E10 - How to: Ensure optimal rooming results using auto-room

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Preamble
• 1. Set up requirements
  • Settings > Rooms
  • Rooms > Room data (F5)
  • a. Rooms > Room areas
  • b. Rooms > Speciality rooms
  • c. Setup > Campus data
  • Teachers > Teacher data (F2)
  • Rooms > Subject rooms (SHIFT-F5)
  • Classes > Class data (F6)
• 2. Room the classes
  • Rooms > Room allocations (CTRL-R) > Actionbar: Auto room
  • Rooms > Room allocations (CTRL-R) > Actionbar: Room new rotation
• 3. Review the results
  • Rooms > Room allocations > Rooming quality
  • Timetable view (teacher/rooms/year)
  • Reports > Reports

Preamble

1. Set up requirements

Correct setup of requirements ensures a desirable result when using the auto-room feature. 

Settings > Rooms

Use Specialist rooms to be shared evenly when the school has more classes than prac labs available. Toggle to highlight/unhighlight rooms. This option may be used when the school has more Science classes than science labs. It ensures all Science classes have equitable access to the labs during the cycle, rather than have one class always miss out for every lesson.

In Rooming priorities, enter a string to signify the priority. For example: (7D,8D),(Yr11,Yr12),(Yr7,Yr8,Yr9,Yr10),*PDHPE. Brackets signify equal level priority. The sequence reflects the relative priority of the bracketed terms, so in the example above, Yr11 and Yr12 have priority over most junior classes. The reference to Yr7 in 3^rd bracket pair will naturally exclude the 7D classes, as these have been addressed at a higher priority. So the Yr7 term refers to all the other remaining Yr7 classes in the example. See F1 Help for more on this priority syntax.

Rooms > Room data (F5)

Use the Size column to set the maximum number of students that can be accommodated in a room. This number is considered with class sizes when auto-rooming. Leave this cell blank if the room is considered to have infinite size.

Please read our document How to: Set up home rooms for teachers or students as well.

By default, all rooms are considered to be general rooms and will have an entry ‘G’ in the Type column when first created. Change this entry to 'S' if the room is a specialist room or '(G)' when the room can be considered as a fallback general room.

Use these View options to display more data:

1. View > Room sets
   
2. View > Unavailable
   
   

Use these other tables to define specific requirements:

1. Rooms > Room areas
   
2. Rooms > Specialty rooms
3. Setup > Campus data; to create/edit a list of campuses and the list of associated rooms.

a. Rooms > Room areas

An 'area' might represent a building, a floor of a building, or a cluster of rooms.

Either list the rooms explicitly, with space or comma as a separator, or use a wildcard to specify a group of rooms. For example, "L*" represents all rooms starting with 'L', which might equate to Block L. Unique to this option is the ability to use wildcards to specify ranges of room numbers.  For example, "L1-19" represents rooms L1,L2,L3,...L18,L19 but not L20.

Examples:

R2,R3,R4,R16,R17

M*, GYM

M20-29

A ‘Nearby Area’ may be in the same building or in another block. Using this enables E10 to determine acceptable alternative rooming if required.

b. Rooms > Speciality rooms

Use this feature to specify rooms required for students with a specific need.

Enter one row for each type/capability of room. Describe the requirement, e.g. 'hearing loop' or 'ground level'. List the rooms that have this capability, separated by commas. List the names of the students requiring this capability, one name per cell with the same order as the name in student data.

The Auto-rooming algorithm considers these requirements.  Adjust the weight of Rooms > Room allocations (CTRL-R) > Actionbar: Auto room > Parameter: Adhere to special needs to specify how important these requirements are in relation to all other aspects of rooming.

Violations of special needs requirements are also shown in Health Check > Summary or Rooms if there are any.

c. Setup > Campus data

Teachers > Teacher data (F2)

Use View > Home room to display or enter the home room of a teacher. 

Rooms > Subject rooms (SHIFT-F5)

Click on a cell (empty or otherwise) in the Room Codes section.  Select a room from the room picker window and keep selecting same room to cycle through the ability to; add as Preferred; add as Fallback; add as Desperate; Remove.

If a subject just needs a general theory room and the school is not fussy which one, leave the Subject Rooms set empty for that subject code. The room will be correctly roomed into a general room (rooms with type G in Room data). There is no requirement to list a particular room for any subject in Rooms > Subject rooms.

Ensure that the Home room of the teacher or group, as defined in Room data, is included in the Subject rooms set for every class that teacher or group has.

