Xronos Scheduler - ideas wanted

[jwinters]

(Not sure this is quite the right sub-forum, but it seems the best match.)

 

For the last few years, I've been developing an Open Source (GPL) software package for schools called Scheduler. Its purpose is to provide a unified store recording all the multitudinous things happening from day to day in a given school.

 

 

At first sight it looks a bit like Google Calendar, but with one major difference - it stores its event information in a structured fashion. Rather than having dozens or hundreds of different calendars as you would with Google Calendar, with Scheduler you have just the one store and then you choose what you want to see from it.

 

It can thus store your entire academic timetable, your extra-curricular activities, homework timetable, invigilation, cover, public calendars (General, Sport, Music, Drama etc.) in one place, making it quick and easy to extract the exact information which you want, and automatically identifying clashes.

 

It can feed personalised schedules to hand-held devices (phones etc.) for both staff and pupils. It can identify exactly who will be missing from your lessons because of a trip. It can facilitate re-location of lessons - either individually or in bulk.

 

Scheduler doesn't aim to replace your MIS. It's solely concerned with schedule information - what is happening, where, when and with whom. It doesn't require double-entry of information - anything relevant which is already in your MIS it can extract automatically and import. It can handle data exported from SchoolBase, WCBS/Pass and iSAMS. It takes all that data and unifies it - making it far easier for staff and pupils to get just the information which they need. It tells them not what would be happening if this were a normal week, but what is actually happening this week - there's often a big difference.

 

It is in use in a number of schools and has been very well received by the staff. "Why didn't this package exist years ago?" is a not uncommon reaction.

 

Anyway - to the point of this post. Development is still ongoing and I'm looking for new ideas. If you can spare the time to take a look at the documentation and/or demo and come up with comments along the line of, "Yes, but why doesn't it do ...?", or "Well, it would be useful if only ..." then I would be most appreciative.

 

Documentation is at https://xronos.uk/

 

Demonstration system at https://schedulerdemo.xronos.uk/

 

Entire source is at https://github.com/XronosSchedulingLtd/scheduler

 

The software is free - as in both beer and speech.Thanks in advance for any feedback.

 

John Winters

 

(Incidentally, that initial X in Xronos should be seen as a Greek Chi character - it's pronounced Chronos.)

Edited September 3, 2019 by jwinters

[mavhc]

the links in your post are broken.

 

I guess what would be useful is a document that goes through the steps needed to add a new importer for a different MIS

[jwinters]

Thanks. The text of the links was right, but the editor seems to have mangled them in each case by adding the first word of the next line to the URL. I think I've fixed them now.

 

Adding an importer for a new MIS is probably not a task for a beginner, but I'd be very interested in cooperating with someone who wanted to do it. The data importer is modular - it has a core section which is MIS-agnostic, then plug-in modules for each individual MIS. You're right - this should all be documented. One of my big ideas for the autumn is to write a lot more documentation.

 

 

Addition a few hours later - after I've thought about it a bit more. I now think this is a really good idea and so thanks for it again. It isn't actually that big a job to write the extra modules necessary to add import for a different MIS, and it's the sort of thing which really should be documented. I will put it high on my list of upcoming work.

Edited September 3, 2019 by jwinters

[djrscally]

I enjoy the levity of your code comments

 

The documentation mentions re-location of lessons: https://xronos.uk/relocate.html. Is there any write-back functionality to inform the MIS of that relocation? One thing that springs immediately to mind is that there is usually a bunch of reporting in the MIS that isn't necessarily in a calendar format but nonetheless draws information about the timetable. For example you might have a "where is little johnny right this very moment" report, or a "where are the kids who've been assigned detention today having their lesson in the last period of the day" report so you can send some heavies to haul them to the detention room.

[jwinters]

Thank you. ;-)

 

Feeding a single lesson relocation back into the MIS would depend very much on the capabilities of the MIS. The ones which I've experienced can generally store the school timetable, but they don't usually cope with the idea of minor transient amendments.

 

This is one of the big reasons for Scheduler to exist. It gives you a quick way of finding out where little johnny actually is - not where he would be if this were a normal school day but where he actually is today. It is generally far faster simply to ask Scheduler the question than it is to log in to your MIS and try to get it from there. Users tend to keep it open in a tab in their browser, and it then takes a very few keystrokes to pull up the schedule for any pupil or staff member (or room, or facility, or...)

[djrscally]

Thank you. ;-)

 

Feeding a single lesson relocation back into the MIS would depend very much on the capabilities of the MIS. The ones which I've experienced can generally store the school timetable, but they don't usually cope with the idea of minor transient amendments.

 

This is one of the big reasons for Scheduler to exist. It gives you a quick way of finding out where little johnny actually is - not where he would be if this were a normal school day but where he actually is today. It is generally far faster simply to ask Scheduler the question than it is to log in to your MIS and try to get it from there. Users tend to keep it open in a tab in their browser, and it then takes a very few keystrokes to pull up the schedule for any pupil or staff member (or room, or facility, or...)

 

Yeah that's useful in the case of a single student, but not when you have an often ad-hoc batch of students to locate quickly. Is there a means of achieving that?

 

Also, is there any intention for this to replace scheduling software, I.E. will you be able to write a timetable with this?

 

Edit: also; have you tested this on windows? If so and it works are you planning on including Windows oriented installation documentation? I don't see from the components any reason it shouldn't work on windows as well as linux, so although my experience with this sort of thing is that everything is easier on Linux, my guess is you'll find at least some people will discount it on the grounds of unfamiliarity with that OS and an unwillingness to puzzle out the windows equivalent of the installation steps.

 

Also also also; have you considered a bash/powershell script to run through installation?

Edited September 5, 2019 by djrscally