Building a Draft Board 101 and Pro Tips

Copying an old schedule can save time, but relies on term and timeblock setup matching from one year to the next. See Import Live Schedule to Draft help document for details on importing.

If terms and timeblocks do not match from one year to the next, and/or if your schedule will be drastically different from the previous year, then you'll follow the rest of the steps in this lesson to build a fresh schedule using Illuminate tools. See Create a Draft Schedule help document to get started.

Illuminate tools will try and place sections in the best way possible to allow for the least scheduling conflicts possible. However, if you absolutely must have specific sections occur in particular timeblocks and assigned to certain teachers, you'll want to place those first. For example, if Mr. Smith teaches 1 section of Marching Band and 4 sections of Music Appreciation, and Marching Band absolutely has to be offered Period 5, but Music Appreciation can happen at other times, then place the section of Marching Band with Mr. Smith in Period 5.

As you work on placing sections and move some around, it is highly recommended to duplicate your draft as you experiment with different possibilities so that you always have a version to go back to if the new one doesn't work out.

Illuminate Scheduling Tools aim at fulfilling as many course requests as possible, but there may be a need for manual updates. It's possible to make different selections when running the Mass Student Scheduler in Phase 5. If for any reason you find you want to start over in scheduling students, it is recommended to save a draft version with your finalized board before students are placed in any sections. This allows for a fallback option.