NOVA Facilities

[Zcapw97]

Hi all,

 

Hoping someone can help me with a timetabling issue.

 

In year 10 & 11 we have Food and Nutrition and Design and Technology.

We have one classroom for food and 2 for tech but can only have one class of each subject at KS4 at a time. So i have added facilities (FDK4 & TEK4) for each with a limit of 1 on both so that no KS4 classes will clash. This is fine.

 

In year 7, 8 & 9 we have Technology which rotates through the same three rooms above. So at KS3 we can have 3 classes at the same time. Again i have set these up as a facility (TECH) with a limit of 3. This is fine.

 

What i need to do is ensure that if a KS4 class (of either food or DT) is on at any time then no KS3 Tech class is scheduled as well. At the moment nothing will be flagged if i have a KS4 class alongside 2 KS3 classes.

 

I have always solved this manually by reviewing as i go but am wondering if i can put an automatic process in place as i am about to stop the timetabling in my school and a less experienced person is picking it up so i would like to try and leave more support embedded in the structure if i can.

 

Thanks in advance for your help

 

Darren

[Linfit]

You can assign more than one facility to a class, so if you assigned FDK4 and TEK4 to one of the KS3 classes as well as TECH shouldn't that prevent them being scheduled at the same time ?

[Zcapw97]

Thank you but I would need to add it to all of the key stage 3 classes as there is no systematic way in which they are scheduled (all based on staffing and how it fits), so it could be x1,x2,x3 but it could be x1,x3,x5 or x1 and x4 or even just x1.

If i add KS4 facilities to all of the KS3 classes it will then flag up as a facility issue whenever there is more than one KS3 class rather than if there is a clash between KS4 and KS3.

 

Thanks

[Linfit]

Yeah, sorry, reading it now I assumed the KS3 classes were in a block together. If they are free floating in linear blocks you are right, I can't see an obvious way to do it.

[Zcapw97]

Darn, I was hoping that wasn't going to be the case.

Thank you anyway!

[Mjstone1]

I don't have experience of this system so not sure if this would work but if you can assign more than one facility to each class, could you create a unique FDK4 and TEK4 code for each of the KS3 classes, e.g. FDK471 for year 7 class 1, FDK481 for year 8 class 1 etc...

then add all the FDK4xx codes to the KS4 classes, all with a limit of 1. Then if a KS4 class is scheduled, all of the FDK4xx codes will be triggered causing any of the KS3 classes to clash and if any KS3 class is scheduled, it would be one of the tags in the KS4 class causing a clash. It would mean the KS4 classes would have lots of facilities attached to them though.

[Zcapw97]

I think that would probably work.

There would be a large number of facilities attached but you can set it so that they dont show up on the timetable so it would just be a behind the scenes list.

 

Thanks very much!