take these courses.  Some of these courses are core courses needed to ensure they meet their degree requirements. Other courses are specialized or technical elective courses students need to receive a minor.

Scheduling Representatives will let the Scheduling Office know which courses need to be conflict-free using Course Combinations. The Scheduling Office then creates Academic Blocks.

To do this: Go to departments and choose what department you are making courses conflict-free for.  For example, ECON 101 001 must be conflict free with ECON 102 001. 

Instructor Constraints

 Timetabler - Instructor constraints

Within the Data Collection Utility (DCU) Scheduling Representatives (SR) code Level 3 ‘Instructor Constraints’ into the system. When creating or checking an instructor constraint, it is important to make sure that constraints indicate ‘Desired’ instead of required for anything that is a ‘Level 3’ constraints. 

Open

Level 1 and 2 ‘Instructor Constraints’ are sent to the Scheduling Office via the ‘Instructor Constraint Form.’ The Scheduling Specialists for through each departments form and code level 1 and 2 constraints into the system.

To code level 1 and 2 constraints, go into ‘Secondary Files’ → ‘Blockoff Types’

Adding/Deleting Course

During and after the DCU has closed, there are situations where a Scheduling Rep needs a course added or deleted from the Schedule of Classes. To add or delete a course, this must all be done through the ‘Departments’ section in the system. 

Find the department you would like to add or delete the course into and click on one of the courses so that the list of courses can generate in the main preview screen. 

To add:  Right click and ‘add new’

Add:  Course information – Subject, ID, and Description

Add:  Section by going to ‘Sections’ tab and right clicking in the white space.  A box will pop up and fill in information.   Save.

Add:  Component under the ‘Components’ tab within Sections.  The RN is the 4-digit ‘Class Nbr’ number from Quest.  Fill in information and save. The description is also from Quest, and the Scheduling Number is the Course capacity.

Add:  Delivery under the ‘Deliveries’ tab in Components. 

Save.

Deleting:  Highlight course you would like to delete and right click.

Delete:  Click ‘Yes’ to delete

Adding/Deleting Components

Adding or deleting a component is also done within Departments → Course → Sections.  To add, use the same process as when adding a course to the system. 

• Right click in the “Components” tab in sections of a course.  Add new.

• Fill in course information

• Add delivery

• Save

Deleting a component:

• Go into the ‘Section’ tab of a course and double-click to open

• Go into the ‘Components’ tab of the section.

• Highlight and right click on component

• Delete and save

Adding/Deleting Delivery

Adding or deleting a component is also done within Departments → Course → Sections → Component.  To add use the same process as when adding a course to the system. 

• Within the component, go to the “Delivery” tab and right click within the white area of the box.

• In “General Information” put ID (01, 02, 081)

• Put in time (forced time or pattern request) – if necessary

• Put in room request or force room – if necessary

• Add instructor name – if available

• Save

Deleting a delivery:

• Within the component go to the “Delivery” tab highlight the delivery

• Right click

• Delete and save

Changing Section Numbers  

There might be some in situations where section on a course is deleted but the following sections are not.  When prior term copy is done, the cancelled section no longer appears on the Schedule of Classes as it is not carried forward, this course could be set up as such – 001, 002, 004 and 005 (where 003 was cancelled the previous year). 

The best problem solving scenario for the example below is to do a query to determine what is missing. 

However, there might be some incidents when these are missed and a change needs to be done in Infosilem. 

Go to sections and locate the course needing the change. 

As you can see in the highlighted area the section numbers are not in sequence. 

Open the section that you need to recode.  All you need to do here is change the 028 to 026. 

Save. Repeat these steps to change the following components to put them in sequence. 

In situations where the sections are separated by associated numbers, there is a need to change both the associated numbers and the component.

Open the associated number that needs to be changed and change the ID to the appropriate number.  Save.

Go into the ‘Components’ tab to change the component. 

Change the component to the appropriate lecture number.  Save.

Changing Associated Components

To change associated components, go into ‘Sections.’

Go to the course that needs the associated components changed.

Find the components you would like the change (e.g. change LEC 008 to 007 to be associated with TUT 118)

To change a component on this list, you must highlight just the cell it is in and then hit F9 to generate a list of components for the course to.  From there you will highlight the component you would like to change the cell to and then save. 

Creating Ties

 Timetabler - Scheduling Ties

Scheduling ties are put on courses and/or deliveries in order to ensure they are scheduled relating in the way departments request.  For example, if an instructor requests two courses they are teaching to be back to back, a tie can be created to achieve this. 

Creating Scheduling Groups

Scheduling Groups is a way to group certain courses together that are either held with each other or maybe held at the same time or at the same time in the same room but not scheduled as held withs.  You can create groups by going into “Scheduling Groups” in the left hand navigation panel.

