Each run of the student scheduler takes no more than 10 minutes. The scheduler usually places the vast majority of students in the first few minutes, and then uses the rest of its time to resolve scheduling conflicts by shuffling students in and out of classes. The scheduler may be run multiple times to give it extra time to resolve conflicts.
Where to Start
1. You must be logged in under the school year and site for which you are impacting scheduling. Note (in the upper-right corner of your screen) that you are now logged in under the upcoming school year.
2. If you are not, use the Change Student Set / Site in the upper corner of your screen to log in under the upcoming school year.
1. Click the Scheduling tab.
2. Under Schedule Management, click Mass Student Scheduling.
If the Draft Overview page appears, simply select the Current Schedule Version for which you are working with.
Run Scheduler
1. Select/check Start Fresh if you want the scheduler to clear out student schedules from previous student scheduler runs (note, however, that any time a student is manually scheduled, those placements are locked and are not affected by this option, or by any action of the student scheduler).
2. Select/check Lock all previous assignments if you want all schedules (whether they were created by the scheduler or scheduled by hand) to be locked, in which case the scheduler will only act upon unsatisfied course requests without doing any shuffling of existing schedule assignments (this can be useful when used in combination with the Grade Level option if you are scheduling one grade level at a time).
3. Enter a number after Allow section capacities to be exceeded by if you want to tell the scheduler to treat every section as though its capacity was increased by the number you stipulate (this is useful if you begin the school year expecting more students to show up than ever actually do, as is the case for many middle and junior highs schools). For example, if I enter 5 after Allow section capacities to be exceeded by, and my section capacities were previously set at a maximum of 35 students per period, the scheduler will behave as if I had set ALL my section capacities at a maximum of 40 students per period.
4. Select a Grade Level if you want to only schedule students in a particular grade level (this is a popular option for sites that first schedule one grade level, then schedule the next by running the scheduler again with Lock all previous assignments selected/checked, and so on).
5. Select/check Disable Houses if you want to turn off house restrictions (students will then be scheduled into any available section regardless of house). This is often a "last resort" option (often run with Lock all previous assignments selected/checked) to schedule remaining students who are not fitting into sections otherwise.
6. Select/check Use automated student houses if you want the schedule to run so that the first time the scheduler places a student into a section (or with a teacher) that is associated with a house, the student will be assumed to belong to that house for the remainder of the scheduling process (this is a popular option if you do not want to take the time to assign students to houses ahead of time, but would rather let the scheduler do it for you).
7. When you are finished setting scheduling options, click Schedule Students to run the scheduler.
Next Steps
Give the scheduler time (e.g., typically no more than 10 minutes) to run. Meanwhile, you might choose to review the Scheduler Jobs Report that appears on your screen, documenting the current and previous scheduling jobs you have run.
Proceed to the next lesson in this manual for support with the next step.