E10 - ADMIN Setup: School info - Multi-Grid mode

Modified on Thu, 14 Aug at 12:42 AM

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preamble
Setup

Preamble

The Multi-grid feature is used when a school has a single timetable etz file but requires different sets of bell times for various year levels, e.g. Senior, Middle, Junior, Primary. Year levels with the same bell times are associated with a 'campus'. A change to the bell times in Grid structure for one year level in a 'campus' automatically updates the bell times for all the other year levels associated with the same 'campus'.

Two key points when Multi-grid is enabled:

The campus displayed in the year level dropdown is significant.
A single period can NOT have 2 different start and end bell times. This will mean some period short codes will need to change.

The steps below can be expanded to set up multiple sets of bell times for, say, a single school timetable etz that has Senior, Middle, Junior and Primary bell times.

For simplicity, consider the case where a K-12 school has purchased a Multi Grid licence and has 1 timetable etz file with 2 sets of bell times - one for Secondary (7-12) and another for Primary (K-6). Assume all periods in the Primary campus start and end at different times to those in the Secondary campus. In this example, we will keep the period names for Years 7-12 as they are and set up different bell times for Years K-6.

The school must be licensed to use this functionality.

Setup

School Info

In the School Info tab, tick to select the Multi-grid mode.

Campus data

Enter the short CampusCode to be used.

Examples:

Secondary and Primary
Senior, Middle, Junior

Do not use the CampusCode of 'Main'

Year levels

Enter the appropriate campus for each year level - Secondary for each of Years 7-12 and Primary for each of Years K-6, in this example.

Grid structure

Select 'Primary' from the Year dropdown.
Change the period names to start with the letter P (for Primary) - P0, P1, P2, PR, P3, P4, PL1, etc - and change bell times as required. If, and only if, a Primary period has exactly the same bell times as a Secondary period can you use the same label.
1. If Primary period 3 starts and ends at same time as Secondary period 3, then use '3' as period label in the Primary Grid structure - i.e. both Secondary and Primary have the same period labelled '3'.
2. However, if Primary period 3 has same bell times as Secondary period 4, then use a different label e.g. P3, for the Primary period.
All year levels associated with the Primary campus will pick up the Primary period names and bell times.

SUGGESTION:
If the file started out as a Secondary only file, then after changing to Multi Grid and creating a Primary campus and a Secondary campus, there will be 3 dropdowns in Grid Structure - Default, Secondary, Primary.Initially the Default and Secondary period names will be the same.

Either:
* Change the Default campus period names to start with 'D' or 'X'. They are not required. This means that if a file started out as a Secondary only file, there will be no need to change the entries in Periods column in Class data for all the Secondary Year levels.
* Change the Secondary periods to start with 'S'.
You cannot have duplicate periods on a file with different start and end times.

Examples:

Grid structure for Secondary

Grid structure for Primary

Teacher data

You may (optionally) associate teachers with a campus in the Teachers > Teacher Data screen.

Select Main Campus from the View filter to show the column. Assigning a campus to the teacher will determine the default grid structure that is displayed when viewing a teacher’s timetable. Leaving it blank will mean a filter dropdown appears in TT view.

Timetable Views

The Period names in a timetable view will depend upon what year level was being viewed prior to selecting the Timetable view.

Select Class data for Year 11 and then select Year timetable. The period names will be 0, 1, 2, R, ...

Now select Class data for Year 6 and then select Year timetable. The period names will be P0, P1, P2, PR, P3, P4, PL1, etc.

Teacher Timetable

Example 1

Teacher HOLK has not been associated with any campus in Teacher data. She mostly teaches classes associated with the Secondary campus.

From the Filter dropdown, select 'Secondary'.
The Secondary period names and bell times appear.
HOLK has classes in the Primary campus - 6SCIA etc. They appear in the timetable with start and end times next to the class code.

Example 2
The same timetable as above, but with 'Primary' selected from the filter dropdown.
This time it is the Secondary classes that have start and end times next to the class codes.

Example 3
This teacher PRIA was associated with the 'Primary' campus in Teacher data.
There is no campus filter dropdown.
The periods and bell times are those of the 'Primary' campus.

Duty Roster

Duty areas may be associated with a campus using the Campus column in Teachers > Duty Roster > Step 2: Duty areas table.

Meetings

Meetings scheduled for teachers may be associated with a campus using the Campus column in Classes > Class data.

Master Grid F11

The clash spots in F11 are coded differently for multi-grid. The clash spots are displayed as blue diamonds. These diamonds will not line up because the clashes are across different grids and period names.

Use Improve or Advanced Options > Optimise to fix any clashes, instead of the specific Fix clashes algorithm.

The reason for this is that:

The Fix clashes algorithm tries to find and fix issues within each column
Optimise tries to find and fix issues between different columns (Spreads, ...)
A cross-campus overlap is technically a clash, but it is happening between different columns, so we need to use Improve or Optimise.