Right click to add new and set up grouping

Add courses by going to the “Components Group” tab, right click and add.  Then key in descriptive ID in General information.

Go to the “components” tab and add courses.

Held with courses are also done in a similar way, except that the 4-digit combination number in Quest must also be in the ID in Infosilem.

Creating Blockoffs

 Timetabler - Instructor constraints

Blockoffs are created to block off specific times and/or days on a course or instructor.  You can find blockoffs by going into “Secondary Files.” 

Creating Academic Groupings

There are situations where courses must be on the same day and conflict free.  The best way to tie these courses together is in an “Academic Block.” By doing this you need to go into “Departments” to add an academic block. Double click on the Department that you are going to be attaching the Academic block

Right click in the main preview screen to add block.  Entertain ID information. 

To add ‘Type’ hit F9 to find and choose ‘to spread things out’

Add components to the blockoff in the components tab and then save.

Room Characteristics and Blockoffs

 Timetabler - Room Blockoffs

Within Infosilem the user can add characteristics (whiteboard, electronic classroom, etc.) or blockoffs on a room.  To do this go into the “Rooms” section in the navigation panel.

To add a characteristic, go to the “Room Characteristic” tab.  Right click in the white space and hit attach.  Find characteristic you would like to add and highlight.

Hit Enter and the characteristic will be added.  Hit save. 

Creating ‘TBA’ instructor

In cases where an instructor is not in the system (sessional) but has constraints that affect a course being scheduled, then a ‘TBA’ profile can be created.  To do this you must go into Departments → choose department → Professors.

Right click in the main screen and add new.

When the profile screen pops up, put cursor in ‘Type’ and hit F9.  Pick ‘TBA.’

You will then need to go to the ‘Constraints’ tab, click the ‘Customized Constraints’ check box, and change the weekly constraints from 0-0 to Preference 4 and Limit 3 days off. 

Go into ‘Blockoff’ tab and add necessary time constraints.  If you cannot find the one you need, go into ‘Secondary files’ first and create a new blockoff using the block off procedure at the start of this section

Using ‘TBA’ instructors for component blockoffs

Creating New Patterns

Creating a new pattern might be necessary in situations where the program requires a meet pattern that is not part of the standard patterns already created.  To create new patterns, this is found in Secondary files → Mater Grid → UWaterloo → Pattern…

From here, go into the main preview screen, right click and add new

Put in ID information (name the pattern – 1x1h, 2x1.5h, etc)

Go to the ‘Pattern Subsets Generator’ button, so you don’t have to enter each time/day separately. 

Coding Alternate Pavilions

 Timetabler - Adding Alternative Pavilions

For each course that has a starting pavilion on it, there needs to be alternate pavilions set up within Infosilem so that if a room cannot be found for that course in the starting pavilion the system can then move onto other pavilions to search.  In order to add these alternate pavilions, these steps should be made. 

Courses with no time request

It is important to ensure whether a course is to have a time request on it or not.  There are two areas in Infosilem you need to check – ‘DCU Review’ in ‘My Views’ and ‘Components without Deliveries’ in ‘Data Consistency Check’.   The reason why it is important to view the latter is because if no coding has been put on a course in the DCU, then it will not show up in the ‘My Views’ section of Infosilem.

My Views:

Data Consistency Check:

My Views

 Timetabler - My Views

This area of Infosilem is where the user can view all the notes that have been coded via the DCU regarding specific course requirements. 

Scheduler

 Timetabler - Running Scheduler

Once all coding and clean ups has been done, it is then time to schedule the courses. 

Ties vs. Blockoffs vs. Grouping

There are multiple ways to code courses to meet pedagogical needs of the program. Below are some examples of how to code courses together using either ‘Secondary Files,’ ‘Academic Groups,’ and ‘Scheduling Ties.’

Scheduling Tie:  Needed to tie two courses together.  Examples:

• ECON 101 LEC 001 must be back to back in same room with ECON 101 LEC 002

• HIST 235 DIS 101 must be one to two days after LEC 001

• FR 250 must be conflict free with FR 706, FR 709 and FR 641 (Grad students TA)

Component Blockoff:  Needed for when certain times/days must be blocked off for a course.  Examples:

• ECE 356 must be blocked off on Monday and Friday for LABs

• OPTOM 309 must not occur in the afternoon due to clinics

• CHEM 123L cannot be booked after 2:30pm

Academic Groups:  Needed to group courses together that must be conflict-free.  Example:

• ECE 329 must not conflict with SYDE 104, SE 235 and CHE 254

• PSYCH 102 must occur on the same day as PSYCH 105