Where 2 or more subjects share the same set of rooms, enter the room set code of one subject in the LinkTo column of the other subject(/s). This is simpler than managing 2 identical sets of rooms.

Classes > Class data (F6)

If a teacher/student has a requirement to use a particular room for ease of access, enter the room in RoomPref column. Otherwise, this field should be left blank which means it will default to those rooms associated with the subject of the class, entered in Subject rooms set.

The RoomPref column can be used to specify a room code for E10 Study classes. The other place to assign rooms to Study classes is from Teachers > Study roster (CTRL-F4) > Actionbar: Auto room study classes.

If two classes share the same room, e.g. 11Mus1 and 11Mus2 share the same room, being either ‘Music1’ or ‘Music2’, use the Link column to link the classes and set the RoomPref of the linking class to ‘None’. That way the 2 classes run at the same time and the linker picks up the same room as the linkee. There is no need to link both ways.

For classes that are not yet populated, specify the proposed class size in the #Stu column. This will force the rooming algorithms to treat these classes as if this number WAS the size of the class. For example, an entry of ‘22’ as likely approximate class size will ensure this class can’t be auto-roomed into a 5-seat library seminar room, as it would not fit. Once a single student is registered to the class, the actual class list/class size is used.

2. Room the classes

Rooms > Room allocations (CTRL-R) > Actionbar: Auto room

Auto room will first clear all rooms and then assign rooms to classes for the selected rotation. Auto room works on one rotation at a time.

Only if you feel confident, adjust the default weights to specify how important one requirement is in relation to all other aspects of rooming. The higher the weight, the more important is the requirement. 

Usually, you don’t need to vary the rooming weights unless you are a more confident or advanced user, and have specific rooming issues you want to address.

The parameter Proximity to main room relates to the room code that a CLASS in Classes > Class data, is predominantly scheduled into. It is not the main room ‘of the teacher’, such as the teacher’s home room or predominantly scheduled room.

Rooms > Room allocations (CTRL-R) > Actionbar: Room new rotation

This feature tries to retain the existing rotation rooming, and apply it to the classes of the selected rotation. 

We can improve this feature and better report the outcomes by manually applying the existing rotation rooming to the class as a RoomPref in Classes > Class data (F6). 

Go to Classes > Class data (F6) > View > Assigned room. Then, for each rotation class: Manually copy (CTRL-C) the room codes shown for each class, or the dominant room code at least - and paste (CTRL-V) it into the RoomPref column for that class. You may now apply auto-rooming tools in Room allocations (CTRL-R) such as Actionbar: Improve > Fix Clashes or Optimise rooming, or Actionbar: Room new rotation or even Actionbar: Auto room if you added the existing rooms to even the all-year classes. The result is that the existing rooming will be seen by E10 as a strong preference, and be largely granted in any subsequent changes.

Note also that by populating RoomPref fields, you will be able to generate a rooming report of all variations of the preferred retention of semester change rooming, given these will not be the ‘preferred’ room in these cases (Health Check > Rooms > Fallbacks filter per rotation). 

3. Review the results

Rooms > Room allocations > Rooming quality

Sort the columns (double click on the relevant grey column heading) to see room allocations by Class, Subject name, Main staff or Score.

A yellow 'N' next to the room code indicates a violation of the requirement to have a Special Needs room. The class has a student who requires a Special Needs room as defined in Rooms > Speciality rooms.

To see room score details of a class, broken down into each of the weighted categories, double click the ‘Score’ cell for the selected class. 

To see rooming allocations for a specific year and subject, use the filter options top-right to filter on a faculty or on a year.

To change all periods for a given class, do one of the following in the Room allocations screen:

1. Double click on the assigned room for that class or select the assigned room and hit CTRL-R on the keyboard.

2. This opens the Room selector window for changes to all periods for the highlighted class.

3. From any timetable view, select the class and CTRL-R to open the ‘all periods’ selector window for the highlighted class.

Timetable view (teacher/rooms/year)

Yellow, lowercase ‘f’ means the room is overfull of students beyond the room capacity, but not beyond the ‘allowed’ overfull level (e.g. 2 seats). Yellow, uppercase ‘F’ means the room is overfull beyond this allowance.

To manually change the room of a single class on a teacher’s timetable, click the lesson / period in the teacher’s timetable. Then press R or CTRL-R on your keyboard and select the desired room for the highlighted period.

Reports > Reports

his shows a list of:

1. All double periods which have a ‘split double’, such that the class has a different room for the second period than the first.
2. Prac classes not in prac rooms, as per Settings > Rooms.
   
3. Classes that failed to get their home room.